iReport Ultimate Guide - Nimsoft Library

iReport Ultimate GuideSince a frame is a container of other elements, in the document outline view the frame is represented as a node containingother elements (Figure 5-27).Figure 5-27A frame in the outline viewA frame can contain other frames, and so on recursively. To add an element to a frame, just drag the new element from thepalette inside the frame. Alternatively you can use the outline view and drag elements from a band into the frame and so on.The position of an element is always relative to the container position. If the container is a band, the element position will berelative to the top of the band and the left margin. If the container (or element parent) is a frame, the element coordinates willbe relative to the top left corner of the frame. Since an element dragged from a container to another does not change its top/leftproperties, when moving an element from a container to another its position is recalculated based on the new containerlocation.The advantages of using a frame to draw a border around a set of elements, with respect to using a simple rectangle element,are:• When you move a frame, all the elements contained in the frame will move in concert.• While using a rectangle to overlap some elements, the elements inside the rectangle will not treated as overlapped (respectto the frame), so you will not have problems when exporting in HTML (which does not support overlapped elements).• Finally, the frame will automatically stretch accordingly to its content, and the element position type property of itselements will refer to the frame itself, not to the band, making the design a bit easier to manage.5.4.3 ChartFor all the details regarding charts, see Chapter 12.5.4.4 CrosstabFor all the details regarding crosstabs, see Chapter 16.5.4.5 Page/Column BreakPage and column breaks are used to force the report engine to make a jump to the next page or column. A column break in asingle column report has the same effect as a page break.In the design view they are represented as a small line. If you try to resize them, the size will be reset to the default, thisbecause they are used just to set a particular vertical position in the page (or better, in the band) at which iReport forces a pageor column break.The type of break can be changed in the property sheet.92