Technical Information

"Forms" are understood to be graphic files which can contain various graphic objects, such as text, boxes, bitmaps, lines, etc. A form can contain multiple pages and even a watermark, if desired. These "forms" can be created, edited, filled, previewed and printed.

In the "form completion mode" WPForm displays editors for all fields with a specific attribute and locks all other objects. This allows you to use the form for data entry and for printing! It also makes it possible to create forms which look exactly like the paper based forms your users are familar with.

Actually the designer is action based (requires Delphi 4 or higher) and hardly needs any coding to work. With the special wizard component a raw designer can be created within seconds. You can easily change a few details to give your product an individual touch. With WPForm there's no need to explain user functions not included in your application - simply delete the automatically created button or menu entry!

This may sound trivial, but there's more to it than you think. WPForm's technology enables you to preview all label sheets before they are printed (they should be organized in rows and columns). It's also possible to specify the label number which should be used as the first label printed. This makes it possible to print on partially used label sheets.
What about coding? No coding is required, simply set the property LabelDef.Enabled to true.

And these lists are more than just your average list. WPForm supports a certain object type, the TWPFReportArea, which automatically creates a table with objects by using the first row as a template. Since the report area already displays a sample of the output in the design mode the user has a good idea of how the printout will look. Several TWPFReportAreas can be used on one page, either to stretch the text from one area to the next or to display the contents of different datasets.

Not only can the form be automatically loaded from a dataset, but the graphic objects can also be attached to database fields loaded from multiple datasets. You only need to use several objects from the TWPFDataSource class. This class also includes the automatic control of the TWPFReportArea object.
Of course, a database is not required to use WPForm. You can provide data from any source by using events.

Although the design and the handling was optimized to create database forms, WPForm still simulates a vector graphics program. This includes the possibility of selecting a group of objects and changing the size of the entire group or updating their attributes. Possible actions include rotation (in increments of 90 degrees), sizing, mirroring, shifting, duplication and changing the alignment.

Can a graphic object be 'creative'?
With WPForm it definitely can: You can use the owner drawn object to easily embed the output of a Tchart in WPForm. You can also create custom graphic controls to be used for printed output or to start certain actions. Using the polyline object you can embed symbols from any TT-font into your program or even draw a line or a polygon. The class TWPFExternalObjects makes it possible to load a (WP-)form file into a this graphic object - it works like a place holder.
And there is more: the memo text objects can be combined to a text path and enable you to create a 2 page form which prints any text that did not fit on the first page onto the second page.

The WPForm engine uses either inches or centimeters as the unit for all the position properties. You can change the units to your preference or to fit your needs. The strings (action captions, hints, property names) are created in one unit which allows you to hide and/or change texts. As a result of the action based design changing just one unit will automatically update all the captions.
(As a result WPForm is prepared to work with script engines.)

This object inspector allows you to change most object attributes even though many of the attributes (color, etc) can easily be changed using actions (menu items and/or tool buttons). You can change the strings and hints which are displayed in the inspector by simply changing the localization unit mentioned in item 7. The object inspector also shows the fields from the datasets attached and lets the user change the paper or label format. It uses a TCollection to select which property sheet you want to display.

If you already have our product WPTools, simply add one unit to WPForm to work with RTF texts. Most of the WPTools features, such as alignment (justified text), tabstops and tables are supported. Just like regular text, RTF text can be rotated by 90, 180 or 270 degrees!

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