Is there an easy way to change the Print Previewers default settings? I would like the previewer to come up in a maximized window with the page at 100% zoom or page width zoon. How do I do it?
That same question has been asked here and also answered, with the answer lines above, 54 times during the years 1999-2002.
Yet this advice is nowhere in the manuals, examples or help files. And yes, even if it works, it's just a work-around!!!!
Write 100 RB reports, and you'll have to add those lines to all of those reports manually! How clever.
If I get the same answer fifth time from my customers, I do not fix it any more with work-arounds, or put more folks on phone support. I'll fix my app, so the same question does not rise any more, and does not eat my valuable time.
I don't know how the time of DM support personnel has been valuated. But it looks strange to me, that this thing has *not* been fixed, nor better dodumented. Even after 54 different people asking the same question.
I can see that DM folks have written a lot of sophisticated code. I don't know yet if the re-write of the whole Printer unit was good or bad. But it shows they are really trying.
Yet this sloppyness in many places, and weak and slow responsiveness, these still make my temperature to rise high and rise fast. I wonder if these same small, but annoying preview problems are going to be still in RB 6.04?
With all this whining, I'm not saying that I would be leaving RB behind me. I'm better saying I'm going to keep these positions for the moment.
I just looked through the 3..5 other competing report alternatives. Some things they do better, but they also seem to miss something, either reasonable support or some product features. Even if not a complete product, it now looks like it's still wiser to stay married with RB, than start going elsewhere.
But please, put your effort to fix the things right in to your product and documentation. Instead of spending your time, year after year with un-productive on line support. On areas that could be easily and quickly fixed.
I concur with you Barry. I was using Quick Report Artist, a $75 product, and I miss simple things it has that Report Builder doesn't. But, the foundation of Report Builder is superb, and much better. The eye appeal is great, which is very important for a Report writer. So, I'm not thinking about leaving it. :-)
What would be nice about this print previewer is if there was an expandable print preview properties where these things could be easily and quickly set. Another less desireable possibility but perhaps easier to implement is to have a simple text configuration file read during compilation where all these details could be set for all my applications. I can't imagine a single application where I want the previewer to come up with its normal default settings.
Hi Chris. Please forgive us. As for me, I think I just get a little frustrated learning something new. You say look at the demos, but there are a lot of demos. A lot of information. Quite overwhelming. I generally search the manual for phrases like "Preview Form" or other key words. By the way, which demo documents this Print Preview change?
Note that I have worked through the "Learning Report Builder" tutorial and also read the manual very closely. The problem is that there is just so much information, that little things like this aren't clear until they are needed. Then a search in the manual turns up nothing. Help turns up nothing. You guys have a lot of documentation, so it is not easy finding that little piece of information that makes things work well. I would recommend just adding a statement to the help file and indexing relevant keywords. That shouldn't be hard, and updated help files could be available for download. If I could just go into a Report Builder help file and find this kind of info by looking at index "Preview Form," that would have helped a lot.
I think the problem with this particular incident is that it has come up from many other users. A little thing like this can be frustrating, and most of us buy something like Report Builder because we don't want to spend a lot of time coding things. If the behavior of a component is such that you always have to remember to go into an event and code something, get the right syntax, find that example syntax that you haven't looked at for six months, well, that is a pain. Sure, you might have hundreds of reports for which you wrote that code only once, but what about the next time you drop a report component down? You are going to be looking for that code again so you can make the preview form come up as it should.
The response to this particular question was the best I have ever gotten in this newsgroup, but answers to other questions were always a little weak. By weak I mean that I am unable to understand. I had almost given up using this newsgroup as a resource. In fact, I have been asking Report Builder questions in another newsgroup.
As for speedy responses... Have you checked out the Turbopower FlashFiler newsgroup? That is the fastest newsgroup that I have ever seen. I'm talking responses almost always within hours, not a day. Good answers too. Nevertheless, it is hard to compare any newsgroup with that one. I'm not faulting you for that. It would be nice to get same day responses, but next day responses are better than none or next week. :-)
I'm very glad that we have a newsgroup here, and I'm very glad for Report Builder. It is a nice product, so nice that we all expect it to be perfect. We get disappointed when we realize that it isn't perfect, but it is still a great product.
first let me say, that I am not working for DM, I'm a user like you.
Hit and look for 'PreviewForm.Viewer).ZoomSetting' in folder 'RBuilder', then you'll find all places where it is used.
you can do a fulltext search by your own, that's a standard Windows help feature.
too.
question : Concatenate Fields from 2002-02-08 14:51 answer : from Tom Ollar at 2002-02-08 16:19 delay : 1.5 hours
question : Getting started 2002-01-14 18:27 answer : Jim Bennett 2002-01-14 18:27 19:52 delay : 1.5 hours
question : What does pp stand for? 2002-03-04 05:20 answer : Bruce Roberts 2002-03-04 06:17 delay : < 1 hour
a
No problem so far, because all necessary settings and doings are done by my framework automatically. When I have to remember on 'how to do that special thing' I look into my reference projects and/or use .
I've added the code to two different TppReport components, to their OnPreviewFormCreate event. Neither of them have any effect. The code compiles fine. If I do an F4 to compile (Compile to Cursor and Break), the event evidently never fires because I never get a break there. What might I be doing wrong?
I'm using Delphi 5 with Report Builder Pro 6.03 and FlashFiler 2 database.
Hey, what's this F3 thing? Where do you hit F3? That repeats a search in Delphi.
I guess this is what is meant by "weak answers." Some of us guys are not as sharp as others. You say, "hit " and look, but I hit F3 and nothing happens. :-)
So please tell me how to do this. This sounds interesting. You mean that I can somehow search all the demos for a Preview string? How would you know to look for "PreviewForm.Viewer).Zoomsetting"?
Chris wrote:
Yes, but keywords not specifically used in the text do not show up. I was able to use your tip to find in the help file the answer that Jim gave. It was under TppProducer.OnPreviewFormCreate. So you are right, the information is in the help system, contrary to what Barry said, but still, there isn't enough information for me to get this to work. I guess I'm missing something yet again.
I see you are a TeamDM member, I wonder if this is also the DM's official answer.
But sure you can do that, and anything else too, if you write your own Class for that. That just is not a decent offer from a Mercedes class reporting tool: Do It Yourself.
(Well, still some of the early 1980 Mercedes Benz models had a window washer where the driver pumped the water by a foot pedale to the windscreen:) Now this good Old Folks thing has disappeared from MB. )
When you look at the RB examples, all the examples describe *only* that situation, how you drop a Preview component on your Form. And add the ZoomSetting code to the report's OnPreviewFormCreate event.
And when you do it this way, you'll have to include these lines of code to all of your 100 reports. A home made solution, that is even not documented in the Manuals.
Of course, after writing it the 50th time, you start thinking that is there some more clever way to do this. I just think that it's the RB writer's task to do that, put then to their package in an easily adoptable form, that is, a Property.
The current situation is a work around situation. And it makes me wonder why it has been here this way, all the way from 1997.
--- I'm not a component writer, but application developer. The every day needs and discussions with my clients have nothing to do with creating new Reporting Tool classes.
Beside RB, I have a dozen of other commercial component packages to deal with. And all they are just black boxes to me. I'm not interested to touch anything inside them, and I'm happy when it works that way.
All my time goes in that, that I try to write the functionality my client wants. Reporting is not such a intersting area, that I would like to dig deep in to Classes or anything within it.
Just make the reports my client wants, and in 100% they want them maximized in 100% size. I see the other developers here sayying also their customers want to preview in that way.
Then, why does not RB offer this kind of, very commonly needed functionality? No real or sensitive ear for the customer needs for 5 years:(
--- As Barry, I know this is a dangerous thing, to criticize any work where the good and professional people have put years of their life.
The receiver usually does not accept any of it, but considers it as an personal attack against himself and his products.
I myself would not have started any of this in the first place. Just quietly brought my things and gears from QR to RB, and kept my mouth shut all the time.
Be sure to reassign any event handlers to the report, after you load each report template (rtm) into the report component. This is most likely the problem.
I plan to wrote a book about the meaning of in Windows, until that the short explanation should do it! :-) You may also use Delphi's search in files feature or a GREP utility.
I
It was said that there is nothing about the 'Zoomsetting' in the demos, therefore it is simple to know what searchstring must be used.
If you have a real serious problem, where you can't wait a few days, you should better contact the support directly. Sure it is sometimes possible that one overlook a thread, is busy ,ill or ... it is a NG.
maximize
you are working with templates, right? Then you have to reassign the events after loading, here the 'TppReport.'OnPreviewFormCreate' event. When you are using the ReportExplorer, this should be done in the 'OnLoadEnd' event of the template, which must be assigned just after a report is selected, I use here 'TppDesigner.OnReportSelected'.
No, I'am answering my way. I do NOT work for DM. I am a developer like you.
You don't need new classes for reusing code.
use the second time ;-)
my short answer here, the coding for Preview's zoom setting is so simple that I'll do it by myself, but there are much more other features, which can't be simply done by us. The focus should be kept on the latter thing by DM. (I managed the zoom setting by myself by reading the code/documentation/tech-tips, I can't remember any difficulties, lucky by chance :-)).
You're right, you have to code an event handler for each report component in your app to get a 100% zoomed preview screen. I've added a new property on the report component which will allow you to configure the preview form at Delphi design time. This will be in the next manitenance release. If you've coded the OnPreviewFormCreate events in you old reports, you won't have to change anything, they will work as before. This new property simply lets you define the settings before hand. The settings you make on the preview form in the OnPreviewFormCreate will override the settings that are given by the new property on the report.
Yeees, thank you for the men at DM (and the nice blonde girl at the reception desk).
And don't forget to put the Close on ESC feature to Preview also.
I'm not sure if I got everything off my chest. But if the marriage with RB remains, I'll probably be back with the naggings. As in every decent marriage. If nothing is to be heard, everything goes fine.
Comments
event.
For example the following code sets the Print Preview form to maximized and
sets the Viewer ZoomSetting to 100%:
procedure TForm1.ppReport1PreviewFormCreate(Sender: TObject);
begin
ppReport1.PreviewForm.WindowState := wsMaximized;
TppViewer(ppReport1.PreviewForm.Viewer).ZoomSetting := zs100Percent;
end;
Note: You will need to add ppViewr to the uses clause of your unit, so that
the ZoomSetting enumerated type is recognized by the compiler.
Cheers,
Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com
info@digital-metaphors.com
That same question has been asked here and also answered, with the
answer lines above, 54 times during the years 1999-2002.
Yet this advice is nowhere in the manuals, examples or help files.
And yes, even if it works, it's just a work-around!!!!
Write 100 RB reports, and you'll have to add those lines to all of
those reports manually! How clever.
If I get the same answer fifth time from my customers, I do not
fix it any more with work-arounds, or put more folks on phone support.
I'll fix my app, so the same question does not rise any more, and
does not eat my valuable time.
I don't know how the time of DM support personnel has been valuated.
But it looks strange to me, that this thing has *not* been fixed, nor
better dodumented. Even after 54 different people asking the same
question.
I can see that DM folks have written a lot of sophisticated code. I
don't know yet if the re-write of the whole Printer unit was good
or bad. But it shows they are really trying.
Yet this sloppyness in many places, and weak and slow responsiveness,
these still make my temperature to rise high and rise fast.
I wonder if these same small, but annoying preview problems are going
to be still in RB 6.04?
With all this whining, I'm not saying that I would be leaving RB
behind me. I'm better saying I'm going to keep these positions for
the moment.
I just looked through the 3..5 other competing report alternatives.
Some things they do better, but they also seem to miss something,
either reasonable support or some product features.
Even if not a complete product, it now looks like it's still wiser
to stay married with RB, than start going elsewhere.
But please, put your effort to fix the things right in to your product
and documentation.
Instead of spending your time, year after year with un-productive on
line support. On areas that could be easily and quickly fixed.
-Barry
and I miss simple things it has that Report Builder doesn't. But, the
foundation of Report Builder is superb, and much better. The eye appeal is
great, which is very important for a Report writer. So, I'm not thinking
about leaving it. :-)
What would be nice about this print previewer is if there was an expandable
print preview properties where these things could be easily and quickly set.
Another less desireable possibility but perhaps easier to implement is to
have a simple text configuration file read during compilation where all
these details could be set for all my applications. I can't imagine a
single application where I want the previewer to come up with its normal
default settings.
David Miller
David Miller
look at the demos!
It is normal code, no workaround (around what?).
I have hundreds or reports and wrote this code ONE time.
Nothing to fix, but sure we all would like to handle it simplier by
properties.
It is the fastest NG I've ever seen!
regards,
Chris Ueberall;
frustrated learning something new. You say look at the demos, but there are
a lot of demos. A lot of information. Quite overwhelming. I generally
search the manual for phrases like "Preview Form" or other key words. By
the way, which demo documents this Print Preview change?
Note that I have worked through the "Learning Report Builder" tutorial and
also read the manual very closely. The problem is that there is just so
much information, that little things like this aren't clear until they are
needed. Then a search in the manual turns up nothing. Help turns up
nothing. You guys have a lot of documentation, so it is not easy finding
that little piece of information that makes things work well. I would
recommend just adding a statement to the help file and indexing relevant
keywords. That shouldn't be hard, and updated help files could be available
for download. If I could just go into a Report Builder help file and find
this kind of info by looking at index "Preview Form," that would have helped
a lot.
I think the problem with this particular incident is that it has come up
from many other users. A little thing like this can be frustrating, and
most of us buy something like Report Builder because we don't want to spend
a lot of time coding things. If the behavior of a component is such that
you always have to remember to go into an event and code something, get the
right syntax, find that example syntax that you haven't looked at for six
months, well, that is a pain. Sure, you might have hundreds of reports for
which you wrote that code only once, but what about the next time you drop a
report component down? You are going to be looking for that code again so
you can make the preview form come up as it should.
The response to this particular question was the best I have ever gotten in
this newsgroup, but answers to other questions were always a little weak.
By weak I mean that I am unable to understand. I had almost given up using
this newsgroup as a resource. In fact, I have been asking Report Builder
questions in another newsgroup.
As for speedy responses... Have you checked out the Turbopower FlashFiler
newsgroup? That is the fastest newsgroup that I have ever seen. I'm
talking responses almost always within hours, not a day. Good answers too.
Nevertheless, it is hard to compare any newsgroup with that one. I'm not
faulting you for that. It would be nice to get same day responses, but next
day responses are better than none or next week. :-)
I'm very glad that we have a newsgroup here, and I'm very glad for Report
Builder. It is a nice product, so nice that we all expect it to be perfect.
We get disappointed when we realize that it isn't perfect, but it is still a
great product.
David Miller
first let me say, that I am not working for DM, I'm a user like you.
Hit and look for 'PreviewForm.Viewer).ZoomSetting' in folder
'RBuilder', then you'll find all places where it is used.
you can do a fulltext search by your own, that's a standard Windows help
feature.
too.
question : Concatenate Fields from 2002-02-08 14:51
answer : from Tom Ollar at 2002-02-08 16:19
delay : 1.5 hours
question : Getting started 2002-01-14 18:27
answer : Jim Bennett 2002-01-14 18:27 19:52
delay : 1.5 hours
question : What does pp stand for? 2002-03-04 05:20
answer : Bruce Roberts 2002-03-04 06:17
delay : < 1 hour
a
No problem so far, because all necessary settings and doings are done by my
framework automatically.
When I have to remember on 'how to do that special thing' I look into my
reference projects and/or use .
I think that's the point here.
regards,
Chris Ueberall;
OnPreviewFormCreate event. Neither of them have any effect. The code
compiles fine. If I do an F4 to compile (Compile to Cursor and Break), the
event evidently never fires because I never get a break there. What might I
be doing wrong?
I'm using Delphi 5 with Report Builder Pro 6.03 and FlashFiler 2 database.
David Miller
Chris wrote:
Hey, what's this F3 thing? Where do you hit F3? That repeats a search in
Delphi.
I guess this is what is meant by "weak answers." Some of us guys are not as
sharp as others. You say, "hit " and look, but I hit F3 and nothing
happens. :-)
So please tell me how to do this. This sounds interesting. You mean that I
can somehow search all the demos for a Preview string? How would you know
to look for "PreviewForm.Viewer).Zoomsetting"?
Chris wrote:
Yes, but keywords not specifically used in the text do not show up. I was
able to use your tip to find in the help file the answer that Jim gave. It
was under TppProducer.OnPreviewFormCreate. So you are right, the
information is in the help system, contrary to what Barry said, but still,
there isn't enough information for me to get this to work. I guess I'm
missing something yet again.
I see you are a TeamDM member, I wonder if this is also the DM's
official answer.
But sure you can do that, and anything else too, if you write your
own Class for that. That just is not a decent offer from a Mercedes
class reporting tool: Do It Yourself.
(Well, still some of the early 1980 Mercedes Benz models had a window
washer where the driver pumped the water by a foot pedale to the
windscreen:) Now this good Old Folks thing has disappeared from MB. )
When you look at the RB examples, all the examples describe *only* that
situation, how you drop a Preview component on your Form. And add the
ZoomSetting code to the report's OnPreviewFormCreate event.
And when you do it this way, you'll have to include these lines of
code to all of your 100 reports. A home made solution, that is even
not documented in the Manuals.
Of course, after writing it the 50th time, you start thinking that is
there some more clever way to do this. I just think that it's the RB
writer's task to do that, put then to their package in an easily
adoptable form, that is, a Property.
The current situation is a work around situation. And it makes
me wonder why it has been here this way, all the way from 1997.
---
I'm not a component writer, but application developer. The every day
needs and discussions with my clients have nothing to do with creating
new Reporting Tool classes.
Beside RB, I have a dozen of other commercial component packages to
deal with. And all they are just black boxes to me.
I'm not interested to touch anything inside them, and I'm happy
when it works that way.
All my time goes in that, that I try to write the functionality
my client wants. Reporting is not such a intersting area, that
I would like to dig deep in to Classes or anything within it.
Just make the reports my client wants, and in 100% they want
them maximized in 100% size. I see the other developers here
sayying also their customers want to preview in that way.
Then, why does not RB offer this kind of, very commonly needed
functionality?
No real or sensitive ear for the customer needs for 5 years:(
---
As Barry, I know this is a dangerous thing, to criticize any work
where the good and professional people have put years of their
life.
The receiver usually does not accept any of it, but considers
it as an personal attack against himself and his products.
I myself would not have started any of this in the first place.
Just quietly brought my things and gears from QR to RB, and kept
my mouth shut all the time.
-Barry
report template (rtm) into the report component. This is most likely the
problem.
Cheers,
Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com
info@digital-metaphors.com
Hit anywhere on the Windows desktop or Explorer.
as
I plan to wrote a book about the meaning of in Windows, until that the
short explanation should do it! :-)
You may also use Delphi's search in files feature or a GREP utility.
I
It was said that there is nothing about the 'Zoomsetting' in the demos,
therefore it is simple to know what searchstring must be used.
If you have a real serious problem, where you can't wait a few days, you
should better contact the support directly.
Sure it is sometimes possible that one overlook a thread, is busy ,ill or
... it is a NG.
maximize
you are working with templates, right?
Then you have to reassign the events after loading, here the
'TppReport.'OnPreviewFormCreate' event.
When you are using the ReportExplorer, this should be done in the
'OnLoadEnd' event of the template, which must be assigned just after a
report is selected, I use here 'TppDesigner.OnReportSelected'.
feel free to ask more questions,
Chris Ueberall;
No, I'am answering my way. I do NOT work for DM. I am a developer like you.
You don't need new classes for reusing code.
use the second time ;-)
my short answer here, the coding for Preview's zoom setting is so simple
that I'll do it by myself, but there are much more other features, which
can't be simply done by us. The focus should be kept on the latter thing by
DM.
(I managed the zoom setting by myself by reading the
code/documentation/tech-tips, I can't remember any difficulties, lucky by
chance :-)).
regards,
Chris Ueberall;
your app to get a 100% zoomed preview screen. I've added a new property on
the report component which will allow you to configure the preview form at
Delphi design time. This will be in the next manitenance release. If
you've coded the OnPreviewFormCreate events in you old reports, you won't
have to change anything, they will work as before. This new property simply
lets you define the settings before hand. The settings you make on the
preview form in the OnPreviewFormCreate will override the settings that are
given by the new property on the report.
Report.PreviewFormSettings.ZoomSetting
Report.PreviewFormSettings.WindowState
Cheers,
Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com
info@digital-metaphors.com
you.
Now, Barry, don't forget to thank the man. :-)
David Miller
Yes.
------------------------------------
Bruce Roberts
Roberts Browne Limited
RBAddOn Components for Report Builder
http://www.bancoems.com/rbaddon.htm
Yeees, thank you for the men at DM (and the nice blonde girl at the
reception desk).
And don't forget to put the Close on ESC feature to Preview also.
I'm not sure if I got everything off my chest. But if the marriage
with RB remains, I'll probably be back with the naggings. As in
every decent marriage.
If nothing is to be heard, everything goes fine.
-Barry