Yes, of course. My thinking was that it is more convenient to do it directly rather than have to generate a PDF and then print it when you could just print directly. Now that both buttons are there, why not keep them? (Of course, you may have a longer term strategy I don’t know about.)
Definitely an advantage to keep the print button → Speed → convenience.
My example with the P&L report reported in the earlier thread has actually became worse in the latest version (16.10.51).
This is the Screen layout:
This is the pdf layout;
/AnBe
You have too many columns to be fit on A4 in portrait. For these cases, I need to add support for landscape printing and ability to decrease font size so you can fit more columns side by side.
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Yes, I understand and agree.
It is strange, however, that the “Print” button handles this better (also in Portrait) - still far from perfect;
/AnBe
I don’t think it would be unreasonable to limit the number of comparative columns that can be added on P&L and balance sheet. One doesn’t typically see financial reports with more than three years of data in my experience. If users really want something like monthly P&L for an entire year, a couple of reports for different time spans can be exported and merged in a spreadsheet. You can’t cater to every single desire with the standard reports.
I’m not planning to limit that. It’s not like everything must be printed. If you have a widescreen you can take an advantage of it and compare many periods side-by-side without ever printing it.
You can try the latest version (16.10.52) where I made a few adjustments so columns on PDF are not so far apart.
Is this when you are using the cloud version of Manager. I also use Firefox and have no issues getting bold text to show in pdf - the only issue that I had was that the bold was on a separate line from the rest of the non bold text.
@lubos Would it be possible to rather have a Print button that when you click on it, it shows the printers on the system and the Manager PDF option, but when you select your local printer, it actually creates the Manager PDF in the background and then opens the Print dialog of your pdf viewer program, without actually opening the pdf itself
This way you solve four problems. The program uses the Internal PDF Creator of Manager which will eliminate a lof of issues like background printing not working in Windows (if people don’t configure IE settings) and secondly, the end user doesn’t have to create a pdf and then print it, if all they want to do is print the report. Third, the user can choose which PDF printer they want to use as some of us have PDF Printer software like Nitro and there may be times when we want to use a dedicated PDF Printer for whatever reason eg I might want a hyperlink to be active on a report or invoice. Last but not least, people expect to see a print option somewhere in the program - its like a standard feature like close or open. I don’t know of any program that you can’t print from - people expect to see a print button.
@dalacor, I know what you mean but does any website doing this? Opening PDF in some hidden frame and printing that? Would this solution work reliably across all web-browsers and operating systems? I’m not sure.
As far as I know, you either print HTML you see on the screen or you download PDF and print that. Neither solution is perfect but that is how every web app works out there.
@lubos Slightly better in 16.10.52… I think when there is a “landscape” option this might solve the rest…:
@Tut This is not various time period but various “projects” (using the “Tracking Code” feature). In my situation this is my most essential report, being able to review profitability of various projects “side by side” over the same time period. Normally I always print/view this in landscape orientation. (By “printing” I actually refer to creating a pdf which I can distribute to various partners)
/AnBe
That was just a suggestion that I was throwing out if you wanted to have just one print button which goes to PDF and then to actually Print the document. I don’t know how workable it is, but if its a problem to implement then I guess you just need to decide whether you want to have a print button and a pdf button or just one print button.
Here is a small problem:
HTML markups in sales invoice Notes field that come across correctly onscreen do not in the PDF. Specifically in the sample below, the larger font size on THANK YOU ends up on the PDF, but the bold type does not. Screen shots show the code, onscreen view, and PDF, in that order. Sales orders have the same problem, so other forms may, too. Note that in these screen shots, differences in size onscreen when capturing and as scaled when uploaded to the forum obscure the differences; but the PDF THANK YOU is definitely not bold text, just larger size.
Hi Dalacor, Server version, as mentioned if I use another browser say Chromium the bold typeface issue it is no longer a problem. I have since told FireFox to use Document Reader to open PDFs and the rendered PDF looks great. I think Lubos’ explanation about FireFox pdf.js could be the cause.
@Tut, that’s because <strong> tag is not yet recognized by PDF generator. I’ll add it but you can use <b> tag which does the same thing and is already supported.
I’m in the process of writing a guide which specifies which tags within HTML are supported in Manager.
Unfortunately, @lubos, the <b> tag produces exactly the same result: no bold face on affected text on the PDF. And although <b> works onscreen now, I could swear the reason I switched to <strong> was that <b> previously did not work, and I thought you were moving to more current usage.
I think I know why.
Try
<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold">THANK YOU</span>
That works.
For some reason, some text on the next line is indented (like one space in), but others aren’t. I can’t seem any rhyme or reason to the pattern. “SSD” and “78000” is idented as is “wall” but for some reason Delivery is not indented. Same thing occurs on other invoices. Some are indented, some aren’t.
Is there some reason why the font size is smaller on the PDF as it used to be arial 10, but its now arial 9. Maybe I was just used to the bigger font size and once I use it more it will seem perfectly fine, but it just feels slightly small. But it might just be what I am used to.