> I don't understand why some people would rather strugle and kludge with the VFP report writer.
> Those people say 'I shouldn't HAVE to pay for a third party product, VFP is a database ap,
> and reports are important part.' Well, I agree with that, but I also HATE reports and
> would rather use one that supports multi-line detail bands, sub-reports, report chainging,
> OOP access to the report form, etc, than fight with the VFP report tool. When the VFP rw is
> up to par with VFP, I will re-evaluate my decision.
Bob,
I think a lot of the reasons that VFP people like myself don't like the fact that I can't use VFP Cursors directly with Crystal Reports. I personally own 3 versions of Crystal Reports Developer Edition 5, 7 and 8. I never shipped a single copy of my apps with Crystal. I never used 5.0 and 7.0 because of crashes and BUGS. Yes they would eventually ship fixes. Then I bought 8 and they still didn't support native VFP tables without exporting to FOX2X tables and I didn't want to have to add ODBC support to my software for installation in a self install due to support headaches and added overhead to distributions from downloads.
So that is why I wrote my Report Engine and OCX controls. I could have done it in Pure VFP but there are speed advantages to using low-level compiled apps like Delphi in loops, etc. Plus, there are Technical Limitations to using VFP as a Report Preview since there is now WM_PAINT messages that can be captured when painting to a VFP Form using the GDI API.
However, now that I have an OCX that is basically a Page Painting tool with the included methods you can do just about anything you want with it as far as painting your own multiple detail bands, sub-reports etc. It already supports Report Chaining but with the ability to support different Page Sizes and/or Orientations all withing a Single Report Preview. And it's very OOPy. And Watermarks are a breeze! Not that we all do Watermarks.
And I HATE making Reports TOO!!! I do however love writing the Low-Level stuff that makes people say WOW!!!
