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nlOverlay – overlay a previous report

Normally, the report definition gives sufficient flexibility and this function will not be required. However if you require complex elements (such as tables) in the master-page definition, you will need to define these as an overlay and tell NewLeaf to run it whenever it throws a new page.

First you should run the commands to build the overlay page, and save the completed definition in a suitable variable ...

 nlUse rpt.ovl  © Overlay page
 'sub'nlPlace'Repeating Header for all pages'
 nltList 2 4½'This' 'Will' 'Repeat'
 ovl„nlClose

Now you can open your normal layout and tell NewLeaf to superimpose the saved definition on every page (including the first) ...

© Choose a layout which leaves space for the repeating part
 nlUse rpt.follow
 nlOverlay ovl  © Must run AFTER Use/Switch!
 'head'nlPlace'Main Report Starts Here'

You can pass a vector of (enclosed) overlays which will be used in turn for odd/even pages in the same way as normal page-layouts.

Note that no substitution takes place in the overlay process. This means that it is not a suitable place to define a field such as a page number, but it might be appropriate to use it for a date/time field if you want the time to stay the same on every page of a report which takes several minutes to produce.


Continue to: nlPlace – place text into frame
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