Posted by Ian Bartholomew-18 on Sep 30, 2003; 9:33am
URL: https://forum.world.st/How-does-Dolphin-compare-to-Access-and-Delphi-tp3368794p3368808.html

Jen,

> About RTF -- someone mentioned that they've used this for printing and
> previewing, so it sounds interesting. But I looked at Ian's goodie
> (http://www.idb.me.uk/goodies3/richtext.html) and it seems like it was
> written for Dolphin 3 and hasn't been updated in three years ... is
> this an issue?  Also, it looks like licensing makes it so that it
> cannot be sold as part of another package. As with other printing
> methods, this doesn't lend itself well to users customizing reports.

Printing and previewing of rtf documents _is_ included in the Dolphin 5
goodies but the (non existant) documentation doesn't make it that
obvious - sorry.  It all got a bit complicated as I wanted to use some
of the functionality included with the RichText and Printer dll's
included in the later Windows OS (XP mainly) but still try to retain
some compatibility with the earlier OSs.

The printing is also integrated with the Dolphin IDE, my main reason for
writing it in the first place, with the inclusion of the usual page
set-up/print set-up/print preview menu options on a lot of the IDE file
menus.

As well as the Printing and RichText aspects the Dolphin 5 goodies
package also includes the beginnings of a (sort of) report generator.
It's really just a wrapper around the RichText interface that makes it a
bit easier to create formatted rtf documents.

Licensing is not really an issue - you only have to ask and I'll say yes
:-).  I was just trying to avoid someone trying to include the goodies
as part of a commercial "utilities for Dolphin" type package - they are
released as freeware and that is how I wanted them to stay.

I been a bit distracted lately and haven't done anything major with the
goodies (or Dolphin itself) for the last 9 months so it's all getting a
bit hazy.  If you've got any specific questions then e-mail me (use
reply-to, mail to [hidden email] is ignored) and I'll try to answer
them.

--
Ian