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johnp

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Hello,

 

I am evaluating uniGUI and new to it. I have some questions for web and web server use. I am converting an application that processes delivery orders from client sites. I have some questions. We currently use an older version of Intraweb, TMS (with form fill), and Fast Reports for PDF generation. I am using Delphi XE running under Windows XP. I am very impressed with uniGUI so far.

 

1.I am wondering how I can handle form fill options to allow users to automatically fill addresses in edit boxes or db fields, similar to lookups. I do not want the application to lookup data from a remote server as that would make things slow, plus each client has their own unique address list or data to fill in. What is the best way to handle this using only a web browser on the client side to fill in data with uniGUI.

 

2 Are there any working components or tools such as Fast Reports that can create a PDF file or form fill options that works for WEB applications now. Any success stories?

 

3.What other native Delphi or third party VCL components are developers using that can be used now with uniGUI. I would like to see about using other components. What other components are causing users grief and should one stay away from? Keeping in mind we are working under Windows. I look forward to chatting more about this with other users. Thanks.

 

On a side note. It would be nice to know more about the creators of the uniGUI product. The site does not tell me where you are from or located, or anything about yourself or company. You should be proud of your product and where you are from.

 

 

John P

Saskatoon Canada

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1.I am wondering how I can handle form fill options to allow users to automatically fill addresses in edit boxes or db fields, similar to lookups. I do not want the application to lookup data from a remote server as that would make things slow, plus each client has their own unique address list or data to fill in. What is the best way to handle this using only a web browser on the client side to fill in data with uniGUI.

Not sure what you are asking. Are you refering to storing data on the client, like in a cookie, which is then used to fill out the form?

2 Are there any working components or tools such as Fast Reports that can create a PDF file or form fill options that works for WEB applications now. Any success stories?

QuickReport works as well. It is a bit troublesome in ISAPI mode though. It is better to separate the reporting out into a background service that the web interface calls.

3.What other native Delphi or third party VCL components are developers using that can be used now with uniGUI. I would like to see about using other components. What other components are causing users grief and should one stay away from? Keeping in mind we are working under Windows. I look forward to chatting more about this with other users. Thanks.

None. You can only use the components supplied with UniGUI. There are a couple of example extensions made by users, which you can download in one of the other subforums, but no thirdparty packages. Keep in mind that this is still beta software, although it is stable and featureful as it is.

 

The key thing to understand is that the components are designed to use the Ext framework from Sensha for the web part. I believe that the goal is to wrap as many Ext controls as possible in UniGUI itself, leaving little to be added by third party developers. To create a custom component, you would both have to implement the custom VCL part, as well as an web implementation from scratch. Quite a chore, I would say, and I don't see much reason to do this.

 

Right now the idea is to keep as high feature parity between the VCL end and the Web framework as possible, but this could possibly change. There has been some discussion about possibly losening the focus on the VCL framework, in order to speed up development of the Web part, since this is the part that most people actually need. The VCL part of Unigui primarily serves as a way to design the Web layout of the forms. The people that actually plan to deploy both a VCL and Web version of their applications seem to be not that many compared to how many that only needs the Web framework.

On a side note. It would be nice to know more about the creators of the uniGUI product. The site does not tell me where you are from or located, or anything about yourself or company. You should be proud of your product and where you are from.

I should let Farshad answer that one. :)

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On a side note. It would be nice to know more about the creators of the uniGUI product. The site does not tell me where you are from or located, or anything about yourself or company. You should be proud of your product and where you are from.

 

 

This is very good question. It's very important for developers/project managers to minimize all risks, if we're responsible to our companies for software development/project management. We can't use any product if it's based on one person. Commercial projects can not be one man show. But actually we don't know who is in the uniGUI development team.

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Hello,

 

I am evaluating uniGUI and new to it. I have some questions for web and web server use. I am converting an application that processes delivery orders from client sites. I have some questions. We currently use an older version of Intraweb, TMS (with form fill), and Fast Reports for PDF generation. I am using Delphi XE running under Windows XP. I am very impressed with uniGUI so far.

 

Thank you.

 

1.I am wondering how I can handle form fill options to allow users to automatically fill addresses in edit boxes or db fields, similar to lookups. I do not want the application to lookup data from a remote server as that would make things slow, plus each client has their own unique address list or data to fill in. What is the best way to handle this using only a web browser on the client side to fill in data with uniGUI.

 

You can use ComboBoxes with pre-filled items. Of course, filling more complex structures like an address field needs more comprehensive client side coding. What type of auto-fill is your requirement?

 

2 Are there any working components or tools such as Fast Reports that can create a PDF file or form fill options that works for WEB applications now. Any success stories?

 

It is not within scope of uniGUI so it doesn't provide a reporting tools. You can successfully integrate any reporting tool with uniGUI. I personally use Fast reports with success.

 

3.What other native Delphi or third party VCL components are developers using that can be used now with uniGUI. I would like to see about using other components. What other components are causing users grief and should one stay away from? Keeping in mind we are working under Windows. I look forward to chatting more about this with other users. Thanks.

 

uniGUI has a visual special set of components which majority of them are based on Ext JS components. uniGUI has been closed source to the public and the receipt to create new components hasn't been shared yet. The reason for this is internal changes to the framework core which wlll be fixed in 0.90.0. Again, some of our developers have been able to create custom components which you can see in related section in our forums. At the correct stage when framework core is fixed the instructions to create custom component will be available.

 

As for non-visual components the main criteria here is thread safety. Component must be completely thread-safe. Which means multiple instances of same component should be usable in several threads which run simultaneously .

 

On a side note. It would be nice to know more about the creators of the uniGUI product. The site does not tell me where you are from or located, or anything about yourself or company. You should be proud of your product and where you are from.

 

Our small company is based in Ankara/Turkey and is registered under name of FMSoft. F & M are initial letters of company owners' first names. One can assume that F & M are my name and surname , but that assumption is wrong :)

 

Yes, I'm aware that company detailed info is not explicitly mentioned anywhere. Main reason is that product is still beta and current focus is 99% on product quality. I'm the main creator of the project and for the most of the part the only developer working directly on the product. Our other developers have been working on products based on uniGUI, not on the framework itself. Our main purpose of creating uniGUI was porting our end-user consumer desktop apps to the web. i.e. we created the uniGUI for ourselves in the first place.

There are plans to increase number of people who work on various sides of the framework. Again, I'm waiting for 0.90.0.

 

Thanks

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>> You can use ComboBoxes with pre-filled items. Of course, filling more complex structures like an address field >> needs more comprehensive client side coding. What type of auto-fill is your requirement?

 

I am wanting more complex structures, which would be address fields as well as other numeric data from a second file source.

 

It would have to work client side from the browser if possible, which I do not know is possible other than creating a client-server application independent from being controlled by a browser, which we already have.

 

Thank you for the rest of the information.

 

John P.

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This is very good question. It's very important for developers/project managers to minimize all risks, if we're responsible to our companies for software development/project management. We can't use any product if it's based on one person. Commercial projects can not be one man show. But actually we don't know who is in the uniGUI development team.

 

 

I do somewhat agree on the risk part, however many one man shows have seen lots of success, and for most of us that is how we start out as I did. Programming can be isolated and lonely. It has become my policy, and I believe it should be of everyone else that you should not buy or even try software from someplace you cannot verify, or somehow conclude that the product has potential to serve well, which I believe it does. Do I know there might be some kind of trap or back door, well the answer is no. For what I have seen the developer has demonstrated good intent here and wish him the best, and as they say here in Canada the law always gets their man if there is any wrong doing. The only risk that I see is if I try to make something out of something that is not possible and that is why I am doing due diligence for this product as I try to learn what are the limitations as this is quite new to me.

 

If it was a compiled application or eCommerce store I would totally stay away from any site without a phone number and address that I could not verify. There are too many scams out there. Which sadly I have fallen victim to. In this case I am going on more than a gut feeling which the news groups seems to support, but then again I could be wrong. We all have to take risks at some time and I am willing to gamble on this product for basic projects for now.

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Farshad may consider start "beta stage with paid support" including startup fees for licenses and/or support (i.e. 1/4 - 1/2 of the nominal price). Many of us can "donate" some money in this period so FMSoft can recruit other employees, boost the development process and we will have priority support, weekly builds and so on. The biggest "one man show" risk is the knowledge concentrated in one head only and the minimal substitution.

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Hi Farshad,

 

Count me for supporting FMSoft in some way.

 

My company is Enfotek Corp. from Izmir/Turkey. We are developing ERP platform on Windows base. And UniGui is seems the best way for integrate to Web.

 

Tugrul Tamturk

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procedure TFPreviewReport.ShowFastReport(AReport: TfrxReport; ATitulo : String = '');
var
 lFilePDF : String;
begin
 lFilePDF := AReport.Name + '_' + FormatDateTime('hhmmss.zzz',Now())+'.pdf';
 Self.Caption := 'Visualizar Relatório';
 Self.pnlTop.Caption := 'Relatório de ' + ATitulo;

 frxPDF.FileName := lFilePDF; //TfrxPDFExport
 frxPDF.ShowDialog := False;
 frxPDF.DefaultPath := UniServerModule.LocalCachePath;
 AReport.ShowProgress := False;
 AReport.PrepareReport;
 AReport.Export(frxPDF);
 FrameReport.URL := UniServerModule.LocalCacheURL + lFilePDF; //TUniURLFrame
 Self.Show;
end; 

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This is very good question. It's very important for developers/project managers to minimize all risks, if we're responsible to our companies for software development/project management. We can't use any product if it's based on one person. Commercial projects can not be one man show. But actually we don't know who is in the uniGUI development team.

 

It would be a perfect world if we all could minimize our risks to ZERO. In Delphi world majority of 3rd party component vendors are one-person entities. Those vendors that "look" like companies with many people are actually individual developers who work on different component sets and joined under a single brand name. If you don't want to rely on one person then you'll be having a hard time finding good 3rd party components for Delphi. The reason behind this is size of Delphi market which is small compared to .NET and other development tools. Delphi is still a big player, but not as big as it was once before. So generally speaking not many companies would take the risk of investing in Delphi 3rd party components without knowing the pay off in advance. That's why majority of Delphi components start as one-man endeavor. One man can take many risks without sacrificing lots of resources and continue working on the project alone. Same is true for uniGUI and FMSoft. At very beginning we started as a very small team, but as time passed I realized that developing the main core, which was my responsibility, was advancing too slow to allow other team members do anything useful on their parts. So I decided to work on product alone until it passes a certain level of majority. Once that threshold is passed and core architecture becomes intact I plan to draw more people into picture to speed up development.

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