ON PAGE

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Executes a specified command when printed output reaches a specified line on the current page.

Syntax

ON PAGE
[AT LINE <expN> <command>]

AT LINE <expN>

Identifies the line number at which to execute the specified page-formatting command.

<command>

The command to execute when printed output reaches the specified line number, <expN>. To execute more than one command, issue ON PAGE DO <filename>, where <filename> is a program or procedure file containing the sequence of commands to execute.

Description

Use ON PAGE to specify a command to execute when printed output reaches a specific line number. ON PAGE with no options disables any previous ON PAGE statement.

The value of the _plineno system variable indicates the number of lines that have been printed on the current page. As soon as the _plineno value is equal to the value you specify for <expN>, dBASE Plus executes the ON PAGE command.

Use the ON PAGE command to print headers and footers. For example, the on page command can call a procedure when the _plineno system memory variable reaches the line number that signifies the end of a page. In turn, that procedure can call two procedures, one to print the footer on the current page and one to print the header on the next page.

You can begin header routines with EJECT PAGE to ensure that the header text prints at the top of the following page. EJECT PAGE also sets the _plineno system memory variable to 0. Use the ? command at the beginning of a header procedure to skip several lines before printing the header information. You can also use the ? command at the end of the procedure to skip several lines before printing the text for the page.

Begin footer routines with the ? command to move several lines below the last line of text. You can use the ?? command with the _pageno system memory variable to print a page number for each page on the same line as the footer.

To calculate the appropriate footer position, add the number of lines for the bottom margin and the number of lines for the footer text to get the total lines for the bottom of the page. Subtract this total from the total number of lines per page. Use this result to specify a number for the AT LINE argument. If the footer text exceeds the number of lines per page, the remainder prints on the next page.