Tabulation and Line Spaces

[ChrisatIIOnline]

Hi
How do we leave line spaces and tabulate(or multi-spaces) in description and comment lines?
Currently they all seem to be removed after saving/modifying ?
Cheers
Chris

[Lurch]

Some basic HTML is the easiest option. e.g… <br> for a line break, <ul>...</ul> for lists of items.

Bear in mind if you are still sending out the invoices as PDF’s the PDF rendering engine is not as advanced as the browser so if you make it too complex the browser preview will be fine but the PDF could be … not so much, hence the “basic HTML”.

[ChrisatIIOnline]

Hi Stuart
Thank you for your valued input (I still have not had chance to check your other posts to me yet, but thanks in advance).

Ok, I think I understand this but please could you show an example,
I want to show a parts list within an invoice, (including on Screen and PDF)

–Qty- - - Part Code- - -Description
–3 off- - -AAAAAAA- - -Widget 1
–4 off- - -BBBBBBB- - -Widget 2
50 off- - -CCCCCC - - -Widget 3

[QFMathew]

Hi @ChrisatIIOnline

Some basic HTML tags are supported - including <table>, so these could be used.

For example, the below will make a table with 3 columns and 2 rows (1 being the heading).

<table style="width: 100%;">
  <tr>
    <th>Qty</th>
    <th>Part Code</th>
    <th>Description</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>3 off</td>
    <td>AAAAAAA</td>
    <td>Widget 1</td>
  </tr>
</table>

For reference, a full list can be found here: Rich Content Support

[Lurch]

You could do either;

<strong>-Qty- - - Part Code- - -Description</strong><br>
-3 off- - -AAAAAAA- - -Widget 1<br>
-4 off- - -BBBBBBB- - -Widget 2<br>
-50 off- - -CCCCCC - - -Widget 3

or

<strong>General items as follows;</strong><br>
<ul style="list-style-type:none;">
   <li>Widget 1
   <li>Widget 2
   <li>Widget 3
</li></ul>

You can change the style=".... to suit (for example just removing it entirely in that example will make the default bullets show on each line).

Both of these are a bit off for exactly this application though, so they are there for reference mainly.
Probably for what you are trying to do there a basic table would be best;

<table>
	<tr>
		<th>Qty</th>
		<th>Part Code</th>
		<th>Description</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>3 off</td>
		<td>AAAAAAA</td>
		<td>Widget 1</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>4 off</td>
		<td>BBBBBBB</td>
		<td>Widget 1</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>50 off</td>
		<td>CCCCCC</td>
		<td>Widget 1</td>
	</tr>
</table>

I’m just playing with the table at the moment, for some reason it doesn’t like the line breaks. The preview inserts 15 <br>'s before the table unless I remove all the CR/LF’s. Not sure if this is a bug? Maybe @QFMathew has some idea regarding that?

<table><tr><th>Qty</th><th>Part Code</th><th>Description</th></tr><tr><td>3 off</td><td>AAAAAAA</td><td>Widget 1</td></tr><tr><td>4 off</td><td>BBBBBBB</td><td>Widget 1</td></tr><tr><td>50 off</td><td>CCCCCC</td><td>Widget 1</td></table>

Here it is all in one line, which works just fine but is exactly the same content just without line breaks.

[ChrisatIIOnline]

HI all, yes I have just found I have 15 line breaks.
I never thought I’d have to be a HTML coder to use my accounts package!

[Lurch]

Well I have always said it is very customisable!

[ChrisatIIOnline]

Thanks, really aprreciate the help here and I think I can just about cope to put the data in without error.

But on a general user issue, this is definitely unrelistic to expect my accounts administrator to understand HTML code and not make a mistake so I hope someone at Quickfile takes this on board to be able to achieve these simple text editing options without coding.

[QFMathew]

Hi @ChrisatIIOnline

Thank you for your feedback. We’re always open to suggestions and users are encouraged to start a #feature request with anything they would like to see.

[ChrisatIIOnline]

HI Stuart
I’m curious, whats your background, ie are you a programmer?
Cheers
Chris

[ChrisatIIOnline]

Dear Quickfiles, Mathew, Glenn, please offer “Lurch” a consultancy fee / job
as I’m sure he will make a valuable contribution to your support network.

[Glenn]

@ChrisatIIOnline

this is definitely unrelistic to expect my accounts administrator to understand HTML code and not make a mistake so I hope someone at Quickfile takes this on board to be able to achieve these simple text editing options without coding

We don’t really advocate it’s usage, we just provide it as an option for those that are inclined to use it. A lot of the systems I’ve used don’t even go that far and you’re limited to plain text.

Long term it would be better to use markdown, but even with that the support for table formatting is not going to be simple.

In the mean time if you create a draft invoice with the format you need you can just copy use that as a template and copy it. Or store the invoice line within the inventory system.