Can TRichView do this?

[RobB]

I'm tasked with developing a word processor for our application. So far it looks as though TRichView will handle almost all of our needs, but there is one feature I need and I can't see a way of doing this.

A mail merge must be supported. However, the values for the merge fields will not be coming from an underlying field in a database table. What the merge field must contain is a URL that defines, among other things, the table+column names for DB data, or perhaps the full path to an external image|text|Word|etc. file or any other piece of information and it's location. When the field is about to be printed, the URL is retrieved and decoded and the data looked up and fed into the field.

I also must mention that users can create and insert their own URL. Also, and this is very important, the resulting document must be capable of being treated as a Form--where only the merge fields are editable, and when their contents change (for database data at least) the underlying table+column is changed. BTW, we can't do this with embedded Delphi controls on the TRichView as the users will be creating their own documents and Delphi controls are way beyond their scope.

One last thing, any idea on when Headers/Footers and Zoom might be implemented?

Thanks!

rob

[Sergey Tkachenko]

Field codes ("URLs") can be stored in items tags. They can contain abitrary text (one line of text), so you can place any information there.

Implementation of mail merging depend on which type of field values you need. Some examples are shown here: http://www.trichview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8

As for editing... While it's possible to protect all text except for field values, there are some difficulties.
The first problem is losing connection between field value and field. If field value is an arbitrary document, mailmerging procedure deletes field placeholders and inserts field values in their place. Field codes ("URLs") are lost. But if field values are simple (a picture, or a line of plain text), mail merging can be implemented by modifying field placeholders, and the resulting data will still contain "URLs".
There are some lesser problems.