New Software Versions Uploaded

2007-09-19T07:31:00.000-05:00

As The Miradyne Component Library and PrintManager betas were time-bombed, and the final date of them was this month, I have uploaded new versions that will be good for another 6 months. These versions are backwards-compatible with the original versions, but have some new features and improvements.

Free Beta Software Available!

2007-03-08T10:24:00.000-05:00

Did I mention it's FREE?

Well, I have finally found enough time to prepare setup packages for our beta products, DSI PrintManager and the Miradyne Component Libraries, to finish up on the web site (at least enough for now), and to get our Forums up and running.

There is no charge to download the software, and although you may provide us with some contact information if you wish, there is no need to do so in order to download the software.

DSI PrintManager is a nice little Printing application, which provides capabilities for creating all sorts of printable documents, but is specifically designed with SQL Server database reports in mind. It was originally created for an in-house database management application. I found Crystal Reports to be functionally capable of doing almost any kind of report, but also incredibly difficult and counter-intuitive to use.

DSI PrintManager does a few things, and does them well.

First, it provides a simple, WYSIWYG graphic user interface for creating printable documents. The size of the document in the PagePanel is the size of the document to be printed.
Second, PrintElements can be moved and resized by dragging and dropping with a mouse. Even images can be resized in the same way.
Third, there are no grids, sections, or any sort of difficult interface items to deal with. What you see is truly what you get. If you put a table of data into the PrinterDocument, it simply goes where you put it. It may jump or resize itself to fit inside the margins of the page, but that's it. If you want to add a header, you simply add other PrintElements above the table. The application is smart enough to know that if it's above the top of the table, it's part of the header. Of course, you need to specify whether these PrintElements are to be repeated on all pages. But that's about the size of it.
Fourth, it provides a completely extensible .Net programming interface, which means that it can be used with or without the GUI, in applications you write with the Microsoft .Net Framework. In addition, you can create your own extensions using the base PrintElement and PrintElementData classes.
Finally, your documents can be saved to an XML file format (with a .pdd extension). The XML includes everything, including images and database data, and can be transformed using XSL to any other document format you wish. At present, support for transforming to HTML is already built into the application. We hope to add Microsoft Word to the list of transforms next.

How does it work? Well, Printing from computers today is not what it used to be. Back in the day, printers supplied fonts and all sorts of other necessary software to create printed documents. But today, printers essentially print images. What your word processing software or whatever other software you use sends to the printer is an image.

An image is a rectangle with something drawn or "painted" inside it. In addition, like an HTML page (such as this one), it may contain other smaller rectangles with different things drawn in them. Sometimes they overlap. So, they can be stacked.

DSI PrintManager uses 2 base classes, PrintElementData and PrintElement, to create these rectangles. The PrintElementData class is the class which holds all the information about what to draw and how to draw it. The PrintElement class is a container for a PrintElementData class instance, and provides a user interface for interacting with it.

There are 6 current PrintElement/PrintElementData classes currently:

TextPrintElement creates a rectangle with text in it.
LinePrintElement creates a horizontal or vertical line.
BoxPrintElement creates a box.
ImagePrintElement creates an image.
TablePrintElement creates a table from a database.
LabelPrintElement creates sheets of labels.

These 6 PrintElement classes provide all the basic functionality needed to create printable documents. In fact, the ImagePrintElement can hold any kind of image, so it draw anything that fits in a single page.

So, please, try it out, and let us know what you think of it!

In addition, we have a rather large set of assemblies which we call the Miradyne Component Library. The web site, as well as the downloadable zip file, contains complete documentation on these assemblies. These are Microsoft .Net Platform 2.0 assemblies, and contain classes, components and Controls for all sorts of things, including Networking, Imaging, Database connectivity, Geography, Logging, Exception-handling, and much more.

I will add more information about these, and updates about the web site, as I am able. I will be in Seattle next week for the Microsoft MVP Summit, so I'm sure I'll have a lot to report when I get back!

Coming Soon

2007-02-11T11:51:00.000-05:00

Miradyne is getting ready to release some beta versions of upcoming software, and we would like to invite you to try it for free, and participate in our beta testing program.

The Miradyne Component Libraries is a large collection of various namespaces and classes which extend the Microsoft .Net 2.0 Platform. It consists of a variety of Components, Windows Forms Controls, Tools and Utilities, which we have been using in our various projects, and believe would be useful in many types of applications.

The DSI PrintManager is a stand-alone Windows application that provides an easy-to-use way of creating printable reports and other documents. It integrates with Microsoft SQL Server databases, and was developed out of the idea that many commercial reporting tools available today, while full-featured, are expensive to buy, and difficult to operate. The DSI PrintManager provides a simple WYSIWYG drag and drop user interface for creating reports and other types of printable documents. It can save dynamic reports and other documents in an XML format that can easily be transformed to almost any other document type.

We are currently in the process of building our web site, http://www.miradyne.net, and invite you to visit often, as we expect to be releasing the beta versions of this software in the next few weeks. We invite your feedback. Our web site will have various discussion forums for questions, comments, and suggestions regarding the software.

Miradyne Software

New Software Versions Uploaded

Free Beta Software Available!

Did I mention it's FREE?

Coming Soon