GUI report editor

[Chris Griffin]

I have a lot of experience and code for doing graphic layout.
Including things like snapping to other elements, etc. Let me know if
I can help.

[Andy Dent]

On 07/23/2009, at 9:00 AM, Chris Griffin wrote:

>
> I have a lot of experience and code for doing graphic layout.
> Including things like snapping to other elements, etc.

Thanks. I actually have a project which was a commercial CD label
printer which I can also use myself as the basis for a visual layout
editor.

I am currently waiting to see what happens with the RB built-in Report
Writer. It is already partly integrated into RB2009r3 - try the
contextual menu Add to Project and choose Report.

regards

Andy Dent - www.aussiedesignedsoftware.com
Freelance Designer-Developer - C++, C#, Objective-C, Python,
REALbasic, Ruby, VB.Net

[Chris Griffin]

Interesting! So it does. I've been using 2.1 for the current project.
One thing I'm concerned about though is if it will be a "Studio" only
thing.

Best regards,
Chris Griffin
cgri...@33keys.com

[Andy Dent]

On 07/24/2009, at 5:52 AM, Chris Griffin wrote:

> One thing I'm concerned about though is if it will be a "Studio" only
> thing.

Which will make the third-party market a bit happier :-)

Given the flack they have received over the years for lacking this
feature, I'm confident it will show up in Professional.

What might be a differentiator would be the ability to expose the
designer to end users - I can see RS deciding that Professional only
allows developers to design reports and Studio has some kind of
runtime license.

Historically, runtime designers are where report-writer products make
a lot of money, judging by licensing schemes I've seen.

[Chris Griffin]

It will be interesting to see how sophisticated their solution will
be. Some of the features that the good ones have aren't easy to build.
That's why I was interested in rbrw. It looked like it was
substantial. Make an editor for me would be the easy part. :)

[Chris Griffin]

BTW did I see somewhere that there is an XML format for defining
reports? Or was that a TODO?

On Jul 23, 2009, at 2:59 PM, Andy Dent wrote:

[Andy Dent]

On 07/24/2009, at 7:23 AM, Chris Griffin wrote:

>
> BTW did I see somewhere that there is an XML format for defining
> reports? Or was that a TODO?

I haven't finished porting it but yes it is pretty solid - the
original actually allows an entire "document" to be created with
layout and data. It was to allow for reports to be saved, edited and
re-presented, including ability to reflow to different size paper.

Given my current workload, I'm planning on putting some serious time
in on rbrw for that and a few formatting additions in mid-August.

http://www.oofile.com.au/reportsamples/xml/

http://www.oofile.com.au/oofile_ref/html/group__oof_render_x_m_l.html

and yes, rbrw is based on a very robust engine - hundreds of pages of
reports in one batch run by various users (like a bug report from a NY
user that he ran out of Win95 resources with a 150 page report,
because some things were not being freed until the end of the report)
and use by literally thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of
users around the world.

[Chris Griffin]

Well if I can help let me know. I don't have a lot of BW but I need to
come up with a solution for this one project I have. I have a OTR
license but I want to customize the window and I can't do that in OTR.
Like adding TextFields for date ranges, etc.

[Chris Griffin]

Does rbrw support gourds at this time? If so how or is there an
example somewhere?

Thanks,
Chris