Until now I have used
<Label Text="Some Text"</Label>
to present text for the user. However, I was wondering if this is the correct way to render big premade text strings with bullets etc. or if there is another, more neat way to do it?
I have used a WebView in the past with a transparent background. That allows as much markup as needed and is fairly easy to do. Though I have also just used a simple Label and added a bunch of \n's and \t's to make it look like a formatted document. I think it depends on your preference, the layout you are putting the element in, and if the text will be dynamically pulled or not.
There are also markdown plugins you can add that will format mark down text so thats another option. Something like this (I have not tried this plugin myself btw).
I'm working on an app for Macintosh. I want to have the user be able to click inside a PDF rendered onscreen and have an annotation appear where they clicked (or selected). Should/can I use PDFKit for this? I looked at the classes, but PDFSelection seems to deal with text, not coordinates. Specifically, I want to know which classes I should use to achieve this. I've read the PDFKit programming guide, but I'm still not quite clear as to the path forward.
Apple provides sample code, PDF Annotation Editor, its description is:
This sample application uses PDF Kit to examine, edit, and create PDF annotations. It has an inspector panel that shows various attributes of supported annotations. The inspector allows users to edit those values. Additionally, annotations can be created and the code demonstrates how to use PDF Kit to do this. Also, the sample code demonstrates subclassing of PDFAnnotationStamp in order to override the draw method and draw your own custom annotation content. Finally, the sample code demonstrates subclassing PDFView in order to overlay your own content over the PDF content being displayed.
This would appear to answer your questions, in particular look at mouseDown in PDFEditView.
HTH
I have a map that is 40x50 that shows when the visitor comes to the website, i would like the visitor to click the map which puts in topmost actual size 400x500 and everything beneath is blacked out, when they click off the pic it will simply vanish.
I have seem it happen in many galleries but can't seem to find one i can recode and don't even know what the actual process of doing this is called.
I believe the word you're looking for is lightbox.
See this: http://lokeshdhakar.com/projects/lightbox2/
By the way, tags are for tagging what languages you are using. Appropriate tags for this post would probably be html and javascript. The image tag is alright, but without context, it's difficult to figure out how your are trying to implement it.
Does anyone knows about any editor allowing to visually design a form (by form I do not mean DFM or Delphi form, but a "paper form", like those pre-printed forms that you fill with some info) and that generates pascal commands to draw that form in a Printer (or Image) canvas?
What I want is an easy way to draw/design this form visually, composed just by lines and text, and a way to convert this to Pascal commands that when run, will draw that form in a Canvas (Image or Printer), respecting the original layout and scale, doesn't matter the Canvas DPI where it is being drawn.
Update: Maybe I wasn't clear enough about what I need and why I need it. I developed an Open Source component called TFreeBoleto (freeboleto.sf.net). It is used to generate and print bank billets (a common method for billing people in Brazil). Right now, the component uses a TBitmap image containing the "billet" mask, and TextOut methods for the dynamic areas (ie: billet number, customer name, etc). It is fine when looked in the screen, but some people complains that the quality of the printed image is not good. The component uses a BltTBitmapAsDib procedure to maximize the quality of printing, but some people still think it is not good enough. So, my idea was to avoid using a bitmap image as the form layout, and draw everything direct in the canvas (both form and printer). Check here for a sample of what a bank billet looks like.
Of course ReportBuilder and/or FastReport could solve the problem, but they are not free, so I cannot include it in the component. I need "native" solution that any standard Delphi install would be able to compile.
You might get what you want out of the Fast Reports Report Designer which is a commercial reporting system for Delphi. Remember that a report is just a page. That page can be shown on the screen or printed on the printer.
You also might find that something like TRichView helps you.
Whether using TRichView in particular or not, I would look into using HTML to do what you want. I would use HTML+CSS to do both a screen and printer layout, that can also be viewed on the web. For simple text layout plus text boxes I think even bare HTML and HTML tables might be sufficient. To visually design simple text pages, using a Delphi application, I would use TRichView.
In both cases, you would be creating documents, not code. To create code that creates a page, without using any document system, would be very difficult indeed, and I am not sure what you would really do with that code, since you would need a compiler or interpreter to convert that code into something that you could use. Please clarify what you mean by "creating code", and what syntax you would want that code to be using. If HTML is code in your definition of "code" then maybe HTML is the best kind of "code" for your problem.
I do my form-work with WPTools. It is also a commercial product. The core is a very good wordprocessor and form-designer. The engine can render text and forms to any canvas (screen, printer, also create pdf) and is highly flexible. Output is mainly rtf and html.
I also see no advantage in creating pascal code to redraw the form. What you need, i think, is a good WYSIWYG-editor which creates a document that fits your needs.
Check out ReportBuilder # http://www.digital-metaphors.com/
It is a commercial reporting tool for Delphi - around a long time, very high quality, with all native Delphi source code packaged with it. I am using it for an important commercial project right now and I recommend it highly (I'm not working for them.) I've used MANY Delphi reporting tools over the years and this one is the best IMO.
RBuilder also has extensive support for paper form emulation see:
http://www.digital-metaphors.com/products/report_design/form_emulation.html
I haven't worked with that feature, but you can download a full-featured demo and try it.
Yoy can use Adobe Acrobat (full version) to create forms.
Then you can use free Acrobat Reader to display and print forms or other COM object in your application.
I think it is best solution for you.
PS
All tools for reports that are included in Delphi are free for you to design form and are free to distribute if user only preview and print already designed reports.
The same is valid for Adobe Acrobat (you may distribute forms) but you have added that you need to print form and some text over form. Maybe it is easier if you use reports but it is possible to do the same using PDF.
Most report engines are not open source but are free to distribute. There is many components for creating PDF - paid (one time), free, as well as open source.
PPS
I have read your updete for second time. Since you are using TBitmap and you can to TextOut so: You can use TMetafile. There is many editors for metafiles and it is free to distribute metafiles.
I thought I read somewhere that there is a way to embed drawings or other non-text in a text view, but I can't find anything about it in the Apple documentation. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I'm trying to build an editor, not just a view. I'm imagining a special character in the underlying text, and based on text attributes, it would reserves some blank space in the text layout. ? Or maybe I need to layout blocks myself, using NSTextContainers and a custom NSView to flow text around graphics?
Take a look into the NSTextAttachment and NSTextAttachmentCell. You can do your own custom drawing when you subclass the NSTextAttachmentCell.
Apple docs: Text Attachment Programming Topics