URL: http://www.firstbasesoftware.com/man/man5/printouts.htm
Last modified: 12 September 1995
Copyright © by FirstBase Software.
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FirstBase system printouts (dbpgen(1)) are printer ready, and need no further formatting. These reports always have a title, company name, and page numbers. These reports are formatted when generated. This means FirstBase inserts proper padding for page breaks and page numbers.
Labels (dblgen(1)) are also printer ready. These labels are compatible with plain paper or peel-off labels. In dealing with labels, there is no such thing as 'pages', so there is no need to reset the formlength setting on printers.
Special printer dependent formatting characters are never used so as to be compatible with virtually any printer.
Non standard printouts can also be developed in FirstBase through the use of a text editor and dbmerge(1). Once a format or template has been created, dbmerge(1) can merge data from an indexed FirstBase database with the user defined document. This allows mail merge, free form printouts, and much, much more.
Other reports can be created using dbvform(1), a tool that uses standard view(5) dictionaries and generates output accordingly. The SQL tool, dbsql(1) can be used to generate simple reports, too. There are also dbawk(1) and dbmacro(1) tools for those desiring the utmost in control.
Note that all of these tools (except dblgen(1)) can write their results to standard output instead of a disk file.
FirstBase User's Guide and Reference Manual