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Subject:Sample Report Captures (Text) in Windows From:GERALDINE WHITT <GenWhitt -at- PRODIGY -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 11 Jun 1996 13:57:34 -0500
I am working on a manual for a Windows-based software program. In the
earlier, DOS-based version, I included samples of each report in the
manual. These were in text format, not graphics. I want to do the
same thing for the Windows version.
In the DOS-based version, I captured the report output to a file by
any of several methods, imported it into WordPerfect which preserved
the line endings, then imported it into Ventura and formatted it with
appropriate styles so that the font style and size matched the actual
printout.
In the Windows version, I am having difficulty producing the same
result.
If I capture the output, the resulting file has so much stuff in
addition to the actual text that it's practically impossible to make
any sense of it. I tried changing the printer setup in Windows to
"text only" to remove the printer codes from the output. This has an
unfortunate effect, though: the text rolls around, not on each line,
which would be easy to fix, but on each column. So perhaps a report
might have six column titles on a line, and the last one or two
letters on each column title rolls around to the next line. This
would be a real headache to hand-edit.
I could view the report on the screen and capture the screen image,
or I could scan the report and include the scanned image. The thing
is, though, text captures for sample reports have been so pleasant to
work with that I would really like to keep my report captures as text
files if at all possible. I can format them as I please; I can hand-
edit them (extremely useful if the test data is questionable as often
happens); and the file size is small. My screen captures are bitmaps
(PCX files) but I want the reports as text files if at all possible.
Does anyone have any ideas how I can accomplish a plain report
capture from Windows? I'd be interested to know how others approach
this.
Gen Whitt
La Crescenta, CA
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