Subject:various report designer prob;ems/ issues Author:Joe Robe Date:12 Jun 2007 09:01 AM
Hi,
I started to use the report designer, here are a few issues I have so far:
1.) Its use is very inconvenient. Obviously SS repaints everything on any keypress event. This together with struzzo eating up my cpu (see my other post) results in ugly delays when entering text.
2.) Unfortunately there is no draggable resizing of elements, this makes it difficult to create the design. One has to try and error by entering the width values manually.
3.) The XPath expressions screw up the cell width. Is there any way to switch off the xpath expression printing (like in Deramweaver you can say that xpath will only show as {} this fits in almost any cell.
4.) There is a BUG in cell width. With a table I can enter an integer value, in cell width I MUST add pt to it otherwise the transformation to xsl-fo will throw and "invalid cell width" error on rendering.
5.) I only see an IF command, but no xsl:when/xsl:otherwise. How can I create complex conditional expressions ?
Subject:various report designer prob;ems/ issues Author:Minollo I. Date:12 Jun 2007 09:25 AM
Joe,
others are looking into the issues you have reported; I'm sure they'll be back with more feedback. In the meanwhile, just a couple of comments:
- About #5: XML Publisher supports the ability to associate property values to XPath 2.0 expressions, which implies the ability to create if ... then ... else ... expressions; that a quite powerful way to control how your report looks like based on dynamic values.
If you rely on an explicit "if" block, you will notice that the block creates two tabs, "true" and "false", with obvious meaning
- About Stylus Studio eating up CPU; does it happen when you start it with no active documents? Or does it happen only when you open specific documents? Which documents precisely?
Subject:various report designer prob;ems/ issues Author:Joe Robe Date:12 Jun 2007 10:31 AM
Minollo,
unfortunately I am not able to reproduce the CPU problem ! Its just again at 50 %. I closed all and reopened the report and now its o.k. But after a while it than goes back up to 50 % ! So it ssems to be a combination of doing some commands which is the problem, very difficult to debug ! If there is anything I can do to help let me know.
NEW problem:
Setting text to bold results in calling a template name bold, which does not exist ! In report designer I can render, but once transformed to XSL, running that xsl crashes with message tamplate bold not found
Subject:various report designer prob;ems/ issues Author:Joe Robe Date:12 Jun 2007 10:49 AM
which means that every time I update I have more versions on my system not only eating up my ressources, but also leaving me with various SS in the startup menu ?
Subject:various report designer prob;ems/ issues Author:Minollo I. Date:12 Jun 2007 11:00 AM
Joe,
Stylus Studio issues two kind of updates:
- Maintenance updates: they apply to the same *version*, overwriting your existing installation with updated modules that fix defects; that doesn't cause new folders or duplicate entries to be created
- New version upgrades: they are logically new products, for which a valid AUP or license is required; and they don't affect your existing installation/license
2007 Release 2 is a new version, compared to what you are running (v2007); I haven't even checked if you are entitled to the free upgrade (AUP), because I thought it is more important that we understand if the most recent version addresses some of the problems you have reported.
If you are concerned about resources (disk space, I guess? Stylus Studio doesn't consume resources while it's not running), then you can remove your current v2007.
Subject:various report designer prob;ems/ issues Author:Joe Robe Date:12 Jun 2007 11:22 AM
sorry, I have to come back with more issues, this designer seems just not to be useable !
1.) Changing the font to bold of one text block changes ALL fonts to bold of any other text block inside a table.
2.) So I have to change those others back manullay, which takes about 10 SECONDS on a 2.8 HGZ dual core 2 GB ram machine ! I just click on font type, select bold and than it takes 10 seconds to complete !
Am I doing something wrong here ? Is that a know issue ?
Could you please share your XML report with our technical support (stylus-field-report@progress.com)?
Also you mentioned that you have changed font style to bold on a text block then you have seen other text blocks became bold as well.
Where those blocks nested inside the block where you have set the style to bold?
XML Publisher propagates the property values in the component hierarchy that what you may have experienced.
I send the report and XML data file to the address mentioned.
Propagating settings down in a hierarchy is a good idea but it should be optional so the user can select !
Anwyay, it woul dnot be such a bog deal, if it would not take 10 seconds to alter the changes ! If you have 20 rows and 3 columns, it will take you 10 minutes waiting just to change this ! This is of course unacceptable.