generate a dynamic report

rbuser

Hi,

I've to generate a Report that is a letter to a person.
It consists to 90% of continuous text pieces with several headlines. And
the 10% are the addressfields and some embedded tables.
Every piece of text has its own condition for printing or not.

I looked at your DynamicReportCreationProj.dpr, the dm008*.pas examples
(and "Learn ReportBuilder", but no dynamic reports )
I think its manageable with dynamicly generated
- TppLabel for the headlines
- TppMemo for the continuous text
The text pieces I'll read from database tables, and they should contain
variables I can resolve through dataset-fields or programm-code.
I'll give the user a TForm where he can choose the actually necessary text
pieces.

Are there any examples that give me more advices than the mentioned above.

For the Tables it would be nice to use report templates, that are
accessible for the user to modify them in a defined range.
I think there is a end-user-design tool.

Last question:
The text pieces should be full justified.
With TppMemo its possible by TextAlignment = taFullJustified.
But TppRichText doesn't have such a property. For now I think I can use
TppMemo because they told me, bold-text and so on isn't necessary, but I
know a new solution generates new wishes.


--
Norbert

nicocizik

Hi Norbert,

1. It is possible to create a RB report completely in code. Take a look at
the Code Based thread located in the Tech-Tips newsgroup thread for some
handy articles on creating various report components dynamically in code.

2. The End-User solution sounds like the best way to approach your
application. Take a look at the end-user demos located in the
\RBuilder\Demos\3. End User\... directory for examples of how to create and
use the End-User solution with RB.

3. The built-in RichEdit does not currently support full text
justification. This is a feature we are strongly considering adding for the
next major release of ReportBuilder. Currently you would need to enhance
the rich text capabilities using one of the following options described in
the article below.

----------------------------------------------
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.

TRichView
----------
TRichView is a suite of native Delphi components for displaying, editing,
and printing hypertext documents. Documents can contain tables, pictures,
and images. TRichView is available from www.trichview.com. There is a
wrapper for available for using TRichView inside ReportBuilder, see
http://www.digital-metaphors.com/Subpages/Downloads/CompanionRCL.html or
http://www.trichview.com/resources/

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com