[Lazarus] LazReport

[Lee Jenkins]

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> Lee Jenkins wrote:
>> Reporting is significant to an application (well the back office portion) that 
>> I'm hoping to write with Lazarus/Freepascal and without a viable solution, I 
>> stuck with using Delphi or Visual Studio/Mono.
> 
> I have not user FreeReports or LazReports yet, so can't comment on them. 
> I wouldn't dismiss Lazarus/Free Pascal that quickly though. ;-)
> 
> I have a RTF based report engine which might come in handy as well. I 
> use it to report off my tiOPF objects, but it can report from TDataset's 
> as well, or both. You can create custom fields (tags) for use in your 
> reports as well. So you are only limited to what Free Pascal can do! :)
> 
> The RTF report engine was originally written for Delphi and tiOPF. I 
> ported it to Free Pascal and fpGUI. It should work as-is for Lazarus. I 
> commented out the image support due to fpGUI lacking JPEG support, but 
> that should be fairly straight forward to get working with Lazarus (as 
> it's much closer to how Delphi works).  I can email you in private the 
> original and ported RTF engine if you want. It's one unit and a sample 
> application.
> 
> BTW: I use OpenOffice to view reports and design the rtf report 
> templates. I have even created a OpenOffice macro to convert the 
> generated rtf to pdf before it gets viewed by the user.
> 
> BTW #2: I still want to have a look at PowerPDF as well. That would be 
> handy for non-Lazarus based applications as well.
> 

Hi Graeme,

That is the whole point, to use Lazarus/FreePascal!  I want freedom of platform! 
  I already know I that can (and am, for that matter) writing the major (front 
office) portion of my application in Laz/FPC.

I'll take a look-see, but I'd rather not have 3rd party requirements for 
reporting if I can help it.  PowerPDF seems pretty tight to me, even is there is 
no banded report designer.  Maybe if you would send me what you have for your 
rtf engine, I could see how it might be used as a basis for one with PowerPDF.

Fortunately, I will not need to start writing reports for quite a while yet so I 
can wait to see how LaReport shapes up.  Just knowing I could use PowerPDF 
(after playing with it a bit yesterday) is enough for me if LazReport doesn't 
seem viable by the time I have to start on reporting.  Nice to have options. :)

BTW, I noticed that the PDF export filter that was written for FreeReport uses 
PowerPDF for its engine.

Thanks to all for your input!

-- 

Warm Regards,

Lee

"When my company started out, we were really, really, really, really small. 
Now...we're just really small."