Does a VCL OrgChart component with decent features exists? Is there a viable alternative?

Question

I am using DevExpress OrgChart component that is still maintained but not developed since 2003 (fortunately bugs are fixed, but nothing more).

Honestly this component, even if it starts to look too old still suffices my requirements except for 2 things:

1) it doesn't support at all the staff feature, for understanding what I mean see this image (where the items in staff are Administration, Communication, IT, Special Projects).

2) it arranges the items without optimizing the space, for example if there are 3 items at top level, and only the second item has 2 childs, the top items items are drawn more distantly, because of the 2 childs, there is no an option for "shirinking" the diagram.

Of course the component misses tons of the features one would expect from an OrgChart tool, but in my case Those 2, and expecially (1) are important, the rest is lack of eye-candy.

I look for VCL components, but if (as I fear, since I never found it) such component doesn't exist) I can see the following alternatives:

i) using Hydra with .net winforms components

ii) using ActiveX components. Between the 2 I would prefer ActiveX because of the .NET deployment hell (what I like about Delphi is that you ship the exe to the customer witn Win2k and it works). Anyway I never used an activeX control and I don't know which are the deployment issues, but I fear I will lose the opportunity of replacing an exe and upgrading the software.

iii) hire a delphi component develoeper that can customize the DevEx component by adding feature (1) and maybe (2).

I am stuck.

Answer 1

Try www.componentone.com . They have almost every component you need.

Answer 2

Have you looked at TMS Diagram Studio or dtpDocuments?

Both are native VCL solutions.

Answer 3

By answering my question I has to (sadly) say that:

there is no a good OrgChart VCL component, where by OrgChart component I mean one like DevExpress OrgChart component: not only a component that allows you to draw a orgchart diagram, but a component that has some logic for rearranging nodes automatically (like DevExpress one does). Unfortunately DevExpress doesn't develop that component anymore, because the idea beyond that component was good, there is a very light hope from Steema people (they introduced a new OrgChart series in TeeChart v8 and put as desired feature the "staff", this is tracked on their website as enanchement TV52013924, anyway it is not clear if this will be ever released).