About RTF output About delimited output

2-72 Oracle Reports Users Guide to Building Reports Oracle Reports 11g Release 1 11.1.1 adds more enhancements to PDF output: ■ Ability to run the reports designed on Windows on Unix platforms by simply copying the font file to the fonts folder. ■ With the new font model, no misalignment will be seen in the PDF subsetted report output. For detailed information about PDF enhancements and capabilities in Oracle Reports , refer to the chapter Using PDF in Oracle Reports in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Publishing Reports to the Web with Oracle Reports Services manual. Usage notes ■ You can preview your PDF report output in your Web browser by choosing File Preview Format PDF . ■ If you are building a multibyte report for multibyte languages, such as Chinese or Japanese, and you need to alias the font in PDF output, you need the CID fonts named within the Acrobat 4.0 packs. Otherwise, you do not need the CID fonts in the Acrobat 4.0 packs. ■ Oracle Reports does not support Windows UDC for PDF output. For the user-defined characters to be printed or rendered, all the glyphs must be within a single TTF or TTC file. ■ Graphics and text can be overlapped. ■ The foreground color of the object will be used as the fill color regardless of a specified pattern. ■ You can modify the PDF file, if you have: ■ the fonts used in your report installed on your machine. ■ a PDF writer. Restrictions ■ For PDF output, the bit-mapped drivers for example, PostScript for the currently selected printer are used to produce the output. See also Section 1.2.2, About Web Reports Section 2.2.4, About Web links for PDF output Section 4.7.6, Generating PDF output

2.8.11 About RTF output

Oracle Reports Builder can generate report output to Rich Text Format RTF files, containing the formatted data and all objects. RTF can be read by many different word processing software packages, such as Microsoft Word. You can use the softwares editing and graphics features to modify and enhance your report output. When you generate your report output to an RTF file, you can distribute the output to any RTF destination, including e-mail, printer, Oracle Portal, and Web browser. Usage notes ■ Graphics and text can be overlapped. ■ Text can only be rotated by 90-degree variations. Advanced Concepts 2-73 ■ As with PDF output, the foreground color of the object will be used as the fill color regardless of a specified pattern. See also Section 4.7.8, Generating RTF output Section 4.7.1, Running and dispatching a report from the user interface

2.8.12 About delimited output

Oracle Reports can generate report output that includes a delimiter to delimited files for example, files that contain comma-separated or tab-separated data, which are easily imported into spreadsheets or for use with word processors. Oracle Reports provides two options for generating delimited output: ■ Delimited: uses the paper layout to generate the output. ■ DelimitedData for use when you have problems running large volume reports with Delimited: does not take into account the paper layout, and directly runs off the data model that is, all fields that are available in the data model will appear in the output, not only those that are displayed in paper layout. You can specify a delimiter a character or string of characters to separate the data boilerplate or field objects in your report output in either of the following ways: ■ On the command line using the DELIMITER keyword. ■ In the Delimited Output dialog box or DelimitedData Output dialog box displayed with File Generate to File Delimited or File Generate to File DelimitedData in Oracle Reports Builder. You can further distinguish the cells by using a cell wrapper. A cell wrapper can consist of any series of characters, such as a comma or parentheses. For example, if the data in your report output include the same character as the delimiter for example, a comma, you can use the parentheses cell wrapper to distinguish each cell: 1,000,000,3,6000,543,2,003,500… Usage notes DelimitedData output: ■ When you generate a report to DelimitedData output, only data as defined by the report data model displays in the output. Any formatting changes defined in the layout are not reflected in the DelimitedData output. ■ You can set the following column properties to alter column names and exclude columns from the DelimitedData output file: Note: When you view the report in Microsoft Word in Office 95, you must choose View Page Layout to see all the graphics and objects in your report. Note: If you do not specify a delimiter, the default delimiter is a tab. 2-74 Oracle Reports Users Guide to Building Reports ■ The XML Tag property can be used to enter a column alias. ■ The Exclude from XML Output property can be used to exclude the column from the DelimitedData output. ■ To generate report output that preserves the report layout information, see Section 2.8.13, About Enhanced Spreadsheet output . ■ You can distribute and burst a report in DelimitedData output format, specified either in a distribution XML file or in the Distribution dialog box. Delimited output: When you generate a report to Delimited output, the data displays according to the positions of the objects in the Paper Layout view. ■ If you place A above or to the left of B where A and B are any boilerplate or field objects Oracle Reports Builder displays each instance of A before each instance of B in every line of output. Figure 2–8 Delimited output of A above B ■ If you create a frame that contains a boilerplate object A and encloses a repeating frame that contains a field object B, each instance of A displays with each instance of B. Advanced Concepts 2-75 Figure 2–9 Delimited output of frame enclosing repeating frame ■ In the previous layout, if you add another frame that contains a boilerplate object C and encloses another repeating frame that contains a field object D, A displays for every instance of B, and then C displays for every instance of D. Figure 2–10 Delimited output of two frames enclosing repeating frames ■ If you create a matrix in your report, be sure to align your objects carefully according to the grid in the Layout Model view. If the objects are not aligned, Oracle Reports Builder may interpret the extra space as an extra row or column and disrupt your report output. ■ If you create a boilerplate object outside of a matrix, each instance of the boilerplate repeats with every row not column of the matrix. Note that boilerplates contained in the matrix will not be repeated with field objects outside of the matrix. 2-76 Oracle Reports Users Guide to Building Reports Figure 2–11 Delimited output of boilerplate outside matrix Restrictions ■ If the text file contains a field labeled ID in uppercase as the first field, you will be unable to open the file in Microsoft Excel. The following delimited output causes an error in Excel: ID, name, title, dept If you want to generate delimited output that contains an ID field, try changing the database column name to lowercase that is, id, or re-arranging the order of the fields. ■ Report distribution and bursting do not support Delimited output format. You cannot specify DELIMITED as an output format in a distribution XML file or in the Distribution dialog box. Note : You can distribute and burst a report in DelimitedData output format, specified either in a distribution XML file or in the Distribution dialog box. See also Section 4.7.10, Generating delimited output Section 4.7.1, Running and dispatching a report from the user interface Section 1.2.2, About Web Reports

2.8.13 About Enhanced Spreadsheet output