[Gambas-user] Who use gb.report ? (to all gambas users)

[jm]

On Thu, 2012-08-30 at 13:11 +0200, Fabien Bodard wrote:
> This is my query...
> 
> If you use it tell me what you want to see as improvement... The problems
> with it.
> 
> If you are not using it but need printing or generate reports. Tell me why
> you are not using it.
> 
> Thank you
> 
> Fabien Bodard


I always wondered what the point of a 'report generator' is when
you already have an open source office suit such as LibreOffice
out there.

All you would need to do is auto-pilot LibreOffice from Gambas programs
and drive it with data generated from inside gambas. Then all the best
reports in best laid out fonts, spreadsheets, presentations, etc, can be
auto generated with all the hard work done LibreOffice!!

Doubly better if the files that LibreOffice opens such as spread sheets
can be processed to read the data from the spread sheet back into
Gambas.

Since source code is available for LibreOffice, I assume, its just a
matter of telling LibreOffice developers to make some APIs (if they
don't exist already) that oil this idea through to completion.

The same idea would work with other software such as gimp to generate
images, inkscape to generate vector graphics, LibreCAD to generate
CAD files from Gambas, 3D files with openscad, custom copper shapes in
KiCAD, Cheese to take photos, something to talk to evolution and
calendar, etc..

So in short, if you got source code, and you are not beholden on a
third party to take the next step, then why not work with the other open
source projects extend gambas to 
directly control some of the more common packages with emphasis on
the transfer of data back and forth? Report generation is a small and
outdated idea that we forget it only applies to software that has been
walled. Everything that a report generator does is a duplication of
what a word processor already does. And its unlikely to beat it.

If it were down to me, I'd get rid of anything that looks like
binary data, and make all transfer of data through
simple text files which can be more readily inspected and debugged.