ManageMoveSizeCopyClone Files

Manage Move/Size/Copy/Clone in QlikView Documents

    Author: Bill Chatfield <bill_chatfield@yahoo.com>



GENERAL DESCRIPTION

This is software to manage the ability to modify components in QlikView 
QVW documents. After you are done with development of a QVW document,
you want to give it to your users. But you don't want them to change the
size or positioning of the charts and graphs. To lock down the document
you would have to bring up the Properties for each component to turn of
Move/Size and Copy/Clone. Then when you, the developer or designer,
want to fix problems with the document or add features, you have to go
back to the Properties of each of the components and turn on Move/Size
and Copy/Clone.

The scripts included in this package allow you to automatically turn
on and off Move/Size and Copy/Clone for all the components in a group
of documents that you select via a standard file selection dialog.



FILE DESCRIPTIONS

DisableMoveSizeCopyClone.bat

    This batch file simply invokes ManageMoveSizeCopyClone.js with the
    command line argument "disable" to disable Move/Size and Copy/Clone
    in documents that the user will select.

    The batch file uses the construct %~dp0 which is an automatically
    populated variable containing the drive and path of the batch
    file itself. The "d" specifies the drive. The "p" specifies the
    path. The "0" specifies argument number 0, which specifies the
    batch file itself. So, %~dp0 is the drive and path of the batch
    file. This allows the batch file to find the 
    ManageMoveSizeCopyClone.js which exists in same directory as the
    batch file. You can see the documentation for this feature in the
    Windows Command Propmpt documentation for the "call" command
    by typing: call /?

EnableMoveSizeCopyClone.bat

    This batch file simply invokes ManageMoveSizeCopyClone.js with the
    command line argument "enable" to enable Move/Size and Copy/Clone
    in documents that the user will select.

ManageMoveSizeCopyClone.js  

    The main script which does the work to enable or disable Move/Size
    and Copy/Clone in selected documents.

    This script is written in Microsoft's JScript language of Windows
    Script Host. This technology already exists on every Windows
    machine. To run a JScript file, all you have to do is double-click
    it.

    This script uses Windows Script Host's ability to access ActiveX
    (COM) obejcts to access the ActiveX components exposed by QlikView.
    It opens QlikView documents, updates the Move/Size and Copy/Clone
    properties of every component in the documents and then closes
    the documents.

    It runs the PowerShell script QvwFileSelector.ps1 to allow the
    user to select QVW files.

QvwFileSelector.ps1

    This script only implements the file selection functionality. It
    is implemented as a PowerShell script because there is no dependable
    method of displaying a file selection dialog in a Windows Script
    Host script. There are some COM components one can take advantage
    of to do this, but they aren't consistently available across all
    versions of Windows.

    So, I have used PowerShell because it has access to .NET libraries
    which can display a standard file selection dialog across all
    versions of Windows.

    Now, I could have written everything in PowerShell as it can
    access the ActiveX (COM) objects exposed by QlikView. And in fact
    I have done that. But, I am not happy with the results. PowerShell
    may be powerful, but as a language, it has drawbacks. I want to
    write code that other people can read and understand. In terms of
    readibility, PowerShell is worse than Perl. I refer to Perl as a
    "write-only" language, meaning you can write it, but reading it
    several months later is harder. Reading Perl code written by
    someone else is even harder still. 
    
    Perl syntax is messy, but PowerShell to me looks like someone 
    puked on the screen. Also figuring out how to do things in
    PowerShell is very hard because the documentation is so poor.
    The QvwFileSelector.ps1 script I have provided, is very small and
    I have carefully written it to be easy to understand. If you try
    to write more complex scripts in PowerShell it gets messy very
    fast.

    I could have written this component in C# or Java, but then the
    source code would not be as visible because the distributed 
    component would be compiled. I want people to be able to easily
    see the code.




USAGE

    Basically, use the two batch files:

    Double click DisableMoveSizeCopyClone.bat to disable
    Move/Size and Copy/Clone in documents that it will allow you to
    select.

    Double click EnableMoveSizeCopyClone.bat to enable
    Move/Size and Copy/Clone in documents that it will allow you to
    select.

    You can also dobule click ManageMoveSizeCopyClone.js and it will
    ask you whether you want to enable or disable before it displays
    the file selection dialog. The batch files allow you to make
    that choice up front.

    QvwFileSelector.ps1 will open in Notepad if you double-click it.
    Even if you run it with PowerShell, all it does is allow you to
    select a file or files and then writes the file names to the
    output. So, it is not useful to run by itself. It is invoked
    internally by ManageMoveSizeCopyClone.js to allow you to select
    the files you want to enable or disable.