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Posted by: softcomlimited on 19 September 2022, 1:15 am EST
softcomlimited
Posted 19 September 2022, 1:15 am EST
I just upgraded from AR12 to AR16 and I notice that the standalone designer does not seem allow you to highlight the text in a RichTextBox on a xml section-report and use the toolbar to change font, color etc. All the buttons are disabled.
Am I missing something?
I did try changing Compatability from GDI to CrossPlatform but nothing.
Thanks
Brian
softcomlimited
Posted 19 September 2022, 1:56 am EST
I also notice that regardless of Compatability setting, once I create with AR16 and put a RichTextBox and save, using AR12 gives “is not a valid report file”
If I use AR12 to create the report to start formatting the text and then save it and then open it in AR16 I am now able to use formatting toolbar, make changes and save and still use AR12 to open the same file.
Thanks
Brian
softcomlimited
Posted 19 September 2022, 2:19 am EST
I realise that in AR16 I must first delete all of the text in the RichTextBox, click outside of the RTB, then I can double-click in the RTB and start entering my text that can be formatted, and also edited in AR12. If I don’t click outside before entering my text it does not work. Clumsy but it works.
Thanks
Brian
akshay.rajput
Posted 21 September 2022, 1:53 am EST - Updated 15 February 2023, 1:33 am EST
Hello Brian!
>> I notice that the standalone designer does not seem allow you to highlight the text in a RichTextBox on a xml section-report and use the toolbar to change font, color etc
Highlighting HTML tag ‘mark’ text is not supported in Section Reports. If you want to highlight text I would suggest you to use the background-color property and style the text to show highlighted text.
Here’s a sample HTML:
<html><body><p>This is a test HTML Text with <span style="background-color:#FFFF00;">a HIGHLIGHTED text</span>.</p>
</body></html>
Here are all the HTML tags and attributes supported in the HTML Render of the RichTextBox:
The RichTextBox control does not support editing RTF/HTML format in the RichTextBox control using the Toolbar. If you want to change the text formatting please add it in the HTML/RTF code itself by using different tags and attributes.
For Example:
HTML Plain text:
<html><body><p>This is a sample text.</p></body></html>
Formatted output:
<html><body><p><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">This is a <strong>sample</strong> <span style="color:#ff0000">text</span>.</span></p></body></html>
>> I also notice that regardless of Compatability setting, once I create with AR16 and put a RichTextBox and save, using AR12 gives “is not a valid report file”
Many changed have occurred in ActiveReports Section Reports since ActiveReports 12. Such as new properties like CompatibilityMode ActiveReports 12 does not handle changes that made in the later versions where as ActiveReports 16 does handle many of such changes to support previous versions. For example, we set the CompatibiltyMode to default when no compatibility mode is selected.
Please note we do not recommend moving between different versions of designers when designing reports as it can lead to unexpected behavior.
>> If I don’t click outside before entering my text it does not work. Clumsy but it works.
We have set it to double click to open edit mode because many of our customers don’t really edit the RichTextBox control at design-time manually. The popular use case is to either load a pre-designed file or set the formatted text at run-time using code.
An alternative method to open edit mode is to simply select the RichTextBox control and start typing. This will automatically show the control in edit mode.
Apologies for the inconvenience. We understand it can be a little infuriating when you are seasoned user of an older version of ActiveReports and have to see such changes. However please understand ActiveReports 12 is an legacy product and we have updated the product a lot since then.
Based on the above mentioned approached for highlighting text I have also created a sample report with highlighted text in html and attached it along with.
I hope this resolves your issue.
softcomlimited
Posted 21 September 2022, 4:40 am EST
Mr Rajput,
Thanks for your reply.
I should have used the word “select” rather than “highlight” as you then misunderstood my scenario.
In my case my end-users normally make their own mail-merge reports using RichTextBox v12 end-user designer. Now that I upgraded to v16 the new designer seems not as “practical” so as you suggested I will let them continue with the v12 one or maybe I will look at the v14 one to see if it is similar to v12.
Thanks for the info
Brian
