Evaluating StimulSoft's Report.WPF

[PJoyeux]

Hi,

I am in the process of evaluating your "Report.WPF" Package and comparing it to competitors. I was able to achieve many of my goals and it looks like your tool might be the winner, but I am a little annoyed or better worried about the quality of the Helpfile (CHM-File) provided with the trial-version.

This CHM-File seems to be nothing more than a mere list of all classes and their properties/methods/events. There is next to no explanation regarding the use or meaning of a given class and its parts. Neither are there examples. To make things worse, I found out that the CHM-file seems to be clearly outdated compared to the online-version of the documentation.

Luckily the "Developper-FAQ" and the "Programming Manual" helped me to gather my first impressions and I was able to check whether my requirements are met (albeit leaving a lot of question-marks since it does not address nearly all classes...).

But I would like to know whether or not this problem is confined to the trial-version. I see that this tool is very powerful and it looks like I could achieve everything I need with it, but I need to be able to master it completely, hence the need of a thorough documentation.

Thanks for your answer!

Cheers,
Pascal

PS: I am not talking about the end-user documentation which seems to be of good quality. I am talking about the developper-documentation...

[Andrew]

Hello,

Thank you for the inquiry.

We highly appreciate your efforts to use our product and very thankful for you find it very good for your needs.

I admit that our documentation is far from perfect but I would like to say that due to intuitiveness of UI, our tool is very easy to learn. The programming aspects are also based on standard procedures. We do the best to improve the documentation to make it as good and friendly as possible. The product is very complicated to cover everything at one time.

In case you have specific issues with our tool, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are happy to help you.

Thank you.

[PJoyeux]

By the way, speaking of documentation, I just redownloaded your file "StiReport.chm" and it looks like it is still dated from January 2010!

Is there really no newer help-file somewhere? I have downloaded it from http://www.stimulsoft.com/en/documentation

Cheers,
Pascal

[Andrew]

Hello,

We do not update our .chm file because it is almost impossible to create it from time to time. The size of the file is really huge.
Please use our online Class Reference at http://admin.stimulsoft.com/documentati ... index.html

Thank you.

[PJoyeux]

Hello,

We do not update our .chm file because it is almost impossible to create it from time to time. The size of the file is really huge.
Please use our online Class Reference at http://admin.stimulsoft.com/documentati ... index.html

Thank you.

Unfortunately, this web-help is really slow and I haven't found a way to search therein...

[HighAley]

Hello.

Do not hesitate to ask us if you have any questions.

Thank you.

[PJoyeux]

Hi,

in the meantime I have completely integrated StimulSoft in my application and build my own architecture and library around it.
I am still impressed by the many options and settings one can use!

But I must say that I am disappointed by your documentation. I spend to much time looking for things... You pointed my towards the online-documentation (http://admin.stimulsoft.com/documentati ... index.html) but even there things are missing and its from 2012:

Bild 1.png (39.3 KiB) Viewed 5675 times

So in the end, I end up having to use the forum. I know that I will get my answers there, but this takes days...

An Example: I am looking for a way to set up the used EscapeCodes in the Matrix-Preview window. There are two lists of codes for "EpsonFX" and "Oki ML92/93". I know they are saved in EscapeCodesCollectionList but where can I set the collection to be used for rendering and printing? I want to use "EpsonFX" each time I print/preview a report and have to set this via code.

Usingto the documentation I had access to, I found out that

• PrintToDotMatrixPrinter doesn't seem to have an overload where I could tell which EscapeCodesCollection to use.
• StiOptions.Viewer.DotMatrix has all visible options of the Dot-Matrix-Preview-Window except the one I need, the dropdown with the EscapeCodesCollections

So I reverted to trial&error and entered PrintToDotMatrixPrinter in VisualStudio and suddenly the CodeCompletion showed my that PrintToDotMatrixPrinter has an overload which offers exactly the setting that I need...

If your documentation would have been up to date, I would have spared a few hours... Or if the online-documentation could have a SEARCH-Functionality, I would have been quicker too, since it is described therein (event if not really completed):

Bild 4.png (79.42 KiB) Viewed 5675 times

And I still do not know how to do it with the preview. I have found "StiWpfRibbonViewerControl.ViewerControl.InvokeDotMatrixMode()" which works ok, but how can I set the uses Escape-Code-Collection there? I have found that StiOptions.Viewer.DotMatrix does NOT have a corresponding property "UseEscapeCodes". I need the following checkbox to be checked and "EpsonFX" to be set:

Bild 3.png (48.01 KiB) Viewed 5675 times

I will most certainly buy your component in the next weeks but I am really disappointed by the lack of accurate documentation.

Cheers,
Pascal

[HighAley]

Hello.

We have several products every one have several components and there is one universal documentation for all of it.
We make many changes in every build but the documentation is updated for our major releases only.
About class reference we didn't update it last time because it's better to use Object Browser in Visual Studio where you will see all new classes, methods and properties exactly after you update to the next build. You could also find there a short description of each member.

We need some time to prepare an answer about DotMatrixMode.

Thank you.

[HighAley]

Hello.

This option is not often used. So there is no static option to change it.
You could set necessary settings with next code:

Code: Select all

StiSettings.Load();
StiSettings.Set("Viewer", "UseEscapeCodes", true);
StiSettings.Set("Viewer", "EscapeCodesCollectionName", "EpsonFX");
StiSettings.Save();

We have also added static options to set these options:

Code: Select all

StiOptions.Viewer.DotMatrix.UseEscapeCodes
StiOptions.Viewer.DotMatrix.EscapeCodesCollectionName

These static options will be available in our next prerelease build.

Thank you.

[PJoyeux]

...
We have also added static options to set these options:

Code: Select all

StiOptions.Viewer.DotMatrix.UseEscapeCodes
StiOptions.Viewer.DotMatrix.EscapeCodesCollectionName

These static options will be available in our next prerelease build.

Thank you.

Thanks, I found those options in 2014.1.1806.

Cheers,
Pascal