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Editing the properties of many components simultaneosly

edited May 2003 in End User
Hi there

One thing I would dearly love to be able to do is select multiple components
in the report designer and then change their properties with the right-click
menu. When you've got 200 components in the layout and you want to change
their display format or font, it takes a real long time using the current
method. Also it would be nice if one could assign the pipeline and field
this way.

Any chance this will ever happen-or maybe there's another way?

I'm hopeful.

Phillip Taylor

Comments

  • edited May 2003
    Thanks for the suggestion. The only current way to do this is at Delphi
    design time where you can use the object inspector to change a common
    property across a selection of components.

    Cheers,

    Jim Bennett
    Digital Metaphors


  • edited May 2003
    Hi Jim

    Thats why I posted it here. I develop a lot of complex (many fields)
    end-user reports and find it quite cumbersome to do this in the end-user
    designer. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm assuming I could do these in the
    delphi environment and then output the RTM file. I guess I'll do that in the
    future, but that doesn't solve the problem for the actual end-user who
    doesn't have delphi.

    Do you expect to implement this functionality in the designer in some future
    version?

    Thanks

    Phillip Taylor

  • edited May 2003
    Yes, there is no runtime object inspector for ReportBuilder. It would be a
    cool feature. It would be possible if you have to have it, to modify your
    copy of our source and add one. The code that deals with the current
    selection is located in ppDsgner.pas. You may be able to make it a
    TppToolWindow descendent so it will be dockable. Basically, you'll need to
    access the selction list and find all the common properties. THe best
    example which deals with the selection and the components is teh object tree
    view. See the TppReportTreeView in ppTreeVw.pas. Check out the report object
    tree as it highlights the components in the treeview which represent the
    current selection of the designer.


    Cheers,

    Jim Bennett
    Digital Metaphors


  • edited May 2003
    Thanks Jim

    I think that's a good idea, but I think time constraints would prevent me
    from
    tackling that at this stage - is there any chance DM will do it?

    I think what I need to do in the near future is get the RB designer in
    delphi to
    use our ODBC Express interface (the one we created to get the end-user
    designer to work with ODBC Express). Can you point me in the right
    direction to achieve this?

    Thanks

    Phil Taylor
    Australian Flagship
  • edited May 2003
    You simply need to create and install a Delphi design time package whcih
    includes your daODBCExpress plugin unit and whatever else is required to
    compile this package. Check out the other packages for DADE plugins in the
    End User Demos directory for other databases for examples.


    Cheers,

    Jim Bennett
    Digital Metaphors


This discussion has been closed.