Rotating text in VFP 9 report 4

[GTGeek88]

thread184-1771243

Is there no way to make the VFP text actually rotate in the designer. I am getting the field I need rotated 270 degrees to display that way in the preview. Yes, that works. But not in the designer, which is a pain (and may just be what we have to deal with). But even more of a pain is that I can't get it to position where I need it, no matter what I try. It has a mind of its own and it's a loopy mind. I can't figure it out and so I can't get it positioned as needed and so this cool feature is not helpful to me. Any ideas or tips would be appreciated.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Yes, you can only see it in preview and print, not in design. As you can see in the advanced tab the rotation point always is at the left upper corner of the label or field report control, you can't change that. You can change the detail band height as stretch with overflow will still orientate on the height of the unrotated control. That's what we have to live with.

If you have text with very variable length texts, you need to plan room for the longest texts, automatic stretching won't get you where you'd like to be.

I guess the use case that was mostly thought of is having labels with a slight rotation, so you can have more columns in a report with still a slimmer column layout, so main use in a group header band and not for details.

Bye, Olaf.

Olaf Doschke Software Engineering

https://www.doschke.name

 

[GTGeek88]

Yeah, I was afraid of all that. Rotation in the designer would be sweet. Should I submit it as an engineering request?

I've got it working reasonably well, but had to tweak various properties of the text object because at first it was printing off the printable page in preview mode and when printed, it would scrunch the report to the right making it about two inches narrower and then print the rotated text on the page, but outside the report (so it "simulated" printing off the printable page like it showed in preview mode). Really odd, but various property setting changes got it printing acceptably.

Thanks for your input.

 

[Koen Piller]

Mr. GTGreek88

There is no need to post an engineering request, as it is possible. Apart from that, VFP is not updated anymore by MS.

Please study the pictures

Regards,

Koen

 

[GTGeek88]

Thanks, Koen, but I'm sorry to see that you wasted your time. I already said that I had it working. I initially had some trouble with placement, but some tweaking to the properties of the text object fixed that. And my comment about submitting an engineering request was a joke. Notice the "wink face" right after that.

 

[Mike Lewis]

I must admit I didn't notice the "wink face" either. I was going to make some facetious comment about the "engineering request". Good job I didn't.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[GTGeek88]

Maybe I should use something programmers would be more tuned into. Like . . .

<Joke>Should I submit it as an engineering request?</Joke>

Or . . .

Define Class Humor as Object
Joke = "Should I submit it as an engineering request?"
End Define

? Humor.Joke

 

[Mike Lewis]

Or perhaps

SET JOKE ON
  * Make some more-or-less humorous remark here
SET JOKE OFF

Personally, I prefer the old reliable <g>, but that seems to have one out of fashion.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[GTGeek88]

Yes, I forgot about <g>.

 

[farzad321]

Hi every body. I have visual foxpro version 9.00 but i never seen advance tab in report designer or in preview mode. WHY ?
can you help me to find this tab (ADVANCE) . I need to rotate some of my report element .
thank you for koen piller post.
until now i think noway to rotate labels without use of classes
please tel me if i need install any service pack or other pathch to maximize my control over my internal report builder.
thank you
I was working from dbase 2 since vfp9 and I love this type of programming .

I am thirsty to hear about it.

farzad

 

[mjcmkrsr]

Hi,

While in the ReportDesigner right click on any control of the report and then click "Properties" - that's it

hth

MarK

 

[farzad321]

Hi MarK
Thank you for your respond

unfortunatly i cant find that

my version is VFp 9.00
and my OS is win xp sp3

I test it in windows 7 and nothing.

WHERE IS THE ADVANCE TAB ?

I think i miss somthing BIG !

and again thanks a lot for your help

 

[Mike Gagnon]

What service pack do you have, you should have SP2 09.00.0000.7423

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[farzad321]

Thanks body

I never installed any service pack and just work with original program.
I must download and install that immediatelly

thank you very much MarK

come back soon !

farzad

 

[Olaf Doschke]

The advanced tab also exists in VFP9 without SP, you need to SET REPORTBEHAVIOR 90 before you enter the report designer, though.
You'll see the tab, also when the FRX is "legacy", ie not created in that mode.

It's a good idea to update anyway.

Important order of updates: First install SP2, then the latest Hotfix, the Hotfixes work based on SP2, none of them was patching an older VFP9 version. Even though they contain complete files (VFP9.EXE, VFP9E.DLL etc) it makes a difference in the tools and other things aside of the major files and once you install the hotfix files SP2 will detect it's already existing, while it's not really.

So:
1. VFP9 base installation (from MSDN subscription ISO or CD)
2. SP2 and OLEDB ofr SP23 and GDI+ Update for SP2 and some more are here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/pr...oxpro/mt490121(v=msdn.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN

Notice some things are also available later in even newer version from Github's VFPX roof project, eg a newest XSource.ZIP and VFPCOM.
3. Hotfix KB968409:

https://github.com/VFPX/VFP9SP2Hotfix3

You may aks "Isn't there an official source for the Hotfixes?". This blog post was Microsofts's announcement:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vs...re-now-available-for-download-on-codegallery/

It has links to code.msdn.microsoft.com, that once was Codeplex, acquired and already extinguished again from Microsoft, at that stage Codeplex projects moved to GitHub. You make a slow move by updating in 2019, all this is from 2009, 10 years old.

And then you already saw Github and VFPX in the Hotfix3 location:

https://github.com/VFPX.

Lots of good stuff from the community, mainly advisable are the add ons that once were called Sedna, what MS gave as freebie as it was developed on the way to VFP10 before the product was discontinued. Also the latest VFP9 help, community added legacy content, too. So you find lgacy Foxpro Commands and Functions described. See

https://github.com/VFPX/HelpFile

The Github site is organiued in repositories and in itself okay to browse and search through. You also find a more comprehensive project list to GitHub and external VFP relatedf projects at

https://vfpx.github.io/projects/,

for example also FoxyPreviewer.

Go by the readme instructions, please, don't expect this to be a click and run installation, you get instructions for replacing files. Hotfixes are no comfy installers. If you donÄt do that, all you did was unzip the files and remain at SP2 level without Hotfix. You'll see that you replace the VFP9.exe in that process, I already hinted on that. Which explains why you can't apply the Hotfixes separately and pick your choice of fixes.

Nothing more to worry, though. Hotfix 3 includes Hotfix2 and 1, Hotfix 2 includes Hotfix 1. So you go to the latest stage of least C5 glitches in the runtime and what else was fixed, there is a bug fix list included.



But once more, to end with where I started, so you remember: The rotation is available without SPs or Hotfixes with SET REPORTBEHAVIOR 90. You get the dialogue Koen showed, you can set the rotation, see the preview of the effect of the rotation angle within the Advanced tab, what you don't get is the report layout showing that rotation in the designer, it's only shown in the preview and of course in the print result.

Bye, Olaf.

Olaf Doschke Software Engineering

https://www.doschke.name

 

[farzad321]

Hi Olaf
[highlight #FCE94F]You describe that very well and I grateful for that.[/highlight] for a long time I write program in vfp 9.00 . today I visit this page and undrstand that i miss some good options in vfp.
In last hour i download the service pack 2 and install that. But I think I didn't need to install hotfix'es (1 ,2 ,or 3)
now i am able to rotate my object in report. plus that my text report was not full alignment at right side becasue my character set is arabic and persian , but in today update all alignment is completly OK and i am very happy.

therefor every things is okay and I do not need to hotfix. What you think ?
I checked some of my application and every things seems good.

with best regard

farzad

 

[Olaf Doschke]

The Hotfixes all address some Report bugs besides others. I'd take it, I do use it myself.

When anything runs you can of course always apply the rule to never change a running system. That would also have applied to the SP2.

One good reason for updating to the last version 9.0.0.7423 is to let every or at least the majority of VFP developers use the exact same runtime version.

Bye, Olaf.

Olaf Doschke Software Engineering

https://www.doschke.name