Operation Manual

Formatting
Using the Report Design Environment
13
Crystal Reports User’s Guide 253
When a section is formatted with free-form placement, all objects can be
placed anywhere on that section. Crystal Reports places objects within a
section based on their absolute coordinates. These coordinates determine
the vertical placement of objects on your report. What this means is that you
control the vertical placement of single-line, text-based objects rather than the
printer driver. In doing so, you can better protect your reports from printing
inconsistencies caused by using different printer drivers.
However, while the printer driver no longer controls the vertical spacing of
text-based objects within the sections, it still determines horizontal spacing of
text within the text-based objects, as well as the inter-line spacing of multi-
line, text-based objects. So, while free-form placement gives you better
control, you must still take into account these considerations when designing
your reports. See “Placing multi-line, text-based objects” on page 244.
Free-form placement off
If a section has the Free-Form Placement option turned off, the program no
longer references the object’s absolute coordinates to determine where it
prints, except under the following conditions.
• The absolute x coordinate is still referenced to determine where each
object begins printing horizontally (left and right placement).
• The y coordinate is still referenced for vertical placement of the object,
but the coordinates may be adjusted by the Crystal Reports Designer
when the printer driver changes.
So, if the report is printed using a printer driver that measures inter-line
spacing greater than the original printer driver, the y coordinate increases and
the text-based object prints farther down the page. With the Free-Form
Placement option turned off, the user no longer controls the vertical
placement of text-based objects; the printer driver determines that instead.
However, the placement of OLE objects such as graphics, boxes, and lines is
not controlled by the printer driver. Therefore, when placing and printing, the
Crystal Reports Designer always references the absolute coordinates of
these objects. Due to the various placement methods, problems can arise
when both text-based objects and OLE objects are placed on a report.
For example, a box (OLE object) is placed around a database string field
(text-based object). Everything looks great and everything is aligned as it
should be. However, if the report is printed using a printer with an especially
high measurement for inter-line spacing, then the following conditions occur.
• The placement of the box does not change relative to the section in which
it is placed (the x and y coordinates do not change).
• The vertical placement of the text-based object changes because the y
coordinate is adjusted upward.