Forecast of Launching of Version 3.0 of the FastRe
Already it has some time I am waiting anxious so that the <span style='color:red'><span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>launching of version 3.0</span></span> of the FastReport is announced, therefore with it many things go to improve for we programmers.
Mainly the part of Reports for Dot-matrix printers.
Being thus it would like to know if already it exists a foreseen date so that this happens?
Debtor for the attention of all.
Edson
Mainly the part of Reports for Dot-matrix printers.
Being thus it would like to know if already it exists a foreseen date so that this happens?
Debtor for the attention of all.
Edson
Comments
And it would be nice to finally see something..
Strange !
I used components since many years & i not always buy these with source.
I buy sources if I need it, in order to change some functions or to be able to maintained my applications.
No problem today with this policy.
I think I will bougth FR3.0 (but when ??!! ) without sources for the begining and later if this component is OK and become important for our products, I'll bought the source.
May be I am 'plain stupid'
Why not provide the sources for the various versions?
If I need to look for another report manager with sources at reasonable price, I would like to know now, not be left anging for more than one year (or two? who remembers...).
thanks
One needs only to be caught out once. And then they will never, ever consider buying third party components again without the code.
I know this. From experience
Regards
Pierre
or in one year, two ......??????
I hope it will in two months.
I never (never ! never !) buy a 3rd party component where the source is not available.
If the comp. 'without source' is cheaper I buy it.
If I Need sources (for maintenance or changes or ...) I buy it.
It is the most economical way I think..no ?
The other thing is that you never learn more about the components and how they are ment to be used (and what potential they have) than by investigating the source. No matter how good the documentation and help files are.
Also you will need the source for reference when overriding any objects, or finding out what to put in the different properties. It's mutch faster than searching through the helpfiles, hoping that they have covered the property or whatever you need there (and updated with the latest version).
I will never buy components without source. If the components are to expensive with source, I use other components or write my own.
(Still Borland forces me to deal with this kind of problems by delivering crappy dbExpress drivers without source. Luckily CoreLab has drivers with source available for a reasonable price)
As I (and others) have not sufficient skills to dig in the source code, a good doc and help-file saves lots of time and irritation.
Lack of these did cost me lots of time and did me long for the good FAQ of QuickReport.
Fastreport is a better product but the documentation is less then QR.
I hope this will not be the so in 3.0 and future releases.
the first version will undoubtly have some bugs (hopefully all the simple ones will have been fixed, ie. not being able to produce a simple report) but fixes will be more than likely be published by FastReport themselves as the prices including source are now more expensive, less people will have source and therefore can't debug it (or even post possible offending lines of code).
Producing documentation is all well and good but it would be better to release a beta version for more 'seasoned programmers' to play around with and hopefully eliminate more bugs. I've been using FastReport a long time (since v2.2 I think) and I've not seen a beta version available with "use this at your own risk, don't bother emailing support with questions - only problems, etc".
People like MySQL have 3 different version available for public download:
Production 4.0.18 <used by Newbies/Critical system; fullly documented + stable>
Development 4.1.1 <used by more seasonal programmers; partially documented + will have [un]documented bugs>
Preview 5.0.0 <as per description; its a preview - don't use it except to look at/play with!>
In short: I don't want documentation to start with...to be honest I probably wouldn't even use it for new reports...I want to experiment and see if it'll fit in to our existing apps without breaking them.
Why can't you do something along the same lines? ie.
Production v2.52
Development v3.00
?
Regards
I assume there will be upgrade pricing from the current version.
My main reason for asking is that we are currently looking to purchase Fast Reports after testing if it will fit in with the data access components we are looking at using and I would (obviously) like to have the most recent version.
With regards to the source code issue. We also would probably not buy without source code however the price of an Enterprise Edition may become an issue. Not having source does cause issues when it comes to possible bugs in the components and quick response times to these fixes and also should the component become no longer available.