Disable Thumbnail Viewer when the report preview is loaded

rbuser

Hi,

is it possible to disable the Thumbnail Viewer (the thumbnails on the
left side of the preview window) when the report preview is loaded, for
all the existing (and future) reports? The effect should be as if
manually setting report.ThumbnailSettings.Enabled := False;


Thanks and regards,
Jure

nicocizik

Hi Jure,

I'm not sure I understand the issue. You can set the
ThumbnailSettings.Enabled to False before calling Report.Print to
disable the thumbnails for every report you preview.

Do you mean to change the default value of this property when a report
is created?

rbuser

Hi Nico,


Sorry for the unclear question, I'll try to explain better.

What I want to achieve, is to disable the thumbnail viewer in every
preview window. The problem is that our application has many reports in
many different forms in Delphi, so to achieve that, I should change the
ThumbnailSettings.Enabled property of every report in the application
(probably I could write a script to parse the .dfm files and change/add
the property, but that still means changing all the reports in the
application).

What I'm trying to figure out is if there's any way to centrally
handle/disable the thumbnail preview for all the TppReport components in
the application? Something similar to the kind of functionality you
suggested in the post from 20.2.2013 titled "Problem displaying the
Print Preview form when adding a button to the Print Preview toolbar".
Part of my question (and your answer) in that post was how to set up a
drop down menu in the report preview window for all the reports (so the
code change was only in one unit, all the existing reports weren't
changed). Part of the solution was to override the
TppPreview.CreateToolbarItems procedure. I was hoping the
"Viewer.Report" (TppProducer class) had the ThumbnailSettings property
so that I could change this property in the same unit which "centrally"
handles the drop-down menus, but unfortunately it doesn't.

Thank you and regards,
Jure

nicocizik

Hi Jure,

Thanks for the clarification. You have two options in this case.

1. Create a custom preview plugin and overrides the default value of the
OutlineSettings and ThumbnailSettings. See the ConfigureOutline routine.

http://www.digital-metaphors.com/rbWiki/Plugins/Dialogs/Preview_Plugin

2. Create a driver unit for all your form based reports similar to the
main reports demo we include with ReportBuilder (\Demos\1. Reports\...).
This way all reports are loaded from a single routine and can be
initialized how you need.

rbuser

Hi Nico,

thanks for the answer.

I'd prefer to go with the first option you suggested since I already
have a unit for a custom preview plugin (for rendering a drop-down menu).

I checked the implementation of the private procedure
TppPreview.ConfigureOutline in ppPreview.pas, however I don't know how
to override the default value of the OutlineSettings and
ThumbnailSettings (the method isn't virtual). Do you mean I should call
the TraRTTI.SetPropValue method in the custom preview plugin unit to set
the default value of the properties 'OutlineSettings' and
'ThumbnailSettings' to false? If so, where should be it called? If you
have a similar example of how to achieve that I'd be very grateful.

Thank you and regards,
Jure

nicocizik

Hi Jure,

The ConfigureOutline routine is simply to give you a reference on how
you might hide the Thumbnails in code.

The ConfigureOutline routine is called from the BeforePreview method
which is virtual. Overriding BeforePreview and hiding the thumbnails
after you call inherited should give you the effect you are after.

rbuser

Hi Nico,

thanks for the update.

I'm making some progress - I've managed to hide the thumbnails, but the
vertical empty panel on the left is still visible (by "empty panel" I
mean the vertical rectangle on the left side which is used as the
background for the stack of thumbnails and which is separated from the
main report with a vertical bar). Could you please advise me on how hide
also that panel? The code I used so far is as follows:

TmyPreview = class(TppPreview)
private
FComboBox: TppDesignComboBoxToolItem;
FOutlineNotebook: TppOutlineNotebook;
FSplitter: TSplitter;
FAccessoryToolbar: TPanel;
protected
procedure CreateToolbarItems; override;
procedure ehStyle_Change(Sender: TObject);
public
property ComboBox: TppDesignComboBoxToolItem read FComboBox;
procedure BeforePreview; override;
end;
.

.
procedure TmyPreview.BeforePreview;
begin
inherited;
FOutlineNotebook := CreateOutlineNotebook;

FOutlineNotebook.ThumbnailsVisibility(false);
FOutlineNotebook.OutlineVisibility(false);
FOutlineNotebook.OutlineEnabled := false;
FOutlineNotebook.ThumbnailsEnabled := false;
FOutlineNotebook.Visible := false;

// call reset after setting OutlineVisible above
OutlineViewer.Reset;

//calls taken from ConfigureAccessoryPanelVisibility;
FSplitter := TSplitter.Create(Parent);
FSplitter.Parent := Parent;
FSplitter.Visible := false;

FAccessoryToolbar := TPanel.Create(Parent);
FAccessoryToolbar.Parent := Parent;
FAccessoryToolbar.Visible := false;
end;

The FAccessoryToolbar actually isn't the empty panel on the left since
if I set its width to eg. 250 it gets rendered in a different color
(clBtnFace) than the already present empty panel. Additionally it gets
drawn next to the empty panel.

So if you have any suggestion on how to hide the empty panel, I'd be
very grateful.

Thank you in advance and regards,
Jure

nicocizik

Hi Jure,

By the time your code is executed, the OutlineNotebook and
AccessoryToolbar are already created. There is no need to recreate
these objects. Your code should be fairly simple..

procedure TmyPreview.BeforePreview;
begin
inherited;

AccessoryToolbar.Visible := false; //Never show the accessory
toolbar (outline and thumbnails)
end;

rbuser

Thank you very much Nico, that did the job.

Regards,
Jure