About WPTools Professional

Add word processing capability to your Delphi applications.

WPTools is a set of components for word processing that includes powerful mail merge, a complete set of text property dialogs, ruler and toolbar. It has all the format features you need: justified text, different kinds of tab-stops, graphics, hyperlinks, outlines, indentation and spacing, different fonts, sizes and colors. It also supports headers and footers.

This VCL component suite includes editor components, dialogs and all the important GUI controls to integrate word processing into any Delphi application. The standard package already handles hyperlinks, headers and footers, paragraph styles, bookmarks, RTF, HTML (also HTML/CSS), tables and graphics. The page layout view provides a complete WYSIWYG preview of the page, including display of headers and footers. Integrate this component suite into your application to guarantee that your end users experience the comfort and ease they have come to expect from standard word processing programs.

WPTools allows you to create an impressive word processor. Or take advantage of WPTools' multitude of powerful features to expand the ability of your application. For example:

Movable graphics: The standard setting on this feature allows you to handle a graphic like a character. When this is changed the graphic can be handled relative to a paragraph, with the text floating either to the right or left of the graphic.

Mail-merge: This feature allows you to integrate fields into your document and insert text or graphics at a certain position. Formatted text is also possible. True, other tools can do this, too, but WPTools goes even further and lets you read out the merged text back into the database. This means that if your end-user changed or completed merged text in the letter created, your application can read this information. Depending on your program you can either re-import the updated information or create a new database. Plus, the data fields remain visible so it is possible to update the data or insert new data in a previously merged letter at any time.

Bookmarks: WPTools supports bookmarks. Bookmarks are handled as start/end tags so they can be nested easily and can optionally be displayed in the text. When the closing bookmark is deleted it will automatically delete the opening bookmark as well.

Numbering and Bullets: Internally WPTools provides several pre-defined numbering and bullet styles. However, the dialog provided also makes it possible for you to create your own. Numbering can be done with letters (A,B,C), Latin numbers (1,2,3) or Roman numbers (I,II,III) which can be preceded with a "[" or "{" or followed with a "]", "}", "." or a ")". The powerful numbering procedure even provides up to 9 levels for outlines and the dialog also makes it easy to add your favorite bullet styles with the symbol(s) and font of your choice. Legal numbering (1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.2.1, 1.2.2) is also supported.

Viewing modes: WPTools supports the normal editing view and a page layout mode. In the page layout mode the user sees the header and footer and it is possible to change the page margins using the vertical and horizontal rulers included. This mode can also display watermarks (painted and printed using a versatile event).

Table handling: In programming tables our priority was to make them easy to use. Thus, WPTools offers you and your end-users the standard features you are accustomed to. The [TAB]-key moves the cursor to the next column and rows can be added automatically with the [CR]-key. Use the mouse to select a range of cells within the table then simply click on the buttons provided to either create lines around the area selected or make the lines in this area invisible. Table cells can also be split (this can be done as often as desired to create as many cells are needed) and merged horizontally. Of course, additional table rows and columns can be inserted and deleted at any time.

Undo: WPTools offers complete undo and redo capability. This is a very attractive feature which helps combat frustration among your end-users. Our undo architecture makes it possible to combine the undo objects of several editors on one form into one stackthus allowing global undo for data entry forms.

WPTools offers a multitude of features to make utilization easier for your end-users, but also has a great number of interesting possibilities to inspire you while developing your tool. For example, the WPTools library has been created with Delphi and is specifically designed for Delphi. It uses collections (TCollection class) frequently, for example in the headers and footers, paper formats, bullets and numbering styles, paragraph styles, RTF-variables. This makes it possible to change included features easily or add new items of your own creation to the Delphi IDE.

The data structures of the module which work with the text can be easily accessed through program code. This makes it possible to work with the text under program control at high speed, without requiring any slow or difficult messages. Thus, WPTools can be tailored to your individual requirements fast and effectively.

WPTools also includes a unit specifically designed to use the conversion DLL's installed by Word. As a result the program is able to load a wide variety of formats, depending on the system configuration. It also includes 2 print control classes for integration in QuickReport and optionally an add-on to support ReportBuilder.

WPTools also contains several shared components which are also used by WPForm. This component set includes a tool to localize a project, a universal XML reader class and a very powerful XML writer class. It also includes an undo manager.These shared components can be easily integrated into your projects, even if you don't need the versatility provided by WPTools or WPForm. One simple example of this is to use the undo-manager to create forward and backward browsing buttons or use the XML tree class to manage your configuration file.