Ido Millet at Millet Software has recently added some unique new functions to the Cut Light UFL. Cut Light now adds 130 new formula functions to Crystal Reports. Here are the ones most recently added.

1) Creating charts from formulas.
This includes advanced gauges, sparkline charts (bar and line) and bullet charts. These charts are generated in real time by a formula function. The functions do not rely on Crystal’s integrated chart engine. They are generated as image files which are automatically read into the report. These charts are simple and have no customizable features. There is also no drill-down capability. But these charts can be generated on any series of numbers, including numbers that come from print time variables or even shared variables . Ido has posted some image examples: And you can read the details in the user manual.

2) Image cropping.
Allows you to read an external image file and crop it before displaying it in the report. This can be used with the chart images above and also with existing Cut Light functions that allow you to read the image properties and resize an image. Here is the relevant section of the Cut Light user manual:

3) Google sentiment analysis.
This allows a formula to process a block of text through Google’s “sentiment analysis” engine. The result will be 2 numbers which represent the score (positive, negative or neutral) and the “emotional magnitude”. This can be used to evaluate any comments, Email messages or product reviews you have in your database. It does require that you have an ID to use the Google API, but there is no charge for the first 5,000 calls per month.  You can read more details in the user manual.