Rich Text with Underlines does not preview correctly.

rbuser

I am having a consistent problem that every time I preview a report with
rich text that has underlined text in it the lines show up going through the
words (similar to strikeout) when previewed. The document prints correctly
but the preview looks horrible.

Any ideas on this one?

digitalmetaphors

-----------------------------------------------------
Article: Why Your Preview Won't Match Your Output
-----------------------------------------------------

We have two choices when we create a preview - compose for the screen, or
compose for the printer. Most programs such as MS Word compose to the screen
when they create a preview. This makes for attractive previews but they tend
to
be inaccurate. And it means that they then compose again for the printer
when you print the document. Most of the time things will print effectively
similar to the preview, but we have seen many times when the printed output
was different - a word wrapped to the next line, or some such problem. If
you use a program meant for accurate page layout, such as PageMaker, you
will notice that the Page Setup dialog asks you for which printer you wish
to compose. When PageMaker displays a page, it may not look exactly how
you think it should, but you do get a preview where the element placement
is guaranteed to match the printed output's element placement.
We have chosen to follow this second model.

Note that when we say element placement, we are referring to X and Y
placement and not height and width. While the X and Y placement of
our previews will be accurate, the height and width of text elements
may vary based on zoom percentage. This is a normal artifact of
composing for the printer and not for the screen.

Your preview can not match your printed output. It will
differ in one of two ways:

1- It can look good on the screen, but items on the page may not
display in the same location they will when printed.
or
2- It can be less attractive, but items will display on the preview
exactly where they will when printed.

We give you the second because it is more accurate and more reliable.
Not to mention more in keeping with professional page layout products.



Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

But what you are saying is not true. Your preview shows lines through the
text like strikeout when they are supposed to be under the text (underline).
That means the lines are printing in a different position then they are
being previewed. I would rather have the first option where it may preview
slightly different then it prints if it would get rid of the randomness of
the lines in rich text. There must be a way to display rich text properly on
the screen if you printing it out properly, underlining seems like such a
simple task.

digitalmetaphors

The Windows RichEd.dll is drawing the richtext in our screen preview. Try
zooming to 100% or greater. You'll see that the underline renders
correctly.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

digitalmetaphors

Sorry, newsgroup guidelines don't allow attachments. Don't worry, we're not
going to cancel your registration:) I see in the image you posted that you
still get a rich text rendering problem. Since our RichText relies on the
Windows RichEd.dll, what you can do is to replace the rich text support with
WPTools rich text engine. There is an example of replacing the InfoPower
rich text engine in the InfoPower directory in your installed RBuilder
directory. You can use the same approach with WPTools. WPTools has their
own rtf rendering engine which doesn't rely on the windows dll.

----------------------------------------------
Article: ReportBuilder's RichText Architecture
----------------------------------------------


The RichText in ReportBuilder is a wrapper around Delphi's TRichEdit
which
in turn relies on Windows. There are two versions of Windows richedit -
RichEd32.dll is the older one and RichEd20.dll is a newer one (RichEd32
is being phased out). Delphi by default relies on RichEd32 - the older
version. To use some of the more advanced features of Windows RichEdit,
see the topic on InfoPower RichEdit Support below.

In general Windows RichEdit supports the type of formatting that you can
do using WordPad.



InfoPower RichEdit Support
---------------------------
InfoPower from Woll2Woll Software is a popular database add-on product
for Delphi. InfoPower's TwwRichEdit components support the Windows
RichEdit2 format. This format allows the rich text data to contain
embedded bitmaps and OLE objects. For more information please see
http:\\www.Woll2Woll.com.

ReportBuilder includes a component that enables the TppRichText and
TppDBRichText controls in ReportBuilder to use the formatting
capabilities of InfoPower's TwwRichEdit when rendering RTF data. The
ppWWRichEd.pas unit located in the ..\RBuilder\InfoPower directory
defines a TwwDBRichEdit descendant and then registers the class with
ReportBuilder. This enables the TppRichText and TppDBRichText controls
in ReportBuilder to use the formatting capabilities of TwwDBRichEidt
when rendering data.


WPTools Support
----------------
WPTools is a collection of components used to edit and print
formatted text. With its own RTF engine, WPTools offers
numerous features not supported by the standard Windows
RichEd20.dll. This control lets you use tables, paragraph
frames, headers and footers etc. Using the optional
ReportBuilder support units for WPTools 2.x, you can print
the enhanced WPTools features (justified text, tables, graphics
...) within your ReportBuilder reports.
For more information please see http:\\www.wptools.de.



--
Tech Support mailto:support@digital-metaphors.com
Digital Metaphors http://www.digital-metaphors.com


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

I think Infopower uses its own too or am I wrong on that? We've had
instances where Delphi's RTF component will display the RTF code and not the
text, where IP would display the text.

digitalmetaphors

If you already have InfoPower installed, then give that a try. They do have
their own engine, but it still relies on the dll, which is used when we
render in the previewer. We just don't have the functionality built in to
rearrange the preview to appear best, when it is composed for the printer
canvas. It's on the todo list, but we haven't got around to it yet as there
are more features higher up on the priority list right now.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

Ok, dumb question for you. I added ppWWRichEd to my dclRB55.bpl and
recompiled the design time package, but no component shows in my
ReportBuilder Designer to use it. I didn't see any examples in my IP
directory just a project with the WW file as the only file. So how do I use
it?

digitalmetaphors

The visual interface is the same. However, when the rich text is generated,
RB uses the newly registered infopower engine instead.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors