How To…Format Text With Ellipse

Question

“How can I append a ‘…’ to the end of text that is too wide to fit the bounds of a control?”

Solution

ReportBuilder 12 introduced the TppCustomText.Ellipsis property to automatically truncate text too wide to fit in a given area. Below is an example of performing this task for versions earlier than RB 12.

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The following example shows how to calculate the width of text and truncate it with a ‘…’ when the text is too wide to fit.

Download: FormatTextWithEllipse.zip

uses
  ppUtils,
  ppTypes;


procedure TForm1.ppDetailBand1BeforePrint(Sender: TObject);
var
  lsText: String;
begin

  lsText := ppReport1.DataPipeline['Company'];

  ppLabel1.Caption := FormatTextWithEllipse(ppLabel1, lsText);

end;


function TForm1.FormatTextWithEllipse(aLabel: TppLabel; aText: string): string;
const
  csEllipses = '...';
var
  ldTextWidth: Double;
  lsText: String;
begin

  Result := aText;
  lsText := aText;

  ldTextWidth := CalcTextWidthInReportUnits(lsText, aLabel.Font);

  {shrink length of text and add the elipses, as needed}
  if (ldTextWidth > ppLabel1.Width) then
    repeat
      lsText := Copy(lsText,1, Length(lsText)-1);
      Result := lsText + csEllipses;
      ldTextWidth := CalcTextWidthInReportUnits(Result, aLabel.Font);

    until (ldTextWidth < ppLabel1.Width);

end;


function TForm1.CalcTextWidthInReportUnits(aText: String; aFont: TFont): Double;
var
  liPrinterPixels: Integer;
  liMicrons: Integer;
begin

  ppReport1.Printer.Canvas.Font := aFont;

  {calc width in printer pixels}
  liPrinterPixels := ppReport1.Printer.Canvas.TextWidth(aText);

  {convert to microns}
  liMicrons := ppToMMThousandths(liPrinterPixels, utPrinterPixels, pprtHorizontal, ppReport1.Printer);

  {convert from microns to report units}
  Result := ppFromMMThousandths(liMicrons, ppReport1.Units, pprtHorizontal, ppReport1.Printer);


end;