Slowly getting a handle on Dynamic Printing
I've been playing around with Carbone studio to get a better handle on how to work with Dynamic Printing and have come up with the following:
The dynamic bits of it are the Year and everything in the table. The header row is all art. The newest bit is the color coding of text based on another field. You will see gold colored numbers.
The code for that is:
{d.teams[i].e1Pl}{d.teams[i].e1FR:ifNEM:show(..success):elseShow(..normal):color(p)}
I show the data from e1Pl. Then I use the e1FR key to test if it is not empty. If there is data then it will color it gold, if not then it will color it black. The two dots in front of success and normal tell Carbone to go up one levels to look for the key.
I was thinking of making it all dynamic, but I don't think it will work out very well. The two main leagues have very different amounts of events so I would think I have to make very specific templates so I can be sure everything fits. Spacing for MLSJ is not the same for GCL.
If you want to get into dynamic printing, Carbone Studio is the way to go. It was so much faster to develop and test. The free plan only gets you two templates, but it is a good place to start.
Anyways, what have you done with dynamic printing?
9 replies
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Hi ,
I've been meaning to convert my reports to the Carbon engine for a while now. With Ninox going down that route, it seems like the right time to get it done. -
Looks great mate!
So are you saying that using Carbone Studio means I can get around the designing forms within "ms Word) first! as instructed to do so by Niniox. The build in print engibe is poor for basics forms ie delivery Notes etc. and doing them in word/carbone is not that much better (they look basic and nd not professional). But your sample above hints are some design element taking place.
or have i missed the point here and you are talking about only complex grids of data as shown above ?
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said:
So are you saying that using Carbone Studio means I can get around the designing forms within "ms Word) first! as instructed to do so by Niniox.Sadly that is not what I am saying. You still need a text program, but you can also use LibreOffice if you don't want to buy Word.
What Studio offers is the ability to see your changes without having to "print" every time you make a change.
If you use Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera then you don't even have to upload the changes as Studio will automatically upload your changes.
So in Ninox to see your changes, you need to:
1) make the changes in your text editor
2) save the file
3) reload the file in Ninox
4) print the file
5) open the downloaded file
In Studio with a supported browser, you need to:
1) make the changes in your text editor
2) save your file
and doing them in word/carbone is not that much better (they look basic and nd not professional).
I'm no Carbone expert, but I think how a document look is not a limit of Carbone.
But your sample above hints are some design element taking place.
or have i missed the point here and you are talking about only complex grids of data as shown above ?
My main point was to show that you can dynamically display your data. In my example, I dynamically colored different data points. Reading the docs, you can show/hide entire sections of the document depending on your data. You can dynamically show/hide art as well.
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Ah thanks for clarifying. So studio offers effectively "live: updated data back onto the screen. without the faff of having the reprint (redraw the screen etc) That makes sense. Wheres as I want good quality documents that are printed off as final documents that are sent the the client. So I am coming to this from a different direction and thus the word (which i do have) / Carbone route is the one I have to use in preference to the standard reporting module.
However, thank you for the very detailed explanation.
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Lucky you! I would love to switch to carbone, but no way for me to get it to work.
Other two issues I am facing - our CI Font is not compatible and the logo is always pixeled.
So I am stucked with the actual Print engine
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Been adjusting my print layout to be more dynamic as I had more information that had to be displayed.
The last bit of info is to show which events had $300K or more in prize money and highlight the Final event.
You can see the attached pdf to see how it looks. Here is the code in each of the cells with the art work.
{d.events.e1is3K:ifNEM:show(..mlsjGreen):elseShow(#FFFFFF):color(cell,background)}While the original post shows how color(p) changes text color. Here color(cell,background) changes the individual cell.
For this layout I used the table styles to get the row color. I also figured out a way to do it within Carbone.
{d.teams[i].standing}{d.teams[i].standing:mod(2):ifEQ(0):show(#ffffff):elseShow(..mlsjGreen):color(row,background)}Here I use the color(row,background) to change the color of the entire row.
Content aside
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