>>>In the rewrite of all of the in house apps, there is a requirement to be able to send all report output to graphic files. These graphic files are to be placed in project databases within Lotus Notes Apps. The original thought was to print out he report and then scan it but there has to be a better way. We have been kicking are some ideas but I need some refresh thoughts. The solution has to be universal across all reports. Currently users have the option to print, print preview or save as Excel file.
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>>>We've been kicking around the thought of using GenRepox and use low level file writes to create a RTF file. This will work, but is not generic enough, too much hand coding. The other thought has been to preview the report to the screen and do a screen capture. Then from within Paint save as a grphic file. Again problems like automating the process once we have the screen capture and how to ensure multi-page reports are captured correctly. We have even thought of sending the report to an HPGL printer and capturing the output. The problem is HPGL viewers are not always of high quality and we don't have the time or desire to write our own and there is some system setup involved that the hardware group is not to hip on.
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>>>Thoughts and suggestions please.
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>>I would think about writing a form with grid. This grid will be used for report cursor representation (surely it will take some coding). This form can be captured to BMP file programmatically, also you can automate grid scrolling+capturing.
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>We kicked around something like this and the problems are: we can send graphic information to the clip board, but we have not been able to figure out how to save it from there.

Thanks God, we have George Tasker on the board. Recently he posted description of keybd_event API call which allows to save form/screen contents to clipboard. When it's there, you can save to general field and FPT file will be actually BMP file (at least imaging OCX will get it).

There should be a way of controling Paint but we haven't found it yet. How do we ensure the user saves all of the pages of the report.

You could programmatically scroll grid and capture in loop.

The last problem is, the project managers want the graphic to appear the same as the printed report.

These guys used to want strange things:)