unicode text in reports

[muralinarayan1968]

Dear all,
Can anyone tell me how to print unicode fonts using any reporting tool like native report writer, foxpreviewer or crystal reports or any other.
I am specifically stuck with using the mangal font for hindi data which i have in a text file.
VFP9 would be great cause i am comfortable with it, but since fox does not support unicode any .net application or suggestion would be welcome.
p.s. i do not know any .net programming, so gouidance would be highly appreciated.

regards
murali narayan

 

[Mike Lewis]

Hi Murali,

You don't have to go to .NET.

Crystal Reports natively supports Unicode. You can keep the rest of your application in FoxPro, and just call the Crystal report when you need it.

Using CR would also solve your other problem, that is, showing part of a text string in bold. I didn't advise going to CR just to solve that problem, but if you are going to use it for its Unicode support, that's another matter.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips, training, consultancy

 

[muralinarayan1968]

Hi mike,
yes i am badly stuck with supporting unicode just for this project, unfortunately i do not have any time to convert the entire program to .net & yes it will be worth it if i can just do this one report in CR.
Please give me some example as to how i will store the data (in which type of field) in fox and how will i connect to CR.
Also can i do concatenation of strings & such with the unicode data in VFP itself.
kindly help me urgently otherwise we stand to lose this project

murali

 

[craigber]

Rick Strahl wrote about Unicode in VFP. See it here

http://www.west-wind.com/presentations/foxunicode/foxunicode.asp

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[Mike Lewis]

Murali,

I think you said the Unicode text was in a text file.

If you don't get an answer about how to store the text in a FoxPro table, be aware that Crystal Reports can read text files directly. It treats them just like a data source.

Also, I know you were considering using Foxy Previewer. I don't know whether this offers any particular support for Unicode, but it would be worth checking, as it woild mean you can stay with Fox for your reports.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips, training, consultancy

 

[muralinarayan1968]

Mike,
Yeah i did mention that the unicode data came to us as a text file, however i failed to mention that there are quite a few fields in english which needs some kind of calculation or manipulation for eg. a city code is given from where we have to expand the city name in hindi.
Somebody had mentioned previously that fox can store unicode data in blob or memo fields, is that true?? If so will simple append from bring it into the field (cause i thought command like append use the local codepage available), i could use fgets() to get the string from the text file however, is that a good idea??
Also i have Crystal Reports 8.5 will that do the job??
I tried foxpreviewer but i could not understand how to work it, so i am trying CR for now.
If not native table can i use mdb or sql?, if so is it very hard to try to connect to these databases?

Sorry for asking too many questions, but desperation makes a man illogical.
Regards
Murali

 

[Mike Lewis]

Murali,

Unfortunately, Crystal Reports 8.5 does not support Unicode. Unicode support started with 9.0.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips, training, consultancy

 

[muralinarayan1968]

mike,
Yeah i googled that & found out, i have downloaded ver 11 now.

murali