10387 : Gantt for Delphi 7, how to use?

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hasse

Question

Im evaluating a few gantt tools for use in Delphi7.
I need some documentation
Is there anyway to find out how to use your software?
I dont see anything anywhere!
Teechart is integrated with a data set
What mechanism do you provide to load records

Answer

The phGantTimePackage comes both as VCL components and as an ActiveX.

The vcl components is probably the best choice for you.

The phGantTimePackage does not support datasource couplings, so you need to use the API to populate the Gantt chart with data.

The activex version is better documented since it has had a bigger audience thru the years, but all of the stuff in the ActiveX package is achievable with the VCL version (and more).

I guess that you downloaded the VCL version, but I suggest that you also download the ActiveX version and look over the samples there too, just to get a better picture on what is doable (most samples are in VB6).

Once you download the VCL package (make sure you get the right version 2006 will only work in BDS2006 and D7 will only work in Delphi 7).

The zip files contain dcu files and pbl files. Extract the contents to a new folder where you normally keep your third party components.

Open Delphi.

Close any open project.

Choose Components | Install packages

Choose Add.. in the dialog and browse to your folder were you extracted the dcu’s and bpl’s and choose the pbl.

You should now see the phGant etc components in a new plexityHide tab.

You should add the search path to the extracted dcu’s in the Library path.

The dcu’s are used for linking with your application. The bpl files contain the compiled code for design time behaviour.

10350 : Different colors on days

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hasse

Question

with the ActiveX version of the control hosted on a web page, is it possible through script to block out specific days on the gantt chart like making weekends a different color? If so, how.

Answer

If you embed the ocx on a web page you can choose to write VB- or JScript on that page that will access the Gantt on the client side. Since the access to win32 functions are often very restricted on the client side you will have a hard time accessing drawing functionality that is needed to use the Back- and Foreground events.

A better solution is to produce your own ActiveX that uses the phGantTimePackage and put all the extra drawing stuff in that ActiveX, the user will then accept your control for download or not.

To hide certain days from view your can simply call IphGantX3.SetHiddenHour and IphGantX3.SetHiddenDayType from VBScript or JScript.

10320 : How can I iterate over my rows’ entities? VCL D7

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hasse

Question

I am trying your component TphGant. I am using Delphi7, and using native component. I did an example. I have gant and a table with two fields. Name and duration. i am able to put these names to the gant and display duration of these names. The user can change duration with the mouse and I need to change duration in my table. but I am not able to iterate from the first TphDataEntity_Ganttime to the last in a row.

How can I iterate over my rows’ entities?

Answer

Each GantRow has a datalist that holds the drawing layers. Each drawing layer has a list that holds the time items. You can iterate them like this:

procedure TForm1.Button2Click(Sender: TObject);
var
i,ii:integer;
begin
for i:=0 to phGant1.RowList.Count-1 do
begin
    for ii:=0 to phGant1.RowList.Rows[i].DataLists.Items[0].Count-1 do
    begin
      (phGant1.RowList.Rows[i].DataLists.Items[0].Items[ii] as TphDataEntity_GantTime).Start:=
    end;
end;
end;

The same code for ActiveX in VB:

    Dim ti As IphDataEntity_GantTime2

    For i = 0 To phGantX1.RowList.Count – 1 ‘ loop over all gantt rows
        For ii = 0 To phGantX1.RowList.GantRow(i).DataLists.Count – 1 ‘ loop over all layers in gantt row
            For iii = 0 To phGantX1.RowList.GantRow(i).DataLists.DataList(ii).Count – 1 ‘loop over all time items
                Set ti = phGantX1.RowList.GantRow(i).DataLists.DataList(ii).Items(iii)
                ti.Start = ti.Start + 1
                ti.Stop = ti.Stop + 1
            Next iii
        Next ii
    Next i

10285 : “Canvas does not allow drawing”. Then the application crash.

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hasse

Question

I use in my project a phgant object with the tree enabled. I have about 100 rows in my diagram and i set ganttime.style=tsUser and manage the event OnUserDrawTime (as shown in your example …Samples\ActiveX\VB6\UserDrawAndToolTip) .

After having zoom and scrolled the diagram (vertical and horizontal) many times the GantPyjamas disappears, vertical scrollbar fails and if i try to resize the tree i obtain the error “Canvas does not allow drawing”. Then the application crash.

To test this behavior create in your example UserDrawAndToolTip 100 nodes with ganttime having style tsuser, and then manipulate the diagram.

I tried this also with last patch of phgant.

Thank you.

Answer

What you describe is consistent with what happens if the resources allocated to draw in the OnUserDrawTime event is not properly deleted. You must make sure that pens and brushes are handled in one of two ways;

#1 Created pens and brushes in the OnUserDrawTime MUST be deleted (DeleteObject, see further info in win32 documentation). If you leave only one pen handle un-deleted your application will run out of resources if you scroll back and forth a couple of times.

#2 Keep global pens and brushes that you use to draw in the OnUserDrawTime event; in this case do not delete and do not create these objects inside the OnUserDrawTime, but rather create them in FormLoad or were appropriate.

After further investigation by Carlo he found that even when he called DeleteObject it still used up resources. Eventually he found the error: the problem was due to the declaration of function DeleteObject: in your vb example the prototypes of the API funcion DeleteObject and SelectObject are missing of ByVal keyword and so both fail (SelectObject does not return the previous handle of the object).

Public Declare Function DeleteObject Lib “gdi32” (ByVal hgdiobj As Long) As Boolean
Public Declare Function SelectObject Lib “gdi32” (ByVal HDC As Long, hgdiobj As Long) As Long

(The sample has been updated for new future releases, but you may change the module1 declaration to match the lines above)

10305 : How can I iterate through all loaded RootDataEntities? ( Only the loaded ones) (VCL version)

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hasse

Question

Hi!
This should be easy for you, but I am lost:
Using a Gant with Grid and VirtualLoad, allowing Multiselect.
How can I iterate through all selected RootDataEntities?
( Only the loaded ones, i dont care about the unload ones ) Iterating all the BABCells gives an exception, when it comes to the unloaded ones. I cant find a way from a RootDataEntity.Item to the correspondent BABCell to check if its loaded or not.

Answer

You can go straight on the loaded grid rows; only loaded, check if they represent a root tree node then check select state:

procedure TForm1.ButtonIterareLoadedAllClick(Sender: TObject); begin
for i:=0 to phGant1.MainGrid.AxisContentListY.LoadedCount-1 do
begin
    if phGant1.Grid.AxisContentItemToGridTreeNode(phGant1.Grid.MainGrid.AxisContentListY.Loaded[i]).Level=0 then
    begin
    end;
end;
end;

To check selection state on a cell in this loop you would go:
phGant_VL.Grid.Cell[x,phGant_VL.Grid.MainGrid.AxisContentListY.Loaded[i].ListIndex].Selected, where x is the column.

To be more precise:

for i:=0 to phGant2.Grid.MainGrid.AxisContentListY.LoadedCount-1 do
begin
if phGant2.Grid.AxisContentItemToGridTreeNode(phGant2.Grid.MainGrid.AxisContentListY.Loaded[i]).Level=0 then
begin
    If phGant2.Grid.Cell[0,phGant2.Grid.MainGrid.AxisContentListY.Loaded[i].ListIndex].Selected then
       // Do Stuff here
       // e.g. phGant2.Grid.AxisContentItemToGridTreeNode(phGant2.Grid.MainGrid.AxisContentListY.Loaded[i]).Userreference….
end;
end;

10243 : Printing in VCL

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hasse

Question

Using the TPhGant-component I would like to print the gantview as well. However the PrintToHDC seems to be available in the ActiveX-version only.

After some experiments with methods such as PrintWithGrid (causing an AV for unknown reasons) and PhGanttPrinting. TphPrintGantt.Print (is printing but timeobjects are missing?) I would like to have an example on how to print the gantview including treeview and timeobjects since there is not one available for the VCL-component (or i might havnt discovered it yet 😉 )

Tnx in advance 4 your help

Answer

There is a sample in the Samples\VCLNative\VCL\MultiPagePrint folder.

Is does this to start the print:

procedure TForm1.BitBtn1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
usedwidth,
usedHeight:integer;
begin
//showmessage(‘I have no idea how to do this ???’);
//Answer#
Printer.BeginDoc;
Printer.Handle;
TphPrintGantt.PrintWithGrid(G1,Printer.Handle,10,10,2,2,G1.TreeWidth,nil,-1,true,g1.Start,g1.Stop,g1.Width-g1.TreeWidth,g1.ScalerHeight,usedwidth,usedHeight,0,0,nil);
Printer.EndDoc;
end;

and also has this in the OnPrintToHdcNewPage event:

procedure TForm1.G1PrintToHdcNewPage(theGant: TphGant_ComBasic;
aPageNo: Integer; var pageHeight, pageWidht: Integer; var goahead,
render: Boolean);
begin
//Answer# continued

pageHeight:=Printer.PageHeight;
pageWidht:=Printer.PageWidth;
goahead:=true;
render:=true;
if aPageNo>1 then
Printer.NewPage;

end;

I would guess that your problems is due to that you are not using the grid option. If you are using the tree you can use the TphPrintGantt.Print call instead…

10208 : In VCL version, may I know how to use onDependencyAction?

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hasse

Question

In VCL version, may I know how to use onDependencyAction? How to set theFirst and theSecond? How the userIntergerReference be used in the TphDataEntity_Ganttime? Thanks in advance.

Answer

In the TphGant you can set the StickyMode=smDependency. This will set the mouse into a mode were a click and drag from one time item draw an outline of a link from the time item (start). If the user lets go of the mouse over another time item (target) the OnDependencyAction is fired…

In this event you get theFirst,theSecond:TphDataEntity_GantTime , that is the start and the target.

To exit from this mode you must call StickyMode=smNone…

You are free to use UserReference properties to whatever you need. It is commonly used to store some kind of unique information that leads you back to the original data.

10223 : Page break in printing

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hasse

Question

Now I have another problem with ” OnPrintToHdcNewPage”.

When I enter to this event, my parameter apageno=1 – always!

In the “gant.printToHdc” func. I have ‘theStopDate’ parameter more then may see on the screen,and I have item in this invisible on the screen’period.

What I must define for getting 2 page?

Answer

The page breaking functionality of the phGantTimePackage will help you to break up your data in pages over the Y axis (ie the Grid rows).
Bad news: The OnPrintToHdcNewPage will be of much use if you only want to break pages over the x-axis (ie time axis)
Good news: Splitting a print over the X-Axis is much easier than splitting over the Y-axis. You simply call PrintToHdc twice. First one time, then update your Start and Stop time interval, possibly change the grid width, then call printToHdc with the same devicecontext (hdc) again.

If you want to combine a split of pages for both X and Y axis you simple implement the OnPrintToHdcNewPage and handle the more complex Y-axis split.

You get page one all the time in OnPrintToHdcNewPage because you do not have enough data in the grid to flow over your bounds of printing one page.

10205 : OnHintInfo

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hasse

Question

We’ve been looking desperately for an event or a property that gives back the current start and stop value of a GantTime when it is dragged. We need to know these values at any time while it is dragged so that the one who drags (or changes the GantTime in another way) knows the current values of the time period b e f o r e he
stops.

Answer

Use IphGantX3.OnHintInfo,

private void axphGantX1_OnHintInfo(object sender,
AxphGantXControl.IphGantXEvents_OnHintInfoEvent e)
{
labelHint.Text=”Starts”+e.theStart.ToString()+” and This long:”+e.theLength.ToString();
}

Use the e.theStart and e.theLength parameters to get the would be
time/length if the user were to drop now.

10348 : Color and font of cells in phGantTimePackage grid

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hasse

Question

Using property TPhGantX.SetGridCellString(X, Y, sText).
With the above property, I am able to display the text (stext) on the left side.

Is there any way that I can change the color and font of this sText?

Answer

Yes. Each cell can be assigned a IphGridLayoutPropX. You can choose to set the same layout on all cells, unique layouts to all cells or anything in between.

Use IphGantX3.GetGridCellLayoutPropIndex, and IphGantX3.SetGridCellLayoutPropIndex to control each cell.

Once you have the hang of that you can set/control the following properties:

BackColor
EndEllipsis
Font
FontColor
FrameBottom
FrameColor
FrameLeft
FrameOptionsUse
FrameRight
FrameTop
HorzAlignCenter
HorzAlignRight
MinHeight
MinWidth
UseFontInfo
VertAlignCenter
WrapTextAndFit

Note that you must set UseFontInfo=true for Font and FontColor to be applied.