Modern Vespa

Granted, though I would argue that wrapping something in [code] tags is a better way to demonstrate formatting.

I'm inclined to fix the problem. I've seen cases where the OS "helpfully" adds an extra space when copy/pasting -- which might be fine for regular text, but not very useful when formatting BBCode.

Of course, it is regex, so now I have two problems.

I've modified a number of regex patterns to allow stray whitespace at the beginning or end of an URL. I am not entirely sure that I haven't broken something in the process, but that's why regex is such a shit-show never-ending adventure: you just never know what's going to happen next.

I've also tightened up the requirements for URLs in the process. The original forum code has long allowed (and made links out of) half-assed URLs without http:// or https://, but only if the domain was prefixed with www (e.g. www.google.com). If it was just google.com, it would not linkify it. Which is probably good, because down that path leads certain doom. Consider whether config.pl is a perl script or a domain in Poland, for instance.

So I've eliminated the linkification of half-assed URLs in all the contexts I could find. You now must paste the full URL or you get no link.

I've also prepared some permutations of the various URL forms for testing, as below: Which evaluates to:

https://test.com/something/
https://test.com/something/
https://test.com/something/
https://test.com/something/

something or other
something or other
something or other
something or other

http://test.com/something/
http://www.test.com/something/
https://test.com/something/
https://www.test.com/something/

[MVFR] POLL: What should Jess fix next?
[MVFR] POLL: What should Jess fix next? (Page 13)
[MVFR] POLL: What should Jess fix next? (Page 13)
[MVFR] POLL: What should Jess fix next? (Post 2656717)

Something
Something
Something
Something Else

Well, it didn't take very long to discover a shortcoming in my previous attempts at allowing spaces in a few specific places. That change interfered with the automatic conversion of pasted-in links to MV topics.

Gah.

So now the regex is even more complex, and it is unlikely I will understand how it works by this afternoon (to say nothing of 2 months or 2 years from now).

But here's a better selection of test cases that includes MV links: And these translate to:

[MVFR] POLL: What should Jess fix next? (Post 2656767)
([MVFR] POLL: What should Jess fix next? (Post 2656767))
https://modernvespa.com/forum/topic183278.13#2656767
This

https://modernvespa.com/forum/topic183278.13#2656767
https://modernvespa.com/forum/topic183278.13#2656767
https://modernvespa.com/forum/topic183278.13#2656767

This
This
This

http://example.com/forum/
http://example.com/forum/
http://example.com/forum/
http://example.com/forum/

This
This
This

And non ASCII like ō in [NSR] What's cheering you up today? (Post 2656869)

Unlikely to be fixed. Some URLs will never be parseable.

(It's not just the ō -- there are 14 reasons why that URL won't parse).

Just as an aside, this is the fully RFC 3987 compliant URL regex:

all of which are no doubt due to regex as we know the url is valid (copy and paste it to/from a modern browser works)

(not a blame as I know you didn't right the original)

Edit: rfc hmm well umm

Yes, technically legal. But also impractical to the point that it's probably not worth the effort to get it to work, and then find all the side effects of things that no longer work down the road.

gotta love maintaining vintage code (phpbb?)

Yes, phpbb 2.0, circa 2002.

That said, the regex we use for extracting URLs has changed repeatedly over the years. I changed it today, in fact.

I doubt it resembles the original any longer.

But there have always been some URLs that push the boundaries of what is legal, and these have never parsed correctly. The non-ASCII character in the names is the first thing that fails, but even if you replace those with a regular 'o' (and hope that google is smart enough to figure it out) it still fails on the first exclamation mark.

On top of that, we are dealing simultaneously with URL formatting but also with bbcode formatting in the same text. Which means there are additional constraints.

Honestly, I'm not qualified to make it work, nor to evaluate the security implications of an expanded (and much more complex) regex extraction.

One of the vexing things about having a long-running forum (such as, say, Modern Vespa!) is that URLs and paths change over time. I've managed to keep most of the paths fairly consistent, but the actual format of a topic URL (or post URL) has taken on several forms over the years.

When formats change, the usual requirement is that I continue to support the old formats indefinitely. New URLs will be served from the server in the correct format, but all of the older versions are embedded in various posts throughout the forum.

Up to this point, updating a zillion old posts was largely out of the question. I've done a few mass-change search-and-replace operations over the years, but each of these was hand-coded and only done because it was absolutely necessary. Older topic URL formats (that still worked) were never a priority, and not worth hand-coding a specific regex-style search for each variation.

So I decided a few days ago to build myself a tool. A feature that only I would ever use, but that would help me make mass-changes throughout the entire historical MV database.

It's all regex based, which makes using it painful. But regex is really the only way to capture very specific URL format nuances and automatically substitute something else in its place.

I've updated thousands of old posts so far. And I'm just getting started.

The Img button/feature to post inline images seems to not be working.

I tried to post an inline image, but I get a broken image instead:



If I add explanatory text, I get this:

[img=Inline Image]http://www.monogodo.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CheckLightWarning.jpg[/img]

I ended up adding it to the post as an attachment instead.

Undoubtedly something I broke. I'll check it out. Thanks for the tip!

Okay, as it turns out I just woke up and am still quite groggy. So I might be misunderstanding, or my first impression reading this through bleary eyes might have been mistaken. Or probably both. The BBCode you posted: Is valid and works, and produces the image as expected. This BBCode, however, isn't legal. There isn't any code anywhere in the forum that recognizes this format:

Unlike the URL tag, IMG tags can only be used in standard pairs. There is no facility for adding explanatory text. AFAIK, there never has been.

Am I missing something? Remember, I've only had one sip of tea so far today, so go easy on me.

Not for me, it shows a broken link image (see attached image). Yeah, I tried both ways, thinking it might have been like the Quote code button.

It could be an issue with the school district's internet rules/filters. But that doesn't quite make sense, as I'm able to see the image when pasting the URL directly into the browser.

I think, based on this, that we're probably dealing with a permissions issue combined with a cache issue. That's my best guess, anyway, but I am open to the possibility of other explanations.

Let's try it with a known-good image, one that is already on MV: This should produce a valid image, as below:

I'm able to see the image you posted.

Let me try this.


The above is using the Image button with the URL of the image I uploaded to my webhost.


The above is using the Image button with the URL of the image I uploaded to MV using the Add Attachment feature earlier today.

Image from my brother's website:


Image from a WordPress powered website (like mine), to see if it's a WP issue:

I can see all of those images.

since you are using an http instead of https url some webbrowsers auto convert to https if the hosting server also has https. monogodo.com supports https. once converted to https the new url gives a 404 and certificate error (cn=allenandcookinc.com).

tl;dr it's a problem with your image hosting not the img tag.

Thanks for this info.

I've gone through the process of getting an SSL cerficate set up for my domain. Hopefully that will fix the issue. That fixed the issue. I now see the images.

Sometimes what seems like a simple task ends up being an extensive tour of all the rabbit holes in the vicinity of whatever it is I am working on.

I set out several days ago to build a better unsubscribe mechanism -- the emails that MV has been sending out forever had a few deficiencies, namely that you generally need to be logged in to unsubscribe from a given topic reply notification. And there wasn't a mechanism to unsubscribe from all topic reply notifications, nor private message notifications.

Seems like a straightforward task. But hah.

Anyway, after days and days of coding and tweaking and researching, I've put in place a relatively modern unsubscribe mechanism that relies on JWT tokens. These are essentially bits of authentication that I can append to an email, giving the recipient the right to make limited changes to their account without actually being logged in. Even if they've been banned, in fact.

Each token is signed by the server for security, but the contents are actually not opaque -- you can paste the token into the website above and it will tell you exactly what is in it.

The main thrust of JWT tokens is that the server can issue them at will but does not need to track them. Once released into the wild, it will either be returned when the recipient follows the link, or it will just sit in the recipients email archive until it expires. The expiration date is built into the token. And since the token is cryptographically signed, any tampering with the token will be easily detected and the token rejected.

Neat!

As always, let me know if you encounter any issues with this, if you actually ever see an email from MV.

My own code comments (rediscovered after I've forgotten I wrote them) are endlessly entertaining to me. Nobody will probably ever get to read them, though, so I'll just post this one here. Because it amuses me.

Today I started trying to untangle the various per-user-per-topic preferences and other sundry data, mostly as it relates to the topic preference buttons in the upper right corner of each topic. It's a bit of a mess, as is typical when features aren't designed so much as congealed over many years, like layers of dirt, oil, and other mysterious things that put off a foul oder when you scratch the top surface.

The deeper I got into this particular task, the bigger the scope of the task became. It quickly escalated until I literally could not hold all the moving parts in my head simultaneously, and I knew that the moment I stopped thinking about it everything would come crashing down around me. Between the code changes in many different places, assumptions that weren't quite well thought out, and working on a live database with live data, I could sense that something tragic was going to happen imminently.

And that's when I threw in the towel. Literally backed out all of my code changes, and reverted one critical table in the database to a previous state.

So. I'm going to have to approach this in pieces. It's still a mess, but I have at least replaced a few of the more confusing icons that appear in that corner with new, possibly less-confusing icons. I've also got a slightly better picture of how some of the pieces interact. Slightly.

Baby steps.

Here's a picture of the new buttons in their off and then on states. Which is itself confusing, because the last one is kind of a negative-setting for ignoring topics when looking at the Replied synthetic forum.

Actually, I hate that button. Maybe it will disappear soon.

personal preferences for toggles:

not selected : gray icon and popped out background
selected : coloured icon and popped in background

many physical buttons are like this

You mean like this?

I don't hate it, but it's veering wildly in the direction of skeuomorphism, rather than away from it.

Also, the button on the right is a bit odd in that I've just changed its off state to be colored to nudge people toward understanding it a little more clearly. The popped-in effect arguably makes it even more confusing.

yes for the first two buttons but the one on the right should still be a grey icon while popped out. gotta keep the visual consistency

It was gray in the off state until yesterday. It was super confusing then. Based on your initial reaction, it isn't any clearer, which means I should probably rethink the feature altogether. Or scrap it. I've already spent far too many brain cells on it.

is the feature itself good or bad ... hmm .. haven't spent brain cells on that myself

The feature is bad. The colored button in the off state is an apparently feeble attempt at making it less bad.

It's even worse in the code, where it goes through multiple negations on its way to the database.

joy

my strong feel:

double negatives in ui confuse users

double negatives in parameters & variables lead to confusion when reading code a year later

I doubt you disagree

No, that pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject. I'm just trying to figure out what to do about it.

Making it a positive also has the potential down side of adding a new column to about 1.3 million records. Which is probably why it is a negative instead.

EDIT: Yes, I see what you did there.

lol, I didn't mean to

broken on safari for greasy

Fairings for GTS 🤣 (Post 2658382)

Naturally you're blaming me.

I'm stumped tho.

Was behavior changed recently to flag any edit, or am I imagining things?

I seem to recall if you edited a post within say 30 min, it didn't trigger an "edited" banner. Useful for correcting typos, for example. But I just edited a post recently right after submitting, and the edited banner showed up.

Not a big deal either way, but I am curious.

If I click my avatar on the top right I see options for My Posts; My Profile; etc. Could we add an option for My Summary to show my user summary page?

If I want to see that currently, I have to find a post I submitted and click my username link.

The criteria for whether an edit is marked (or not) is not time dependent, though it can certainly appear that way. The actual criteria is 100% dependent on whether anyone else has replied to the topic prior to your edit being submitted.

TL;DR: It is only marked as being edited if it isn't the last post in the topic.

It's a fine idea. I've had some variation of this idea on my list for literally years. I've mentally tied it together with an overhaul of the profile editing interface, which is why it hasn't happened yet. Shortcut: click on your avatar in the upper right corner, then select My Posts. Click on your name above your giant-sized avatar on the upper-left side of the page.

Voila! There's your public profile.