Shrinking text to fit

rbuser

I have a memo field on a report. The text it it usually fits fine, but
occasionally there is a bit more text than fit.

For various external reasons, it is not feasible to extend this field larger
than its current size, nor to let it roll over to another page, etc.
Rather, the text font size therein needs to automatically adjusted downward
far enough for it to fit. So, for example, most of the time it would be at
11 point, it would sometimes reduce to 10, 9, 8, whatever, to make the text
fit.

In a past project with Ace Reporter, I implemented this with excellent
results. All I had to do was write a few lines of code to see if the text
fit in the alloted size, then put that in a loop to keep adjusting down
until it fit.

I've been looking all over the RB docs and example, and haven't been able to
figure out what hook to use to do this. Surely it must be possible, for RB
is a far more featureful and expensive package than Ace :-)

There was a previous post from Jim Bennett about this example:

http://www.digital-metaphors.com/tips/ForceFontToOnePageReport.zip

But that does not answer my question at all, unfortunately; it uses a much
larger-grained measurement of whether the whole report fit on a page; I need
to do this at a field level.

I have looked around and experimented with a variety of RB component
properties/methods, and I can't find any that actually exposes the answer to
the question "did this text fit in this box?", although some appear to be
related. I've also been unable to find out where to get a graphic context
that would let me ask that same question.

--
[ Kyle Cordes * kyle@kylecordes.com * http://kylecordes.com ]
[ Consulting and Software development tips and techniques ]
[ for Java, EJB, Delphi, the BDE Alternatives Guide, & more ]

digitalmetaphors

The tip you founf was for a customer that wanted to always print a page on
one piece of paper. Because RB relies on the printer driver for font sizes
in order to determine pagaination, this demo forces a report that should be
one page to always be one page and include all the information of the report
by reducing the font so it fits. It isn't what you want, exactly.

You'll need to generate your memo in memory. Use the TppPlainText function
called WordWrap. See ppPlainText.pas for a listing of parameters. This class
is meant to be an internal one, so it is not in the help file. Basically,
you also need to search our source for uses of this routine. See ppMemo.pas
as well for this. Also, TppCustomMemo.CalcSpaceUsed uses two functions of
TppPlaintext to see if the wrapped lines (TppPlaintText.WordWrap) fit inside
the count which TppPlainText.MaxLinesFit calculated.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

"Jim Bennett (Digital Metaphors)" wrote in

digitalmetaphors

What may be happening is that you are using a different printer to calculate
the memo wrapping. The WinAPI calls rely on the printer driver to provide
the calculated text width and height. Every printer driver is different and
you will get different measurements when using different printer drivers to
measure the text widths and heights for the same font name and pt size.
Check to make sure that Report.PrinterSetup.PrinterName is set to the
printer that you want to use (it should be 'default'). Do not use the screen
to measure any text. ReportBuilder always relies on the selected printer to
measure text, and that is why the screen preview doesn't look as good as the
printed output. The screen can't resolve the precise measurements that the
printer can using the 96 ppi on the screen versus 600 on the printer.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors