_padvance

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Determines whether the printer advances the paper of a print job with a formfeed or with linefeeds.

Syntax

_padvance = <expC>

<expC>

The character expression "FORMFEED" or "LINEFEEDS".

Default

The default for _padvance is "FORMFEED".

Description

Use _padvance to specify whether dBASE Plus advances the paper to the top of the next sheet one sheet at a time using a formfeed character, or one line at a time using linefeed characters. If you use the default "FORMFEED" setting, the paper advances according to the printer's default form length setting.

Tractor-feed printers (such as dot matrix printers) generally use a "LINEFEEDS" setting, while form feed printers (such as laser printers) generally use a "FORMFEED" setting.

Note

Sending CHR(12) to the printer always issues a formfeed, even if you set _padvance to "LINEFEEDS".

Use the "LINEFEEDS" setting if you change the length of the paper or want to print a different number of lines than the default form length of the printer without adjusting its setting. For example, to print short pages, such as checks that are 20 lines long, set _plength to the length of the output (20 in this example) and _padvance to "LINEFEEDS."

The number of linefeeds dBASE Plus uses to reach the top of the next page depends on whether you issue an eject during streaming or non-streaming output mode.

An eject occurs during streaming output mode when you issue:

EJECT PAGE without an ON PAGE handler

EJECT PAGE with an ON PAGE handler when the current line position is past the ON PAGE line

PRINTJOB or ENDPRINTJOB and _peject causes an eject

In these cases, dBASE Plus calculates the number of linefeeds to send to the print device using the formula _plength – _plineno.

An eject occurs in nonstreaming output mode when you issue:

EJECT

In these cases, dBASE Plus calculates the number of linefeeds to send to the print device using the formula _plength – MOD(PROW( ), _plength).