Standard and Legacy Formatting

New releases of WebFOCUS often introduce improved ways of formatting reports. Some of these new features are advances over earlier features that performed similar formatting, but with fewer options or less functionality. The new feature becomes the standard, and the earlier one is then considered a "legacy" feature.

When you create a new application and have a choice between using a standard or a legacy feature, we encourage you to use the standard feature. When you are maintaining an earlier application that incorporates a legacy feature, you may choose to retain the legacy feature to save time, or to convert the application to the standard feature in order to leverage its new functionality.

As an example of the difference between standard and legacy formatting, consider the standard and legacy methods of laying out a report on a page:

• The standard way is to specify the page margins using TOPMARGIN, BOTTOMMARGIN, LEFTMARGIN, and RIGHTMARGIN. (You can apply these keywords as StyleSheet attributes or SET command parameters.) You can specify the margins in inches, centimeters, or points, as determined by UNITS (which you can also issue as a StyleSheet attribute or a SET command parameter). This is simple, and enables you to design reports the same way that you design other kinds of documents.
• The legacy way is to specify the height of the report output on the page, measured in report lines (using the LINES parameter of the SET command); and the width of the report, measured in characters (using the WIDTH parameter of the SET command). The top and bottom margins will each be half the difference of the page height and the report height, measured in character lines; the left and right margins will each be half the difference of the page width and the report width, measured in characters. This legacy method limits you to using a monospace font, such as Courier.