REAL Software Forums

I was looking for a report generator for my new realbasic project I started few weeks ago. I found two solutions on the web, but they where not that, I was looking for. Thus i decided to create my own report generator and continue my main realbasic project later.

I need a report generator, which is 100% realbasic, very easy to use, support several pages, has a word layout and supports all basic functions a report generator should have.

It is not a report designer like o*e ta*et re*orts! I do not plan to create a report designer in the future! It is only a very good solution for creating reports.

My project is nearly finished. I already made some little test reports.

There are still following functions missing:

- create tables (important for lists and invoices) <- the hardest work of all (but I have experiance with these things)
- create objects (text, pictures, rectangles, ...) on special positions (x, y)
- some testing
- documentation
- examples / videos
- Things I forgot

As I read that more people would need a class like this I decided to distribute it for a fee, when it is finished, after a test phase. I already created a homepage for that class with more informations and a screenshot of current work, that you can make a picture of my work.

http://www.turboreport.com/

I am very satisfied with current work.

I am working under os x, but I think it will run under windows as well (i did't test it yet). as i have no experiance with linux, i do not know if this is working there. we will find out in the test phase.

When the test edition is ready for download, I will inform you here.

Phil

I had a look at your site yesterday and the screenshots looked interesting and nicely done.
I went to look again today but your site seems to be temporarily down.

yeah, the server was down for few hours.

I just upload a second screen to my page http://www.turboreport.com/screenshots.php. I improved the drawtext function, that i can set the alignment. left, center and right is possible. block would be fine, but there i still have no idea how to solve 100% that problem. I only have rudiment ideas. But this is not a very important feature at the moment.

With the improved drawtext function the feature to put a text to a special x,y position is nearly finish as well. Next to the x, y position you can set the max width. so it is possible to put text beside a picture or text (multiline) beside a text (multiline). when this is finish will add a new screen. i think this will be a very good feature.

so, i just add a third screen on http://www.turboreport.com/screenshots.php which shows that you can have text beside text and text beside picture. picture beside picture and for example 4 pictures beside 3 text is possible as well.

here you need to set the x and y positions (inch or mm) for the elements. you do not need care about y coordinates. this generator is very clever and make it very easing working with positions. that means: you can working with coordinates without any problem, even when the elements will have dynamic height.
for all examples of the first two screens, you do not need to work with x and y coordinates, it is very easy to use.

but know i need to do some code optimisation. it is working fine, but the code is not perfect yet, because i was to fast with this feature

Looks like a nice job. Just a small point, some of the english on your site (while clearly understandable) is obviously not that of a native speaker. I don't know if that matters, probably it doesn't.

You are right. I overworked my texts. I found several mistakes and it should be better now. Not perfekt! I am not native english, I will let correct my texts later by an expert

I just publish in few words the structure of turboreport. You can get an imagination how it works and can understand that it is very simple and clear.

http://www.turboreport.com/structure.php

Furthermore I am very happy that my table creating functionality is in very high progress. I think you can create any type of tables. Different colors (fore and back), fonts, columns, vertical and horizontal aligns, multiline, .... Of cource each row can have individual number of columns with individual width (wrap is working fine (with aligns as well)) and you can deside where to put a border and where not. In my eyes it is very powerfull and helps creating very professional reports. The complicatest part as finish. There is just little improvements and last parameters. Natural tables can going over several pages.

But I will need few days to finish it. Then I will create a nice screen of a nice table.

Thats my current state.

Okay, now I have two screens with my table functionalty online

http://www.turboreport.com/screenshots.php

I am not shure if functions for rectangles, ovals or polygons are needed. I will not need for my work but i do not know if other would need. what you say?

Otherwise there is still little testing, create serveral examples and documenation until testphase can start to do.

Thats the current state.

Okay, the programming part is 100% finish. There are still two thinks to do before you can test it:

- documentation (0% finish yet)
- example project (75% finish yet, includes examples for invoices over multiple pages with tables)

Thats the current state.

Well done, it looks good.

I have uploaded screenshots of my example application for os x and windows.

http://www.turboreport.com/screenshots.php

so it works fine under windows as well. there is only some flickering while using the scrollbars (windows only), but I think this could be solve anyhow. I will search the forum for this tomorrow. as I do not code for windows I don't know what the problem is, but I think this is a very little change to fix that.

okay, time to go to bed

---

flickering is only when i let it run on windows in parallels. on an real windows computer, it works fine.

Hi,

Have you solved block alignment for text?
This is how I do it in one of my programs:

Before drawing, separate the text at each space character, and create an array of type=double that will hold the width of the space character.
Store the normal width of the space character in a property.

Cycle through the first array and add each time in a property (smallWidth for example) the width of the word and in another property (bigWidth) the width of the word and of the space character. If the value bigWidth is greater than the width of the page, calculate this: (bigWidth - smallWidth) / amout of words.
This will give you the width of the space character for that line.
Store that value, and continue cycling through the words.

Then when you draw the text, draw each word, and add the width of the space character for that line between every word.

I hope this helps.

I am waiting

I forgot to say that you already can download the testversion.

I will still do some optimisations, especially for reports over more pages.

With current test version there is a limit of ca. 40 pages depending on your computer. This is not very much.

I started with optimization today. I needed some days pause of TurboReport in the last days

Things I will change:

- Improve the complete visualisation process. This will make it possible creating reports with more than 100 pages, because I change a working concept. I did not test the max number of pages, but I had no problem with 100 pages now. Of course, there will be a limit depending on the computer ressources, because I create a new Picture element for each page. Picture size is depending on DPI. But changing this will make that class much better. But in this point I will still need a lot of thinking, but i will do

- Improve performance. There are some places, where I can optimize performance. When you create reports with a lot of pages, it will take some time! So do not expect to create a report with 100 pages in 5 seconds. I will make a performance table (pages / time), when I am finish. Performance will be better, but I will still takes time! I am not god!

- There will be an PDF Export! You can open the Report as PDF and you can Save it as PDF (Thanks to Michael for help). I will use rPDF-Lib for this purpose. In this case TurboReport will need more than one class, but you need to deal with one class only.

- I am not sure. At the moment I have function for milimeter and function for inch (for example createReportMM and createReportINCH). Maybe I will reduce them to one function and you have to set mm or inch as parameter, when creating that report.

- Improve the documentation. As I had less time the last two weeks I created a basic documentation that you can start with testphase.


Thats the current state, then I hope that TurboReport is perfect. You can already test it and inform me, when there are bugs.

As mentioned in the current newsletter of realbasic there will be a report generator (with designer) this year ins realbasic.

I am not sure to continue of my project. maybe I could publish the current state of coding as freeware. I think nobody would be anymore interested in my class.

hard decission what best todo, I do not know