Displaying a Graphic from a Delphi Component

rbuser

Is there a way of making a graphic on a form available to print in
ReportBuilder?

I am using a signature pad from TopazSystems.com. Their graphic of the
signature is saved as an ASCII text string and contains biometric data in
addition to the graphic. It would be preferable for me to save only this
ASCII text string and then be able to have ReportBuilder print the signature
graphic on a contract, rather than saving bitmap graphics as well as the
string versions of the signature. I can't figure out how to get the graphic
over to ReportBuilder.

ReportBuilder Enterprise 10, Delphi 2007

nicocizik

Hi David,

I'm unclear about what type of "graphic" needs to be displayed. What format
is this graphic in? Does the ASCII text you mention represent some sort of
in-house graphic type used by the signature pad application? If so, you
would need to create your own image plugin such as ppJPEG.pas.
ReportBuilder has the ability to natively display bitmaps, jpegs, gifs, and
metafiles.

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Article: ReportBuilder Image Support
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ReportBuilder natively supports .bmp, .jpeg, .wmf, .ico image formats.

ReportBuilder has an open architecture that supports any TGraphic
descendant.

For example, ReportBuilder ships with a freeware component called
GIFImage that can be used with ReportBuilder to print .gif images. (see
the main report demo app for an example.)

There is another freeware component called GraphicEx that
supports several additional formats - including tiff, targa, and
autodesk.

It can be downloaded from:

http://www.lischke-online.de/Graphics.html


ReportBuilder can easily support TGraphic descendants
with a simple register call.

Below is the code to our ppGIF.pas unit which
'uses' and registers the freeware GIFImage component.


{********************************************************************}
{ }
{ ReportBuilder Report Component Library }
{ }
{ Copyright (c) 1996, 2000 Digital Metaphors Corporation }
{ }
{********************************************************************}

unit ppGIF;

interface

{$I ppIfDef.pas}

uses
ppCtrls, GIFImage;

implementation

{***************************************************************
*
** I N I T I A L I Z A T I O N / F I N A L I Z A T I O N
*
{****************************************************************}

initialization

ppRegisterGraphicClass('GIF', TGIFImage);

finalization

ppUnRegisterGraphicClass(TGIFImage);

end.


--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

Hi Nico. Thanks for the thorough explanation.

The component is an ActiveX control called TSigPlus. It is a descendant of
TOleControl. It stores the graphic as a BitMap, but has a lot of other
things as well. It has a method where I can get the BitMap into an array of
byte. I'm just not sure how to get it over to ReportBuilder without saving
the bitmap to a file and then loading it into the database and then using
ReportBuilder to do that. This is the method I am using right now. It
works, but I would rather bypass two things that I have to do right now: 1)
saving the image onto disk in the windows temp folder and then reloading it,
and 2) saving the image into a database which already is saving the
information for the bitmap as a string in a Memo field. In other words, I'm
saving two different versions of the signature which wastes disk space. The
string version of the bitmap is a nicely compressed version which contains
additional biometric data as well as the bitmap image, while the other
contains only the bitmap version for ReportBuilder to understand.

I guess my question for you would be: If I have a bitmap graphic of the
signature in memory, such as in an array of byte, is there a way for
ReportBuilder to access it and use it?

Thanks for your time.

Delphi 2007, ReportBuilder Enterprise 10

nicocizik

Hi David,

If you can stream the bitmap to a memory stream, you could easily load it
into a TppImage on a report using the
ppImage1.Picture.Bitmap.LoadFromStream(); routine.

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

Great! Yes, I successfully moved the bitmap into a memory stream today.

What would be the best event for this? Can I do this directly in RAP?

nicocizik

Hi David,

You can use any event that fires before the image prints. The
Band.BeforePrint event would be a good starting place.

In order to do this from RAP, you will need to create a passthru function to
access the LoadFromStream routine.

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com