Component advice

rbuser

Hi all

[don't know if it is the right group to post. If not sorry in advance!]
I am looking for a component advice
We have an end-user application written in Delphi 5 with Oracle using
Direct Oracle Access and Report Builder 7.03
We have some lob fields in which users can put text into through a
simple TDbMemo component.
Now users ask for a more word-processing-like component. They want to be
able to format paragraphs, choose different font and so on..
We could use an external word-processing application (e.g. ms word) and
store the result in the database but in this way we loose the printing
capability in RB, am I right?
I have see in the RB site a component named wptools
Are there any other choices?
Are there any caveats/tips/advices regarding this (or other) component?

Thanks in advance
Bye

Nicola

nicocizik

Hi Nicola,

There are currently two products you can use to enhance the RichText
capabilities of ReportBuilder. They are InfoPower and WPTools. I believe
InfoPower is more or less an enhancement to the TRichEdit Delphi component.
WPTools contains its own RichText engine and therefor may be more advanced.
Please see the article below for more information.

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Article: ReportBuilder's RichText Architecture
----------------------------------------------


The RichText in ReportBuilder is a wrapper around Delphi's TRichEdit
which
in turn relies on Windows. There are two versions of Windows richedit -
RichEd32.dll is the older one and RichEd20.dll is a newer one (RichEd32
is being phased out). Delphi by default relies on RichEd32 - the older
version. To use some of the more advanced features of Windows RichEdit,
see the topic on InfoPower RichEdit Support below.

In general Windows RichEdit supports the type of formatting that you can
do using WordPad.



InfoPower RichEdit Support
---------------------------
InfoPower from Woll2Woll Software is a popular database add-on product
for Delphi. InfoPower's TwwRichEdit components support the Windows
RichEdit2 format. This format allows the rich text data to contain
embedded bitmaps and OLE objects. For more information please see
http:\\www.Woll2Woll.com.

ReportBuilder includes a component that enables the TppRichText and
TppDBRichText controls in ReportBuilder to use the formatting
capabilities of InfoPower's TwwRichEdit when rendering RTF data. The
ppWWRichEd.pas unit located in the ..\RBuilder\InfoPower directory
defines a TwwDBRichEdit descendant and then registers the class with
ReportBuilder. This enables the TppRichText and TppDBRichText controls
in ReportBuilder to use the formatting capabilities of TwwDBRichEidt
when rendering data.


WPTools Support
----------------
WPTools is a collection of components used to edit and print
formatted text. With its own RTF engine, WPTools offers
numerous features not supported by the standard Windows
RichEd20.dll. This control lets you use tables, paragraph
frames, headers and footers etc. Using the optional
ReportBuilder support units for WPTools 2.x, you can print
the enhanced WPTools features (justified text, tables, graphics
...) within your ReportBuilder reports.
For more information please see http:\\www.wptools.de.

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