Cathy e-mailed me on May 31st:

Hi Lisa,

I’m trying to figure out how to use the new Advanced Property called “HTML.Metatag.HTTP-EQUIV”.  I can’t figure out how it wants me to format my tags.  I’ve tried some things like the following two examples [LSN: omitted here because they weren’t even close]… but I can’t seem to hit the right combination.  The VFP Help file gives absolutely no clue at all on how to use this property.  I’m hoping you can tell me how to format the expression for this advanced property.

Of course I can. And of course the VFP help file gives “absolutely no clue”, although there isn’t much I could do about that.

Every FX/GFX or listener that recognizes an Advanced Property or other Reporting MemberData has the ability to decide how it wants to do this type of thing.  HTML.Metatag.HTTP-EQUIV is a complex instruction, specified in a specific type of XML (complex, but designed to be really easy to create, as you’ll see) by HTMLListener, the class that recognizes and leverages it.

Problem was, e-mailing Cathy back wasn’t the right way to handle the question, especially as she wrote back about 10 minutes later saying she had gotten the answer.

The right way was to write more TMM stuff for everybody to reference. In this case several docoids I hadn’t gotten to yet were required to flesh out the whole idea.  So these topics got moved to the top of my list, and are now available to you.

Please note that the order I’ve listed them here is the order in which I recommend you read them, not the order in which the appear in the TMM ToC, which is presented as an excerpt from the CHM Table of Contents structure:

• Using Document Properties in Reports
• _ReportListener’s RunCollector
• Using Document Properties and the Run Collection in XMLReportListener and its Derived Classes **
• How to: Use Advanced HTML Properties in Reports
• How to: Register New Advanced Properties in the ReportBuilder Application

The pre-existing TMM docoid on HTMLListener was also extensively revised in this TMM sprint, so check that one too.

** this is where Cathy’s specific question is answered, but you really do need the background, really and truly.

There’s a lot going on here. HTMLListener doesn’t invent a system to handle this particular Document Property just because it owns that property.  HTMLListener is supported in this work by a large and capable extension architecture.

Here’s something I can’t do

You notice I say Cathy wrote on May 31st.  It’s now the middle of July.  And adding this set of docoids took me all this time, working really hard to find the time to do it.  Honestly.

I can’t do it any faster, and I won’t do it in a vacuum.  I mean to say: I don’t know what people are using, or interested in using, or not. I have zero time or interest in doing stuff you don’t have a need for.

Don’t be a stranger

You have a question not yet available in the TMM? Is there a topic listed in the TMM ToC but not yet linked to a published page that you’d like priority given to?  Is there a topic not listed in the TMM ToC set of docoids that you really think needs addressing?  Let me know.

I’ll do the best I can to get to it, and (grid willing) some of them will be faster to write a proper answer for than this one was.