Switching to HTML rich texts and the new rich text editor

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Historically, Sage X3 has used RTF for rich texts embedded in the application. Rich texts are used mostly

for customer-facing texts attached to documents such as Sales Orders, Invoices, or labels, and also for

some internal documents.

RTF is a proprietary format initially promoted by Microsoft® to allow the exchange of rich text between

applications in the Office suite and other text-editing software. Although it still occasionally appears in the

Microsoft® context, it has been largely superseded by HTML5.

From 2022 R4, the Sage X3 rich texts can now use HTML. This avoids most of the issues that appear

when rich texts are translated back and forth from RTF to HTML to be displayed on screen. The HTML

scope used by X3 has been adapted to cover only features supported by Crystal Reports for all texts that

may appear in a report. This is to guarantee maximum similarity between the report (rendered using

From Sage X3 2022 R4, you can activate the flag Use HTML for rich texts in Administration > Global

Settings. This enables a new HTML rich text editor in all of Sage X3.

When this is done:

• Any rich text created or modified from that point on will be stored as HTML.

• Existing texts that have not been modified will still be stored as RTF.

This allows you to progressively move to HTML with no disruption to existing rich texts.

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However, this requires you to review your custom reports using Crystal Reports designer, to modify the

fields that display rich text so they can display both RTF and HTML during the transition phase. This is

Methodology

The following is a step-by-step guide on how to switch rich text management to HTML:

1. Check and modify your reports if needed

The first step is to enable your reports to display both RTF and HTML texts.

NOTE: This has been done by Sage in all standard reports delivered with Sage X3, Sage X3 HR and

Sage X3 Warehousing. You need only review reports that you have customized or created.

• Review your custom reports and locate any reports that use rich text fields. In the example below,

we find field TEXTE_0:

If Left({TEXTCLOB_DEB.TEXTE_0},5) = "{\rtf" Then crRTFText

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Else crHTMLText

otherwise. If the text is raw (no formatting), the Crystal Reports HTML engine will display it as

such.

• Repeat for all rich text fields in the report and save.

2. Switch Sage X3 to HTML richt text and the new rich text editor

You can now switch the Sage X3 interface to use the new HTML rich text editor:

• Log into Sage X3

• Go to Administration > Global Settings

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A certain number of text formatting features such as tables, HR separations (line breaks) and indentation

have been disabled because they are not supported by the Crystal Reports HTML engine. Please see

Appendices

1. Unsupported HTML features in Crystal Reports

Crystal Reports HTML text interpretation supports a limited set of HTML tags and attributes covering basic

text formatting only. As an example, tables and text indentation are not supported or partially supported

by Crystal Reports HTML rendering. Those options have been disabled from the rich text editor.

This is not an exhaustive list and it merely outlines a few of the HTML features that are not supported. In

general, advanced non-formatting HTML5 features are not supported by the Crystal Reports HTML

engine.

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