[ic] Donation: report-table UserTag

Grant listbox at email.com
Sun Nov 16 12:06:06 EST 2003


> On Sunday 16 November 2003 12:46, Grant wrote:
> > That sounds like it could be useful for formatting a printable
> invoice or
> > receipt to go to the customer.  Have you used it for that?
>
>  It could be used for that, in fact I am using it to create a printable
> inventory. I've been thinking about expanding its capabilities so
> it could
> replace the code that generates the shopping basket report, too.
> I'd have to
> make it use $Items as the data source before that could be done, though.
> Anyway, it's too easy to get carried away with a hammer; not
> everything is a
> nail.
>
>  The main application I developed it for is a property management
> system (for
> managing buildings, apartments, and the tenants who rent them).
> There's a lot
> of data to be viewed, and these kind of applications live and die by the
> reports they can generate.
>
>  Pre-defined reports are easy enough to do with a [query] tag,
> but it gets a
> lot harder if you want to implement a way for the user to configure the
> report herself, even just to toggle columns on and off, or
> re-arrange their
> order. So the tag only displays the columns you pass to it, and
> in the order
> you pass them.
>  It would be very easy to write a form with a multi-select box,
> and use the
> selections from that widget to define the columns used in the
> report. It'd
> also be easy to let the user chose which columns are used for headers.
>
>  The reason why I added support for widgets was so I could do a
> "who paid the
> rent" screen. The report lists all the due rents, and each row
> has widgets
> for entering the amount paid, the check #, and the date. The nice
> thing is
> that columns in the report don't have to correspond to columns in
> the query
> results. You can create a virtual column just by adding its name
> to the list.
>
>  BTW: I made a few dumb typos in the documentation that might
> make some things
> a bit confusing. Sorry about that. I'm going to post an updated
> version to my
> web site later.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Chris Wenham - Synesmedia, Inc.

That sounds great.  Thanks for donating!

- Grant



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