Version 9.6

Release date: 05/24/2004

Installation note: Please be aware that all three libraries have been updated in this version (hndlib.dll, zlib.dll and xfrxlib.fll).

Bug fixes

New features

Note: If you are interested in making your reports accessible via the internet, you can have a look at a web based report previewer demo application utilizing XFRX compiled as VFP COM DLL. (Run demo).

Zipping the generated file
The generated file can now be automatically zipped. We have added new parameters to Setparams method:

SetParams method

Syntax:
XFRXSession::Setparams(tcOutputName, tcDirectory, tlNotOpenWiewer, tcCodePage, tlSilent, tlNewSession, tcTarget, tcArchive, tlAdditive, tlDeleteFileAfter)

New parameters:

tcArchive
  The name of the zip archive to be created. If not empty, the generated file will be added to the archive after generation (optional)

tlAdditive
  If set to .T. and the archive already exists, the file will be added. (optional)
Please note: you can add several files to the archive, but existing files with the same name will not be overwritten - the new files will always be added.

tlDeleteFileAfter
  If set to .T., the generated file is be deleted after it is copied to the archive. (optional)

Example:

With these SetParams parameters, XFRX first creates "invoices.pdf", then creates "archive.zip" (if it doesn't exist) and adds "invoices.pdf" into the archive. Then "invoices.pdf" will be deleted:

lnRetVal = loSession.SetParams("invoices.pdf",,.T.,,,,"PDF","archive.zip", .t., .t.)

Optional band printing
You can prevent individual report bands from printing by calling skipBands() methods of the XFRXSession object. A parameter of this method is a string containing a comma delimited list of bands that will be skipped. The bands are represented by codes as stated in the following table:
Band Code
Title T
Page header H
Column header CH
Group n header GHn
Detail D
Group n footer GFn
Column footer CF
Page footer F
Summary S

Example:
loSession.skipBands("H,GH1,GF3,S")

Numeric field picture format in Excel
The format definition of numeric cells in Excel is different from the format syntax used in Foxpro. XFRX is now able to convert the simple format definitions and allows for user-defined implicit and/or explicit Excel-type format definitions.
In Visual Foxpro, the numeric field is converted to its text representation based on an explicit format definition (format field in the report expression definition) or field's decimal places and SET DECIMAL setting.
When a numeric field is transformed to an Excel cell, the following algorithm is used:
  1. If there is an explicit XLS format defined, use it.
    To define an explicit XLS format for a numeric field, add:

    #UR XLSF= (expression)

    to the field's comment.

    Example:
    #UR XLSF="General"

    The "General" formatting - no special formatting, the number of decimal places is determined by the field's value
    #UR XLSF="Standard"
    The "Standard" formatting - two decimal places, thousand and decimal separators will be used according to the Excel defaults
    #UR XLSF="#0.00"
    Two decimal places, no leading zeros
    #UR XLSF="#0.00;[red]#0.00"
    Two decimal places, display negative numbers in red
  2. If the field contains a format definition, try to look up the format in a conversion table. A conversion table can be populated programatically when XFRX is executed so that the formats that are often used and cannot by converted automatically by XFRX would not require an explicit definition in each field in the report.
    To add an entry to the conversion table, use addXLSFormatConversion method of XFRXSession class.

    Example:
    loSession.addXLSFormatConversion("@L 999999.99","000000.00")

  3. If the field contains a format definition and it is not listed in the conversion table, try to convert it. XFRX is able to convert simple format definitions containing the following characters: '9', '#', ',', '.' and ' '. For example, 999,999.99 is converted to ###,###.00.
  4. If the format cannot be converted, use the implicit XLS numeric format, if available.
    To define the implicit XLS numeric format, call setDefaultXLSFormat method of the XFRXSession object with the implicit format as a parameter.

    Example:
    loSession.setDefaultXLSFormat("General")

  5. If the implicit XLS numeric format is not defined, XFRX creates a format definition to display the same number of decimals as in VFP report output.
If you want to specify that a certain numeric field should be converted as a text cell in the excel sheet, define "TEXT" as its explicit XLS numeric format:

#UR XLSF='TEXT'

For a live example of formatting the Excel cells, please have a look at the "XLS formatted numeric cells sample" report in the demo application.

Version 9.5

Release date: 04/01/2004

Installation note : In order to save reports as pictures, XFRX requires two additional libraries to be installed:

If you are not planning to export reports as pictures, you can download a special version of XFRXLIB.FLL (http://www.eqeus.com/files/xfrxlib-nogdiplus.zip), which doesn't require the two dlls mentioned above.

Bug fixes

New features

Exporting reports as pictures
XFRX is able to export individual report pages as BMP, PNG, GIF and JPEG pictures, multiple pages can be exported to TIFF image format.
The picture generation process is divided into two steps:
  1. the report is generate as XFF cursor
  2. savePicture method of the XFFWriter class is called to generate the picture
The advantage of this approach is that once the XFF file is generated, it is very easy to get the page count, generate individual pictures in a cycle, etc.

SavePicture method saves the report page(s) as a picture.

Syntax:
XFRXWriter::SavePicture(tcFilename, tcType, tnFrom [, tnTo [, tnBpp [, tnJPEGQuality [, tnThumbnailWidth [, tnThumbnailHeight] ] ] ] ])

Parameters:

tcFilename
  The name of the file to be generated.

tcType
  The format of the picture to be saved. Currently supported options are: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF.

tnFrom
  The page number to be saved. If TIFF format is being saved, the parameter specifies the first page to be saved.
 
tnTo
  If TIFF format is being saved, the parameter specifies the last page to be saved. Ignored otherwise.

tnBpp
  Bits per pixel. Currently supported values are 16 or 24.

tnJPEGQuality
  Specifies the JPEG compression quality. The range is from 1 - the lowest quality to 100 - the best quality. The default value is 0 - default quality. Ignored for other output types.

tnThumbnailWidth
  The width of the output picture in pixels.

tnThumbnailHeight 
  The height of the output picture in pixels.

If both tnThumbnailWidth and tnThumbnailHeight are omitted, the original page size is used. If only one of the values is sent, the other one is calculated accordingly.

Return values

 0 ... no errors was encountered
-1 ... unknown image format
-2 ... page out of range


If this sounds complicated, please have a look at the example, it is actually quite simple: 

	loSession=EVALUATE([xfrx("XFRX#INIT")])
	*
	* nothing is sent as the file name, so only a memory cursor is created
	*
	lnRetVal =loSession.SetParams(,,,,,,"XFF")				
	If lnRetVal = 0
		loSession.ProcessReport("invoices")			
		local loXFF
		*
		* the finalize method returns a XFFWriter object reference,
		* which will used to save the pictures
		*
		loXFF = loSession.finalize()
		LOCAL lnI, lnJpegQuality
		lnJpegQuality = 80
		*
		* loXFF.pagecount contains the number of pages if the report that 
		* was just generated
		*
		* we are now going to save all pages one by one as separate jpeg pictures
		*
		FOR lnI = 1 TO loXFF.pagecount
			loXFF.savePicture("page"+ALLTRIM(STR(lnI))+".jpg","jpg",lnI,lnI,24,lnJpegQuality)
		ENDFOR
		MESSAGEBOX("Pictures saved.")
	Endif
XFRX report previewer localization
Each localization is stored in two files: To create a new localization, please follow these steps:
  1. Choose a code for your localization (e.g. DE for German)
  2. Create a copy of default localization DFB (localization\default\XFRXLIB_XXX.DBF (+CDX, +FPT)). Change the suffix according to your localization code. The default localization DBF contains English strings that need to be translated.
  3. Create XFRXLIB_<localization_code>.vcx visual class library using localization\default\locClass.prg. Send the localization code as a parameter.
    Example: Copy locClass to the XFRXLIB directory and call:

    do locClass with "DE"

    which will create the XFRXLIB_DE class library.

    Translate the two dialog classes in the class library.
  4. Copy the localization files to XFRXLIB directory.
To activate the localization in your code, call setLanguage method of XFCont class. Send the localization code as a parameter.

Example: this.cntXFRX.setLanguage("DE")


Version 9.0

Release date: 01/03/2004

Please note we have added a new library that is required for XFRX to run: XFRXLIB.FLL. Please copy XFRXLIB.FLL to the same directory where HNDLIB.DLL and ZLIB.DLL are.

Bug fixes

New features

Version 8.3

Release date: 11/10/2003

Bugs fixes

New features

Version 8.2

Release date: 10/14/2003

Bugs fixes

If you're using versions 8.0 or 8.1, we recommend upgrading to 8.2.

Version 8.1

Release date: 10/14/2003

Bugs fixes

Please note that there is updated HNDLIB.DLL in this version. If this version of XFRX is run with the previous version of HNDLIB.DLL, 'old version of hndlib.dll" error message is displayed.

We'd like to apologize for the 'vertical lines printed slanted' bug. If you're using version 8.0 and have vertical lines in your reports, we recommend upgrading to 8.1.

Version 8.0

Release date: 10/04/2003

Bugs fixes

New features

Version 7.1

Release date: 9/22/2003

Bugs fixes

New features

New features in the container object

 
  • added ability to search the report
  • mouse-wheel is now supported
  • mouse middle button is now supported
  • right-click menu was added
  • new toolbar
  • major scroll speed increase
  • and much more is going to come soon :)

Bookmarks in HTML output

  XFRX can now optionally generate bookmarks (outlines) into the result document. Please see Creating bookmarks (document outline) section in XFRX manual to see how to define a bookmark.
To enable bookmarks in the HTML output, call 
loSession.SetOtherParams("PRINT_BOOKMARKS",.t.)
before calling loSession.ProcessReport()
With bookmarks enabled, XFRX will generate three HTML pages: the main page defining the page frames, the bookmark page and the page with the report output.

XLS cells adjustment

  When XLS document is generated, vertical and horizontal coordinates of objects are adjusted - if the difference between two coordinates is smaller than a certain value, the coordinates are 'aligned'. This approach significantly reduces the number of rows and columns in the generated document.
Now it is possible to define this minimal different. The greater the number is, the lesser number of rows/columns is generated, but if the number is too big, fields might get overlapped and could be left out.
Call SetOtherParams method with "HORIZONAL_ADJUSTMENT" or "VERTICAL_ADJUSTMENT" to define the minimal horizontal and/or vertical difference.
Example: 
loSession.SetOtherParams("HORIZONTAL_ADJUSTMENT",1000) && default value = 76 
loSession.SetOtherParams("VERTICAL_ADJUSTMENT",1000) && default value = 180

Pictures rotation in PDF

  Pictures now can be rotated the same way as text fields. Please see Object rotation in PDF chapter in the manual to see how to define the rotation.

Canceling report generation in progress

  The generation process in progress can be canceled by setting the global variable gnStopXFRX to 1. For example, you can, for example, use it this way: 
ON KEY LABEL Esc gnStopXFRX = 1

Version 7.0

Release date: 8/25/2003

Bugs fixes

New features

Version 6.5

Bugs fixes

New features

Word document splitting

  When the generated documents are very long, Word application has problem with the conversion - it takes very long to convert it. To avoid this problem, XFRX now can split the generated document into more smaller documents. To set this up, call SplitDocument() method before calling ProcessReport(): 
loSession.SplitDocument(tnPages)
tnPagesp is the number of pages each of the resulting documents would have.

Printing page ranges

  To define the page range, call setPageRange() method before calling calling ProcessReport(). There are two possible ways how to call the setPageRange() method:
  • setPageRange(tnFrom, tnTo)
    tnFrom and tnTo define the from-to range. If tnTo is empty, the total number of pages is used
    Example: 
    loSession.setPageRange(5,10)
  • setPageRange(tcRange)
    tcRange is a string, which can contain page numbers and page ranges delimited by commas, the page range is defined as "from-to".
    Example: 
    loSession.setPageRange("1,4,10-20,25")

User-defined page size

  You can define the page size of the generated document. The user-defined page size will override the page size stored in the report. To define the user-defined page size, call setPaperSize() method with paper width and paper height as parameters: 
setPaperSize(nUDPaperWidth, nUDPaperHeight)
The unit is Inch * 10000.

HTML page size adjustment

  When generating HTML documents, XFRX makes the page a bit shorter by default (by 1.65 inches). This is because when printing from the Internet Explorer, two lines are added to the page - at the top and bottom of the page - as header and footer. By calling ShrinkHeight() method, you can either suppress this behaviour by calling: 
ShrinkHeight(0)
or set your own value by which the page will be shrinked. The unit is Inch * 10000, so to make the page shorter by 2 inches, call: 
ShrinkHeight(20000)
The value sent by ShrinkHeight() method is applied to all output types, not just HTML.