Best Practice for Printing?

[hstijnen]

Hi,
I have to create print output and little experience with printing, except that I can expect many troubles with different printers, fonts, lines, page-breaks etc.

I'v tried to solve the problem by creating a MS Word file, so all printer handling is done by Word, but then I must suppose every user has a licence for MS Word. Another possibility is to create a html file, but then layout is cumbersome and page breaks are not beautifull.

What is your "best practice" for creating print output?
Is there perhaps a possibility to create a pdf file or so?

Thanks for your reaction

Henk Stijnen

 

[onrdbandit]

Howdy...

Check out Quick Rep components (on component palette) if you are planning to create document printouts and such. All you need to do is create a form, place a TQuickRep object on it, then place additional QuickRep Controls to hold the data (i.e. plain or rich text, database info, pretty much anything). Then call the print functions. The components let the user worry about selecting a printer and all that stuff.

Hope I could help.
Can be more detailed if necessary...
onrdbandit

 

[hstijnen]

onrdbandit,

thanks for your reply. My app comprises a computational model, so not straigth-on DB records, and I have to print input and output in a neat way. The input has variable length.

Alas, CBuilder has not online help for the components on the QReport tab. Is there any help/support?

Now I'v made a form, dropped a TQuickRep, defined page header/footer, title.
In the Detail section I dropped a TQRRichText. Herein you can directly enter Lines, or you can connect it with a parent TRichEdit. What is the difference and best practice?

Further, I'v entered much lines to the TQRRichText, and page 2 of the print output was correctly started. But I'd like to start a new page myself. How can that be done?

Cheers,

Henk

 

[onrdbandit]

check out this link...

It has detailed descriptions on using The QuickRep components for all sorts of things.

[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.soldierx.com/books/CHARLIE_CALVERT'S_BORLAND_C++BUILDER_UNLEASHED/htm/ch17.htm[/URL]

The process is fairly simple with a little reading up. I figured it out with this tutorial, so I am sure you can...

Good luck!
onrdbandit

 

[2ffat]

Quick Reports has some documentation on their web site

http://www.qusoft.com.

Go to their "Download" page and then to their "Documentation, examples, and FAQ" page.

James P. Cottingham

^{There's no place like 127.0.0.1.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1.}

 

[hstijnen]

Thanks,
It works fine. Also without a dataset. I'v full control over what and when to print through the different event triggers such as QuickRep1NeedData and QRLabelPrint. I use QRDetail and QRSubdetail, all OK.

But once depicted your print, by dropping all the labels, and assigning them the proper values on runtime, is it easy to blot out a complete line when it is not needed (also runtime)? That implies, I think, all the labels to shift up, and decrease the region of the (Sub)Detail. But the next record all has to be reset. In traditional printing this is very easy: you can decide to print or not to print some line.

Henk Stijnen