Multiple old legacy flaws (see below) had surrounded the Print Designer as such and its different "generators" (i.e. for Reports on Objects, Users, Bookings, Projects, Invoices, Financial Reports, Financial Exports, Dispatches, etc.) and the behaviour of "Page Breaks" and "Rectangles".
And these flaws and issues had reached an "annoyance" level on which we simply had to act upon during the 6.5 Beta development phase.
The BIGGEST changes are:
- We improved the "WYSIWYG" ("What You See Is What You Get") experience on Mac; so what you see on the Print Designer on Mac is now even closer to the end result when creating PDFs or carbon prints on Mac.
- "Page Breaks" now work! IMPORTANT: Check your Reports as these changes might affect also your Templates.
- The bottom "Footer" - layout text elements are now located BELOW the "Page Break"!
IMPORTANT after the upgrade to v6.5:
We recommend that you review each and every "Report" Template within your farmerswife system BEFORE you send out a Report to a client!
Please create PDF test prints of your most used Reports. Then quickly verify that all is in order.
What to look for?
- Mostly multiple-page Reports are affected.
- Footer: "Text" or other "Elements" are designed to be displayed within the bottom "Footer" section, since info from here is now BELOW the "Page Break", there might not be enough space to show all the info.
- Rectangles: if you have rectangles on your layout some might cause problems.
- The "Page Break" (yellow-handle) and "Page Height" (red-handle) settings might now be too close together.
This is also a great opportunity to create a "Master Layout" Template. And to delete old, abandoned, bad and no longer used Templates.
We recommend to manually "Export" every "must stay" Template after the final changes, and store them in a good way (i.e. on a central safe location, incl. a DB-backup and the fw Server Installers for that version, etc.).
The "Page Break" rules that apply now:
- On the set vertical ("y" axis) location-value of the "Page Break" (yellow-handle) setting, that's where the page-break takes place.
- The next lower "element-value" after a page-break will be drawn on the next page.
- All "element-values" on that same "y" axis as the first element-value on the next page, will then be drawn "in-line" with the first one.
- For "element-values" from Custom Fields type Text which are configured to be part of the same "Table Name" will now be cut or delimited according to the length set on "Split On Space". This is to ensure the content within a "table cell" will not break the "table layout"; this prevents that if you entered text that is too long to break the intended layout. Or try to change the "Line Hight" instead, if that helps:
- Images and Rectangles also follow these Page Break rules.
- You should no longer need to use "hidden" (= outside of printable area) "Rectangles" as layout-helpers! There are some exceptions to this rule. "Hidden" rectangles will most likely now cause that the designed layout will fail. Remove them one-by-one and adjust the used Elements accordingly until the intended layout is accomplished.
- Images in the "Header" section are aligned West and Top (start of the page at "0"/"0" coordinates).
- The bottom "Footer"-page-layout section goes from "Page Break" (yellow-handle setting) to "Page Height" (red-handle setting). The "Footer"-page-layout section does NOT follow the Page Break rules. The starting point of the "Footer" loop IS the Page Break position. In order to create more space for the Footer section, the Page Break needs to be moved manually. If the Footer-text-content is "bigger" than the available height of the Footer section, this will cause misalignments.
- The Print Designer "WYSIWYG" experience on Mac is now closer than before, when comparing with the PDF or print output.
- "Section-loops" have a starting point and Elements will be placed from this point onwards/ down.
- Mixing data from one "Section-loops" with another loop can cause misalignment.
- When using elements with "Page" coordinates (= Edit > "Position: Page"), by design these do NOT follow the "Loop" convention; be careful and only use if necessary (i.e. when designing single-page Reports).
- If static information is needed at the bottom of the Page, then use the bottom "Footer"-layout section, and don't use the same data from other sections by forcing them to be located below the "Page Break"!
- If the "Header" content is bigger than one page, then using "Print Header In Every Page" will create misalignments.
- If you place elements using negative position values, these can create misalignments (better to move the next field below down-wards).
- "Totals" (e.g. "Sub Total", then below: "Discount", then below: "VAT" and then "Total") will be "grouped together" by using a Rectangle Element; then on a page-break these "grouped" Total Elements will "jump" together to the next page if a page break needs to take in-between these vertically "stacked" Elements.
- Should something fail during the print-process, this will create empty pages when printing. If this happens, please contact support@farmerswife.com, use the "Send Backup Now" button and provide usable replication steps, include screen shots and attach samples of the print-out as PDF.
NOTE:
- For Print Designer Templates used/printed on Mac, the setting in Print Designer > Templates > Setup > "Resolution on Mac" the set values are being ignored and will not show any changes on the layout of the Print Designer when modifying these values. These values are internally set to use "203" for the internal calculations. BUT the set values are used on the actual print-out.
If you experience a vastly different result on Mac of what you see in the Print Designer within farmerswife and the printed output, then this setting might be wrongly configured. Try to use the value "203", adjust the Template design if needed, and repeat the print out. (This setting is pending to be removed on the next version.) - In fw Server application > Setup > General > "Use Windows Resolution on OS X" <= Obsolete, in process of becoming ignored in the future and this Setting is pending to be removed.