We need to be able to offer our customers the ability to design and lay out their stationery (invoices, statements, pay-slips, etc) as they wish, using a graphical interface (boxes, bitmap logos etc). Has anyone got some ideas or recommendations as to how to achieve this?

Nick,

To me the obvious solution would be to provide a developer's copy of the Reporter. This is obviously very graphical and gives them practically as much flexibility as they'll ever need. Of course this all depends on how well Reporter is working these days.

We've designed rather static forms for our applications using the OIPI but we've included a facility for the client to choose their own logo. They can either design their own or have us do it and we generally support WMF and BMP files. Then our code will scale the logo appropriately to fit within the area on the form designated for company logos. It sounds to me, however, that you want to give your users more options for changing the form than custom logos.

Don Bakke

SRP Computer Solutions

Nick,

In addition to Don's suggestions .. you could have the user use Word, WordPerfect etc to develop their forms then use either DDE or Merge facilities to print ..

dsig

David Tod Sigafoos ~ SigSolutions

dsig@teleport.com

We use OIPI to produce reports.

The reports are driven by a set pf parameters detailing the location, font, width and depth of various fields, eg text, data, logo, lines, shading etc.

At present these are defined in an edit table and is very accurate at placing things, but not very friendly to the average user.

We are starting a graphical version soon, which will create a control on a form for each type, and using the mousemove and buttondown.up you can resize or relocate the controls on the screen.

You could then use the current controls location and size to re-update the parameters.

It is a lot of work, but hey, great fun.

If you do intend to enbark on this avenue, I would be interested to know so that we can both share problems/experiences.

David,

Have you used DDE between Word and OI to fill forms I'd be really interested in how you did it!

Regards,

Glen.

Thanks to all.

Report Designer - too fiddly, and difficult to control multi-values and form lengths.

Word/WordPerfect - may work, but I'd like to keep the facility in the family.

Graphic interface - YEAH! This is what I want. I'd like to touch sides with you Colin, if you're going to be at the Revelation Conference in October.

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