report builder examples needed

[Alex Rice]

On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 03:04  AM, Jan Schenkel wrote:

> First of all, I couldn't agree more : a good demo
> would go a long way towards opening it up ; the good
> people at Revolution HQ insist that all the parts are
> there to build wonderful reports ; but the absence of
> a sample stack leaves us all scratching our heads.

Plea to RR HQ:

I'm a smart guy (sort of) and Jan is surely one of the brightest 
programmers on the list and we are both scratching our heads about the 
Report Builder. Please provide a tutorial and a demo stack.

> To be honest with you, this seems like one heck of a
> detour. So if I'm misreading the backScript, I'd sure
> like to know. In fact, I'd love to be wrong.

Interesting... it does raise more questions for me about Report Builder 
though.

Report Builder is supposed to save it's settings to the "this card" 
where "this card" is the sole card on the stack, i.e. the report layout 
card. But Report Builder has a print range tab, with selection for 
ranges of cards. I would expect that to refer to the cards on the stack 
of "this card" which we think should only have 1 card. Also, in the 
inspector for a report viewer, one can select a source object from any 
stack and any card! So the print range is totally ambiguous: it could 
apply to card ranges on:

- "report/layout stack" (1 card or multiple cards?)
- stack 1 of source objects
- stack 2 of source objects
- ... stack N of source objects

Which means what? We have to always use the expression builder for 
cards in Print Range, and somehow tell it not to traverse the card(s) 
in the report layout stack?

AAARRGH <- sound of me needing more coffee :-)


Alex Rice, Software Developer
Architectural Research Consultants, Inc.
http://ARCplanning.com