Report-Writer can determine report margins by analyzing your report code (see Automatic Determination of Default Settings). In most cases, the default settings generated by Report-Writer are quite adequate. However, in some cases you must define these settings explicitly, using the .leftmargin and .rightmargin page layout statements to indicate the starting and ending character positions. Horizontal character positions start at 0 (left margin).

In some reports, the right and left margins are changed dynamically to achieve different effects. See Dictionary Example in the appendix “Report-Writer Report Examples.” In cases such as these, you must keep the margins for the page header and footer independent of the margins for the rest of the report, because the report margins have been set to values inappropriate for the footer and header when a page break is encountered.

Because the margins for the page header and footer can be independent of the margins for the rest of the report, the page header margins are stored separately. These can be determined automatically in the same way that default margins for the report are determined, or you can specify the margin setting statements, .leftmargin and .rightmargin, in the formatting statements for the page header.

For detailed information on margin setting statements, see Page Layout and Control Statements on page 321 in the chapter “Report-Writer Statements.”