RxRichEdit formated rtf in RB

rbuser

I need to be able to print rtf data that has been created using RxRichEdit
in a RB report. How can I do that?

I'm using Delphi5 and RB6.03

Thanks,
Lars.

digitalmetaphors

If you have an rtf file, then make a call to load the rtf from file from our
component. Otherwise, if it is a runtime rtf from a control, then sream the
rich text to our TppRichText control. Here is an example of doing this with
a TRichEdit, but the concept is the same.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

------------------------------------------------
Tech Tip: Copy RTF data from TRichEd to TppRichText
------------------------------------------------

You can copy RTF data from Delphi's TRichEd to ReportBuilder's TppRichText
control by using an intermediate memory stream:



var
lRTFStream: TMemoryStream;

begin

{create temp memory stream}
lRTFStream := TMemoryStream.Create;

{save the TRichEd's rtf data to the memory stream}
RichEdit1.Lines.SaveToStream(lRTFStream);

{load the rtf stream to the TppRichText}
lRTFStream.position := 0;
ppRichText1.LoadFromRTFStream(lRTFStream);

{free the memory stream}
lRTFStream.Free;


end;


Note: An alternative method would be to use RichEdit1.Lines.SaveToFile and
TppRichText.LoadFromFile.



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rbuser

Have done that already. Technically it's working, but the data is not shown
in a proper way. The raw rtf is shown as if TppRichText can't understand the
data format, ex: {rtfl\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1053 etc.

I belive it might be that the data was created with RichEdit ver 2 and that
the RB control am using RichEdit ver 1. I read in an earlier post that it is
possible to register what class RB should use as ancestor for the RichEdit
control, but I don't know what class to register since TRxRichEdit didn't
work (has to be an TCustomRichEdit descendant).



Thanks,

Lars.

digitalmetaphors

Yes, any replacement needs to be a TCustomRichEdit descendent. You will have
to write an adapter class to get the TRx rich text to be used in RB, which
expects a TCustomRichEdit interface. RB tries to use the latter version of
the RichEd20.dll. You can revert to the older RichEd32.dll as shown in this
article to see if that helps.

Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

----------------------------------------------
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.

A problem occurs when using the RichEd32 with Office 2000 installed and
trying
to print.

To correct this problem, we made a modification, to use RichEd20 when
possible.

Options:

1. You could try downloading a newer version of RichEd20 from MS web site.

2. You could try downloading the latest printer driver and testing with
another printer.

3. If you want to revert to the old RichText behavior, add an initialization
section to the bottom of your unit and code:


uses
ppDrwCmd;


initialization

ppRegisterRichEditClass(TRichEdit);


For an example of the above, check out ppDrwCmd.pas. It registers
a class called TppRichEdit:


initialization

ppRegisterRichEditClass(TppRichEdit);



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rbuser

Thanks Jim.

Tried No.2 (another printer) and No.3 without any success, will try No. 1
tomorrow if it's possible to get a newer version of RichEd20.dll from
Microsoft.
Is there anything else to try (except write a new adapter class for the
format)? Are other people using TRxRichEdit with RB?

Thanks,
Lars.

digitalmetaphors

The first thing to attempt to get working is to try to use a Delphi
TRichEdit on a form to display rtf that is created with a TrxRichEdit. If it
doesn't work in a simple form based test for your rtf, then you'll have to
create a wrapper component to allow RB to use a TrxRichEdit. The WPTools
rich text component requires a wrapper for RB, so it is possible to adapt a
non-TCustomRichEdit desendent to work in RB.



Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

TRichEdit (Delphi standard) shows the rtf created with TrxRichEdit perfectly
exept for embedded objects.
Does that indicate that there's some problems in ReportBuilder?

Lars.

digitalmetaphors

Now try streaming the rich text from the TRichEdit to a TppRichText to see
if that works (without embedded images of course). I posted this article in
my first response on this thread. "Tech Tip: Copy RTF data from TRichEd to
TppRichText." The only difference is that we are using the RichEd20 dll
while the Delphi TRichEdit uses the older RichEd32 dll.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

Trying to stream from a TDBRichEdit to a TppRichText didn't work. Do I have
to stream from a TRichEdit?

Well, tested to stream from a TDBRichEdit to a TRichEdit and was supprised
by the fact that all formatting disapeared, left was only the plain text. If
I instead used the clipboard functions for copying, it worked perfectly.
So then I tried to first copy the rtf from a TDBRichEdit to a TRichEdit
using the clipboard, then I streamed the TRichEdit to a TppRichText, but it
didn't work anyway!
What to do?

Lars.




Lars.

rbuser

Don't really understand why it's not working to take rtf created by
RxRichEdit / RxDBRichEdit, which I assume uses RichEd20.dll, and print in
ReportBuilder, which is using RichEd20.dll.

What's involved in creating a wrapper component for RxRichEdit? Looked in
ppWWRichEd.pas to see if I could get any hints about whats needed for a
wrapper, but it was more or less just a registration of the TppRichEdit
class. Is it still the same method to hook WWDBRichEd up with RB, looks like
the stuff in the InfoPower folder was created a couple of years ago. When
the wrapper is installed does it work automatically or do you still have to
copy the rtf data to the TppRichEdit components? Is there any other exemples
about wrapper avaiable?

Lars.

digitalmetaphors

The Infopower control is a TCustomRichEdit descendent so there isn't much
code to get that working. The only other code which is a wrapper for a non
TCustomRichEdit descendent is the WPTools rich text wrapper for RB. The
WPTools wrapper is not freeware. I believe it costs $75 from WPTools
http://www.wptools.de/

When a wrapper is properly working, you do not have to transfer any rtf
because the adapter class gives the RB engine the interface it wants and
then passes through to a TrxRichEdit instance in the adapter class to render
the rich text.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

Got it working now! I found that when I created a temporary Access table the
rtf fields somehow changed format. Now, It's very easy, just have to use the
ppDBRichEdit directly, no streaming necessary.

Sorry I didn't give you the whole picture. I just didn't imagine that
creating a temp file (SELECT * INTO "FILE" etc) would change the rtf format.

Thanks,
Lars.

digitalmetaphors

Thanks for pointing this out, perhaps other customers can use this technique
to get it working.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors