Hello! I have a problem with the aforementioned features:
1. printable PDF is empty. yes, I've read this is a known issue - any ETA on the fix?
2. I tried printing a queXML PDF to store and scan in the future. Problem is: all box-type answers are cut after the first option - even normal Y/N questions, so I doubt it's a problem with custom answers

Since I'd rather have a paper backup for answers (it's a clinical study...) at least ONE of the two methods must be working. Is it a bug or am I missing something here?
Tried changing theme, language, keeping the default question group, nothing worked. At all.

Version 4.1.13+200325

Since the IRC channel is deader than dead and seemingly no-one has my same problem, I will add that even the official demo survey on LS's GitHub shows the very same bug - version 4.1.11

Added this to the bugtracker, but quite frankly I'm dismayed to see a bug go by undetected even in official demos. Added the problem to the bug tracker and switched to a different software solution.

Not a real help, but for any production work I currently would still stick to LS 3.x. The LS 4.x branch still has some problems, I personally would not consider it "stable".

The IRC chat is probably not the place were you'll get help. It definitely makes more sense to ask here in the forum.

As you can reproduce the problem in the demo, I would create a bug report (which you did).

I'm dismayed to see a bug go by undetected even in official demos.

Well, there lies the problem. LS has a lot of functions and not everyone is using them all the time, and the XML export is probably rather a niche function, not used by many. Unfortunately very few people test the beta versions, so at the end the developers just go forward and call it "stable" so that people will report bugs.

So just think of yourself, how much time did you spend on testing the betas? How many bugs did you report? To find bugs a lot of helpers are necessary, the few developers can not test it all. Even I had not much time for testing and only had time to play around a couple of hours and reported maybe 2-3 bugs, if that (As LS is just a hobby and I don't really use it professionally, time for those things is limited, as for many others)

Limesurvey is an Open Source project and it needs the help of the community. Unfortunately I see many people use LS professionally, but the support to the project seems to be very little (bug reporting, testing, translations, etc.).

Also, it is always good to put a link to the bugtracker so that people in the forum can follow. I assume you are referring to this:
bugs.limesurvey.org/view.php?id=16096

Thank you for reporting.

Thanks holch! Pleae pardon any rudeness, open or implied, in my replies: I do understand the woes of software development and testing, especially when the lines of code increase exponentially.
LimeSurvey is quite popular in the medical field, perhaps second only to another solution. Guess my fault for not going the LTS route but I expected a "stable" version to be, well, stable and not some form of "Canary". Scannable forms are also quite a thing over here, where they are also used for student testing.

I did report the bug but seeing how this is a rather important study and the testbed for eventually adopting LS as a professional installation handled (and funded) by my research centre, it's a rather blatant hiccup, especially since 4.1.13's PDF export is broken aswe..

Hi Evrain, don't worry. I just wanted to highlight were the problems are.

LimeSurvey is quite popular in the medical field, perhaps second only to another solution.

I know. I know there are a lot of companies and organizations using Limesurvey professionally and it makes total sense.

But I also feel that there is coming very little back to the community, with a few exceptions. If all those companies and organizations would only spend a little time on testing, translation or sponsoring new features, Limesurvey could be far ahead. Resources are limited, like in most OSS projects and every little help is appreciated to improve LS.

Guess my fault for not going the LTS route but I expected a "stable" version to be, well, stable and not some form of "Canary".

I am totally with you on this one. I am not happy about software released as "stable" as it has been done with the initial releases of LS3 and LS4. This is not my understanding of stable either. And believe me, it is no fun to help out as a voluntary here in the forum when those "stable" releases are out.

However, I can also understand the developers getting to a point were they just need to release, because there is no progress in bug reports and bug fixing. I don't think it is nice, but it might actually be necessary, seeing that very few users actually test betas. Or new versions would never get released.

Scanable forms are also quite a thing over here, where they are also used for student testing.

You see, the usage of LS varies quite a bit, depending on your background. E.g. I have never used the PDF-Export in my life. Thus, when some people never use a certain feature, they most probably will also not encounter any bug in these features when testing (it's only natural that that people test the features they most use). There are for example a lot of "hickups" with installations in MS environments, simply because the developers all develop on LAMP (as far as I know) and the core users that are giving most feedback in the forum and on the bug tracker are also mainly LAMP. So if no one tests on IIS and MSSQL-Server, it is no surprise to me that there are more bugs.

My suggestion is to install LS 3.x LTS for the foreseeable future and run LS 4.x as a test environment in parallel. LS 3.x is pretty stable in my opinion and can be used in productive environments. LS 4.x not yet, in my opinion. It will eventually get there in a couple of months, but this depends a lot on how many people continue testing and reporting. And there is another caveat: When I recommend to use LS 3.x LTS for productive use, this means less people will "test" LS 4 and thus encounter bugs in this version, which will slow the process to get LS4 stable to the level that I would call it stable down. It is a vicious circle.

Hello Evrain, I marked your issue as confirmed so that we take it into account in the next bug reports allocation. We are sorry you have encountered these issues - @holch summarised perfectly our way of thinking so I don't think there is anything else to be added. In case you find other issues/glitches, please report them in the bugs tracker so that we can track them correctly. Many thanks for your support!

Thanks cdorin. Sadly I've substantially given up on having 4.1.x in a production environment as, during tests, I've found even more erratic behavior - filtering questions by group is unavailable and returns a "missing function" error when using MariaDB for example (but that's my fault for not going MySQL), printable previews from the admin CP not being fully skinned using the web theme, and most glaringly imported surveys displaying correctly in Chrome but having both questions and groups in utterly random order in the printable versions (both qeXML and standard PDF, with "orphan" question descriptions or headers.

Guess I'll add these to the bugtracker later today and backtrack to LTS for my next project. A shame, considering how EQ5D already comes with LS support and that I favor open source over commercial solutions.

A shame, considering how EQ5D already comes with LS support and that I favor open source over commercial solutions.

I don't think you will be missing much in LS3. It is perfectly fine for productive use and the changes from LS3 to LS4 that I have seen so far are more in terms of interface than in terms of functionality.

Please do report all bugs that you found in LS4 so that they can be fixed as soon as possible.

Thank you for your feedback. Please make sure to report all of them, and as @holch said, you may stick to LTS for a while till these issues are ironed out.