Tips & Tricks for your 4D Apps – October Edition
by Add Komoncharoensiri, Director of Technical Services at 4D Inc
Here we go with another set of tips and tricks.
The 4D Knowledge Base is a library of information about 4D technology where weekly tech tips and monthly tech notes are actively published. If you missed the last tips on the KB, that’s fine; here is a compilation from the past few weeks.
This blog post covers 19 tips:
4D Write Pro – Document Modification Detection
When a 4D Write Pro document is in edit mode, it’s often helpful to know if it has actually been modified by the end user. Based on this information, actions or interfaces can be adjusted to be more user-friendly.
Starting with 4D v19 R7, this is now easier than ever.
4D Write Pro: User-friendly Display of Formulas
Formulas are an integral part of 4D Write Pro documents. They allow the integration of a lot of information coming from the database. Creating documents and templates that include formulas, combined to physical constraints (number of pages, paper size), can lead to non-wysiwyg designs. A new mode of displaying formulas is now available to facilitate this design.
4D Write Pro: Carry Over Rows are Available!
Using tables in 4D Write Pro documents is more frequent, especially since it is possible to associate a datasource to them, which automatically feeds their rows!
As the number of rows gets more prominent, it is common for these tables to be automatically split into several parts to allow for a page or column break. In this situation, it is sometimes convenient to insert (automatically!) a “subtotal” line at the bottom of each part of the respective tables. Yes, that’s right, this is possible in 4D v19 R7 ?
Use 4D Write Pro to Create & Print a Batch of Documents
Whatever your business, you must create listings, inventories, tracking sheets, product sheets, invoices, and many other documents. These documents are usually printed or saved in PDF for archiving.
4D Write Pro is the ideal tool to create all your documents. Here is a list of several features available in 4D Write Pro that can help you make beautiful documents for printing:
- page layout and margin management for printing,
- pdf export,
- document protection,
- table creation,
- table formatting with repeated headers,
- definition of a data context,
- inserting ORDA formulas in a table (new in 4D v19 R6).
Using these different features, here are some examples of documents produced.
4D Write Pro: Disable Visibility of Empty Images
4D Write Pro documents can contain images from different sources and in various formats. These images may, in some cases, not be displayed for totally reasonable reasons — such as invalid URLs, formulas returning empty images, formats not supported by the platform, etc.
However, they are always represented by a small empty rectangle showing their theoretical location. If you want to change this behavior, 4D v19 R6 is shipped with a new view option enabling you to make empty images completely invisible.
4D Write Pro: Dynamically Fill Tables with Entity Selections & Collections
As developers, we often create complex and advanced 4D Write Pro documents. We may generate tables that need to be filled from a data source, and we may not be sure of the exact rows and columns. Manually filling the tables with data every time is a laborious task. We heard you, and here is where data context comes as an invaluable option, opening the world of ORDA and object-oriented development to 4D Write Pro documents.
It is now possible to define a “datasource” for the tables of 4D Write Pro. Whether it is an entity selection or a collection, this “datasource” will automatically feed the rows of these tables.
Let’s delve into the details!
New Tips & Tricks for your 4D Applications
by Add Komoncharoensiri, Director of Technical Services at 4D Inc
As you know, 4D Knowledge Base is a library of information about the 4D technology where weekly tech tips and monthly technotes are actively published. If you missed the last tips on the KB, that’s fine; here is a compilation from the past few weeks.
This blog post covers 12 tips:
What’s new in the 4D Write Pro Interface widget?
4D Write Pro offers many possibilities for both developers and end-users. A wide range of commands and standard actions are available for developers to create advanced and beautifully designed documents, while end-users are offered two feature-rich interface widgets.
Guess what 4D v19 R5 is bringing? Yes, we’ve added a set of features to the interface widget, such as management of line height!
Here are the new features in 4D v19 R5:
4D Write Pro: Say hello to table headers
Tables are an essential part of 4D Write Pro. They evolve regularly by offering new presentation options. For example, a table can be displayed on several columns or pages. The table headers are repeated at the top of each column or page to make it easier for the user to read.
Starting with 4D v19 R5, the table can be enhanced with headers.
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