Fujitsu PowerFORM
The following sequence of screen captures lets you see the features of Fujitsu PowerFORM at work.
PowerFORM Wizard
Form Overlays and Data
Fixed and Floating Partitions
Edited Numeric Formats
Labels and Bar Codes
Coding for PowerFORM
Points to watch for in the Fujitsu PowerFORM walk-through include:
- Variety of standard forms offered by the Wizard
- Drag and drop form design
- Flexibility of form design
- Professional form designs
- Integration with COBOL
PowerFORM Wizard
PowerFORM provides a form Wizard to give you a fast start to designing your forms. In the Wizard you:
- Select the target paper size and orientation
- Select the basic pattern for your report from (see picture 1 below):
- Fixed - all data and descriptions are in fixed locations
- Head/Body/Tail - fixed header and footer information, with repeated items in the report body
- Labels - for sheets of labels
- Multiple Parts - for more complex reports where you require one or more control headers or footers as well as fixed headers and footers and repeating items in the body. - Configure the details for your report, such as heading text, number and size of repeating parts (see picture 2 below).
- Place data items in the appropriate parts of your report from pre-configured data item lists (see picture 3 below).
Wizard Picture 1 - Selecting report patterns
Wizard Picture 2 - Configuring details for the Multiple Parts pattern
Wizard Picture 3 - Selecting data for the report
You can select from lists of data items supplied with PowerFORM, or that you set up yourself. You can drag the data item from the list and drop it onto the appropriate part of the report.
Form Overlays and Data
PowerFORM helps you replace pre-printed forms by giving you the ability to incorporate the designs of the pre-printed forms into your software-controlled print output.
- The static part of your form, which used to be on a pre-printed form, is called the form overlay - shown in part (1) of the picture below.
- The variable part of your form is defined in fixed or variable partitions - shown in part (2).
- These are combined to give the printed form - previewed in part (3).
Fixed and Floating Partitions
Report data is grouped into partitions. Partitions can be single or multiple lines.
Partitions can be:
Fixed, meaning that the data is always printed at a fixed location on the page, or
Floating, meaning that the data is printed at the next available position on the page.
Floating partitions can be printed repetitively on pages.
Also notice in the picture below:
- Tree view of partitions and included data items (on the left-hand side).
- Ruler at side of form design area indicating the partitions.
- Toolbars at bottom of the window containing design items that can be dragged and dropped onto the report.
Edited Numeric Formats
PowerFORM provides a large number of edited numeric formats with configurable currency signs, separators, and plus/minus sign display
Labels and Bar Codes
One of the report patterns lets you create label-print programs.
Bar codes can be used in any PowerFORM design
Coding for PowerFORM
You write PowerFORM reports just like you would write any other COBOL print report. NetCOBOL provides a few extensions to the COBOL language to help the system recognize when you are using PowerFORM reports and give you greater control.
The following screen capture shows:
- Declaring the print file. The FORMAT and GROUP clauses identify this file as a PowerFORM print report.
- Declaring the data to be output to the file. PowerFORM creates this data definition for you, and the system copies it in from the special library called "XMDLIB".
- You WRITE a partition at a time so, before writing, you move the partition name to the data item specified in the GROUP clause of the SELECT statement. You can control the line and page positioning using the standard AFTER ADVANCING LINE/PAGE syntax.
