Oracle Reports 6i on RDBMS 8i

[DEVELOPERatHTS]

Hi,
I am working on a requirement where I am returning a string to oracle reports which is more than 4000 characters long. As we know reports 6i has a limitation and it does not allow the diplay charaters to be more than 4000.
I am not sure how to approach this requirememnt.

This is what i have tried and have failed the purpose:
The string is being returned thr a PL/SQL function used as a select col in the query builder and has group by and order by.

1) I thought of using LONG but I cannot USE LONG since I am using it in a group by and Oracle does not permit that.
2) if I use CLOB as the function return variable - reports 6i gives inconsistent data types error as the data type reports 6i assigns to it is VARCHAR2(4000).

Is there a any other way by which I can display more than 4000 charatcers in a single field??

Please help,

Thanks,
DeveloperatHTS

[DEVELOPERatHTS]

i did not get any answers, any suggestions people? No one from Reports backgnd??