Hi All,
I just got off the phone with Subhash (pronounced suh-BOSH) of Sub systems. He is the developer of a report writer OCX control called ReportEase. It will be a very nice replacement for the VFP report "thing". There, of course, is just one small problem. It works for Delphi, C or Visual Basic but not VFP.
Well, why doesn't it work and how do I see this as a "small problem", you ask? It has to do with the data structures, or type structures, VB uses and passes to the control for printing data. VFP doesn't support them. The most similar thing VFP has is an array. Subhash is very willing to do modifications and he quoted me a price of about $3000 to make the control work with VFP. That's great, except I don't have that much just lying around. Besides, I doubt my wife would take kindly to my spending that much money on ANYTHING... even if I did wrap it up and put it under the Christmas tree. I explained this to Subhash and then made him an alternate offer to which he agreed. Now, here's the small problem part... If I can get 6 or 7 (or even more) of you fellow disgruntled VFP developers to buy ReportEase, we can all get the VFP version upgrade for free. The cost is $509.00.
Now, before you blow this off, have a look at the demo. You can download it at
http://www.subsystems.com. The menu and toolbar are completely optional. You have control over the entire interface. All the details are there to read. To see ReportEase used in a commercial application, go to
http://www.quotewerks.com and check it out. Click on "Product Info" and take the "QuoteWerks Guided Tour". The report control is featured on page 16.
I am very impressed with Subhash and his products. Please contact me here on the UT or at
pmurray@adelphia.net if you want to get involved because I need to coordinate with Subhash and monitor when/if we hit our goal. Also, feel free to contact Subhash directly. Just be sure to mention the VFP fix for ReportEase and my name. His phone and email are listed on the Sub Systems web site.
By the way, Sub Systems also offers TE Developers kit which is a word processor OCX/ActiveX control that works with VFP right now.
Thanks for checking this out and I hope to hear from lots of you soon!
