Lewis Rosenthal

LOL…

You bet, Jenny. No problem.

Cheers

Lewis

Sorry, Jenny; server hiccup. You should be able to reach them, now.

Updated TCPDF: Indeed, this is in the mill (and should handle CSS better than the version in the existing builds). I hope to have it available for download this weekend. There is a surprising number of fonts bundled with TCPDF 6.0, and I’m not certain that all are appropriate for inclusion with this plugin. They increase the size of the distribution considerably.

Cheers

Lewis

Hi, Melissa…

Typically, this means that either the cache directory is not writable or the filename is in utf8 and the server doesn’t support utf8 filenames in its filesystem.

See https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/plugin-wp-post-to-pdf-error-tcpdf-error-image-unable-to-get-image?replies=5

(I’m not sure whether version 6 of tcpdf handles this situation better than 5.9, but I am working on a new unofficial update to WP Post to PDF which uses the latest 6.0.018 version of tcpdf. I’m still a few days away from releasing it, though, so stay tuned.)

Lewis

Hi, Dave…

You might want to try my unofficial 2.3.6 build as referenced here.

This build adds the ability to select the format of the author’s name from a dropdown in the options panel.

Cheers

Lewis

2.3.6 (unoffocial):

ftp://ftp.2rosenthals.com/pub/WordPress/plugins/wp-post-to-pdf.2.3.6.zip

Diff against the latest official release (2.3.1):

ftp://ftp.2rosenthals.com/pub/WordPress/plugins/wp-post-to-pdf.2.3.6-against-2.3.1.diff

Diff against my previous version (2.3.5 unofficial):

ftp://ftp.2rosenthals.com/pub/WordPress/plugins/wp-post-to-pdf.2.3.6.diff

What’s new:

Added option to select the format of the author’s name from a dropdown list (None, Username, Display Name, or Nickname). N.B.: The Display Name is set for/by each user in his or her user settings, so whatever the user has selected there will be displayed if Display Name is selected here.

To-do:

Add option to move date and/or category to the footer, with left, right, or center alignment.

Add option to specify the separator in a list of categories.

Add option to remove paragraph break between author, categories, date (to format better and waste less vertical space).

Add option to specify first or all categories (presently, we display the list, via get_the_category_list).

Add option to specify ordering/alignment (see above) of these items.

Feedback is welcome.

Enjoy!

Lewis

Hi, Alex…

What version of WordPress and what version of WP Post to PDF?

You might want to note my comments here.

It appears that some versions of PHP may not play well with the code for this plugin. I do recall it working when I was using 5.2, but I know it didn’t with 5.3.19, which I used for quite some time. I just bumped to 5.3.25, and it worked right off. It could have been an Apache memory setting for the mpm, though I doubt that, and the only other thing I’ve changed recently had to do with the TZ string in the environment, as PHP wasn’t getting the correct offset.

GL HTH

Lewis

I ran a successful scan today. In the interim, there were some changes to the Apache configuration on the server, namely, to the mpm settings, where I increased the thread stack size. Normally, had the stack blown, I would have seen Apache crash (or at least stop serving requests), so I’m not sure that that was it.

In addition, I bumped my PHP 5.3 from 5.3.19 to 5.3.25, which was perhaps the most significant change. I also resolved a long-standing TZ string issue (PHP versions before 5.4 will ignore the date.timezone setting in php.ini if TZ is present in the environment, whether PHP can properly interpret the TZ string or not; in my case, my TZ wasn’t fully POSIX-compliant, and while Apache was perfectly fine with it, PHP ignored it, throwing all of my timestamps off.

So, without rolling PHP back to 5.3.19, I think it was probably the upgrade which fixed this, and which would be a reason that not everyone has experienced this failure.

Lewis

Same symptom here, under WP 3.5.1. Initially, I was seeing no feedback whatsoever. php.err reported:

[19-May-2013 18:01:34 UTC] WordPress database error Got a packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet' bytes for query INSERT INTOwp_options(option_name,option_value,autoload) VALUES ('_transient_exploitscanner_files', [...]

(The […] is a placeholder for the rest of the line which is too long to even load into my editor.)

Part of this was due to leftover files from the Global Translator plugin (/gt-cache dir, et seq) which I uninstalled eons ago, and never got ’round to cleaning up. However, after sorting through the mess and running Exploit Scanner again, I actually get an error message on the screen (the same symptom up to that point, however, with 0 files scanned and the spinner):

{"status":"error","message":"$this->files was not an array","data":{"start":250,"files":"b:0;"}}

Settings are:

• search suspicious styles
• upper file size limit: 400KB
• files per batch: 250

Changing the above settings to 100KB / 100 max files without leaving the page and clicking the start scan button yields nothing.

Exiting the page, returning, setting the above lowered values, and starting the scan gets it going again. No entries in php.err, and ultimately, a message:

An error occurred. Please try again later.

PHP is configured for 256M, and as I monitor the progress, I am not even approaching that limit (across all vhosts running on this server). I’m also not getting an out of memory error showing anywhere.

I have no other deep directories which are obvious.

Just some random observations, in the hope that they help track down the underlying cause of the failure (this plugin used to work on this site, too). I wish it had a better facility for tracing (i.e., it’s own debug log).

Lewis

Hi, Jenny…

Yes, TCPDF is an odd package. I also discovered some CSS which it seems to want to ignore. I installed FD Footnotes, which displays correctly and even renders nicely in the PDF, however, the separator line is omitted in the PDF. The CSS for the line (in my theme’s style.css) is:

.footnotes .footnotedivider {
  width: 120px;
  border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc;
}

Note that the text formatting for the footnote numbering (superscript, bold, underlined) remains intact, and the footnotes themselves print as expected. Example post.

I’ve also tried upgrading the TCPDF version in WP Post to PDF, but have not quite gotten it to work.

Your image issue seems like an interesting puzzle to solve; I’m curious to see how you do that or work around it. I agree that the absolute positioning bit is a considerable amount of overkill, particularly if you have a good number of images.

Good luck with it, and please do post your results!

Cheers

Lewis

I’m glad it was something that simple! ??

…and, you’re welcome!

Lewis

Hi again, Jenny…

What are you trying to add, and where?

It might be easier to include your css hacks to your site’s stylesheet, instead (just a thought).

Lewis

Hi, Jenny…

What do you have set in the settings for include/exclude from cache? Try selecting include and leaving the dialog box blank.

I haven’t addressed caching in any of my unofficial updates to this plugin, but I might consider adding a toggle to disable caching if the above setting doesn’t work (or perhaps improving the UI of the admin settings to be more intuitive).

Cheers

Lewis

I’ve added this to the settings page in my unofficial 2.3.5 build of this. See https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/contributed-update-available for download links.

Cheers

Lewis

2.3.5 (unoffocial):

ftp://ftp.2rosenthals.com/pub/WordPress/plugins/wp-post-to-pdf.2.3.5.zip

Diff against the latest official release (2.3.1):

ftp://ftp.2rosenthals.com/pub/WordPress/plugins/wp-post-to-pdf.2.3.5-against-2.3.1.diff

Diff against my previous version (2.3.4 unofficial):

ftp://ftp.2rosenthals.com/pub/WordPress/plugins/wp-post-to-pdf.2.3.5.diff

What’s new:

Added option to include the date in the same area where the author name would go (i.e., beneath the post title).

Added option to include a comma-separated list of categories for the post in the same area where the author name would go (i.e., beneath the post title).

To-do:

Add option to move either or both of the above to the footer, with left, right, or center alignment.

Add option to specify the separator in a list of categories.

Add option to remove paragraph break between author, categories, date (to format better and waste less vertical space).

Add option to specify first or all categories (presently, we display the list, via get_the_category_list).

Add option to specify ordering/alignment (see above) of these items.

Feedback is welcome.

Enjoy!

Lewis