Mailmerge field inside table not showing first space

The following doesn't work anymore in 5.24.3.

Property settings:
InsertPointAttr.hidden = true
AutomatictextAttr.BackGroundColor = clGreen
AutomatictextAttr.UseBackGroundColor = true

When a mergefield starts with a space (' ') and is located at the first position inside a table cell the first space is no longer visible. If i don't hide the insert points, or if i put 1 space before the mergefield inside the same cell, or if i start the mergefield with any other character then the background color is there.

Since i fill the mergefields from edit controls and display a single space when the edit control is empty this is a problem for me, because it now looks like no mergefields are present when creating a new message.

This problem wasn't present in 5.20.9 (and earlier releases), but does occur in version 5.24.3.

Done some debugging, but can't find the exact problem yet.

unit WPRTEPaint.pas

if cp < cp_lend then
    OptCharWidth[OptBufferCount] := lineData.par.CharPos[cp + 1].xoff
else OptCharWidth[OptBufferCount] := lineData.par.CharPos[cp].width;
                        inc(OptBufferCount);

lineData.par.CharPos[cp + 1].xoff returns 0, if i set xoff to 32 (lineData.par.CharPos[cp].width) then everything paints fine, but i have no idea why the xoff has an incorrect value.

xoff seems to be set here:

WPRTEDefs.pas
(around line nr. 39900)

if lastxoff < xoff then
   Par.CharPos[i].xoff := xoff - lastxoff
else Par.CharPos[i].xoff := 0;
lastxoff := xoff;
inc(xoff, w);

the local variable "xoff" however does'n't get increased because w remains 0.

I still can't figure out what changed between 5.20.9 and 5.24.3 that could have caused this behavior.

Final post, this is about as far as i can get with debugging:

WPRtedefs.pas

if FLastWasNL or ((not FLastWasSPC or (endx = 0)) and
      ((w > 0)
       or (xoff = 0)
       ) and 
      (((x  > endx) and (not bLastWasRightTab or (i <par> maxy)))

If this returns False then everything does seem to work, to get it to return false i've changed (w > 0) to (w = 0), but to be honest i'm just guessing here. I have no idea what the code is supposed to do so at this point i'm stuck. (EDIT: Warning: The change i made in the code "(w = 0)" is not correct!)

If this is fixed i can upgrade to the newest release.

Thanks in advance.

Your sample text gives me the problem i'm trying to describe.
The first space is not visible inside the mergefield if the following condition is set:

WPRichText1.InsertPointAttr.Hidden := True;

Instead of showing " FIELD1", it shows "FIELD1".

This is in V5.0 Release 24.3a

I'm sorry to keep pressing, but i can't figure this out and it's really important to me to find a solution for this problem.

That is a useful solution, thanks!

I'll post here if the problem is gone in a future release.

Problem is still there in release 5.25

I have added this to the code though, which seems to fix it (indicated in bold).

WPRTEDefs.pas (around line nr 39550)

if FLastWasNL or ((not FLastWasSPC or (endx = 0)) and
((w > 0)
or (xoff = 0)
) and
(((x > endx) and (not bLastWasRightTab or (i <par> maxy)))
and ((i = 0) or (par.ObjectRef[i - 1] = nil) or
(par.ObjectRef[i-1].ObjType <> wpobjMergeField))

That's right, i'm still not used to posting code on a forum (i must have edited my post at least 3 times)

I'm getting this problem on a new TWPRichText component, with all properties except insertpointattr.hidden set to default values, and all defines (WPInc.inc) also set to default.

Perhaps it is related to the Delphi version (i still use Delphi 5), i'll try this on Delphi 2006 to see if it makes any difference.

It might just be one of those programming mysteries.

Thanks anyway for all your help!

Tested on Delphi 2006, but no difference.