Suggestion: Make Payment Link Prettier

Lines 1350-1355 in includes/ui/ui_view.inc:

if (!isset($payment_services))
{
    $payment_services = array(
        'PayPal' => "https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=<company_email>&item_name=<comment>&amount=<amount>&currency_code=<currency>",
    );
}

What do you mean by that "it appears at the bottom" ? - a screenshot would be nice.

If the only usage is a pdf that will be emailed or seen in a browser, then the shortened text with the hyperlink beneath it would have been okay.

The reason that is expanded in full is that in a printout the URL is not clickable!

Please try replacing Lines 1350-1355 in includes/ui/ui_view.inc for your requirement (inspite of reason listed) with:

if (!isset($payment_services))
{
    $payment_services = array(
        'PayPal' => "<a href='https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=<company_email>&item_name=<comment>&amount=<amount>&currency_code=<currency>'>Payment Link</a>",
    );
}

Line 259 in file reporting/includes/doctext.inc:

$Footer[_("You can pay through"). " $service: "] = "$url";

and Line 1014 in file reporting/includes/pdf_report.inc:

$msg.= _("You can pay through"). " $service: $url\n\n";

are used to display the assembled $url string.

BTW: your screenshot was http and not https and yes, upload rights are controlled by the board admin.

Obtained the backup sql of your system and am testing it out in an OpenVZ VPS - a sort of test ride  troubleshooting using it.

The changes from the stock FA v2.3.13 to the Mercurial Build now as far as the database is concerned is only the following statements (You are using company 0 with a table prefix of "f1_"):

# Default value is not '1' but blank
ALTER TABLE `f1_users` 
    CHANGE `print_profile` `print_profile` varchar(30)  COLLATE latin1_swedish_ci NOT NULL DEFAULT '' after `pos`;

# InnoDB needed for Foreign Keys - not mere unique key
ALTER TABLE `f1_tag_associations` 
    ADD PRIMARY KEY(`record_id`,`tag_id`), 
    DROP KEY `record_id`, ENGINE=InnoDB; 

ALTER TABLE `f1_tags` ENGINE=InnoDB; 

# New feature in Mercurial build needs it
INSERT INTO `f1_sys_prefs` VALUES ('bcc_email', 'setup.company', 'varchar', '100', NULL);

Typo in Company Name - Extraordinaire.

The config.php must be matched with the config.default.php to make up for the missing/changed entries. Stick to default themes for now till the other themes are updated to accommodate the changed function locations that affect the renderer.php in the older themes.

The choice of white background in your logo blends well with stock white paper invoice!
COA has Retained Earnings, Owner's Drawings and Owner's Equity in Owner's Capital type(7).

Working on the prettier link without having to change the code much.....

Lines 205 and 209 in the file reporting/includes/header2.inc attached in the previous post are both:

$this->row -= $this->lineHeight;

If the said lines are commented out, the blank line in the middle of the footer disappears.

Attached herein is the before and after picture set of an invoice.

Works in Adobe Acrobat Reader X
Works in the Browser plugin in MS IE 8 and FF 18.0
Works from Sumatra PDF Reader v2.2.1 - 2.5 MB

Please let me know which PDF Reader it did not work.

If the PayPal Link is necessary to be shown in full, maybe we can add a config variable (all companies) for it or a setup preference (sys_prefs) variable for it (per company basis). The patch contains the native way to populate a link in TCPDF with no dependency of FPDF parsers. The latest TCPDF also has ShotCodes, Extended barcodes / QCodes as well.

See this thread - It works in Foxit Reader as well.

In Foxit Reader:
Edit -> Preferences -> Trust Manager -> Enable Safe Reading Mode -> Uncheck

Sounds to me like my suggestion has "fixed" one problem, long and ugly URL's at the end of the invoice, but has created several others. including possible support issues with PDF readers.  Although personally I would prefer not having the long and ugly URL, I now realize there are logical reasons for having it (so that customers who print the report can manually type it in).

Perhaps it's best to leave things be?  I'm sure I'll get used to the URL's.  Sorry if my suggestion caused anyone to waste time/effort that could have been better spent on other matters.

Regards,

Chris

You could also insert the URL as a QR code. There are libraries available to generate and insert them into TCPDF's output, but it might require changing the layout a bit. (I don't use FA's invoices, but I've done something quite similar elsewhere with FPDF.)

A more keyboard-friendly approach would be building a simple URL shortening and redirection service, but that would involve interfacing with a publicly accessible web server.