1. Report Design Aid Guide
  2. Understanding Dynamic Positioning

Understanding Dynamic Positioning

Dynamic positioning repositions objects in the report to allow for multiple font usage. This makes dynamic positioning most useful when you print reports in multiple languages. For example, you print a report in English, Greek, and Chinese. You can print the English report in Arial, the Greek report in Haettenschweiler, and the Chinese report in SimSun. Because the Haettenschweiler and SimSun fonts are wider than the Arial font, the objects on the report must be repositioned to prevent overlap.

The dynamic positioning feature:

  • Enables you to designate a new font when the report is printed on a line printer or in a foreign language.

  • Automatically adjusts the width of objects on a report so that they do not overlap when a font substitution occurs.

Dynamic positioning is also useful when you send many reports to a line printer and want them in different fonts so that they are easier to read. When sending reports to a line printer, you must use nonproportional fonts.

Dynamic positioning does not adjust for the height of report objects when you substitute fonts. If you use font substitution for a report, ensure that you space the report rows to allow for the different font heights.

To use dynamic positioning:

  • Activate dynamic positioning in the jde.ini on the machine where the reports are processed.

    You must enable dynamic positioning on each machine that runs reports that use dynamic positioning. After you activate dynamic positioning on a machine, you should not deactivate it. You can override dynamic positioning for an individual report.

  • Define font substitutions for languages and line printers.

    If the report is already formatted in the font that you want, you can disable font substitution for the report. After you disable the font substitution feature and save the report, font substitution remains disabled for the report. You must reestablish font substitution by clearing the override if you want to use font substitution in the future. You can view a report with font substitutions applied.