HELP!
Metropolis Reports



I am trying to use two COPYR's in a Metropolis BASIC program.
I have seen some symbols in the REPOR2.CPY that looks like ABL
macro symbols. So in the BASIC program I added the following
	COPY "RPTMAD",RCPNO="A"
at the beginning.
	COPYR "REPOR2",RCPNO="A"
	COPY  "RPTMAT",RCPNO="A"
at the end. After some compiler errors, I hacked the subroutines
in the REPOR2.CPY. I replaced all occurences of rno, r, WRPT,
RPT'AC, rdvf, RBIN with rno|ZZ|, r|ZZ|, WRPT|ZZ|, RPT'AC|ZZ|,
rdvf|ZZ|, RBIN|ZZ| which resolved the compiler errors.      

The problem occurs during a CALL RPT'DETAIL''A which causes a
fatal error "Cannot output - buffer not inited". The report was
initializes with CALL IRPT'REPOR2, but before the primary report
IRPT'REPORT was initialized. Yet after I moved the macro replacement
symbols from the secondary report onto the primary report there
were no fatal errors, but only the secondary report is printed.

Several years ago another programmer hached an earlier version of
Alpha Base which did not have the macro symbols and he was able to
have two reports print from the same BASCI program. I don't have
access to either the code or the programmer, who is now working on
another system. So I know it was possible with hacking, but is it
still possible without as much hacking and using macro symbols?

.