Bullets lost from bulleted lists when using FastAppendText

I have an app in which I compose a "master" document from a bunch of smaller ones. All of these are WPTools documents. Composing the master document is done using FastAppendText.

There is a problem that if any of the smaller docs contain bulleted lists, the bullets are lost, i.e. they do not appear in the master document. Numbered lists seem to be ok. The list text is seen as expected, but just the bullet marks are not visible.

I already got advice from support to use the same RTFDataCollection for both (all) RTF engines, but I'm at loss how to do that, so I would appreciate a sample or any other "for dummies" level help.

I'm currently using WPTools version 6.05.8 and Delphi 2007.

TIA,
Antti Kurenniemi

Hiya,

thanks, I got a bit further now: it works correctly when all the editors involved are visual, created at design time, but not when there is an editor created dynamically at runtime (i.e. for reading the content from database).

I added an OnInitializedRTFData event for the dynamically created edit as well, and have checked that it gets called. It is assigning the same WPGlobalRTFProps object as for the other (visual) editors which is created in the form create event.

What should I do to create the editor dynamically? Right now (for this test anyway) I'm not doing anything except

TempEditor := TWPRichText.Create(nil);TempEditor.OnInitializedRTFData := Initialize_Temp;

And in the Initialize_Temp

RTFPropsObject := WPGlobalRTFProps;

I have further information about this. Seems the problem comes from where I load the editor content from the database. I load it from a Blob field and assign it to my "temp" editor (non-visual, created dynamically) using AsString - after this the formatting is wrong.

I tested assigning the text to the "temp" editor using FastAppendText, and then from there on to the "master" editor, and that worked just fine.

So now the problem is that I need to load the content from a database and assign it to a temp editor, after which the styles formatting is lost.

The whole thing is like this:

procedure TForm1.FormShow(Sender: TObject);
var
  TempEditor: TWPRichText;
begin
  // Copying via a temporary editor created on the fly doesn't work:
  TempEditor := TWPRichText.Create(nil);
  TempEditor.OnInitializedRTFData := Initialize_Temp;


  // Simply calling FastAppendText between two visible editors works correctly:
  Editor3.FastAppendText(Editor1);


  TempEditor.AsString := Editor2.AsString;     // This doesn't work - it causes the styles to be lost


//  TempEditor.FastAppendText(Editor2);        // This would work correctly, but I
                                               // need to use AsString when loading the
                                               // content from database


  Editor3.FastAppendText(TempEditor);
end;

There are Editor1 and Editor2, both containing a small piece of text with a bulleted list. Editor3 is empty at design time, and these two are merged into it. If I just do FastAppendText with both Editor1 and Editor2, it's ok, but not when the TempEditor is loaded from database using AsString.

Any ideas? Sorry to nag on about this, but it's pretty important for me to get this working somehow.

Jamier,

just this one thing:

RTFPropsObject := WPGlobalRTFProps;

The WPGlobalRTFProps object is of type TWPRTFProps and is a public variable in my unit. I initialize it in the form create event as

WPGlobalRTFProps := TWPRTFProps.Create;
WPGlobalRTFProps.Locked := TRUE;

and then assign the same object to each editor.

Hi Julian,

thanks, but still no go; it works as long as all the editors are inserted on the form at design time, but not if I create one at runtime, then it just messes the formatting. It actually now fails differently: the bullets are there, but bold text "leaks", i.e. everything after a single bold line is still bold.

This is the whole unit I have, nothing else:

unit Main;


interface


uses
  Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms,
  Dialogs, WPRTEDefs, WPCTRMemo, WPCTRRich, ExtCtrls;


type
  TForm1 = class(TForm)
    Editor1: TWPRichText;
    Editor2: TWPRichText;
    Editor3: TWPRichText;
    procedure FormShow(Sender: TObject);
    procedure Editor1InitializeRTFDataObject(Sender: TObject;
      var RTFDataObject: TWPRTFDataCollection; var RTFPropsObject: TWPRTFProps);
  private
    { Private declarations }
  public
    { Public declarations }
    WPGlobalRTFProps: TWPRTFProps;
  end;


var
  Form1: TForm1;


implementation


{$R *.dfm}


procedure TForm1.Editor1InitializeRTFDataObject(Sender: TObject;
  var RTFDataObject: TWPRTFDataCollection; var RTFPropsObject: TWPRTFProps);
begin
  if WPGlobalRTFProps = nil then
    WPGlobalRTFProps := TWPRTFProps.Create;
  RTFPropsObject := WPGlobalRTFProps;
end;


procedure TForm1.FormShow(Sender: TObject);
var
  TempEditor: TWPRichText;
begin
  TempEditor := TWPRichText.Create(nil);
  TempEditor.OnInitializeRTFDataObject := Editor1InitializeRTFDataObject;


  // Simply calling FastAppendText between two visible editors works correctly:
  Editor3.FastAppendText(Editor1, False, []);


  // This doesn't work - it causes the styles to be lost
  TempEditor.AsString := Editor2.AsString;
  Editor3.FastAppendText(TempEditor, False, []);
end;


end.

If I change the line TempEditor.AsString to TempEditor.FastAppendText(Editor2) (obviously clear it first), then it works, but like I said I need to read the content from a database so I cannot do that.

Thanks for your tips; unfortunately I still can't get this to work. I changed the dynamically created editor to be a TWPCustomRTFEdit, created using CreateDynamic, and that + the visual editor to which the combined document is created in are both using the same OnInitializeRTFDataObject event and are assigned the same TWPRTFProps object.

Bullets are still lost.

Am I doing this somehow wrong? My goal is to combine multiple (typically 50 - 100) smaller documents into one big document, and naturally I'd want all the formatting preserved. The smaller ones are created within my app, in WPRTFEdits and stored into a database.

Is there some other way I could approach this maybe?

Just an update: this was solved in an email exchange with the help from Julian (wpsupport). Turned out I was using AsString to load the contents, where I should have been using LoadFromString method. Once I changed to that, all the other help in this thread clicked into place and I'm now a happy camper :-)