I see that you are introducing new functionality for setting printers, getting default printers....etc.

If it is not already there, it will be useful to add controls for the following ;

It will be nice, if we can control those items shown above via script.

Just tested and it works fine. Maybe it is your virus software that block it. It is a zip file, the have a tendency to not like them to muc.

http://www.dataease.com/static/ulimages/PDFPlay.zip

Yes, something was wrong with my Chrome. Tried it under IE, it worked. I guess IE wins!!

Hmmm.. Not really the same thing.

What we do is to set the Default Printer (and I don't think you want copies and pages set fixed for that).

And then we set App/Workstation printers to be used by all prints. i.e. printer virtualisation.

This should really be a part of Running a report.

As a programmer you control this very much already.

1. Copies: SImply run the report in a loop, most likely when you want multiple copies it is small prints anyway and if you use ExecDQL it is blitzingly fast.

2. If you know which pages to print of a report you also know how to limit the report to only include those pages, I don't think this would be a very useful feature to do programmatically. 

Don't be to quick to assume that Arul ;-)

They all have their weaknesses and strengths. To get background image on Body is much harder in IE than in Chrome/Firefox that is why in this sample you have full paths etc.

In a way it was a good thing because then we got to showcase GetCurrent("AppPath") etc too.

All the best and enjoy!

path := concat("file:///",StringReplace(StringReplace(GetCurrent("AppPath"),"\","/")," ","%20") ).

This little derivation is a "marvel" in DataEase8ness.

StringReplace x 2 and GetCurrent("AppPath") converting a Windows URL to a web URL.

As you know, in a browser you can load web pages with windows URL's but there is limitations. For instance the ability to do relative loading of images and other linked elements has its clear limitations and you can't use URL's with space in them etc.

So then you need to convert to Web URLs and then you need to convert spaces and slashes etc. 

Quite useful to have the functionality for that so readily at hand.

StringTo/From/Between is also very useful to chop up file paths and rebuild them.

I think there is a misunderstanding. 

All I wanted to do is use the features and make DataEase ......EASY......rather than write code.....use loops.....

Of course you can do ANYTHING with DataEase. If it is programmed right.

He,he. Here we have a standard feature that is user oriented and easy.... the dialog.

What we have added is an option to direct print without going via the dialog i.e programming.

This is very useful when a programmer want to send an invoice straight to a printer or produce PDFS for email etc.

They are not really related. If the programmer want two copies he will easily fix that, but he can't relate to the number of pages he produce only the content i.e. filter. Only someone that have seen the print can decide that he only want to print page 2 or 3, and 4 etc.

I appreciate that you are a strong advocate for simplicity and "dataeasy" but there need to be a clear line between user interface and programmers options. 

We could of course include these options in the function, but as this is GUI features rather than API features it would be a big effort for very little gain.

Don't worry Arul, I can't even get dataease to do basic printing of my screen in WYSIWYG in LANDSCAPE.  It overrules whatever you tell it EVERY time in EVERY form on EVERY database. Dataease is obsessed witrh portrait or nothing, regardless of what the page format or print setup says.  You are forced to select landscape EVERY time you print as it refuses to remember settings in 8.2 and 8.5.  

Don't even get me started on collating and printing multiple pages crash every windows version of dataease has done it since v6 i think lol.

I think we are very close Mr. DataEase.

With the introduction of PDF feature in DE8.5. We can make use of this feature for many things.

Out of curiosity, do we need Adobe on a machine for the PDF feature to work in 8.5?

No. If you have a look at the install package of De8.5 after we added ExecDQL with Body you will see it has increased significantly in size. This is because a entire engine for producing PDFs is included. 

In 8.5 we use a third party engine, but will shift to the DG3 engine (much smaller, more efficient, flexible and efficient) when it is ready. There will be no change for the users.

Printing to PDF is beautiful!

Question is, are we able to merge two reports into one PDF?

Merge another external PDF with a report?

Add background to the PDF?.....etc.

Hmmm... 

With one hand you preach DataEasy and with the other advanced functionality ;-) GOOD!

You can store the result of a DQL as a Text (HTML) file, you can save it in a Memo etc. When you have finished all your reports you can simply merge all the HTML files either by running them in another ExecDQL that simply list all the results as one file (PDF) or you can merge them with MemoMemoCopy() or MemoReadFromFile()/MemoWriteToFile() etc, and then print them to PDF or whatever you like.

As you see from the sample you inspired us to make... 

PDFplay in DE8.5 using MemoExecDQL and HTML.

DataEase 8

That is easy peasy...

I know you shy away from "programming" as much as you can, but to be honest that is how you gain flexibility, to get to grasp with HTML and CSS is no harder than learning to use Word but much more gratifying as you can tweak things exactly as you like.

You cannot merge a PDF with a report directly but there is plenty of tools that merge PDFs. You can produce any PDF based on data in your app, but we are not a copy and paste tool for ready made PDFs.

Unable to download the sample.............