As an old Rev & Arev user, I'm finding it very difficult to get the kind of printed output from OI that I need. I've tried Reporter and the printer DLL and have had major problems with both.

Reporter: It has a lot of nice features, but has what appear to me to be major bugs. I'm trying to replace a report that I developed in Arev, but have not had any luck. The table has 51 data fields, including mv and text fields. When I run the report, after the first record is printed (the data from each record runs 2-3 pages) the data from following records appears in the wrong place, i.e. the name field has a date, etc.

I've tried recreating the report several times, but always have the same results. The records appear properly in the forms on screen when editing, and list proplerly in Rlist.

Another thing I've seen but can't find again is a listing of the switches when calling Reporter. Where can I find this?

I've tried to use the printer DLL functions, but can not control fonts as I need to. For example, the documentation says it is possible to use PrintLineFeed(0) to change fonts in the current line, but after trying every logical possiblity, I've not been able to do it. The documentation also lists other commands like PrintSetPen, but doesn't really explain what it does or how to use it. Is there any place I can get more thorough documentation on the printer functions?

OI needs more documentation on how to get nice formatted printed output on paper. This is a major deficiency in the product.

Hi Don,

As an old Rev & Arev user, I'm finding it very difficult to get the kind of printed output from OI that I need. I've tried Reporter and the printer DLL and have had major problems with both.

If I may be candid, I don't think you will ever get any true satisfaction with either of these two options. Like you, I was too accustomed to crafting reports using R/Basic and I could not find any adequate means of acheiving the same results in OpenInsight. This problem became so critical that I almost wrote OI off forever…until I found the OIPI.

Yes, the OIPI is an additional cost. Yes, Revelation should include much better reporting tools. Yes, life isn't fair sometimes. But ultimately you have to decide whether to stand on principle or do what it takes to get the job done. I don't recall if it was you or someone else who had previously decided they weren't going to consider the OIPI because of the additional cost but one has to consider how much revenue and time is lost in constant frustration over getting the Reporter or Printer.DLL function to work as needed.

My 2¢,

dbakke@srpcs.com

SRP Computer Solutions

Thanks for your input. I had sort of come to the conclusion that OIPI was about the only option, but $445 seems like an excessively high price to pay for a basic function that should be part of a product that costs as much as OIWG does. In a Windows environment tool, the ability to output attractive documents is crucial. One problem with OIPI is that according to the docs, the feature to change fonts in the middle of a line (something I have to have) will be available in version 4.0.

I like OI in a lot of ways, probably most of all because I'm familiar with Basic+ and the xref indexing and mv features are great. But there are several things that are real negatives: The inability to use OCX or VCL type components like VB and Delphi, and the fact that max field length is 64K. Back in 1985 when I started using RevG, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven with variable length fields with up to 64k, but these days 64k doesn't cut it in an application that deals with text.

The other negative is it seems like I'm always shelling out money. With Delphi I can buy great add on stuff cheaply, and the multiuser features don't require all those bump disks fro extra $$$.

Well, I've almost made the decison to jump ship and go with Delphi, even thought I'm not crazy about a new learning curve.

Well, so much for my ramblings

Don Pederson

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