VB6, Crystal Reports 9, PDF export and right to left rendering

[Former Member]

I have a VB6 application that creates a CR9 report in PDF format using the CRAXDRT.Report.Eport method.

The application passes data to the report through an ADO.Recordset object.

On some clients the generated PDF document has data rendered right to left instead of left to right as instead happens correctly on other clients using the same .rpt report file.

On my development machine reports are generated correctly.

I can't figure out which is the problem.

Thank you very much for any help.

Best regards

Luigi Leo

[former_member11696 · Accepted solution]

Hi Luigi,

When formatting the pages CR uses the local language settings. If you have your fields formatted for the default and the user is using a language that uses right to left formatting CR will show the same.

Try changing your test PC to use the same language as their PC's and see if you can duplicate the issue.

Solution is to change the reports objects settings to Custom and use the format required rather than the default.

Thank you

Don

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Don, thank you for your help.

My users don't use a right to left formatting. It seems that only my reports are rendered right to left. Any other application (Word, Excel, ...) work correctly (rendering text left to right).

Moreover, on the same PC that is currently affected by the problem, with the same release of my application, some time ago the same reports was rendered correctly. It seems that something on the system has been changed and this has affected only the rendering of the PDF Crystal Report exports.

I really don't know what to do.

Thank you for any more suggestions.

Best regards

Luigi Leo

[former_member11696 · Accepted solution]

Hi Luigi,

Possibly some CR dependency was installed that was updated. Look in the Util area of our downloads and you'll find a tool called Modules.zip. Run your app and preview the report on both working and non-working PC's and the run modules. It will generate a list of runtime files both are using, save them and then use the Differences option from the drop down menu and compare runtime. This may give you a clue as to what is different on the PC's. You won't be able to attach the files to forums. If you need help determining what the differences are you'll have to purchase a support case and an Engineer can help you and you'll be transfer files.

Other option you could try is open up Control Panel, double click on Regional and Language Settings and click on the Languages tab and check on Install files for complex scripts.... Then click on the Advanced tab and check on Apply all... in the Default user account settings. It'll require a re-boot I believe. See if that fixes it.

As I indicated CR uses the Local Code Page to determine the formatting of the numbers etc. Possibly that user changed something in that area, we don't randomly format fields without being told to do so.

You'll have to ask the user what they changed.

Thanks

Don

[ido_millet · Accepted solution]

Another thing to try is to see what happens if you change the default printer on that machine.

[former_member11696 · Accepted solution]

One other thing to watch for. When you design your report do NOT use fonts that are have the "@" in front of them. CR displays these font for use when text rotation is used and it does cause justification for normal layout to reverse.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thank you very much Ido for your suggestions.

Changing the default printer solved the problem.

Luigi Leo

[ido_millet · Accepted solution]

Excellent. Thanks for closing the loop.