- Offizieller Beitrag
Munich, December 7th, 2004
WPTools V5.10 is now online for registered customers.
The EXE demo: https://www.wpcubed.com/ftp/wp5demo.zip has been updated.
What is WPTools?
In general it is a word processing component. This does not only mean it can work with different character and paragraph attributes, tab stops and tables. WPTools 5 also has the ability to display the text pages as they will be printed, 100% WYSIWYG and scalable.
This includes header and footer texts, and with WPTools "Premium", footnotes and text boxes. All these text can be edited, too.
WPTools 5 allows each page to have different margins and page size. This is controlled through an event. It is also possible to select any header or footer for each page individually.
But WPTools is also powerful to create text using program code.
It includes a new API to create text and table and set attributes in an object oriented manner. (See CreateTable demo)
Important for server apps: WPTools 5 can be used in a thread save manner and does not add too much to your apps EXE size - our "mini" text editor is only about 1MB (uncompressed EXE size)
Only WPTools 5 can display and edit (!) the same formatted text within multiple editors. This makes it finally possible to create split screen editors. The different editors can use different page layout and zoom modes.
WPTools optionally includes the "WPReporter". This tool adds 'band-technology' to the mail merge feature. The enhanced editor can be integrated with a few lines of code, it is mainly an easy to understand dialog box which floats over the regular editor. Reporting groups can be nested and collapsed in the editor. WPReporter does not compete with full blown report generators, it has been optimized to offer your end user an easy to understand possibility to create documents, lists and invoices.
Included with WPReporter is a formula parser. It has been optimized to work with currency values. So you can add calculation to your text and tables. The calculation feature has been optimized for business needs, i.e. sum values and apply VAT. It uses numbers which are displayed (rounded to 2 decimals) not using internal exact values which would lead to incorrect results. (See Table_Calc demo)
The preview capabilities of WPTools 5 are exceptional. But what if you need to preview output from other components, such as report generators? Here the feature "EXTERNALPAGES" helps you out - it makes it possible to integrate other pages into the preview/editor pages (of any size) painted in an event. The text pages can be before and/or after the inserted pages. Please check out the 'ExternalPages' demo.
WPTools has strong support for embedded images. They can not only be inserted as characters but also be handled relatively to their parent paragraph or page with the text optionally wrap on left, right or both sides. If you place a page relative image into a header text it will be displayed on each page this header is used for - this is how users expect a watermark feature to work!
With some competing text controls you may have the problem that text can use the attributes which are defined in only one style (or its ancestors). So if you have two text parts which should look different you end up with two style objects - although the both text parts are in the same context.
With WPTools you do not have this problem. The text attributes are stored in many different locations in this order:
character attribute for one character (they are cached!), preceding SPAN objects in this paragraph, the paragraph, par-style attached to this paragraph / ancestor style, parent row or table if in text is in a cell and at last - the default character attributes. (Not all attributes are inherited between this levels to avoid performance problems)
Paragraph and numbering styles can also be shared between editors. This makes it possible to use the same style sheet in the WPReporter template as in the report output. So if the template is updated the output is updated at once, too!
WPTools 5 native save/load format is optimized to handle this style inheritance. (Please check out the 'GlobalStyle' demo).
About the update 5.10:
Includes support for Delphi 2005 Win32
Most of the changes are in the RTF area. WPTools 5 now handles subtractive character styles correctly: A style which defines 'bold' is assigned to a paragraph but some text in this paragraph switches 'bold' off. This is now displayed correctly and is loaded and saved property in RTF and "WPTOOLS" format.
The "finder" has been improved. It is now able to compare character attributes as well. Check out the 'Finder' demo.
The "hover styles" are now fully operational: Hyperlinks can show a popup effect when hit by the mouse cursor or a hint window can be displayed. Please note that you maybe have to explicitly set the 'Use..Color' property in the properties for special text - i.e. 'AutomaticTextAttr'. With WPTools 5 not only hyperlinks can be active text - it is also possible to change the special style depending on the text (through event) - for example to set a different color for visited hyperlinks.
There is now a label printing demo - the carefully designed dialog form can be easily integrated into your application.
The OnTextObjectPaint event makes it possible to paint objects as they are required. You can embed a placeholder and so keep the files small.
Kind Regards,
Julian Ziersch
WPCubed GmbH
https://www.wpcubed.com
