Losing carriage returns in textarea / using plpdf to generate report

Question

Hello,
I'm using Apex 3.1.1 and Oracle 10g database. I would appreciate any suggestions on how I can preserve carriage returns in a textarea when sending the text to a package that generates a report. Please see example of current problem (below code). I'm using an onkeypress function to check for keycode = 13 when the Enter key is pressed -- that is working. I also created an alert to show the url value -- I can see the text on multiple lines, so that appears to be working as well. The textarea value parameter in the package is defined as varchar2. Per the support folks at plpdf.com, chr(13) indicates an explicit line break, and they told me to check my text. I don't know what I'm missing. Thank you for any suggestions you may have.
Lisa
  function callPLPDFRep()
      var url;
      url = '#OWNER#.' + $x('P&APP_PAGE_ID._REPORT_PROCEDURE').value + '?' + build_params();
      w = open(url, "winPDFRep", "Scrollbars=1, resizable=1, width=800, height=600");
      if (w.opener == null)
        w.opener = self;
        w.focus();
   function build_params()
    var lparms;
    lparms = '';
    lparms = lparms + '&p_incorrect=' + $x('P212_INCORRECT').value;
    lparms = lparms + '&p_correct=' + $x('P212_CORRECT').value;
    return lparms;
  }Text in textarea:
035 5768 06/15/2010
035 5768 06/16/2010
035 5768 06/17/2010
Printout on report:
035 5768 06/15/2010035 5768 06/16/2010035 5768 06/17/2010

Answer 1

Hello Michael,
Thank you for your response. After doing some researching and experimenting, here's what I have found so far.
First, using an onkeypress function to alert the keycode, a chr(13) is being returned when I press the Enter key in the textarea.
  function check_Enter(e)
    var keynum;
    var textval = $x('P212_INCORRECT').value;
    if(document.all) 
      keynum = e.keyCode
    else
      keynum = e.which
    alert(keynum);     
  }Next, when I access the value of the textarea via javascript with $x('P212_INCORRECT').value, the chr(13) is automatically converted to the newline character (\n). In an attempt to replace the \n with a \r so plpdf will recognize the carriage return, I added a javascript replace function before sending the text to the package, and it does not work.
  function build_params()
    var lparms;
    lparms = '';
    lparms = lparms + '&p_incorrect=' + $x('P212_INCORRECT').value;
    lparms = lparms + '&p_correct=' + $x('P212_CORRECT').value;
    alert(lparms.split(/\n/g).length - 1);  // confirm that a newline character is found
    lparms = lparms.replace( new RegExp( "\n", "g" ), "\r");  // replace newline character with carriage return
    return lparms;
  }When I tried to replace the newline character (\n) with chr(13), the chr(13) is printed out like it is text instead of a special character. In order to test that I have the correct syntax for the replace function in javascript, I tried replacing \n with '...', and then in the package that generates the PDF, I replaced the '...' with chr(13). That works!
In response to your comment about the PLPDF procedure for multi line section, I am using: plpdf.PrintMultiLineCell(180, 6, l_incorrect, '0', 0). As a newbie to javascript, I am not sure why replacing \n with \r is not working. Can you advise how to use a chr(13) in the javascript replace function and have it recognized as a special character and not text? I don't know how to view special characters in the textarea other than checking for them with javascript.
Thanks, Lisa