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<reinhar1> good morning
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<btami> hi all
<btami> reinhard johannesV : what do you think about gnue-reports future?, are you using it at all?
<btami> i have plans to chnage .grd a bit
<btami> separating logic from layout, as in forms
<btami> dropping firstrow,notfirstrow,lastrow,notlastrow tags, etc
<kilo> we've been talking about the project and in our opinion common and appserver are quite ok, forms need some work but reports and designer are lagging behind seriously
<reinhard> I agree
<reinhard> we don't use reports much
<reinhard> and I am perfectly ok with *any* change to the structure
<reinhard> because at least for me, I can probably rewrite my only report I really use from scratch in 5 minutes :)
<kilo> what is your experience regarding GNUe in general and your customers?
<btami> kilo, like a jurnalist :)
* kilo hides
<reinhard> forms makes a good tool to fulfill customer's needs
<reinhard> appserver is quite useful
<reinhard> both are, as of now, pretty stable
<reinhard> I would love to see a better reports, but have no significant time available to put into that
<kilo> what is your wishlist when thinking about reports?
<reinhard> actually, we have seen quite some missing parts when we started the first projects
<reinhard> and we have fixed the biggest issues in forms
<kilo> what areas could it improve most?
<reinhard> I'm sorry but I didn't even look at reports close enough to be able to answer this question
<reinhard> I think the general idea of the 2-step concept is really great
<reinhard> (1. create xml file with data and 2. render that xml file to different output formats)
<reinhard> IIRC reports could become somewhat more user friendly
<reinhard> IIRC it does not support printing to printer directly, does it?
<reinhard> or at least it doesn't show the usual printer selection dialog
<kilo> it can show a dialog
<kilo> IIRC it is not general, it only shows when destination is 'printer' and GDI mode
<btami> and the layout is Char
<btami> meaning x,y positioning like forms
<reinhard> but you can write a report without positioning, right?
<btami> there is only a simpletabulation layout, but it was only a proof of concept, not a general solution
<reinhard> sometimes I'm not sure whether the different report filters aren't one level of abstraction too much
<btami> jason started the Universal layout, but he discontinued it, and only code fragments are exist
<reinhard> AFAIU there are different report filters, each one defining a different XML schema, right?
<btami> yes
<reinhard> and each one creating a different XML output format
<reinhard> as opposed to forms, where we have *one* XML schema for forms definitions that just fits all needs
<reinhard> obviously I have no idea why Jason decided to go that way for reports, but I think it makes things very complex
<btami> yes
<btami> btw, forms has 2 layout
<btami> char and dynamic
<reinhard> and the format of grd could look much more straightforward otherwise maybe
<reinhard> btami: yes, you are right
<reinhard> but that only concerns some aspects of the form (the positioning)
<reinhard> while all the field, entry, block, page etc is the same
<btami> yes, i think decoupling logic part in reports (section, field, summ,formula) can solve this partly
<btami> i mean in .grd
<reinhard> yes
<btami> then the remaining difference is that forms has one big GFParser containing 2 layout tags, while
<btami> reports has GRParser + several different layout parsers
<btami> in subdirs
<btami> s/2 layout tags/layout tags for 2 main layouts
<btami> i think we can add the appropriate printer dialogs for different ui drivers, and use them in reports is they was called with -u <ui>
<btami> s/is/if
<reinhard> that would be, IMHO, a big step forward already
<btami> ok
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