I'm not sure if this should be posted as a bug or features request, but at least I think it would be good to find a better solution for this than mine..

Problem:
If you use textfields that has newline characters Cardexchange always (at least with access and MySql) puts a ' character at the start and end of the textfield. So if a textfield has many lines Cardexchange always puts the string separator ' at the start and beginning of the field. A quick solve for me was using the function [Copy(<Fieldname>,2,Length(<Fieldname >)-2)], but that of course requires every row to have newline characters in that field, otherwise it strips of the first and last character of that field.

Just to give one example if my text was unclear, if you have a text field with the following:
---------
Firstname(newline)
Surname
---------
Cardexchange will output the field as:
---------
'Firstname
Surname'
----------

So an option to remove the string separators would be really handy. Quite seldom you use text fields with new lines when making cards, but for instance one customer we made cards for wanted us to do 7 different layouts. The only difference in the layouts were the text on the backside of the card, and our customer wanted to be able to change the text in the database. By using a multiline textfield we didn't have to do 7 formats, we managed with one, but luckily all fields were multiline otherwise we would have had to inform our customer to always include a newline even if he just wanted one row of text on the backside. A replace or remove function to remove a certain character could also be handy(Haven't tried version 4 that much yet, is there a function to remove or change a certain character??).

While I am not actually addressing the multi line text issue I have an alternate solution for similar scenarios.

If you want 7 different possible text blocks on the card, create 7 different bitmaps (name them 1.bmp, 2.bmp etc) with the desired text and format and then use a variable image card item property in the mappings which looks up the value it the back of card field (ie 1 to 7) and it will display the corresponding bitmap.

That solution works good in some cases, especially if you also want some variable pictures( logos etc). But it takes more time to produce bitmaps and if you have a webbased card ordering system or something similar and the customer should be able to change the text quickly without uploading pictures then your solution makes it more difficult. And text in bitmaps usually don't look as good as text printed with fonts, especially on some printers where you can split the k from ymck foils so it prints the backsides text with the k. But otherwise a good solution especially for variable pictures/logos with text.

I agree with your feedback.
Your method of handling it is quite good and in this case I think the preferred option if it's working ok.
We find in Australia many customers cannot change their database fields and have no multi line field so the alternate might suit them.

Yes, the workaround works in some cases, but recently we had to do another format where all cells weren't multilines but some were, which forced us to manually put newlines to all cells that didn't have one. It would be good to know if the Cardexchange developers are aware of the bug and trying to fix it, otherwise we probably have to do an application that checks if there are newline characters and if there are, automatically add it to all fields that doesn't have..

Hi Nicolas,

The CardExchange development team is aware of this feature, which we honestly consider to be a bug. Since it is such a rare issue and since in most cases their is a work-around, this bug is not very high on the priority list. If you need it to be solved for specific projects where none of the suggested work-around solve the problem, please contact our sales department.

By the way, I have one more suggestion for a work-around. If there are both single-line and multiline fields in the database, wouldn't it be possible to define a view in the database or an internal view in CardExchange that adds a new-line character to all records? It would mean that all fields have at least two lines and the empty last line is not visible to the end user.

Hi,

right now it's enough for me to know that you're aware of it and that it will be fixed some day as I'm also aware that you seldom print fields from databases with multiple lines. Your suggestion for a workaround was interesting, I'll try that one out as soon as possible.. And keep up the good work, you've managed to create a great product in a short time..

-Nicolas

Hi!

We have had two customers in the last months with this problem, and I mailed them the workaround. I still have version 4 on my computer so I haven't been able to check if it's been fixed in version 5. So I'm wondering has this bug been fixed in version 5.0 or 5.1?

-Nicolas

Dear Nicolas

This problem has not yet been solved. Sorry for the inconvenience.