How To Merge Into Designer Menus At DESIGN TIME

rbuser

Hello All:

We use ReportBuilder 6.03/Delphi 5. We want to add an extra menu item
into the Designer for myself at DESIGN time. I will use this to add in
custom help items specific to my application that I need to reference when
building reports at Design time.

I do NOT want to merge my help into ReportBuilder's help file - my help
is in an html file and will be accessed via a call to shellexecute.

In Delphi, I would build a unit with a Descendent from TIExpert. Then I
would register the Expert into Delphi itself.

I can write a wizard like that - but I can't figure out how to integrate
that wizard into the ReportBuilder Designer menu (I see component
registrations - but nothing for a menu).

I have seen all kinds of posts on merging help into the Designer at Run
Time for the end user. I want to add in a Menu item into the Report Builder
Designer at DESIGN time.

Thank you for your help.


Neil Huhta
Profit Monster Data Systems LLC

rbuser

Nico:

Since you do not have a method to do this - could I inherit the designer
form, extend it, then inherit a tppReport component that uses my inherited
designer ???

My purpose is for my own internal use.

In addition, I suppose I could extend the report builder help reference
and place my own help into that.

Let me know what you think.


Neil

nicocizik

Neil,

The ReportBuilder Designer was not designed to be easily changed or
customized at design time. This will require you to change the
ReportBuilder source, adding these new menu options, then recompiling and
installing the proper design packages into the Delphi IDE. You would also
not be able to distribute these packages so these changes would only be for
your personal use.

Also, note that if you were to change the RB source, RAP would then be
un-usable if any of the interface sections are altered.

--
Regards,

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

nicocizik

Hi Neil,

You can try . We have definitely never tried anything like this. The
problem is that the designer was never made to be replaceable or very
customizable for that matter. It is something that we would love to change
for a future release of ReportBuilder. This however would take a lot of
time and effort because it would consist of completely re-engineering the
designer from scratch.

--
Regards,

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