Piparti

Written entirely in Object Pascal, Piparti is the first and only nativereport VCL to include a fully interactive Report Designer.

When installed, Piparti adds two components to Delphi's component palette,TppReport and TppViewer. Reports are created by dropping a TppReport componenton a form and double-clicking. This invokes the Report Designer, whichis used to visually design and preview reports. Working just like Delphi'sown Form Designer, the Report Designer supports multi-selection, cut andpaste operations, undelete, control sizing, and positioning. In addition,several Report Designer tools augment the standard Delphi Object Inspectorinterface and provide quick, easy access to the most important report controlproperties. These include a Format Toolbar, Alignment Palette, Color Paletteand various Speed Menus.

Piparti also allows developers to preview reports at design-time viaa built-in print preview form. Once a reporthas been rendered, the previewer can reflect many design layout changeswithout re-running the report. The previewer provides standard Zoom andPrint functions, and also implements a caching scheme which allows usersto view or print any page in the report instantly. The Print Preview featurecan be customized for the run-time environment. TppViewer is a print previewcomponent provided as a starting point for those developers who chooseto customize.

Piparti supports data access through Delphi's standard TDataSource component..Report controls include: ppLabel, ppMemo, ppCalc, ppImage, ppShape, ppLine,ppDBText, ppDBMemo, ppDBCalc, ppDBImage. Control Groups and Title/Summarybands are also supported. Like all apps developed with Delphi, Pipartican be distributed royalty-free. The $149.00 introductory price includesboth 16 and 32-bit versions.

Piparti Features

1.Native VCL
  • 100% Object Pascal
  • Compile reports into your application EXE
  • No additional files or DLL's to distribute
2.Native Delphi DB Connectivity
  • Connect to standard TDataSource component - no separate database connectionrequired, no configuration hassles
  • Share TTable, TQuery, TStoredProc objects between Forms and Reports
  • Utilize standard Delphi calculated fields in reports
3.Interactive Report Designer
  • Just like Delphi's own Form Designer:
    • add a component to your report and it appears in the Object Inspector
    • drag, multi-select, cut copy, paste and undelete are all supported
    • two-way communication with the Object Inspector: change a propertyin the Report Designer and the change will immediately be reflected inthe Object Inspector. Change a property in the Object Inspector and thechange will immediately be reflected in the Report Designer.
    • use dragging to quickly size report bands or to move components fromone band to another
  • Additional time-saving features:
    • Format Bar (for setting font, text alignment and z-order properties)
    • Alignment & Sizing Palette (for sizing and aligning components)
    • Graphics Palette (for setting Pen & Brush properties)
    • Speed Menus (for setting key component properties)
    • Group Dialog (for quickly defining and ordering report groups)
4.Design-time Previewer
  • Interactively design and preview reports
  • Zoom, Page, Goto Page No., and even Print are all supported at design-time
  • Optimized to reflect many design-time changes without re-accessingthe DataSet
  • Optionally limit the number of pages previewed when working with longreports
5.Run-time Interface
  • Dynamically modify report definitions at run-time, or create entirenew reports on-the-fly
  • Use OnPrint event handlers to control printing and perform complexcalculations
6.Report Structures
  • Standard header, footer, title, summary and detail bands supported
  • Unlimited number of report groups
  • Group options
    • Reprint group header band when group overflows to subsequent page withoutbreaking
    • Control page number and page count based on entire report or a singlegroup (subset page numbering)
    • Force group headers onto a new page when less than a specified amountof page space remains
  • Create mailing labels through the use of the following properties:Columns, ColumnPositions, ColumnWidth and RowSpacing
  • Stretch Memos across pages. Shapes and Lines can be set to stretchwith them.
  • Suppress printing of data-aware component when component value remainsthe same across multiple detail bands
  • Reprint suppressed component if detail bands overflow to new page
7.Report Components
  • Graphic Controls: TppImage, TppLine, TppShape, TppDBImage
  • Text Controls: TppLabel, TppDBText, TppMemo, TppDBMemo
  • Calculation Controls: TppCalc, TppDBCalc

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