Creating/printing dynamically-sized, detail report ....

[George]

This is such a basic business question that I'm surprised I haven't seen it
as an example in one of the texts..
I need to create and print a report. The report will have a header and subheader/column
titles for the columns of detail-line data.

The number of detail lines will vary, so a jTable on a JScrollPane will dynamically
grow/shrink as the number of detail lines change. Problem is, I don't know
how to resize the columns; one column is the date (MM/DD/YY - 8 char.), the
next column is name (39 char.), my tables always have the same size columns
- Not good. I've tried using a JList, but it looks somewhat clumsy and there
must be a better/standard way.

Additionally, I will be printing the above report on a Canon BJC-80 and BJC-85
printer. I am only familiar with printing a string of ASCII char. and the
width of the report is 200 char. Problem is, the printers only prints portrait
(only 80 char. width), not landscape.
Is there an escape sequence for either:
1)changing the font of the printed char (if small enough, I can fit all

200 char. on one line, even if it is portrait orientation).
2)changing the orientation from portrait to landscape.

Any thoughts would be appreciated,

George

[Paul Clapham]

You could go through half a dozen Java texts without encountering the word
"business". However, here's a piece of code from a class I wrote (that
extends JTable), for changing column widths:

TableColumn col = null;
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
col = getColumnModel().getColumn(i);
col.setPreferredWidth((i<2 ? 30 : 250));
}

Of course you could set your preferred widths to whatever you liked for each
column. But I found this doesn't actually set the widths to what the
program says. Apparently JTable does some kind of scaling or something that
makes the columns fit the width of whatever container it's in, so the result
isn't exact.

Can't advise you on printing, I've never done any from Java.

PC2

"George" <gkozel@allstate.com> wrote in message
news:3ad4a9a8$1@news.devx.com...
>
> This is such a basic business question that I'm surprised I haven't seen
it
> as an example in one of the texts..
> I need to create and print a report. The report will have a header and
subheader/column
> titles for the columns of detail-line data.
>
> The number of detail lines will vary, so a jTable on a JScrollPane will
dynamically
> grow/shrink as the number of detail lines change. Problem is, I don't
know
> how to resize the columns; one column is the date (MM/DD/YY - 8 char.),
the
> next column is name (39 char.), my tables always have the same size
columns
> - Not good. I've tried using a JList, but it looks somewhat clumsy and
there
> must be a better/standard way.
>
> Additionally, I will be printing the above report on a Canon BJC-80 and
BJC-85
> printer. I am only familiar with printing a string of ASCII char. and the
> width of the report is 200 char. Problem is, the printers only prints
portrait
> (only 80 char. width), not landscape.
> Is there an escape sequence for either:
> 1)changing the font of the printed char (if small enough, I can fit all
>
> 200 char. on one line, even if it is portrait orientation).
> 2)changing the orientation from portrait to landscape.
>
> Any thoughts would be appreciated,
>
> George