Where IS the Report Builder?

[Jim Lyons]

The recent discussions about printing in Rev have come along at a 
propitious time for me. I have a data stack with about five fields per 
record, only a couple hundred records. The data eventually gets 
exported to a page layout program in RTF, but I was trying to make it 
easy for users to get check prints of various subsets of the data. I 
built a printing stack as recommended here and assembled the data into 
one tab delimited field. Using Chipp's and Jacque's tips, I have been 
able to make this work, more or less. I have learned a lot while doing 
this, and discovered things in the docs I didn't see before, like 
revPrintText.

Along the way I found revPrintReport. It makes reference to the "Report 
Builder" on the Tools menu, but it's not in my copy. (Rev v2.5 on Mac 
OS 10.3) Most of the See Also links are broken. Entering "report" in 
the filter field under Topics produces no hits. Only revPrintReport 
comes up in the Dictionary.

So I searched the list archives. (What a pitiful way to try to find any 
specific information, but I'll save that for another rant...) I found 
out that the Search-the-List stack, which is still referenced in 
RevNet, is no longer available. So I spent a little time reading the 
Google advanced search tips since I couldn't remember how to search 
just our discussion list. After I didn't find anything about 
restricting the search, I just tried "use-revolution report builder" 
and got a few hits. They were other people asking the same question, 
and answers that applied to the previous version of Rev. Sigh.

Finally, to be thorough, I went to the FAQ section of our docs and 
immediately found "How do I create a custom printed report?" This 
appears to be the latest up-to-date advice, which is essentially what I 
had already done: build it yourself with a special stack. There is no 
mention of a Report Builder.

So I conclude the answer to the subject line is, "The Report Builder no 
longer exists." Maybe this will save someone else the time of looking 
further, if they search the archives and happen to come across this 
message....

Lest you think I am a curmudgeon, the bottom line is that I was able to 
get done what I needed in Rev. I love working with Rev. I just want the 
docs to be accurate, and for us to find a better way of creating a 
Knowledge Base for using Rev than we have so far. Sorry for a rambling 
rant.

Jim Lyons