SYMPTOM:

You have prepared a Report design. As you know that this Report will typically be extracted on a Dot-Matrix Printer, therefore you have set the 'Print' mode of the Report as 'Text'. The design, itself, appears well aligned (vertically and horizontally). However, while printing, the System is not printing in an 'aligned' manner, i.e., the  System is skipping lines. This becomes particularly worrying, if you are taking printouts on pre-printed stationary.

Here is a more elaborate description of the observed behaviour. You have prepared a Payslip design, which prints with 6 lines of gap between two Payslips, i.e., 6 lines of space is being skipped between the details of two successive employees. However, your problem is that, after a particular number of Payslips (say, 4) are being printed, i.e., after printing the details of four employees with the standard gap of six lines, the System printed a 'non-standard' gap of five lines.

Under such circumstances, the pertinent question, which may arise is that, how can this problem be avoided, and why does the System behave in such a peculiar manner.

CAUSE:

Underneath, we explain how Reports are printed in the 'Text' mode.

Every grid unit in PERKS corresponds to two pixels, 10 vertical grid units correspond to one text line, and 5 horizontal grid units to one text character. So '5 x 10' is actually the size of a character in Text' mode. The segment separators are 15 units wide. While printing, PERKS uses the pixel position of an object, divides it by 20 (i.e., '10 x 2' pixels, since the position is saved in pixels), rounds it off, and prints it at that position. So, if we do not use 'snap to grid',  then the objects might not be placed at a pixel position, which is exactly divisible by '20'.

Let us generate a Report containing the specifications as laid down below.

Grouping - none
Width of report header - 0
Width of report header bar - 15
Width of page header - 0
Width of page header bar - 15
Width of Detail segment - 3 lines = 30 units

In order to print the first line of the 'detail' segment properly, the top row for all the objects on that line should be exactly '30'.

Now, if we place an object at position '32' (which is slightly below the grid line), let us find out what happens:

Record 1:          (32/2)/10 = 16/10 = 1.6 => 2 (rounded off)
Record 2: ((32+30)/2)/10 = 31/10 = 3.1 => 3 (rounded off)
Record 3: ((62+30)/2)/10 = 46/10 = 4.6 => 5 (rounded off)

For record #3, we have a one line extra skip, here. Thus, the System will print an extra gap of 1 line while printing the details for the third employee.

Similar problems will occur, if the segment separators are not properly placed, or the segment width are not proper.

RESOLUTION:

While designing a 'text' type Report, take care to place all the text and data fields at the appropriate row number (in pixels) so that after rounding off, no problems are encountered.

Please remember one more point; if the current segment starts from half of a grid cell ('5 x 10'), please start the line from there itself, and not from the beginning of the next line. To facilitate this, PERKS allows snapping at half grid stops.

This Article clearly demonstrates the use of 'gridline' and 'snap to grid' options.

In order to ensure that fields are placed at proper positions, grid scale should be set to '5 x 10' (height: 10 pixels and width: 5 pixels), and 'snap' should be 'ON'. Besides, if required, we can use the 'Show Gridlines' feature. 

Further, as indicated above, while computing the line number, PERKS considers the height of a character as 10 pixels. Hence, font size should be '10', normal (i.e., 'Regular'). To print Bold letters, the same field can be pasted twice, one exactly on top of another. Besides, the 'Courier New' font should be used since it is not possible to support font styles under printing in 'Text' mode.Although, the Font dialog is available, only 'Courier New' matches with the 'Text' mode default font style.

Moreover, with 'Text' mode designs, 'spooling' a Report (and, sending the spooled file to the Printer from an Editor, or to the 'Command' prompt) rather than taking a printout directly on the Printer, always, proves to be a wise decision.

MORE INFORMATION:

Refer to the Article titled

Difference between 'Spool To' and 'Output To'