Hello @sambapete, sorry for the delayed response.
This DEPR ticket focuses on cleaning up some of the older, already deprecated automated PDF generation code.
In general, we consider PDF certificates to be deprecated and we will be phasing them out starting with the Maple release. I realize this will have a large impact on your organization and others, which is why we want to communicate it as early as we can.
Web Certificates are a more fully developed feature with much greater support in the platform:
- Certificate templating
- Studio Configuration
- Support Tools
- Certificate Allow Listing Support in the LMS UI
- And more I am sure I am missing
As the two types of certificates have diverged support for PDF certificates has continued to degrade. This gap has been growing since the code was deprecated a couple of years ago to generate PDF certificates in the edx-platform.
As a result, I want to give you a heads up on a couple of other DEPR tickets that will be coming soon. I want to call out here that we are not planning to alter the generated_certificates table that supports PDF and Web certs in any way right now.
-
(By Maple Release) I will be following our OEP process for dropping support for the deprecated edx-certificates repo soon. I will add that ticket and link to the post once I make it in discourse.
-
(Post Maple as of right now) We will eventually be removing the deprecated PDF certificate user experience code. This is on hold for now and when we have more details I will add a DEPR ticket and post it here.
Resources on Web Certificates if you are interested:
- Enable Course Certificates: 4.10. Enabling Course Certificates — Installing, Configuring, and Running the Open edX Platform documentation
- Set Up Certificates in Studio: https://edx.readthedocs.io/projects/open-edx-building-and-running-a-course/en/latest/set_up_course/studio_add_course_information/studio_creating_certificates.html
Please let me know if you have questions. If we can keep this thread focused on the removal of the auto-generation code and the improvement of the web certificate generation code that might help. I will post another thread for discussion of the other DEPR actions soon.