I know functionality now exists for page overflow when using variable data in Repeat but could this be expanded somehow to include all objects on a page?

I've been working recently with transactional letters which contain a variable amount of text objects, each of which contains a mix of variable and fixed text. Conditions control when each text object is printed which can mean a letter can be 1 print page or more in length.

It would be an enormous help if the page had some sort of bottom margin overflow option, i.e I set a bottom margin and any text overflowing it is printed on a new page (such as a word processor would handle the text). Also, an option to include underlays/overlays on the new page would be helpful.

Cheers.

Azamat,

Because of the very nature of PlanetPress, complex overflowing documents can be difficult to design when using the standa Stock Object properties.

As you know, each object in the document is drawn as it is being interpreted by the RIP, which means that by the time it goes beyond the physical limit you'd like to impose, it's too late because it has already been printed...
The text object is an exception because we internally have to draw it twice: the first pass draws it in a virtual environment in order to compute the soft line breaks; the second pass actually draws the resolved object. The overflow can therefore occur between those two passes because nothing has yet been drawn on the physical page.

But implementing such a procedure for all objects would impact the performance of the document. Nevertheless, we're looking at different kinds of options to make future versions of PlanetPress more user-friendly when designing overflowing documents.

So stay tuned and make sure you update to the latest available versions when they become available. You're likely to see improvements with each one.

Thank you for your comments!

Philippe

Ok, thanks for your feedback, I look forward to seeing future improvements.

Currently I get round the problem by using the following in each object's Planetpress Talk Before;

if((&physical.y + &height) > &pagebottom)
ShowPage()
translate(&LMargin,&TMargin)
endif()

When the bottom edge of the object reaches a pre-determined bottom margin (&pagebottom) the object moves to a new page. It works ok but each text object has to be limited to a few lines to avoid huge blank spaces at the foot of the page. It'd be great to be able to use a similar method on a per line basis.

Cheers