[DUG] Reports XE6

[John Bird]

Would be interested for sure – the main thing is to see if there is a way to drive reports in code.

For instance if there is a way in Fast Reports or whatever is in XE6 to do the sort of functions I mentioned (page size, assign tabs, print to tab sizes, some control over new pages) then I should be able to convert the unit I used to handle most of my printing – I load the data on a form (including page controls and/or grids) and just call a Printform procedure which scans the components and prints them (Page Controls, labels, grids, edit boxes – ignores buttons)  sensibly laid out and in the order on the form, that can be over-ridden by an order I can specify if wanted.

Have XE6 but haven’t loaded it to see what’s there yet and so I am a bit in the dark still.

So let me know at your leisure – I am not going to be doing more for the next couple of weeks as I prepare other stuff for Unicode (coming from D2007).

PS

I liked your latest nick-name “Smoking Chimp”

From: Jolyon Smith 
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2014 9:09 AM
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List 
Subject: Re: [DUG] Reports XE6

If ever there was a reminder that I should crack on with knocking my "Rendition" printing library into releasable shape, this was it!  :)

I never had in mind to develop it as a fully fledged "report engine" with layout designer etc, more of an advanced print engine, specifically for code driven reports.  i.e. exactly the sort of thing you describe.  It is basically a multi-layered framework to improve the "raw" printing capabilities in Delphi.

The base layer provides a better API for working with printer devices.

On top of that is a layer for handling page layouts and general output in a form that can be redirected for preview, file, or device output. 

Then there is a specialised layer for handling simple text-based reports, particularly those with tabular content.

There is also a preview control that implements support for various multi-page preview layouts and some other rather fancy features which I'm pleased with and will keep hush-hush for now.  ;)

If you're interested I can have a look and see how quickly I could get it into a beta-ble state (among other things it needs refreshing to reflect changes in the way I handle portable Unicode), but be aware that I am in the middle of moving house so won't be able to get on to this for a few days at least.




On 15 May 2014 23:14, John Bird <johnkbird at paradise.net.nz> wrote:

  Anyone know if there is any flavour of Rave reports in Delphi XE6?   If not which version did it disappear in?
  Have some limited purely code reports that use Rave, which I guess I would have to convert to Fast Reports etc.
  (I have a module that prints contents of a form – so as long as there is a way of generating a report purely in code it should be easy enough
  In Rave these are the functions it uses:
  * Set page widths and margins from current paper type
  * does a mixture of SetTab commands
  * then PrintTab commands
  * draw lines on page using Moveto and LineTo,
  * Some control over when to do a new page
  *  set printer output to preview or a printername).
  As long as there is a way to do similar things in code for whatever exists in XE6 I would be happy)

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