Take your imagination to the limit with 4D v17 and 4D Write Pro – Caroline from the 4D Summit 2018
As 4D v17 approaches, it’s worth taking a moment to pause and think of all the possibilities 4D Write Pro has to offer. For those who have extensive 4D Write programming skills and are wondering if 4D Write Pro can compare, this blog post will answer this question and more! We’ll even give you a database example of a complex travel brochure to show you what 4D Write Pro is capable of and how it’s surpassed 4D Write in many areas! And if you’re still hesitant about whether or not to take the plunge, watch this 4D Write Pro video from the 4D Summit 2018 featuring Caroline Briaud, where she presents the capabilities of 4D Write Pro and how far you can go to create complex documents.
How to easily handle text insertion in 4D Write Pro
4D Write Pro packs in a lot of commands and functions allowing you to create and handle complex documents by programming, documents which include pictures and text! Today, 4D Write Pro gets its own commands to insert and read text without needing to use commands originally designed for Styled Text! Thanks to these new commands, your code takes full advantage of the 4D Write Pro programming concepts, i.e. objects and ranges. Thus, your code is more elegant and easier to read!
Get the position of any part of a 4D Write Pro document
4D Write Pro is continuously evolving; thanks to the new features and functionalities we’re shipping with every R-release. A world of possibilities is wide open! Today, thanks to a new command, you can get a set of information about the location of any element within your documents.
Use table ranges in 4D Write Pro
Since 4D v16 R4, it’s been possible to create tables by programming in your 4D Write Pro documents. Styling the whole table or just certain cells could be done during the creation of the document, but maybe you also want to manage your tables afterwards. Now, it’s easy to manipulate tables in an existing document, to change the border style or color, to change the font size or make it bold, etc.
4D Write Pro programming is highly based on “ranges“. After paragraph ranges and picture ranges, 4D v17 introduces a new type of range: table ranges, returned by a new command: WP Create table range. Styling tables is now simple with this new command and new type of range!
Programmatically access elements in 4D Write Pro
4D Write Pro keeps offering more and more programming capabilities! Let’s say you want to programmatically change the style of a table, paragraph, or image in an existing 4D Write Pro document. With 4D v17, it’s possible! Now you can access any element or part of a document, by programming. These parts, called elements, will be returned either as a collection thanks to the WP Get elements function, or as a single element with WP Get element by ID function.
Create multi-column documents in 4D Write Pro
Sometimes the information you include in your document is best displayed in columns. Not only can columns help improve readability, but some types of documents – newspaper articles, newsletters, flyers, etc. – are often written in column format. The good news is that with 4D v17, you can henceforth create multi-column documents with 4D Write Pro! And beyond document creation, you can also convert your existing 4D Write documents containing multiple columns.
As in the 4D Write plugin, it’s possible to define the number of columns for an entire document. But here’s a good example where 4D Write Pro exceeds 4D Write: you can also set a different number of columns … per section!
How to create a newsletter in 4D Write Pro
4D Write Pro is a powerful text engine, entirely programmable, and fully integrated into 4D and its database. It has an unlimited number of uses. Beyond generating complex documents by programming, or creating letters and quotes as in classic word processors, 4D Write Pro allows you to easily publish your documents on the web.
Images in absolute position in 4D Write Pro
Pictures speak louder than words, or so they say. In fact, according to researchers the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than words. 4D Write Pro is constantly evolving, version after version, to support more and more picture-related features. After in-line pictures and background pictures, 4D v16 R6 gives you the full control over picture insertion at a specific position in a document, in front of or behind text, as well as anchored to the page or specific parts of the document (i.e., header, footer, sections).
4D Write Pro: use leading characters for tabs
No matter what line of work you are in, you may want to know how to use tabs (left, right, center, decimal tab). They are quite useful as, for example, they allow you to structure documents by separating and indenting your information.
In typography and design, details matter. But getting details just right can be quite time-consuming. 4D Write Pro now provides an additional functionality to fine tune your design in an instant: leading characters. You know the repeated dots or other characters in a table of contents … the ones that go from the end of the text in your first column to the beginning of the text in the second column? That’s them!
Create a 4D Write Pro brochure in 5 minutes!
Check out our video showing how easy it is to create an elegant brochure with 4D Write Pro, including the painter’s bio (his life, references and so on), as well as a collection of his paintings accompanied by descriptions. Finally, you’ll learn how to easily add a different front and back cover to complete the brochure.
Of course, creating other kinds of brochures, i.e. for real estate agencies, pharmaceutical laboratories, travel agencies, etc… is just as simple. So take a look and start coding now!
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