Tips for pre-printed stationary XML publisher based report

I come up with this because I saw many people are struggling and choosing wrong approach to implement this. Which is the waste of their time and efforts. In this article I am going to explain the approach for developing pre-printed stationary reports. I used to develop various pre-printed stationary reports for many customers using xml rtf template and oracle report builder layout. But my recommendation is xml publisher RTF method because it’s simple and fast. And this article will be based on RTF method.

The key points are following:

• Use the same page size in word as actual printed paper size. (In page layout tab select size, different sizes will be available there. If not there choose custom)
• Remove the header and footer spacing from RTF template. (In insert tab select remove header and remove footer or by choosing edit header or footer and changing the value to zero for header from top and footer from bottom)
• Always use table for the layout designing, it’s easy to adjust the formatting in the table. (This is best for every rtf based report)
• Always use one table for entire report, unless the inner loop start in same row as outer loop (This is best for every rtf based report)
• While taking print out choose the same print size as printed paper size from printer properties. If same print size is not available in list custom size can be define too.
• Focus on adjusting single transaction output, if page size is correctly selected in rtf template as well in printer output will be always accurate for multiple transactions too.