>I just ordered my package. I was hoping you might answer a few questions.
>I can't seem to find any info on the report writer?
>How fast will the compiled programs run? And will they (compiled programs)run at a reasonable speed on slow hardware. I ask this because you said that you would not run the development product on a slow machine.
>John

I have Kylix installed on a 1GHz Athlon with 512MB RAM. I use KDE2 on SuSE 7.1 and have a 1GB swap space. Compiled apps appear within a second, but that also depends on what an app does and if it has to make remote database connections or load lots of records into controls, etc...

Kylix is a complex app. When I click its desktop icon there is about a 10-15 second delay before the app is ready for use. Subsequent openings take less time, just like StarOffice, which takes 15 seconds the first time and less than 3 on subsequent openings.

I would not run Kylix on anything less than a P350 with 128MB of RAM, but if one is patient and doesn't mind waiting for processes to complete then.... ?

Kylix (or Delphi) does not come with a banded report writer. But, there exists a HUGE number of sources of RW, ranging from free to big $$$.

Here is a popular free report writer
http://www.ducktech.com/dreport.html


And a query maker:
http://www.get-ideas.com/qmd_main.htm

Here is XLReport:
http://www.afalinasoft.com/xl-report/index.html

Here, in one place, is a link to most of the common commerical report writing tools used in Delphi-Kylix
http://www.xs4all.nl/~dgb/delreprt.html#T_TOOLS

Here are descriptions of the two more popular RWs from that link:
ReportBuilder (the most popular)
The premiere reporting tool for Delphi has a new name, a new face and a wealth of new features. ReportBuilder€ is in and Piparti is out - the new name aptly describes the evolution of Piparti from a monolithic application to the feature-rich, extensible reporting platform which is ReportBuilder. The current release, version 3.5, sports an Office97 style user-interface, a bar code component, a TeeChart wrapper component, archiving capabilities, drill-down subreports, a 'clickable' print preview component and most importantly - the RCL!

Shazam Report Wizard (toolbar components)
Shazam Report Wizard (SRW) 3.0 is the ultimate ad-hoc query and reporting component for Borland Delphi. SRW is unique among Delphi-based reporting solutions in that it fully integrates Query-By-Example (QBE) and "What You See Is What You Get" (WSYIWYG) Report Design with runtime operation by end-users and total report automation.

I am in total AWE of Kylix. I've finished my first app. It was an amazing process. Every step was with object components. There are three books with the package. The smallest contains a tutorial on building applications and takes you step-wise through the process of creating "Text Editor Tutorial", a notepad program. The object menu builder, and an object image manager (to link icons to menus and toolbars) are sweet. I estimate it to be anywhere from 2 to 10 times more powerful than VFP. That Text Editor required adding code to only four methods, a total of about a dozen lines.
Have fun!