Effective Strategy to Set Page Breaks for ODS RTF Outputs

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Effective Strategy to Set Page Breaks for ODS RTF
Outputs

• Songtao Jiang, Daniel Boisvert, HCRI, Boston, MA

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Introduction

• ODS RTF for report
• Wildly used for report
• Used with Proc Report, it is very powerful tool
• Limitation of ODS RTF
• Lack of vertical measurement BS

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Page Break

• The Real Problem in ODS (1)
• Vertical measurement - SAS RTF does not know
  where the optimal place is to position each item
  on the page vertically including Page Break.
• The example shows that the page break can happen
  any where.

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Page Break (cont.)

• The Real Problem in ODS (2)
• With limited columns in the table, text may wrap
  to fit within the column.
• This makes appropriate page breaking even
  harder.
• For example, you dont know how many
  observations should be put on one page.

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Solution

• Accurately measure the string length
• Column width (known) and String length by inches
  (unknown)
• Other solutions
• Third party packages MFC or Java
• To calculate the string length.

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Algorithm

• Introduction
• Calculate width for the used characters (utility
  file used)
• Calculate the number of lines of each
  observation (according to column widths known)
• Assign a page number to each observation
  (according to the number of lines on one page)

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Algorithm (Calculate width for the used
characters (utility file used))

• The Utility file

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Algorithm (Calculate the number of lines of each
observation (according to column widths known)

• Calculate the number of lines of each column for
  one observation
• The max of numbers of lines for one observation.

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Algorithm (Assign a page number to each
observation (according to the number of lines on
one page))

• Given number of lines on one page
• Number of lines for each observation
• It is easy to figure out how many observations
  can be put on one page

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Code
Pseudocode for getting length of the given char
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Results

• Testing Results
• The Results in Our Daily Work
• Application Patient listing
• Other Applications

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References

• BS Brian T. Schellenberger,, A Reintroduction
  to ODS The Philosophy of the Output Delivery
  System or, How to Find Your Way Around All Those
  Features. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA.
• JK John Kirkpatrick, Pagination in the ODS. SAS
  Conference Proceedings Phuse 2005, Heidelberg,
  Germany.

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Thank You!!