If you are loading a template, then make sure that the event handler is reassigned to the report after the template is loaded. There are articles in the tech tips newsgroup which describe how event handlers get lost, and also, on how to maximize the screen preview in the OnPreviewFormCreate event.
I have the same problem. I have worked with QR for several years, done dozens of complicated reports with it. And through those years, I often thouhgt that QR was bad.
But now, after struggling three days with my registered Report Builder 6.03, after that working with QR is a breathe.
The RB documentation is HUGE, over 400 pages. But the PDF manual is also incredibly bad, and somewhat broken also. I try to make Acrobat Reader to skip to page 54, where there's something about Preview, but Acrobat brings me to page 34. I try to go to 75, I get to page 55 etc. Is this some European, A4 paper size problem only, or what?
Finally I started to scan the PDF through with FIND. Now I have scanned the whole 400 page manual through, several times with keyword "preview". But I still can't find a single example how I could get the Preview window open in whole screen page mode.
I have tried several ways ppViewer1.ZoomSetting := zsPageWidth; ppViewer1.ZoomSetting := zs100Percent;
but these have no effect, the preview still opens in small 4 x 6 inches size. Also the Preview Window often opens blank, both in design mode and runtime mode. And I can't find a reason for this. Then it suddenly comes back again, and then again soon opens blank, no matter what.
The huge examples collection won't help me either. It has examples to use: ppViewer1.ZoomSetting := zsPageWidth; but as said, this does not have any effect.
Then I come to these newsgroups, and try to find something with Google, but Google does not cover these groups. And I can't find Digital Metaphors own search engine either.
Is there some way to search these newsgroups?
Then I again start scanning this newsgroup with FIND, through all the 20.000 articles. And I finally find this question from Bernaert Dominique, where he asks the same thing. But there's no answers, no one has answered anything:(
One of the several frustrations: Why can't I save my work, when the Design window is open? Why must i first switch off from the Design window, and now I can save my report to disk.
I also miss the feature, that I could copy the RB objects to clipboard, and to Notepad, and back again. A standard Delphi feature. But I have not found any ways or work arounds, how I could do the same with RB's printing objects.
I have already come over the fact, that in the minimum RB adds quite a big chunk, about 1.2 MB to the executable. QR made it with 600 kB, and Fast Report with 400 kB. And yet Fast Report comes with their built in HTML and Excel export, and many other things already installed.
Then rhe QR to RB exporting tool (Waler) does not work, but hangs, even with the simplest QR reports.
RB's documentation is big, but it is not good. It looks more like a colorful brochure than a handbook, there's almost no example snippets in it. And all the \DEMOS examples are built around inside one HUGE DPR example project.
This is very bad schema to teach anything for a beginner. I would like to see several independent, and also small reporting examples to start studying. Is there really no other RB example collection available, than that one which comes with the package?
This steep learning curve after QR, it was quite a surprise for me. Currently, I could not be much more frustrated and angry about all this hassle.
I'm sorry for my pseudonym. I'm just so angry now, that I may be also quite unfair against Digital Metaphors. And that's not what I want. I only want to get answers to some things, and according to them be ready to decide, to which direction I should continue.
Should I still try it, or will it get just worse? I have paid this thing, and can live with that loss. But should I still spend much more time with it, if it still feels this hopeless.
"Barry" wrote in message news:3C7E72B5.4377@nomail.no... in
No, that's Adobe Acrobat. That will happen with ANY document which is paged and has a table of contents or other pages before the actual page 1 of the document. That has nothing to do with RB's documentation. You just have to learn how to use Adobe Acrobat's "Go To Page" capability.
Hi Barry, You're wound up after a bad day/week/year - we've all had those. Generally RB is an excellant product, and the support team very responsive and helpful. Hang in there!
However, some of the points you make are valid
The PDF manual is large and not as "nuts and bolts" as I would like, but there are good resources elsewhere.
The demo project has a lot in it and if helpful, but maybe some separate projects (less expansive, more realistic) could be a help too for beginners.
The news group relies upon your own newsreader. For me that is Outlook Express, and I hate it. It always clears the tech-tips and you have to remove the newsgroup compeletely, close, open and resubscribe to get all the entries back. So unless you freshly download the whole group there is no way to search etc. Consequnetly the same questions get repeated because the previous answer is hard to find (if you ever downloaded it then your browser has deleted it etc.).
DM, an online search of these useful groups would be so nice....... Are there reasons why you don't do this?? But the frustration is OE.
But you are wrong here. People do answer, and are helpful.
Stick with it. Use the newsgroups, but please provide a full name and email - it is only polite
> I have the same problem. I have worked with QR for several years,
I must respectfully disagree. I've also worked a lot with both tools and RB is light years far good from QR. I simply love the tool. Maybe you're not still comfortable with it because your big background with QR but i'm even migrating all my old QR reports to RB in order to have QR out of my life forever. The code for maximizong the preview window works perfectly.
I agree some update of the documentation is needed but, the first thing i did before creating the first report was reading RB documentation and doing the examples. And after that all goes fine, no complains. It's a very complete documentation that covers all you need to create a great variety of reports... try looking QR documentation... almost nothing available.
I agree again, but i don't know a single manual covering all the cases. RB is a huge tool, with a lot of capabilities, controls... don't think in it as another QR, much smaller and simpler. (not easier). Even Delphi documentation doesn't covers all the topics, that's why this newsgroups exists.
This is some i also want: The preview report window should be maximized as default. Almost all the applications, users and developers need it that way. Minimize should be the option, not the rule.
Already answered with the correct code.
Strange... i asked the same thing a time ago and had the answer the same day.
I think you can't. On the RB documentation says that the report designer is "just" a very complex property editor, not a Delphi window itself.
As i said before, you simply can't compare QR with RB. They are worlds away. RB is a professional and HUGE tool.
False, i'm using Waler's component since almost 6 months and works fine. ALL my reports need to be exported to Excel and i have no problems. (The little bugs founded were solved for James Waler soon).
??? Had you really read it??? I've learned RB using only that "brochure". It covers almost all the issues you need for any kind of report creation. Even for the custom user's reports, what is really simple. I begun to deply end user's reports just a few hours after i begin to read the chapter. Try doing it on QR with all the query tools, DADE and so on... you'll become gray haired soon, if you even can do something similar to what RB has.
Now i see you didn't read the documentation. The presented examples a really step by step ones... even starting with "Put a ttable object from the database palette". Want anything more simplier? Also the reports in the demos project are step by step, and some of them are the continuation of previous ones.
Then an advice: keep QR. A terrible wrong decision, but it's your decision finally. If you just begin to really learn RB, this post never been posted. It's the most amazing and great tool for Delphi reporting (and maybe for reporting in general), and it's not say by me, not even for Digital-Metaphors... check the Delphi informant, the Delphi newsgroups and the report tools documentation available.
With all my respect... saying that RB is a bad tool and that QR is better than it, i almost like saying that VB is a lot better than Delphi. I worked with QR for 3 long years doing a lot (A LOT) of reports, their support is terrible, it's the time i have unanswered questions, not very powerful, tricky... IMHO just a poor tool. You had been very unfair with RB and i don't work for them, i'm just a customer like you, but i don't like to see good tools being attacked with not well based arguments. Hope you recover your good mood bye -- Guillermo Castaño Acevedo Gerente de Sistemas - Grupo Millennium Ltda GuillermoC@GrupoMillennium.com www.GrupoMillennium.com Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
I 've the same bad mood for a while when start working with RB, but believe me, this tool is great, i've tried other reporting tools and RB was my choice.After you learn how to work you will see. Keep going, and in a while you will be happy, you just need to do things in the best way. After more than 300 reports i'm very happy with RB.I can now do hard reports in a easy way.
Of course the manual is incomplete, sometimes advanced properties and functions aren't there, but i believe that DM will update manual in the future.
My problem is, that asking these very basic questions about the reporting tool, I would not like to appear here at all with them.
I would just like quickly to find and read the answer in Delphi RAD style, either: a) from the online Help b) from the manual c) from the demos that came along
and then go on. But when I can't find the *basic answers* from any of them, well that is a quick blood pressure rising thing to me.
But the sender of the code said "This code has been shown in the NG many times."
Well, if that is so often asked question, then why the heck can't it be told in any of the Demos, or the Manual or in online Help ????
The only way to find this piece of information myself would have to download and scan through the 20.000 article database. This is so clumsy, when I have one PC in work, one at home and the third is the portable.
Now I have got the Preview window maximized. But the second question is, why does this preview not close when I hit ESC-key? There seems not be any property that would make Preview work with this common and widely used (MS-Office, IE etc) way. Close preview on ESC.
Do I have to write my own preview window, to get this happen?
I know that helping people that are already grumpy is not a pleasant task, but please, if anyone could help me with this ESC problem.
RB should be the Mercedes of reporting tools:) That's what I expected after QReport. And that's why I'm grumpy with these very unexpected and very basic and annoying, new Mercedes owner difficulties.
--- By the way, one thing that is no fault for DM. I have always hated the PDF format, and especially the Acrobat Reader that is used to read that stuff.
This Mac product, with hand formed cursor, and odd short cuts and jumpy scrolling and zooming on screen, that is not for me. And a Table of Contents feature, that brings you to wrong page numbers on a 364 page hand book..
Where did the old Word formatted Report Builder document go?
At least you could easily Cut/Paste code snippets from there, but you can't do it with PDF.
--- I still suggest to break that huge demo to some smaller chunks.
Add some simple demos for starters, where the Preview Form is treated and handled elegantly. Show the right events where to put several settings etc. Show the way DM suggests to deal with it.
Well, now I have got something to work now with RB, and I still keep struggling. I hope I can abandon this pseudonyme very soon.
I sympathise with your point of view. I stared at RB for months but could never get figure out how to get started but last month something just clicked (light bulb style) and I was off and running! Once I'd passed that initial hurdle of "I know how QR does this - now how does RB do it?" things definitely came together. Keep at it!
Now I couldn't go back to QR/QRD. Ever.
BTW You can search these newsgroups at www.fulltextsearch.com
Well it seems that DM are dealing with a grumpy user by letting us satified customers handle it. And Barry, as you see there are plenty of us that find the learning curve and frustration worth it.
Yes, it would be nice if the answers to some questions were in the help, manual, demo etc. But having written these kind of things I know that it is almost impossible task to cover everything. Instead DM support the newsgroups and continue development.
So ask the obvious, and keep it brief, and answers will appear. Not ideal, and simple things appear repeatedly, and it is unwieldy to search etc. But ask your "ESC"/preview question in a new thread without loosing it in the grumps, and someone will answer.
Anyone like the job of scanning the common questions from the entire newsgroup and updating the tech-tips????
Sorry, you are frustrated. We are very proud of our active customers on the newsgroup and all of our resources in general. I hope you take a look at our TechTips newsgroup to search for answers. That might be better than searching in General. There are only 100ish articles in TechTips, for common problems. The newsgroups are here so that you can ask the guys who wrote the product questions about "why this is doing that." The developer's guide is over a year old. We are planning to go through it and bring it up to date in the future. We do sell a printed version of it for $30.
I read through these posts, and I wanted to add one note for future reference. If you are loading a report template, it is possible that the event handler may get assigned when the report is loaded. There is a TechTip newsgroup article on why event handlers get lost. You'll simply need to reassign the OnPreviewFormCreate event handler after the template is loaded:)
Here's what you need: Pressing the Escape key when the preview is shown, will close the preview form in this example link below. It is a full working simple Delphi 6 project I created this morning. Essentially, it shows that you can replace the RB preview class with a descendent that overrides the KeyDown method and closes the preview form. RB is very powerful and I hope you stick with it.
procedure TppMyPreview.KeyDown(var Key: Word; Shift: TShiftState); begin
inherited KeyDown(Key, Shift);
case Key of
VK_ESCAPE: PerformPreviewAction(paClose);
end;
end;
I'm using OE and its searching has been working well since I moved to a new machine a couple of weeks ago. Of course, now that I've said this, it is going to flake out:)
Thanks for all the answers, and overall understanding. I'm starting to feel a bit better now, when I got the five first simple QR reports converted to RB. Then it's time to try the tough ones. Reports with a lot of code written inside several QR control's events.
This looks good, but looks there's still some problem. If you press any of the Zoom buttons on the Preview form, then ESC won't work any more.
There is a property ModalPreview for TppReport. When you turn this on, and Preview is opened, then Delphi Modality takes care that you can't do anythine else with your app, but close the Preview Form.
ESC is an overall Windows standard to close all the Modal Forms.
So what is the idea, why the Close button still is *not* the default button for ESC key, even though ModalPreview is turned on? There's no other obvious buttons on Preview form to choose to press.
Also, is it a DM suggestion, that I put this initialization code to all of those 100 reports I'm gonna make:
If that is the suggestion, I'll do it. And then I'll include the Preview Form's Maximizing lines there also.
These questions may sound like splitting the hair. But I just wanted *not* to start scanning through RB's 260.000 lines of very challenging looking code.
I did that a lot with QReport, several weeks of debugging and studying the QR code in total. And I would not like to go there, at least not with the very basic questions yet.
I bougth RB professional 2 weeks ago and in some respects I understand your frustration. The first two days I felt like throwing the whole stuff out the window. But then I started to understand the way RB works. In no time I changed a whole application to RB. One week ago, I upgraded to RB Enterprise. And believe me, this thing is simply genius. RB offers features you only estimate when you have learned how to work with it. This is not easy at the very first time. I agree with you. But I also remember having hard times using QR + QRDesign or Crystal Reports.
I used to build my reports using QR, QRDesign and Crystal Reports. I almost finished developing a big application, when I realized that printing doesn't fit the demands of my customers.
For instance, using QR you simply are not able to switch papersources while executing a report. Maybe on an old Laserjet II that may have worked. But on a modern 5-Tray printer you can forget it. When developing professional applications this is essential.
While Crystal Reports is also a great product, in many respects not as ideal as RB. It's is slow and there are also some enduser installation issues.
Now with RB my customers can modify their reports themselves and all this is compiling into one application.
Using RB as the printing tool and DBIsam as a Database-Engine makes Delphi complete and a joy to work with. So stick with RB and don't look back. You will not regret that. And I'm sure you also had a reason to buy RB in the first place, didn't you?
The register/unregister calls just need to be placed in the one unit where your new preview plugin class resides.
You can create a TppReport descendent which has the OnPreviewFormCreate maximizing code in it. See the thread in this newsgroup on Zoom in ppDesigner Window. There is some example code given by one of our customers who did this. This way you can use the descendent to control the preview form, instead of trying to assign an event handler to every report that is previewed.
Sorry, I quickly looked at the interface section of TppPreview and saw that I could hook into that event. You're right, once the buttons get clicked, it doesn't 'hear' the escape key action. Well, the important point really is that you can replace the entire preview form with one of your own, with a TppCustomPreview or TppPreview descendent, allowing you to create all of the controls and configure them to work any way that you want. You can also register a different preview form for each report, if you really needed/wanted to. One customer I know of has one preview form which is normal, and another one which overrides the print button action so that he can call his special escape code sequences to print to dot matrix printers in a custom format, instead of using a print driver.
Hi there, I tried using the code below, and it didn't work for me. Tracing through, I found that "Report1.PreviewForm" was nil, so it blew up with a catastrophic failure
I'm pretty sure that it's because I'm creating everything at run-time, I don't have a TppReport object created at design time. So, how can I get the code below to work, when it doesn't appear that I have a "Report.PreviewForm" ??
Hmm, I tried defining an OnPreviewFormCreate event and assigned the event at runtime, but as soon as it tried to run it, it crashed (I had a breakpoint on the first line in OnPreviewFormCreate, and it never reached it).
I'm surmising that this is because I don't have a TForm? (Everything is bundled up into a DLL, with no Form). I've been scanning this group, and have seen several references to using RB without a Form - I suspect this is the problem. I'll try adding a form to the project, and just not displaying it, and see if that helps.
Jim, i think it's a good idea to create two new properties of the report: WindowState and ZoomSetting. It'll be very useful for all of us. (Or at least change the default behaviour of the reports. Almost all of us need them maximized and zoomed at 100%). Thanks
The problem lies originally in PPPREVIEW.PAS, the Preview Form unit. With Modal Forms like Preview, I don't see any apparent reason, why the Close button should be of type TSpeedButton.
Suggested change:
Change TSpeedButton to TButton: FBtnCancel: TSpeedButton; {The original row} --> FBtnCancel: TButton;
Make BtnCancel the default Cancel button, so the Preview Form closes when pressing ESC.
With those three lines changed, the Preview Form will *always* close when you press the ESC key. This is one of the most standard behaviours of Modal Forms.
I was able to easily fix thing when writing it straight to the RB unit. But I know this is no good way.
I'm still looking a simple solution that would live at least the next 3..5 years. I only want to have my reports ready, and don't want to start digging deep in to RB units, like I had to do with several QR bugs.
Well, I never had to touch QR's preview form though:)
Ok, copy our TppPreview class to a new unit and change the class name to TmyPreview. Change the button type, and then register this class as the previewer plug in that you want to use. Since this unit is in your project, when you upgrade to the next version of RB, you will not have to change anything, because your preview register call will still override the default registered preview plug in.
Comments
reassigned to the report after the template is loaded. There are articles in
the tech tips newsgroup which describe how event handlers get lost, and
also, on how to maximize the screen preview in the OnPreviewFormCreate
event.
Cheers,
Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors Corp
http://www.digital-metaphors.com
info@digital-metaphors.com
I have the same problem. I have worked with QR for several years,
done dozens of complicated reports with it. And through those years,
I often thouhgt that QR was bad.
But now, after struggling three days with my registered Report Builder
6.03, after that working with QR is a breathe.
The RB documentation is HUGE, over 400 pages. But the PDF manual is
also incredibly bad, and somewhat broken also. I try to make Acrobat
Reader to skip to page 54, where there's something about Preview, but
Acrobat brings me to page 34. I try to go to 75, I get to page
55 etc. Is this some European, A4 paper size problem only, or what?
Finally I started to scan the PDF through with FIND. Now I have scanned
the whole 400 page manual through, several times with keyword "preview".
But I still can't find a single example how I could get the Preview
window open in whole screen page mode.
I have tried several ways
ppViewer1.ZoomSetting := zsPageWidth;
ppViewer1.ZoomSetting := zs100Percent;
but these have no effect, the preview still opens in small 4 x 6 inches
size.
Also the Preview Window often opens blank, both in design mode and
runtime mode. And I can't find a reason for this. Then it suddenly
comes back again, and then again soon opens blank, no matter what.
The huge examples collection won't help me either. It has examples
to use: ppViewer1.ZoomSetting := zsPageWidth; but as said, this does
not have any effect.
Then I come to these newsgroups, and try to find something with
Google, but Google does not cover these groups. And I can't find
Digital Metaphors own search engine either.
Is there some way to search these newsgroups?
Then I again start scanning this newsgroup with FIND, through all
the 20.000 articles. And I finally find this question from Bernaert
Dominique, where he asks the same thing.
But there's no answers, no one has answered anything:(
One of the several frustrations: Why can't I save my work, when
the Design window is open? Why must i first switch off from the
Design window, and now I can save my report to disk.
I also miss the feature, that I could copy the RB objects to
clipboard, and to Notepad, and back again.
A standard Delphi feature. But I have not found any ways or work
arounds, how I could do the same with RB's printing objects.
I have already come over the fact, that in the minimum RB adds
quite a big chunk, about 1.2 MB to the executable. QR made it
with 600 kB, and Fast Report with 400 kB. And yet Fast Report
comes with their built in HTML and Excel export, and many
other things already installed.
Then rhe QR to RB exporting tool (Waler) does not work, but hangs,
even with the simplest QR reports.
RB's documentation is big, but it is not good. It looks more like
a colorful brochure than a handbook, there's almost no example
snippets in it.
And all the \DEMOS examples are built around inside one HUGE DPR
example project.
This is very bad schema to teach anything for a beginner. I would
like to see several independent, and also small reporting examples
to start studying.
Is there really no other RB example collection available, than
that one which comes with the package?
This steep learning curve after QR, it was quite a surprise for me.
Currently, I could not be much more frustrated and angry about all
this hassle.
I'm sorry for my pseudonym. I'm just so angry now, that I may be
also quite unfair against Digital Metaphors.
And that's not what I want. I only want to get answers to some things,
and according to them be ready to decide, to which direction I should
continue.
Should I still try it, or will it get just worse? I have paid this
thing, and can live with that loss. But should I still spend much
more time with it, if it still feels this hopeless.
-Barry
in
No, that's Adobe Acrobat. That will happen with ANY document which is paged
and has a table of contents or other pages before the actual page 1 of the
document. That has nothing to do with RB's documentation. You just have to
learn how to use Adobe Acrobat's "Go To Page" capability.
Use this...
Report.PreviewForm.WindowState := wsMaximized;
TppViewer(Report1.PreviewForm.Viewer).ZoomSetting := zs100Percent;
You also have to place ppViewr in your uses clause.
This code has been shown in the NG many times.
It sure does. See my example above.
Try using your newsreader's search capabilities.
The demos that come with RB are quite easy to follow and very helpful.
Any learning curve away from QR is worth it. The power of RB is phenomenal.
Just don't give up too soon.
Report1.PreviewForm.WindowState := wsMaximized;
TppViewer(Report1.PreviewForm.Viewer).ZoomSetting := zs100Percent;
I forgot to put the "1" after "Report" on the first line. "Report1" being
the name of your report.
You're wound up after a bad day/week/year - we've all had those. Generally
RB is an excellant product, and the support team very responsive and
helpful. Hang in there!
However, some of the points you make are valid
The PDF manual is large and not as "nuts and bolts" as I would like, but
there are good resources elsewhere.
The demo project has a lot in it and if helpful, but maybe some separate
projects (less expansive, more realistic) could be a help too for beginners.
The news group relies upon your own newsreader. For me that is Outlook
Express, and I hate it. It always clears the tech-tips and you have to
remove the newsgroup compeletely, close, open and resubscribe to get all the
entries back. So unless you freshly download the whole group there is no way
to search etc. Consequnetly the same questions get repeated because the
previous answer is hard to find (if you ever downloaded it then your browser
has deleted it etc.).
DM, an online search of these useful groups would be so nice....... Are
there reasons why you don't do this?? But the frustration is OE.
But you are wrong here. People do answer, and are helpful.
Stick with it. Use the newsgroups, but please provide a full name and
email - it is only polite
Sarah
I must respectfully disagree. I've also worked a lot with both tools and RB is
light years far good from QR. I simply love the tool.
Maybe you're not still comfortable with it because your big background with QR
but i'm even migrating all my old QR reports to RB in order to have QR out of my
life forever.
The code for maximizong the preview window works perfectly.
I agree some update of the documentation is needed but, the first thing i did
before creating the first report was reading RB documentation and doing the
examples. And after that all goes fine, no complains.
It's a very complete documentation that covers all you need to create a great
variety of reports... try looking QR documentation... almost nothing available.
I agree again, but i don't know a single manual covering all the cases. RB is a
huge tool, with a lot of capabilities, controls... don't think in it as another
QR, much smaller and simpler. (not easier).
Even Delphi documentation doesn't covers all the topics, that's why this
newsgroups exists.
This is some i also want: The preview report window should be maximized as
default. Almost all the applications, users and developers need it that way.
Minimize should be the option, not the rule.
Already answered with the correct code.
Strange... i asked the same thing a time ago and had the answer the same day.
I think you can't. On the RB documentation says that the report designer is
"just" a very complex property editor, not a Delphi window itself.
As i said before, you simply can't compare QR with RB. They are worlds away. RB
is a professional and HUGE tool.
False, i'm using Waler's component since almost 6 months and works fine. ALL my
reports need to be exported to Excel and i have no problems. (The little bugs
founded were solved for James Waler soon).
??? Had you really read it??? I've learned RB using only that "brochure". It
covers almost all the issues you need for any kind of report creation. Even for
the custom user's reports, what is really simple.
I begun to deply end user's reports just a few hours after i begin to read the
chapter.
Try doing it on QR with all the query tools, DADE and so on... you'll become
gray haired soon, if you even can do something similar to what RB has.
Now i see you didn't read the documentation. The presented examples a really
step by step ones... even starting with "Put a ttable object from the database
palette". Want anything more simplier?
Also the reports in the demos project are step by step, and some of them are the
continuation of previous ones.
Then an advice: keep QR. A terrible wrong decision, but it's your decision
finally.
If you just begin to really learn RB, this post never been posted. It's the most
amazing and great tool for Delphi reporting (and maybe for reporting in
general), and it's not say by me, not even for Digital-Metaphors... check the
Delphi informant, the Delphi newsgroups and the report tools documentation
available.
With all my respect... saying that RB is a bad tool and that QR is better than
it, i almost like saying that VB is a lot better than Delphi.
I worked with QR for 3 long years doing a lot (A LOT) of reports, their support
is terrible, it's the time i have unanswered questions, not very powerful,
tricky... IMHO just a poor tool.
You had been very unfair with RB and i don't work for them, i'm just a customer
like you, but i don't like to see good tools being attacked with not well based
arguments.
Hope you recover your good mood
bye
--
Guillermo Castaño Acevedo
Gerente de Sistemas - Grupo Millennium Ltda
GuillermoC@GrupoMillennium.com
www.GrupoMillennium.com
Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
me, this tool is great, i've tried other reporting tools and RB was my
choice.After you learn how to work you will see.
Keep going, and in a while you will be happy, you just need to do things in
the best way.
After more than 300 reports i'm very happy with RB.I can now do hard reports
in a easy way.
Of course the manual is incomplete, sometimes advanced properties and
functions aren't there, but i believe that DM will update manual in the
future.
You made the right choice.
Artur Azevedo
Thanks for the sympathy Sarah
My problem is, that asking these very basic questions about the
reporting tool, I would not like to appear here at all with them.
I would just like quickly to find and read the answer in Delphi
RAD style, either:
a) from the online Help
b) from the manual
c) from the demos that came along
and then go on. But when I can't find the *basic answers* from
any of them, well that is a quick blood pressure rising thing
to me.
This time the right answer was this code:
Report.PreviewForm.WindowState := wsMaximized;
TppViewer(Report1.PreviewForm.Viewer).ZoomSetting := zs100Percent;
But the sender of the code said "This code has been shown in the
NG many times."
Well, if that is so often asked question, then why the heck can't
it be told in any of the Demos, or the Manual or in online Help ????
The only way to find this piece of information myself would have to
download and scan through the 20.000 article database. This is so
clumsy, when I have one PC in work, one at home and the third is the
portable.
Now I have got the Preview window maximized. But the second question
is, why does this preview not close when I hit ESC-key? There seems not
be any property that would make Preview work with this common and
widely used (MS-Office, IE etc) way. Close preview on ESC.
Do I have to write my own preview window, to get this happen?
I know that helping people that are already grumpy is not a pleasant
task, but please, if anyone could help me with this ESC problem.
RB should be the Mercedes of reporting tools:) That's what I expected
after QReport. And that's why I'm grumpy with these very unexpected
and very basic and annoying, new Mercedes owner difficulties.
---
By the way, one thing that is no fault for DM. I have always
hated the PDF format, and especially the Acrobat Reader that is
used to read that stuff.
This Mac product, with hand formed cursor, and odd short cuts and
jumpy scrolling and zooming on screen, that is not for me. And a
Table of Contents feature, that brings you to wrong page numbers
on a 364 page hand book..
Where did the old Word formatted Report Builder document go?
At least you could easily Cut/Paste code snippets from there, but
you can't do it with PDF.
---
I still suggest to break that huge demo to some smaller chunks.
Add some simple demos for starters, where the Preview Form is
treated and handled elegantly. Show the right events where to put
several settings etc. Show the way DM suggests to deal with it.
Well, now I have got something to work now with RB, and I still
keep struggling. I hope I can abandon this pseudonyme very soon.
-Barry
I sympathise with your point of view. I stared at RB for months but could
never get figure out how to get started but last month something just
clicked (light bulb style) and I was off and running! Once I'd passed that
initial hurdle of "I know how QR does this - now how does RB do it?" things
definitely came together. Keep at it!
Now I couldn't go back to QR/QRD. Ever.
BTW You can search these newsgroups at www.fulltextsearch.com
Kev
customers handle it. And Barry, as you see there are plenty of us that find
the learning curve and frustration worth it.
Yes, it would be nice if the answers to some questions were in the help,
manual, demo etc. But having written these kind of things I know that it is
almost impossible task to cover everything. Instead DM support the
newsgroups and continue development.
So ask the obvious, and keep it brief, and answers will appear. Not ideal,
and simple things appear repeatedly, and it is unwieldy to search etc. But
ask your "ESC"/preview question in a new thread without loosing it in the
grumps, and someone will answer.
Anyone like the job of scanning the common questions from the entire
newsgroup and updating the tech-tips????
Sarah
"Kev French" said
newsgroup and all of our resources in general. I hope you take a look at
our TechTips newsgroup to search for answers. That might be better than
searching in General. There are only 100ish articles in TechTips, for
common problems. The newsgroups are here so that you can ask the guys who
wrote the product questions about "why this is doing that." The developer's
guide is over a year old. We are planning to go through it and bring it up
to date in the future. We do sell a printed version of it for $30.
I read through these posts, and I wanted to add one note for future
reference. If you are loading a report template, it is possible that the
event handler may get assigned when the report is loaded. There is a
TechTip newsgroup article on why event handlers get lost. You'll simply
need to reassign the OnPreviewFormCreate event handler after the template is
loaded:)
Here's what you need: Pressing the Escape key when the preview is shown,
will close the preview form in this example link below. It is a full working
simple Delphi 6 project I created this morning. Essentially, it shows that
you can replace the RB preview class with a descendent that overrides the
KeyDown method and closes the preview form. RB is very powerful and I hope
you stick with it.
http://www.digital-metaphors.com/tips/EscapeClosePreviewForm.zip
procedure TppMyPreview.KeyDown(var Key: Word; Shift: TShiftState);
begin
inherited KeyDown(Key, Shift);
case Key of
VK_ESCAPE: PerformPreviewAction(paClose);
end;
end;
I'm using OE and its searching has been working well since I moved to a new
machine a couple of weeks ago. Of course, now that I've said this, it is
going to flake out:)
Cheers,
Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com
info@digital-metaphors.com
Thanks for all the answers, and overall understanding. I'm starting
to feel a bit better now, when I got the five first simple QR reports
converted to RB.
Then it's time to try the tough ones. Reports with a lot of code
written inside several QR control's events.
This looks good, but looks there's still some problem. If you press
any of the Zoom buttons on the Preview form, then ESC won't work any
more.
There is a property ModalPreview for TppReport. When you turn this
on, and Preview is opened, then Delphi Modality takes care that you
can't do anythine else with your app, but close the Preview Form.
ESC is an overall Windows standard to close all the Modal Forms.
So what is the idea, why the Close button still is *not* the default
button for ESC key, even though ModalPreview is turned on? There's
no other obvious buttons on Preview form to choose to press.
Also, is it a DM suggestion, that I put this initialization code to
all of those 100 reports I'm gonna make:
initialization
TppPreviewPlugin.UnRegister(TppPreview);
TppPreviewPlugIn.Register(TppMyPreview);
finalization
TppPreviewPlugIn.UnRegister(TppMyPreview);
TppPreviewPlugIn.Register(TppPreview);
If that is the suggestion, I'll do it. And then I'll include the
Preview Form's Maximizing lines there also.
These questions may sound like splitting the hair. But I just wanted
*not* to start scanning through RB's 260.000 lines of very challenging
looking code.
I did that a lot with QReport, several weeks of debugging and studying
the QR code in total. And I would not like to go there, at least not
with the very basic questions yet.
-Barry
I bougth RB professional 2 weeks ago and in some respects I understand
your frustration. The first two days I felt like throwing the whole
stuff out the window. But then I started to understand the way RB
works. In no time I changed a whole application to RB. One week ago, I
upgraded to RB Enterprise. And believe me, this thing is simply
genius. RB offers features you only estimate when you have learned how
to work with it. This is not easy at the very first time. I agree with
you. But I also remember having hard times using QR + QRDesign or
Crystal Reports.
I used to build my reports using QR, QRDesign and Crystal Reports.
I almost finished developing a big application, when I realized that
printing doesn't fit the demands of my customers.
For instance, using QR you simply are not able to switch papersources
while executing a report. Maybe on an old Laserjet II that may have
worked. But on a modern 5-Tray printer you can forget it. When
developing professional applications this is essential.
While Crystal Reports is also a great product, in many respects not as
ideal as RB. It's is slow and there are also some enduser installation
issues.
Now with RB my customers can modify their reports themselves and
all this is compiling into one application.
Using RB as the printing tool and DBIsam as a Database-Engine makes
Delphi complete and a joy to work with. So stick with RB and don't
look back. You will not regret that. And I'm sure you also had a
reason to buy RB in the first place, didn't you?
Cheers,
Michael
(ps No, I'm no stockholder of digital-metaphors)
I hope DM fixes them.
your new preview plugin class resides.
You can create a TppReport descendent which has the OnPreviewFormCreate
maximizing code in it. See the thread in this newsgroup on Zoom in
ppDesigner Window. There is some example code given by one of our customers
who did this. This way you can use the descendent to control the preview
form, instead of trying to assign an event handler to every report that is
previewed.
Sorry, I quickly looked at the interface section of TppPreview and saw that
I could hook into that event. You're right, once the buttons get clicked,
it doesn't 'hear' the escape key action. Well, the important point really
is that you can replace the entire preview form with one of your own, with a
TppCustomPreview or TppPreview descendent, allowing you to create all of the
controls and configure them to work any way that you want. You can also
register a different preview form for each report, if you really
needed/wanted to. One customer I know of has one preview form which is
normal, and another one which overrides the print button action so that he
can call his special escape code sequences to print to dot matrix printers
in a custom format, instead of using a print driver.
Cheers,
Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com
info@digital-metaphors.com
through, I found that "Report1.PreviewForm" was nil, so it blew up with a
catastrophic failure
I'm pretty sure that it's because I'm creating everything at run-time, I
don't have a TppReport object created at design time. So, how can I get the
code below to work, when it doesn't appear that I have a
"Report.PreviewForm" ??
I'm using RB 6.02 Professional.
Thanks,
Mike.
form is not created until you choose to preview the report to the screen.
Cheers,
Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com
info@digital-metaphors.com
runtime, but as soon as it tried to run it, it crashed (I had a breakpoint
on the first line in OnPreviewFormCreate, and it never reached it).
I'm surmising that this is because I don't have a TForm? (Everything is
bundled up into a DLL, with no Form). I've been scanning this group, and
have seen several references to using RB without a Form - I suspect this is
the problem. I'll try adding a form to the project, and just not displaying
it, and see if that helps.
Thanks,
Mike.
WindowState and ZoomSetting.
It'll be very useful for all of us. (Or at least change the default behaviour
of the reports. Almost all of us need them maximized and zoomed at 100%).
Thanks
Cheers,
Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com
info@digital-metaphors.com
The problem lies originally in PPPREVIEW.PAS, the Preview Form unit.
With Modal Forms like Preview, I don't see any apparent reason,
why the Close button should be of type TSpeedButton.
Suggested change:
Change TSpeedButton to TButton:
FBtnCancel: TSpeedButton; {The original row}
--> FBtnCancel: TButton;
Make BtnCancel the default Cancel button, so the Preview Form
closes when pressing ESC.
FBtnCancel := TSpeedButton.Create(FButtonBar); {The original row}
--> FBtnCancel := TButton.Create(FButtonBar);
--> FBtnCancel.Cancel:=True;
With those three lines changed, the Preview Form will *always* close
when you press the ESC key. This is one of the most standard behaviours
of Modal Forms.
I was able to easily fix thing when writing it straight to the RB
unit. But I know this is no good way.
I'm still looking a simple solution that would live at least the next
3..5 years. I only want to have my reports ready, and don't want
to start digging deep in to RB units, like I had to do with several
QR bugs.
Well, I never had to touch QR's preview form though:)
-Barry
TmyPreview. Change the button type, and then register this class as the
previewer plug in that you want to use. Since this unit is in your project,
when you upgrade to the next version of RB, you will not have to change
anything, because your preview register call will still override the default
registered preview plug in.
Cheers,
Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com
info@digital-metaphors.com