Dec-27, neighbours, manual layout, navigation, files syndication, ie bookmarklet and more
This is probably the very last 2004 release of YACS, and we have put as many gifts as possible into the basket.
The first gift was on Eoin's wish list. It was about geographical distance computations. YACS has now the complex MySQL statement that makes it all. As a result nearby articles and user profiles are automatically listed where appropriate. All you have to do is to attach one (or several) location(s) items to your pages and/or to your user profile.
The second gift is not ready yet, but will pop up in coming weeks. We are preparing an on-line user manual for YACS, and have enhanced the layout articles/layout_as_manual.php to support structured lists of articles, similar to table of contents in electronic books. The outline is based on dotted strings of number (eg,
The third gift is a navigation bar for articles. They make sequential reading of blogs a breeze. Links to go to the previous or next pages appear automatically in the sidebar. Of course, the navigation bar is compatible with the manual layout described previously.
Several gifts have been included for people who syndicate everything. The most notable one is the creation of a RSS feed for public files shared at any YACS server. Give it a try.Note that <enclosure> attributes are provided as weel, to enable a bare form of podcasting. Moreover, YACS better integrates with Radio Userland, with Sharpreader and with Moreover.
A special gift is given to people who are using Internet Explorer with Windows. They can benefit from a contextual bookmarklet to blog to their YACS server. This is a special gift, since we prefer to support portable solutions. But at the same time we have to recognize that Firefox has not taken over yet...
Another big gift for Unicode supporters: YACS translates HTML entities to Unicode, and this means that any character will have only representation in the database. Ok, this may be a little bit too technical. What is the actual impact? First of all, this improves results provided by the embedded search engine. Secondly, this enables a better interoperability of w.bloggar and YACS web forms.
See you in 2005!
The first gift was on Eoin's wish list. It was about geographical distance computations. YACS has now the complex MySQL statement that makes it all. As a result nearby articles and user profiles are automatically listed where appropriate. All you have to do is to attach one (or several) location(s) items to your pages and/or to your user profile.
The second gift is not ready yet, but will pop up in coming weeks. We are preparing an on-line user manual for YACS, and have enhanced the layout articles/layout_as_manual.php to support structured lists of articles, similar to table of contents in electronic books. The outline is based on dotted strings of number (eg,
1.2.3.0), that allow for up to four levels of classification. The next step is to apply this layout to articles anchored in the section "How to use it?" and to turn this section into an electronic on-line manual, with the support of end-user comments. The third gift is a navigation bar for articles. They make sequential reading of blogs a breeze. Links to go to the previous or next pages appear automatically in the sidebar. Of course, the navigation bar is compatible with the manual layout described previously.
Several gifts have been included for people who syndicate everything. The most notable one is the creation of a RSS feed for public files shared at any YACS server. Give it a try.Note that <enclosure> attributes are provided as weel, to enable a bare form of podcasting. Moreover, YACS better integrates with Radio Userland, with Sharpreader and with Moreover.
A special gift is given to people who are using Internet Explorer with Windows. They can benefit from a contextual bookmarklet to blog to their YACS server. This is a special gift, since we prefer to support portable solutions. But at the same time we have to recognize that Firefox has not taken over yet...
Another big gift for Unicode supporters: YACS translates HTML entities to Unicode, and this means that any character will have only representation in the database. Ok, this may be a little bit too technical. What is the actual impact? First of all, this improves results provided by the embedded search engine. Secondly, this enables a better interoperability of w.bloggar and YACS web forms.
See you in 2005!
177 files have been updated or added since the previous release.
As usual, it is highly recommended to upgrade your server. For further information check How to achieve incremental upgrades of a YACS server?.
In September Dubsky, Eoin submitted a SQL statement aiming to compute distances between two points, based on their longitudes and latitudes. This has been implemented as
References to GeoURL have been removed, since the server seems to be dead. These have been replaced by a link to TravelGIS, which offers a free geocoding engine for 22 countries. See skins/configure.php and locations/edit.php
The script used to map locations on Earth now returns a cacheable image. See locations/map_on_earth.php
The layout articles/layout_as_manual.php has been evolved to handle the dotted ranking system. Also, the database abstraction for articles, articles/articles.php has been heavily impacted.
Navigation links (next, previous) have been moved to the sidebar in actions/view.php, in comments/view.php, in files/view.php, in images/view.php, in locations/view.php. This layout allows for a more simple user interface than before.
Navigation links have been added to articles as well. The navigation bar is built in articles/view.php. Links are provided by sections/section.php, depending of the underlying layout.
Public files posted at any YACS server are now listed in a dedicated RSS feed, implemented at files/feed.php. See files/files.php. Of course, the new feed appears at the related index page at feeds/index.php.
YACS now better supports Radio Userland and similar feeding tool using the port 5335. Direct syndication may be triggered from feeds/index.php.
A profile is now automatically created for the Moreover service in servers/populate.php. If activated, YACS will ping Moreover on page publication.
HTML tags, if any, are now removed from titles in RSS feeds.
A new bookmarklet has been created for users of Internet Explorer under Windows, that enables contextual blogging (meaning: "select some text, right-click, and blog"). The script articles/ie_bookmarklet.php prepares static files that are necessary for this. The bookmarklet is displayed in the Control Panel, at control/index.php.
The search engine search.php now accepts the ';' char and, therefore, is able to locate Unicode strings. Also, Ask Jeeves has been added to the list of forwarded search engines.
The edit form for articles now saves data received from bookmarklets into the session, and therefore allows for user authentication and for section selection, if any.See articles/edit.php.
The blogging back-end (services/blog.php) has been heavily revised. YACS handles templates correctly both for reading and for writing. Unicode support has been improved, and works correctly with w.bloggar. Standard XML-RPC error codes have been implemented. Bug in
YACS now translates HTML entities to Unicode entities (see
YACS has been able to highlight keywords on search for months. Now it even supports Unicode in these keywords. See
Usage of
Sections now feature the same commenting system than articles. This means you can create top-level threaded discussions more easily. See sections/view.php.
The APOP authentication scheme now takes place only if explicitly asked for. The new parameter
We are sure that YACS has more than 99,000 lines in source files because this figure is now computed during build by scripts/build.php.
The forms used to post files, images and locations now display more information on successful upload or update. See files/edit.php, images/edit.php, locations/edit.php..
The query.php form now hides poster e-mail addresses to non-associates. Therefore, if an associate moves the page to a standard section,
there is no risk to expose addresses to spammers anymore.
The script used to check tables related to categories has been improved for performance, and for automatic deletion of zombies. See categories/check.php.
The script cron.php now explains how much time it will wait until the next tick. More information (count of processed items and processing time) is also provided by triggered scripts, such as agents/messages.php, agents/uploads.php and feeds/feeds.php.
A debugging facility has been added to links/link.php.
A rendering bug has been fixed in categories/view.php, that caused a link to Feedster incorrectly appear in the main area of the page.
Rendering bug fixed in error.php, that caused a duplication of displayed message.
The index page for back-end services now correctly displays long URL. See services/index.php.
A help panel has been added to the form used to import blogger templates. See skins/upload.php
The index page for smileys, at smileys/index.php, has been revised and the documentation has been enhanced.
An index page for local avatars has been added (users/avatars/index.php).
The code that supports gravatars now fetches image content directly (i.e., based on
MySQL SELECT statements that return no result are turned into the NULL value instead of an empty array.
More MySQL statements are correctly escaped, like in action/actions.php, in comments/comments.php, in files/files.php
A third argument has been added to almost every call of
Every call to
A non-breaking space has been introduced in French labels that have an ending ';' character. That's the rule.
The documentation of many database abstractions has been enhanced, including actions/actions.php, sections/sections.php and users/users.php.
The documentation of go.php, the page locator, has been improved. More phpDoc comments have been added to overlays/index.php and to sections/index.php as well.
As usual, it is highly recommended to upgrade your server. For further information check How to achieve incremental upgrades of a YACS server?.
In September Dubsky, Eoin submitted a SQL statement aiming to compute distances between two points, based on their longitudes and latitudes. This has been implemented as Locations::list_by_distance() in the database abstraction for locations, at locations/locations.php. More importantly, YACS now displays nearest neighbours to articles (articles/view.php) and to users (users/view.php). References to GeoURL have been removed, since the server seems to be dead. These have been replaced by a link to TravelGIS, which offers a free geocoding engine for 22 countries. See skins/configure.php and locations/edit.php The script used to map locations on Earth now returns a cacheable image. See locations/map_on_earth.php The layout articles/layout_as_manual.php has been evolved to handle the dotted ranking system. Also, the database abstraction for articles, articles/articles.php has been heavily impacted. Navigation links (next, previous) have been moved to the sidebar in actions/view.php, in comments/view.php, in files/view.php, in images/view.php, in locations/view.php. This layout allows for a more simple user interface than before. Navigation links have been added to articles as well. The navigation bar is built in articles/view.php. Links are provided by sections/section.php, depending of the underlying layout. Public files posted at any YACS server are now listed in a dedicated RSS feed, implemented at files/feed.php. See files/files.php. Of course, the new feed appears at the related index page at feeds/index.php. YACS now better supports Radio Userland and similar feeding tool using the port 5335. Direct syndication may be triggered from feeds/index.php. A profile is now automatically created for the Moreover service in servers/populate.php. If activated, YACS will ping Moreover on page publication. HTML tags, if any, are now removed from titles in RSS feeds. A new bookmarklet has been created for users of Internet Explorer under Windows, that enables contextual blogging (meaning: "select some text, right-click, and blog"). The script articles/ie_bookmarklet.php prepares static files that are necessary for this. The bookmarklet is displayed in the Control Panel, at control/index.php. The search engine search.php now accepts the ';' char and, therefore, is able to locate Unicode strings. Also, Ask Jeeves has been added to the list of forwarded search engines. The edit form for articles now saves data received from bookmarklets into the session, and therefore allows for user authentication and for section selection, if any.See articles/edit.php. The blogging back-end (services/blog.php) has been heavily revised. YACS handles templates correctly both for reading and for writing. Unicode support has been improved, and works correctly with w.bloggar. Standard XML-RPC error codes have been implemented. Bug in blogger.getPost has been fixed. YACS now translates HTML entities to Unicode entities (see utf8_to_unicode() in shared/global.php). This enables a true interoperability between w.bloggar and YACS web form. Also, this feature helps to ensure that there is only one representation of a given character in the system, and this is very important to the search engine. YACS has been able to highlight keywords on search for months. Now it even supports Unicode in these keywords. See render_skin() in shared/global.php. Usage of utf8_decode() has been deprecated because of bad Unicode support. We are now using ut8_to_unicode() instead. See shared/global.php, services/ping.php, and services/xml_rpc.php. Sections now feature the same commenting system than articles. This means you can create top-level threaded discussions more easily. See sections/view.php. The APOP authentication scheme now takes place only if explicitly asked for. The new parameter with_apop is set or changed in agents/configure.php, and checked in agents/messages.php. We are sure that YACS has more than 99,000 lines in source files because this figure is now computed during build by scripts/build.php. The forms used to post files, images and locations now display more information on successful upload or update. See files/edit.php, images/edit.php, locations/edit.php.. The query.php form now hides poster e-mail addresses to non-associates. Therefore, if an associate moves the page to a standard section,
there is no risk to expose addresses to spammers anymore. The script used to check tables related to categories has been improved for performance, and for automatic deletion of zombies. See categories/check.php. The script cron.php now explains how much time it will wait until the next tick. More information (count of processed items and processing time) is also provided by triggered scripts, such as agents/messages.php, agents/uploads.php and feeds/feeds.php. A debugging facility has been added to links/link.php. A rendering bug has been fixed in categories/view.php, that caused a link to Feedster incorrectly appear in the main area of the page. Rendering bug fixed in error.php, that caused a duplication of displayed message. The index page for back-end services now correctly displays long URL. See services/index.php. A help panel has been added to the form used to import blogger templates. See skins/upload.php The index page for smileys, at smileys/index.php, has been revised and the documentation has been enhanced. An index page for local avatars has been added (users/avatars/index.php). The code that supports gravatars now fetches image content directly (i.e., based on Link::fetch()) instead of using GetImageSize() with URLS (buggy on some systems). See users/edit.php and users/select_avatar.php MySQL SELECT statements that return no result are turned into the NULL value instead of an empty array. More MySQL statements are correctly escaped, like in action/actions.php, in comments/comments.php, in files/files.php A third argument has been added to almost every call of explode() to avoid strange behaviours in some cases. Every call to die() has been changed to exit(). A non-breaking space has been introduced in French labels that have an ending ';' character. That's the rule. The documentation of many database abstractions has been enhanced, including actions/actions.php, sections/sections.php and users/users.php. The documentation of go.php, the page locator, has been improved. More phpDoc comments have been added to overlays/index.php and to sections/index.php as well.Comments
Skara on Dec. 27 2004Great work Bernard! i'm still waiting for a donation link to send u some € for couple of beers
really do you have thouhgt to build a donation module for Yacs?
Cheers
-S
Happy Holidays!
Bernard on Dec. 28 2004Skara: Thank you for your insistance to give a gift. I suppose I should add a Paypal link or a wish list to this site. When I will have some free time...
Keep posted! I am working on the 2005 roadmap, and this will be fun
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Posted by Bernard on Dec. 27 2004, (popular)
