Annotating reports after generation (in preview viewer)

JonRobertson

How difficult would it be to annotate a report *after* it is generated? For example, the user is viewing a report in the preview form, clicks a highlight button, and then highlights a section of the report? Ideally, the annotation would be added to a list of draw commands so that printing or archiving the port would maintain the annotation.

I think this is feasible, although I'm wondering if there is a way the annotation/highlight can be seen without forcing the report to reprint? I've seen examples of adding TppDrawText during TppDevice.OnPageReceive and TppArchiveReader.OnReadPage. But those draw commands would only execute during report generation. Is there a way to process a draw command after the report has generated?

Thanks

nicocizik

Hi Jon,

DrawCommands are created during report generation. They are then used by the graphics renderer to draw to the screen. If you are creating/adding new drawcommands after the report has generated, the page(s) can be re-rendered rather than the entire report re-generated. This is similar to how a drill-down report works.

See the following example for how you might update a single page after a drawcommand has been added/altered.

https://rbwiki.digital-metaphors.com/delphi-code/formatting-delphi-code/how-to-refresh-the-report-after-a-drawcommand-click/

In your case, you would possibly need to create a preview plugin that logs mouse movements, then uses that information to create and add drawcommands to the page before rendering. Not an easy task, but definitely possible .