Word template interaction (*.dot files)

[metro]

Has anyone attempted to interact with word.dot templates, is it possible from LB?

I have a database of customers that I wish to send letters to based upon certain criteria .

It could be to send an invoice

or a demand for payment

or marketing, promotion....

so a different template for each option, I want to insert the customer details into the letter (template)

just prior to printing.

any guidance appreciated

[Rod]

Well if you look at print form.bas that ships with Liberty you will see that it is perfectly possible to print good quality correspondence. Adding mail merge code would be relatively trivial.

So I would go native, but, someone else may actually have experience of word.dot From my excel days it was simply pointing the template at columns

[metro]

May 30, 2020 2:53:10 GMT -5 Rod said:

Well if you look at print form.bas that ships with Liberty you will see that it is perfectly possible to print good quality correspondence. Adding mail merge code would be relatively trivial.

So I would go native, but, someone else may actually have experience of word.dot From my excel days it was simply pointing the template at columns

Thanks Rod, it may well be that I have to go down that path, @ my  place of part time employment they use MYOB and have

over 20 templates which I will need to re-create , no big deal I just thought if someone has confronted this already it could save

me some time.

meanwhile I'll take a look at form.bas

appreciate the feedback

PS I'm thinking it's printform.bas I'm needing to look at, which is impressive

just curious how would one print a double sided page

is it just a case of more height for the graphic  window

how does the page feed?

so I ran printform.bas and I received a printed page that is completely black.

I seem to remember this happening years ago when I tried it.

Visual_Smalltalk_able-job_13.pdf (55.35 KB)

OK has to be a linux/wine issue prints fine win10

If any other linux users have experienced the same issue I have found that replacing #form "backcolor white" with #form "backcolor 255 255 255" solves the issue

[Rod]

I think you will find that with the graphics PRINT command we are limited to one page printing. This does not stop you printing the face then printing the reverse as two print runs. I don't have the option of an automatic duplex print so that's how I am used to doing it. However I don't think double height would work on an automatic printer, if you have access to a duplex printer you could try. I think the print will just be cropped.

We cant put control characters like chr$(12) in our simple printing. Apparently with RTF you can get some control with say "/page".

So perhaps still worth exploring another tool.

[metro]

Thanks Rod