Use the Drawing Options window to select a variety of fonts, font styles, colors and fill patterns for items in graphics reports. To open the Drawing Options window, select an item in the layout and choosing Report Drawing Options from the Tools menu.
If several items are selected in the layout area when you open the Drawing Options window, the options you specify will apply to all of them. If no items are selected when you open this window, the options defined will be applied to all new objects placed in the layout area.
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For many objects, such as text, lines and rectangles, you can open the Drawing Options window by double-clicking the object. |
Use items in the Font section to specify font characteristics for items in the report. For graphics reports, you can choose any font installed on the current system.
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Keep in mind that if the report is used on another system that doesn’t have the appropriate fonts installed, the missing fonts will be substituted. |
Three “generic” fonts are always available for every report. These are:
These fonts correspond to the fonts that were available in earlier versions of Dexterity and the Report Writer. If you want your reports to be independent of the fonts installed on a particular system, use these generic fonts.
If you are creating a text report and have marked the Variable Characters/Inch option in the report definition, the Font section in the Drawing Options window allows you to specify the characters per inch to use for each line. Simply select a field in the line and display the Drawing Options window. You can choose 5, 6, 10, 12 or 17 characters per inch.
Once you set the characters per inch for a field on the report, any other field you move to that line will also be printed in that size. To see how your text report will appear when printed, be sure the Show Field Names item in the Layout menu is not marked. The report will be displayed as it will appear when printed.
Use the Patterns section to select the fill pattern for fields, text items or shapes in the layout.
Use the Color section to select the font/line, background and foreground colors of items you’ve added to the layout. The line color is used for lines and field borders. The font color is used for text. The foreground color is used to draw the pattern selected in the Patterns section. The background color is used to fill in the remaining area of the object. The line size specifies the size of the line used to draw lines, rectangles, circles and other shapes.
When specifying colors, you can select one of the predefined colors in the list. To use a custom color, select User Defined as the color and then click More Colors to display the Color dialog. Select a color and click OK. The color you selected will be applied to the current color selection.
Use the Alignment setting to specify the horizontal alignment of text in fields or of text items you’ve added using the text tool.