Report Workshop 1.6: shapes

[Sergey Tkachenko]

New versions of our components are released.
While TRichView, RichViewActions and ScaleRichView include no new features (only fixes and tweaks), Report Workshop is improved.

Trial versions are available here:
http://www.trichview.com/download/

Improvement in Report Workshop commands

Normally in Report Workshop, reporting is implemented by assigning properties of objects, such as report tables, without scripts.
However, it includes some commands that you can write directly in document.
One of them $IF command.
In previous versions, $IF evaluated a single variable or a data field:

Code: Select all

{$IF success}Congratulation!{$ENDIF}

In this version, the syntax is extended, you can write a comparison operation, to compare a variable, a data field, string or integer constant:

Code: Select all

{$IF wing_count < 2}The plane can't take off{$ENDIF}

Previous version:
http://www.trichview.com/forums/viewtop ... f=6&t=8696

[Sergey Tkachenko]

Shapes in Report Workshop

In previous versions, shapes were used only in value visualizers, i.e. in diagrams displayed at cell backgrounds (similar to conditional formatting feature in Microsoft Excel). There are two visualizers that use shapes:
- changing a shape color and rotation according to a value
- displaying multiple shapes, shape count corresponds to a value.
This version includes the following improvements:

1) More shapes. In addition to polygons, stars and arrows, the following shapes are added:
- polygon in circle
- star in circle
- star in polygon
- ring (donut)
- square (unlike 4-sided polygon rotated by 45 degrees, it occupies maximum possible space)
- flags (3 shapes of banner)
- emoticons (sad, neutral, smiling, laughing, winking)
- man and woman (two versions)
- "no" sign (slashed circle)
- no-entrance sign (rectangle in circle)
- check mark
See the help topic for shape images.

2) New component displaying a shape, TRVShape

shape-component.png (20.46 KiB) Viewed 58324 times

3) New item displaying a shape, TRVShapeItemInfo

shape-item.jpg (153.59 KiB) Viewed 58321 times

4) New action for inserting a shape, TrvrActionInsertShape

insert-shape.png (64.46 KiB) Viewed 58320 times

5) New property dialog for shapes in TrvActionItemProperties

shape-properties.png (8.91 KiB) Viewed 58320 times

6) ShapeScaleX property for visualizers displaying shapes, allowing to use shapes inscribed in a rectangle instead of a square. It is especially useful for human icons (people look better when stay closer to each other)

people-shape.png (14.35 KiB) Viewed 58319 times

[Sergey Tkachenko]

Limitation: shapes are drawn nicely in Delphi XE2 and newer. In older versions of Delphi, gradients, semitransparency and antialiasing are not supported.

[Sergey Tkachenko]

I updated the compiled demos: http://www.trichview.com/download/demo.html

[Sergey Tkachenko]

I forgot to mention. In this update, we updated user interface translation of RichViewActions to the following languages:
- Hungarian
- Malay
- Swedish (fixed)

To this moment, all translations of RichViewActions are complete, except for Slovak (will be ready soon) and Thai.

[Sergey Tkachenko]

An update has been released. It contains some fixes.

[Sergey Tkachenko]

This video shows shapes in ReportWorkshop.

It consists of 3 parts:
1. Overview of shapes (in the background diagram properties dialog)
2. Using shapes in a background diagram (area size and population report)
3. Using shape object and conditional commands (happiness report)

[Sergey Tkachenko]

EXE file size

If you use the shape component and the document object without reporting features, no reporting code will be linked to EXE.
So they are relatively low-weight features.

If you use the shape action, no reporting code will be linked as well, except for localization strings.

Advantages of shapes

Comparing to raster formats, such as PNG:
- very small memory size required to store an image, and no GDI resources at all;
- look good at any size, even when stretched unproportionally;
- printing at maximum possible quality.

Comparing to vector format (Windows metafiles):
- antialiasing
- gradients and transparency at maximum possible quality