The JADE 2022 release meets tomorrow’s business demands.
The purpose of this JEDI is to solicit ideas for enhancing the Report Writer feature.
To start with this would include include copy and paste of fields like literals and a redesign of the F6 data list to allow searching and collapsing of the structure.
John Richards
Here is a list of the requested changes in the comments. If the checkbox is ticked then it has been completed.
Thank you all for your suggestions!
selected item in the designer should stand out more
by default the selected items are now purple
you can modify the selection colour in the preferences
add copy/paste functionality for designer literals
add search functionality to the catalog like F4 in the JADE class browser
the catalog now has a listbox that can be filtered
you can also focus this listbox with F4
catalog should make class members be collapsible under its class name to make navigating easier
add a way to distinguish between database fields that do not return a value
add option to set the file encoding of an extracted report
I don't know if this is still under review or not (I can make a new JEDI if needs be) but something else we've found would be useful (particularly in Unicode environments) is for an 'Output Encoding' drop down (or similar) to go under the 'Extract' options on the Output tab of a reports properties.
With the field allowing the user to specify if the report is saved in either ANSI, UTF-8, 16, 32 ... etc, and whether the BOM should be included or not.
We're thinking it only really makes sense for the BOM to be optional on the UTF-8 option... but if it were to be made a checkbox, that would work too.
All of the suggestions so far are really good ideas that would add a lot more convenience and practicality to JRW.
Search functionality should display the fields under respective classes or display them when the mouse hovers to be able to clearly identify which field is what.
100 % agree with Daves comment below - copy/paste functionality should not be limited to literals only but should also allow copy of database fields and also across multiple Reports.
In Catalogue, a lot of database fields do not return any value, is it possible to mark them in a separate color (if not remove them) , this will make life easier. Or make all the fields that return a value in bold.
Expanding on Andrew's Suggestion 2 - allow copy / paste to work the way it does in the painter, i.e. copy / paste in the same report design, but also across report designs. So you can take attributes / literals / database fields etc from existing designs to a new design
Suggestion 4. Put attributes and collections under their classes and allow the class to be collapsible, this would really improve the usability of the catalog.
Suggestion 3. F6 Catalog to have F4 search functionality.
The System sheet on the Catalog dialog is really difficult to use. Suggest a search function that high lights matching classes and attributes.
Suggestion 2. Add Copy and Paste functionality for literals.
When building a report quite a lot of literals are needed, a copy and paste function would be great if it copied the literal and all of its formatting. There is a delete option, but need cut, copy and paste.
Suggestion 1. Make selected items stand out more.
In the attached example the literal with 'ANDREW' in it is selected, but it is hard to know that it is. Then to make this clearer, maybe a different colour or bolder out line etc.
The purpose of this JEDI is to solicit ideas for enhancing the Report Writer feature.
To start with this would include include copy and paste of fields like literals and a redesign of the F6 data list to allow searching and collapsing of the structure.