Most of your statements are correct, unfortunately.

Reports are in HTML, which has no logical page breaks.

Browsers can provide page headers/footers but they will be at extreme top and bottom, based on physical page breaks, a function of your page and printer settings.

Although it is awkward, best methods for "REAL" page headers will be to copy/pase report into Word or Excel type of programs and use those tools to create page breaks, using their Header/Footer tools.  Macros can be made within those programs to automate the process

You could also insert some "invisible" HTML code in reports to help force page breaks in the Word/Excel macros.  Search/Replace could replace that special code with logical page breaks.

Version 2 will provide us with better tools for Page Breaks and Headers

It sounds like there might be a market there for automated browser page/printer settings utilities.  Select a stored profile and that would update the browsers settings.  Having said that, I suspect that could be done from within Sesame using file i/o utilities.......

Hmmmm, gotta think about that one a bit.......
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Hope this was helpful

Report generation and document rendering are distinct and separate actions. For report rendering, your operating system (MS) defaults to using IE for rendering to a screen and an IE based DLL for rendering to a printer.

There are, fortunately, many alternatives, many of which do allow you a great deal more flexibility in regard to page headers and footers. In every case, the rendering software will consider page headers and footers to be a function of the renderer - not the generated document.

I am not talking about importing HTML into MSWord or any other "interactive" program and manipulating the document with macros, but rather using an alternative dedicated HTML renderer. Simply because "it came with your OS" does not make the MS solution the best.

The software I use on Linux (by the auther of CUPS, the most popular and highly regarded print rendering software for Unix/Linux), HTMLDoc from ESP software, is also available for Win2000/XP, and allows a lot more flexibilty than does IE with regard to page headers and footers.

docPrint from VeryPDF inc. provides hundreds of print options and formats and can be set as your default print rendering software.

There are at least 300 similar programs, many free, most very low cost (< $40). There are even programs that can convert HTML to RTF or a MSWord document and then automatically print them using MSWord's rendering engine.

A quick search on Google (I haven't investigated all of these thoroughly) turns up hundreds rendering / converting / printing packages that allow for better page control than is provided by MS IE:

- Aha for Windows
- ARTS
- FinePrint
- HandyPrint
- XHTML2RTF
- PrintPDF / PDFCamp
- eDockEngine / PDFToolkit
- Document2PDF
- A large product line from "Two Pilots" software
- AutoPrint
- docPrint
- ePrint
- ClickToConvert
- PrintRTF
- BatchDocPrint

All of the above were found on the first three pages of a Google search with other 100,000 results and investigated just enough to determine that they do allow for pagination control and have options to control page headers and footers. Most of the results are intended to replace either the associated print method in MS for any of a number of document types (including HTML) or are intervening print drivers with pagination controls.

If you absolutely insist that on a Microsoft only solution, you can set the default print action for HTM/HTML files to use MSWord instead of using the IE DLL. To do this, set the print action for the .HTM extension using the same settings for the RTF file extension:

These are:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\WINWORD.EXE" /x /n

DDE On

[REM _DDE_Minimize][FileOpen("%1")][t=IsDocumentDirty()][FilePrint 0][SetDocumentDirty t][DocClose]

WinWord

[FileOpen("%1")][FilePrint 0][FileExit 2]
 

Lets be very clear here: The point we are talking about is not the structure of reports, the ability to generate them or render them, the sophistication or flexibility of the report writer, or the capabilities of the report renderer on your OS.

The point is that the report renderer that you chose to use (IE) puts a page header on the first page and you want to turn it off while on the first page and then turn it on again for subsequent pages

Comparing that singular point to a feature as broad as the entire spell checker in a word processor is comparing apples and orchards.

My point is that you can chose to use any number of alternative to the renderer that "came on your box".

I gave you a short list of easy viable alternatives that can do exactly what you want. Including one alternative that is already on your box and merely needs to be enabled.

Here at Lantica we had to make a lot of choices about the report writer. The first choice was whether to use an open standards based format (like HTML, PDF, Postscript, RTF, etc...) or use a closed proprietary format. We chose to go with an open format because they evolve over time, will exist long after Lantica is gone, can be used in thousands of other programs, and allow our user the most flexibility in regard to how they want that format portrayed. A closed format would give us (Lantica) a lot more control over how you (the end user) use that format. A closed format would disallow our reports from being used in any other program or evolving as standards evolve.

After deciding that an open format was preferrable to a proprietary format, we next had to decide how best to portray that format. If you take a look at your operating system you will see that for almost every file format on your system there are so-called "associations". It is these associations that make your operating system usable. On older OS, there are no associations (command line), and everytime you access a file you are required to chose and find the application that you prefer for that file type. MS allows the end user to set (and reset) these associations as they prefer, but does not require that you set them every time your access a file of a particular type.


Knowing that MS provides an association for HTML files, and that the user can set that association to their preferences, it was decided that Sesame should respect that association when rendering HTML. The user has expressed a preference and Sesame abides by that preference.

We take it on the chin and are fully aware that many users are unaware that they are being offered a choice, and blindly accept the defaults. But the other side of that coin is to ignore the choice they may well have actually made. If I went through the bother of finding a HTML renderer that I like better than the default, and any software then ignored that choice I made and rendered the HTML itself (ignoring my settings!), I would not consider that software to be easy to use.

Hi Mark -

Well it's obvious that I didn't understand report "rendering" because in Q&A when I ran a report everything was done by Q&A.  (If anything was being done "behind-the-scenes" I didn't know about it and it didn't matter).  If report rendering is done by my IE then that simply opens up a whole other "set of issues" for me.

Now that I know the difference I guess I would clearly prefer a "proprietary" report generator (and it sounds like I just ain't never gonna get it in Sesame) ... so that everything I needed/wanted to do regarding a report would have been done within Sesame.  Certainly whatever you chose to do in the past and choose to do in the future is your prerogative - and I respect that.

As far as my comment regarding word processors and spell checkers, I was not comparing it to just the page numbering issue but rather the entire concept.  I was simply trying to keep my explanation simple ... and apparently "it didn't work" since you see it from a different perspective.

In any event, thank you for all the information.  Case closed!

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Couldn't agree more. Not that it matters. 

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Yes 2.0 can do that in both the "print only" reports and in the HTML reports.

Actually, the HTML reports in 1.1.3 can also repeat the group headers at the top of each page.

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Under Windows there is really no need. Windows keeps different file associations for each of the different "verbs". These are the menu items you see when right-clicking on a file, and include both "Open" and "Print". If you wish to keep your current preference for browser, but change the HTML print renderer, you would only change the "Print" verb.

I may well add it to the INI file for the operating systems that do not keep file associations.

There is already an environment variable: "SESAME_PRINT_COMMAND" that will override the default association in either Windows or Linux, when printing reports in Sesame. Simply set that variable to the command you prefer and Sesame will use it.
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Most of the packages will simply ask when they are installed if you want that package to be the default. In some case they will install as a print driver, in which case you tell them to be the default by going to Control Panel / Printers, and right clicking on that driver and select "Set as default printer" on the menu that appears.

If the package neither asks, nor is a print driver - Go to Control Panel and select "Folder Options". A dialog will appear. Select the "File Types" tab. Select HTM from the list of extensions. Press the "Advanced" button. Select "Print" from the list of "verbs" or actions. Select "Edit". A second dialog will appear. There is (in most cases) only one field that needs edited: "Application used to perform action". This field is simply a command line (like in the icon properties). Fill it in with the invocation for the program you prefer.
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That code was the invocation code for MSWord to cause to it to load a file (any of the file types it supports) print it immediately and then exit. If you follow the instructions above for changing the file association for the "print verb", you will see that I simply listed the field contents in the order they appear. I would've listed the labels for the fields in the dialog, but I am at home using Linux and couldn't remember them off the top of my head. But, they are the same as those listed for the RTF file type, so you can cut & paste from there.
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Yes. As I mentioned above, Sesame uses an environment variable "SESAME_PRINT_COMMAND".

If you wish to actually change the default system wide, you can use the instructions above. It may be possible to automate the process with regedit from the command line.
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It really doesn't have to do with their preferred browser. Sesame does provide a different environment variable for both the browser and the print renderer, they can be set independently. Windows also sets the associations independently. On Windows I use Netscape as my browser, but my HTML print renderer is the default:

rundll32.exe C:\winnt\system32\mshtml.dll,PrintHTML
 

The mshtml.dll exists whether or not you have or use IE, it simply the same print renderer that IE uses. MSOffice, on the other hand, uses msohtmed.exe.

You can, under Windows, set folk's desktops to all have the same settings within a Domain or Workgroup, but that it is a question best left to one of the MS system administration forums.