Base SAS

New ODS PRINTER features for SAS 9.1

New fixed escape sequence

The new (*ESC*) sequence will act as an escape character even when ODS ESCAPECHAR is not set. Thus, it acts like '03'x in being always available. The advantage over '03'x is that it works in any context, not just in string-expression contexts. Thus, it's fair game for use in style attributes.

See example code under Ability to generate contents list.

Justified page numbers and dates

You can now move page numbers and dates around in the "obvious" way, by setting the JUST= and VJUST= attributes in the style elements that control them; for example:

   style PageNo from TitleAndFooters /
         Font = fonts("strongfont")
         pretext = "--"  posttext = "--"
         cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0
         just=c vjust=b
         ;
   style BodyDate from Date /
         just=l vjust=t
         ;

Page i of n support

All in-line formatting continues to be experimental in SAS 9.1. The development team is adding new functions while they work toward a production-level product.

New for SAS 9.1 is the experimental in-line formatting function {LASTPAGE}, which provides the page count in PRINTER destinations when output does not contain images. Note that this is not necessarily the page number of the last page; use of the PAGENO option can make it differ. It is intended to be used mostly like this:

   ods escapechar='^';
   proc template;
      define style styles.pageof; parent = styles.printer;
      Style PageNo from TitlesAndFooters /
            font = fonts("strongFont")
            cellpadding = 0 cellspacing = 0
            pretext = "Page "
            posttext = " of ^{lastpage}"
            ;
      end;
   run;

Improved color/background options

The original COLOR/NOCOLOR options were confusing. COLOR controlled both the default SAS/GRAPH device and the printing of background colors in cells and pages and such. For the sake of compatibility these will still be honored, but we are breaking them up into more specific options:

COLOR=FULL: Full-color graphs (default).
COLOR=GRAY: Grayscale graphs.
Alias: COLOR=GREY.
COLOR=MONO: Monocolor graphs.
Alias: COLOR=BW.
NOBACKGROUND: Suppress the printing of background colors in text.

The old NOCOLOR option is equivalent to COLOR=GRAY NOBACKGROUND and now COLOR is COLOR=FULL BACKGROUND.

Improved Table of Contents options

The old NOTOC option was confusing and there was no TOC to do the opposite; plus it turned off bookmark generation as well as the list of bookmarks. (That part is a bug.)

Also, there was no support for a "real," printable table of contents, such as you'd find in a book. Now there is.

CONTENTS

Generate a printable table of contents, like one you'd get in a book. This is a new feature.
Alias: CONTENTS=YES/ON.

NOCONTENTS

Do not generate a printable table of contents. Default.
Alias: CONTENTS=NO/OFF.

BOOKMARKLIST=

Control whether or not to generate and/or display the list of bookmarks for the PDF file. This option can only be set when initializing the destination; it cannot be reset later. It has three possible values:

BOOKMARKLIST=SHOW/YES/ON: Generate a list of bookmarks for PDF. Automatically displays the bookmarks when bringing up the PDF file. Default.
Alias: BOOKMARKLIST
BOOKMARKLIST=NONE/NO/OFF: Do not generate the list of bookmarks for PDF. The generation of the bookmarks themselves (the "anchors") is not affected by the setting of this option, but is rather controlled by BOOKMARKGEN.
Alias: NOBOOKMARKLIST
BOOKMARKLIST=HIDE: Go ahead and generate the bookmark list but do not display it by default. Normally, when ODS PRINTER generates the bookmark list it also sets a flag to tell Adobe Acrobat Reader to display the bookmarks when it initially displays the file. Whether you use BOOKMARKLIST=HIDE or BOOKMARKLIST=SHOW, the list is still generated and can be displayed or hidden using icons in Adobe Acrobat reader; the difference between HIDE and SHOW is just whether it is initially displayed.

BOOKMARKGEN

Generate the bookmarks themselves. This is the default state, and since there is no registry entry to alter that default, only the negative form of this option serves any useful purpose. We had once hoped to be able to turn the generation on and off during the lifetime of the document, but that feature was dropped when it turned out to be harder to implement than we thought, since the perceived benefit of such a feature seems marginal in the first place.
Alias: BOOKMARKGEN=YES/ON

NOBOOKMARKGEN

Do not generate the default bookmark entries, thus omitting them from the bookmark list, among other places. This option automatically turns off BOOKMARKLIST since the list would otherwise be empty when this option was used.
Alias: BOOKMARKGEN=NO/OFF
Caution: Bookmarks are used not only for the bookmark list, but also for the CONTENTS list and for external entries (such as URL=), so be careful with the use of this option.

The existing NOTOC command means NOCONTENTS NOBOOKMARKS.

Also note that I am adding the BOOKMARK= alias for the ANCHOR= option. This should make more sense to everybody since Acrobat calls these things "bookmarks." The previous alias (which we are not discarding) was NAMED_DEST, which is the internal PDF name but is not known to most users.

Ability to generate contents list

The table of contents is produced with the new CONTENTS= option (see above). To control the appearance of the table of contents, use the following style elements:

ContentTitle: PreText is used for the title; other attributes control the appearance of the title.
PrintedContentsLabel: PreText and PostText supply the indention and leaders for the table of contents. Effectively wrapped "around" the following:
ContentItem, ContentFolder, ContentProcName, ContentProcLabel: formatting of the contents strings themselves.

And these in-line functions can be used only in content lists:

^{tocentryindent <len>}: Tells the amount to indent per level.
^{tocentrypage}: Page number of the current TOC entry.

Typical usage:

   Replace PrintedContentsLabel  "Wrapper for the CONTENTS" /
           PreText = "(*ESC*){tocentryindent 2em}"
           PostText = " (*ESC*){leaders .  }(*ESC*){tocentrypage}"
           ;

Leader function

^{leaders <string>}: Produces leaders; that is, it repeats the string so as to fill up the remainder of the line between the leader and the text following it. Typically used in tables of contents.

NEWFILE= supported

ODS PRINTER now supports NEWFILE= just like the other ODS destinations. Experimental for SAS 9.1, but seems to work pretty well.

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