>>>>Marcus.
>>>>
>>>>I've been trying to do this off an on for over a year. I have a client who prints 2,000 to 5,000 claim forms (UB92's and HCFA's) a day and I would LOVE to be able to create overlays for these forms. As it works now, I use a VFP 5.0 report form that completely duplicates the claim form, and of course all the grid lines, boilerplate etc. has to be sent down the line for every claim.
>>>>
>>>>I've tried embedding the overlay macro escape sequences in the report forms, calling functions from within report forms that call ??? commands, and nothing seems to work.
>>>>
>>>>Would it be too much to ask you to post the code you're using to do the following:
>>>>
>>>>1. Load/Reload the PCL file as a permanent macro (??? command I assume)
>>>>
>>>>2. Load / unload the overlay. (This is the part I've had the most trouble with, and I know now most of my problem has been that I have not used permanent macros.) Is it something like
>>>>
>>>> ??? Load Macro Command
>>>> REPORT FORM UB92 TO PRINT NOCON (PROMPT?)
>>>> ??? Unload Macro Command
>>>>
>>>>Of course I just realized that maybe you're not using REPORT FORM and are printing using ?,?? and ???, if so, has anyone succeeded in using PCL overlay macros in conjunction with REPORT FORM?
>>>>
>>>>Thanks.
>>>
>>>Did you ever get this working? I too had been working on it off and on, but have finally met with some success. Let me know if you need any more help.
>>>
>>>Marcus.
>>
>>I completley shelved the project for a couple of reasons Marcus, but it would still be nice to get it working some day.
>>
>>1. I couldn't find a product to create the PCL file. The products mentioned months ago are no longer available at the online software stores I checked. To be honest, I'm not even sure what their names were.
>>2. Even when I created my on little dinky overlays, the data and overlay always seemed to come out on different pages, which I see is what you were responding to in your other post.
>>
>>So.... I've gone on to fry other, slightly less bonier fish, but I'm willing to give it another shot, but I confess I'd have to be walked through it pretty specifically.
>>
>>Thanks for asking,
>>
>>Mike Kiser
>
>If you ever plan to get back to it I suggest printing this out, because you had the same troubles I had. FYI: if you go into your laser printers properties and change 'print to the following port' to FILE: you can print your form to a file on your harddrive. This file is the PCL required to make your image. To actually make it a macro, you could add the pcl commands yourself or use the print driver. (I would use the driver) Some drivers don't have advanced options to save as a macro, however you are printing to a file not a printer and can therefore use whatever printer driver you want. (you don't have to have the printer) I used a lexmark driver that was pretty specific about creating overlays (including help files). I ended up using the Brother 1260 driver. Once you create a macro and download it to the printer it turns out to be simple to use the image from the VFP report designer. I couldn't get past this part for months, because I was always got one page with the image and one
>page with my data. It turned out if I just put the escape code directly into the footer of the report it works great! I was using a Function that sent the escape code to the printer using ???, but this sent the command outside the report. More to the point, create a field in your footer and for the expression type -- CHR(27)+'&f0y3X' -- the 0 is the ID for your macro so it might be different. I was stunned when this worked, I thought it would print out in my footer just like I typed it, but it actually sent the code to use my macro. I hope you can benefit from my torment, I actually looked at print files using a hex editor to figure out what to try. I got a little scared when I started to understand what I was looking at!! Anyway good luck.
>
>Marcus.


You still out and abount in Bellevue, Wa?? Haven't heard from you in a while...

Tony Miller
Benesphere (Actually Probusiness Benesphere now..)