Hi Eric,

After further discussion, we came up with the idea that instead of boxing the report author to always default to a particular file format, we can do the following:

• Do not add a dedicated config setting.
• When the user saves a new file (meaning, after creating a new report or using the SaveAs functionality) remember intrinsically the chosen file format (trdx or trdp)
• When using again New / SaveAs the dialog will default to the remembered file format.

I believe that would work for you. How do you find this approach?

Regards,
Milen | Product Manager @DX
Progress Telerik

Hello Vulpes,

Thank you for explaining the scenario in details.

Indeed, if you have to edit the XML contents, .trdx format is more convenient than .trdp. I myself tend to use .trdx files when I'm developing or debugging code, because it's easier to inspect the serialized data. However, manually editing the .trdx file is not something we want to encourage, because it is very error-prone approach and it's likely to end up with an invalid report definition.

Still, if manually editing the .trdx is something that will make your work easier, I'd suggest creating a small command-line tool that uses ReportPackager to convert .trdp files to .trdx and vice versa, if needed. Combining it with a FileSystemWatcher or some scheduling functionality will save you the effort to manually convert the .trdp files.

I noticed you've logged a feature request in our feedback portal. We will monitor it to see how important this feature is to our users and will change the status of the request accordingly.

Regards,
Ivan Hristov
Progress Telerik

Hi Eric,

My name is Ivan Hristov and I'm an engineering manager in Reporting team. I'd like to ask you to elaborate a bit further on the topic you discuss with Momchil.

If I understand correctly, you prefer to use .trdx files, because they support DLLs that contain data for ObjectDataSource items in the reports. But since .trdp files are basically zipped archives containing a .trdx definition and accompanying files, they also should be able to support your .dll files. Do you mean that .trdx files are easier to be edited manually than .trdp files, being just a plain XML files? This is the only scenario I can imagine, where  the .trdx file are more useful than .trdp files. 

Please let me know if we have understood the requirement correctly, and if your scenario differs from the one I described above.

Regards,
Ivan Hristov
Progress Telerik

Hello Vulpes,

We have chosen TRDP as the default file format of the Standalone Designer because we consider it superior thanks to the following advantages it has over TRDX.

• Localization support.
• Smaller in size.
• Optimized for resource handling.

On the other hand, TRDX definitions are easier to edit manually as they are plain text files with XML content instead of ZIP archives. Generally, we do not expect such manipulations so, to better evaluate this feature request, I would like to ask you why you need to use TRDX over TRDP. 

You mentioned that you ship the Standalone Report Designer along with some custom assemblies of yours. Are these assemblies meant to extend the functionality of the designer and save additional information in the report definitions?

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

Best Regards,
Momchil
Progress Telerik