Custom Report Writer

[ravininave]

We've a application in which we provides a receipt printing to our clients. But every clients has different alignment, format of their receipts. So, we thought about to creating a custom report writer in which user itself will design his own receipt. Can anyone suggest me some piece of code, logic or any url with this.?

[dilettante]

See post #6 in Easy and fast way to print in VB6.

There I gave an example of how to make use of the DHTMLEdit control as a reporting tool.

You could probably also (with a little effort) use the control to create a template editor program you could let your clients use. Of course it could be more work to make it client-friendly and client-safe than putting actual use of the template into your original application.

[Schmidt]

Perhaps the "cheapest" way to accomplish this, (without introducing an expensive MS-Office-
Dependency or a User-Editable Report-Designer) is per IE-Control (and then printing from there).

Your Customer could be allowed, to drag certain <div>-Elements around
(which are defined on your own DefaultReport.htm, you'd deliver with your App) -
and also to change the Styles (Fontsizes, Alignment) within your own Default.css,
which you also deliver as a template...

Then (after your client is done with re-arranging, re-formatting) you could safe the
two resulting contents (the changed Default.htm and the changed Default.css)
under new names within client-specific DB-Fields or wherever.

That's a bit of work on the programming-end - but also not really rocket-science.

If you want to exchange "programming-hours" vs. "prices for a tool", then you
could look at the different Reporting-Helpers (ranging from standalone OCXes
to complete reporting-frameworks).

And just in case it is only for a really simple Form (with maybe 10 Text-Labels,
a Logo and a simple "Grid-Like-List" on a single page (or two) - then you could
also accomplish such a simple "Receipt-Editor" by allowing to move simple Text-
or RichTextBox- or Grid-Controls around on your Receipt-Designer-Form" (allowing
your clients, to change Font- and Alignment-Properties on those Controls.

The less the amount of "areas to fill with content" on your current Receipt-Page,
the less the coding-efforts will be - maybe post a screenshot (which contains only
dummy-data) of your current Std-Receipt, as it will end up on a Printer...
that would give us a better idea, what needs to be accomplished in the end.

Olaf

[Schmidt]

... example of how to make use of the DHTMLEdit control as a reporting tool...

LOL, now it happened to me, to be a little bit too late with pressing the send-button...

Olaf

[DataMiser]

The best approach would be Active Reports Pro which allows you to include a full featured report designer into your program but of course this is not cheap.

In some cases something as simple as an INI file could do the trick.