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Designing Print Applets for Siebel Handheld Applications

The print template references applets associated with the view and is how you specify what data appears in the printed document. For information on print templates, see Creating Print Templates for the Siebel Handheld Application. As you design your applets, be aware of the print specifications of the printers used in the field. Portable printers typically print on two-inch or four-inch wide paper. You need to design your applets so that the data fits within the limits of the paper width. Keep your documents simple so that they work with different sizes of paper. The following are some guidelines to use when designing your applets to accommodate the smaller paper sizes.

Form Applets

Data from only one business component can be displayed on each line in your document. When you design your form applets, keep in mind that you can display a maximum of two columns of data in form applets. You can specify that each column of data is preceded by an optional caption column. This means you can have up to four columns displayed in your document—two data columns and two caption columns. Alternatively, you can have no captions, and simply display one or two columns of data.

The ratio between caption and data columns is, respectively, 35 percent and 65 percent. This is a fixed relationship that cannot be customized in the template.

Limitations on multiple columns in printed output are largely hardware dependent. If printing seven fields on a 40-column printer, the physical limitations allow only 4-5 characters for each field (40 - (7-1))/7 = 4.85. To print more than four columns, an 80-column printer is recommended. Generally, the capabilities of impact printers are lower than those of thermal printers.

List Applets

When specifying the width of a column, you can either specify it with a unit of measurement or as a percentage of the total page width. For example, you can specify that the first column is 20 mm, and the second column is 40 mm. If the width of the paper you print to is narrower than 60 mm, the column widths automatically adjust to fit the printable width as a proportion of the specified width. Therefore, the first column will always be 33 percent, and the second column will be 67 percent of the paper width. The minimum width for a column is 8 mm, which includes a 3 mm gutter margin between columns.

You can specify any number of columns in your list applet. However, if the width of the column is less than 8 mm, the application ignores the column and does not print it.

On narrow paper widths, all the data from a field might not fit on one line. Data that does not fit can be specified, in the Applet tag, to wrap to the next line and keep wrapping until the data in that field is completely displayed. The printable width of the page is equal to the paper width minus the left and right margins (PaperWidth - [LeftMargin + RightMargin]). These parameters are set in the setup.ini file. For more information about setting these parameters, see Print Configuration Settings.