Modern Vespa

That all makes sense, and if it wasnt part of the forum software then please dont try and make it work if I'm the only one asking for it.

Over the last couple of years I've probably gone back to page 1 on the NSM and General forums - Adamspx is a favourite of mine to cheer me up but i can do a name search for that.

The date search will work fine, as you say, it means I'll get the topics in the chronological order they were created rather than last post.

Your question actually got me thinking about other ways we could do page numbers better (which is what I was hoping). I have a few ideas, but I find it's helpful to probe about the intent -- what the user is trying to accomplish -- before I go off and implement some crazy idea I've had.

It's often the case that once I get a clear idea of what the user is really trying to do, better solutions present themselves.

Can the "one thumbs down per day" be changed to 7 per week? Maybe 4 per week even?

I'll put it on the list.

One more image format: webp

Lots of places serve it as an alternative to PNG/GIF, which can make it hard to find a format suitable for posting here.

It's on the list. The obstacle is ImageMagick. WebP is supported, but not in the ARM distribution yet. Or not last time I looked, which was a month or two ago.

(MV runs on ARM processors, both the main server and the database).

Digging deeper, ImageMagick-7 (where webp and heic are supported) is available for aarch64 (ARM) on some linux distributions, but not the Amazon AMI2 linux.

I spent the morning spinning up a new instance, just to install docker, just to build ImageMagick-7 from sources on AMI2. And I *think* it worked, but haven't done anything more than check the version and the supported formats, which both seemed legit.

Actually installing all of the cruft that the build produced on the main MV server is... daunting. I'll try it on a test server, but I don't really want to bork my test server, either. So I'll probably spin up a duplicate instance of my test server and try it there.

You'd think this would be easier.

It took some doing, but WebP and HEIC image formats are now supported for post uploads. They both get converted to png, though, as browser support for both image formats is still spotty.

This involved rebuilding ImageMagick from sources, several new server instances (most only temporary) and doing a hot-swap on the main MV server.

I have not yet supported those image formats for avatar uploads, though -- that's a separate code path that I will have to address at some point in the near future.

I did (and do) wonder how you manage to keep track, prioritize, test and roll out the improvements. And I am intrigued as I read and re-read your explanation of finding (or defining) the problem, noodling around the potential solutions and ultimately the fix. I don't understand most of the jargon. Hell, I don't understand most of the lay-person language either
I am fascinated by seeing how your mind works, as well as the other folks participating in this thread. Understanding how they define and describe a problem, in addition to proposing solutions, helps me re-examine my critical thinking skills. Thanks, y'all!

Tracking and prioritizing is largely done through a highly refined process called "Running around like a decapitated chicken".

But seriously, besides the paper notes, it's really about (a) what is on fire right this minute, and (b) if nothing is on fire, what do I want to work on today? I have a ton of ideas and suggestions and bugs written down, but there is a definite element of working on what will make me happy (read: satisfied) when it is finished.

Of course, I often get derailed, either because something catches fire while I am working on whatever I actually wanted to do, or because I discover some deeper dysfunction along the way that feels worthy of my attention.

Testing is difficult. Software engineers are notoriously bad at breaking their own code, having spent so much time nurturing it into existence. I'm no different, and I frequently fail to consider all the possible ways that a given piece of code might get used. One defensive mechanism that I have developed over the years is just to write really clean, simplistic, modular code. Really complex code has lots of edge cases. The trick is to write code that doesn't have edge cases, or at least has a bare minimum of edge cases to worry about. I'll often write something that technically works, but I will throw it away and start over just because I know it's too complex to maintain.

In my former corporate environment, I had a team of software QA people that I worked with, and nurtured careful relationships with. Having a great QA person testing your code is like a superpower, and a luxury I miss. But it also slows down the process -- a lot -- which was fine when you're writing code that goes into macOS or iOS. What I'm doing here is... quite a bit less disciplined.

Sorry for the bugs.

And finally, roll-out: I am often pushing changes to the server in real time. It's quite unlike the corporate software I used to write -- this is more like working on a scooter that someone else is riding at that moment. I have to consider the current state of the data on the server, what the old code was doing to it, and how the new code will interpret it. It's... kind of a ridiculous way to operate, but that keeps the server going with minimal downtime. Oh, I don't think you're alone. I think I might be typing to myself more than anything, as there are only a handful of people that might sort-of understand what I am going on about. But sometimes, for me, explaining what I'm doing, even shouting it into the void, is a useful process just to clarify things in my own head. Well that's unnerving.

how about AVIF? I just found one of those on a webpage (when I went right click and download)

I've never even heard of it. What's the use case?

same use case as jpeg, webp etc. (it's an image not a video?)

But is it common enough that it needs supporting? ImageMagick has dozens of formats, but we only support the ones that people are likely to come across.

Google is promoting WebP. Apple is using HEIC as their standard camera photo format. Who is using / promoting AVIF?

Probably rare but as I did say I did today bump into it when downloading a pic from a webpage (prefer that rather than screenshot).

If it ain't easy then I'm not asking. Just thought that maybe the updated imagemagik might support it but the php code was blocking the extension or mimetype.

I dug around a bit (not a lot) and the first thing I usually check is caniuse.com to see what the browser support maps looks like. Here it is for AVIF:

https://caniuse.com/avif

Looks like it's gaining support, but not yet nearly common enough that we could support it natively (i.e. serve AVIF files that someone had uploaded). At best, we would have to convert the images to PNG so that everyone's browser could see the image, which would lose any benefit that the AVIF format brought -- namely, better compression. IE and Edge are missing from this list, which is a pretty big problem.

For comparison, here's the map for WebP:

https://caniuse.com/webp

This has much better browser coverage, but the fact that all versions of IE are missing means that I'm still reluctant to support it natively (i.e. without conversion).

And finally, here's the complete list of image formats supported by ImageMagick:

https://imagemagick.org/script/formats.php

That's a lot of image formats to choose from. Too many.

Again, if there are lots of AVIF images floating around out there, and people need to use that format, I'm all in.

Browser support is irrelevant if you convert uploads to PNG (or JPEG) using imagemagik. Oh wait, you are doing that for WEBP and HEIC. I don't see why you are thinking of AVIF any differently than WEBP and HEIC

For the same reason that we don't support any of the dozens of image formats that ImageMagick happens to support -- they are obscure and not something that an average user would need. We just don't need to support every possible format.

WebP and HEIC are both formats that users are already using regularly, because of Google and Apple promoting them and using them in their products.

When I run into problems attaching an image to an MV post, I usually do a screen capture on my iPhone or Mac (using cmd-shift-4 which creates a png file) and upload in the MV post editor. Not ideal but works every time.

Miguel

Same. I bumped into this file format yesterday so just thought I'd mention it to Jess as I thought it would be no challenge for him to add it to the list next to webp and heic. But it's so rare in my travels that I don't really care

I'm completely willing to add it if you can tell me where users are likely to run into it.

The WebP and HEIC conversions were actually a bit sketchy. Aside from having to build ImageMagick (and all of its dependencies) from scratch, I kind of hacked the conversion to PNG into the upload sequence. It seems to work, but I'm not 100% sure that I haven't screwed something up in the process that just hasn't reared its ugly head yet.

The attachment upload code -- which is around 20 years old -- is really, really bad. Even the parts of it that I rewrote are now over a decade old, and those are starting to look crufty, too.

So you'll have to forgive me for being hesitant to add formats unless there's a really good reason to.

Plus I'm, you know, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a rogue actor on the Azure platform.

I do. I just wasn't clear in the earlier conversation as to why the hesitation. But all good

A thought for a feature:

Allow tagging a user with an @ as an alternative to quoting them.

Eg if I wrote "@znomit is a cheeky kiwi" then have it appear in his notifications list.


Edit: here's a real world example
https://modernvespa.com/forum/post2595154#2595154

It's on the list No, seriously, this is something I really want to add. The biggest stumbling block is that it won't really work with regular usernames, which (due to lack of foresight 17 years ago) have spaces in them.

I've since added short usernames, which are lower case and have the spaces (and other random characters) removed -- and they are globally unique across the site. These are the names that show up in paths, for instance to an image you've uploaded.

The disconnect is that there isn't currently a good way for anyone to know what people's short username is, and so it's likely I would have to do something like a javascript autocompletion while typing in order to get it right. Which makes it a bigger job.

But it's high on my list.

Bugger.

I'm guessing actually changing these people's usernames to the short/clean versions would cause a bucket load of issues to resolve. Ouchy

Considering that usernames are the login credentials for most users, yes. I've since added the ability to login using your email address, too, but I think most people are still using their usernames.

And I don't even want to think about how many people don't even know which email address MV has for their account.

lol

I should probably build something that reminds people to validate their email address once a year or something. So many things that need doing.

I'm not receiving notifications of posts via email.

That's not a lot of information to go on. Is your profile set to do so? For a given topic that you think you should have been notified, is the gold bell ("watch this topic") highlighted? Are you turning the setting on or off via the Options when you post? How long has this been happening for?

Work with me here.

EDIT: I can see in the logs that this reply generated an email to you. Is your email address correct?

Email address is correct.

Notify me of replies is set to Yes.

This reminder came through but I've had no notifications for the past week or so.

The quoted you notification is also working.

I've not changed any settings in my profile for years.

None? Have you checked your spam folder?

I should also point out that once you've received an email about a reply on a particular topic, you won't get another one until you've visited the topic.

There's nothing to indicate that anything is amiss with email sending. The chart below shows emails being sent out successfully from Amazon's SES service.

I don't really have anything else to go on here.

This is interesting. All of the Exhaust Wrap posts have gone to the spam folder but this is the first time that's ever happened but no other threads have arrived there that I've posted in.

I'll keep an eye on it.

Thanks for looking into it.

I'm not positive, but it might be because of the nonstandard characters in the title. I'm not even sure if the characters show up via email.

Techniques like using alternate forms of characters are a common way of evading spam filters, but they actually make it easier for spam filters to spot spam.

Thank you for that Jess.

In a twist of irony this thread's notification always shows.

The spam box was full of the wrapping thread but only after a certain date.

It may have been after the title got modified.

I'd believe that.

That explains the funny rendering. Why not just use strikethrough?
It probably evades search too.

An Oil thread E̶x̶h̶a̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶̶w̶r̶a̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶

Strikethrough (and all other BBCode formatting) doesn't work in titles.

Nope

Probably because of this line in the code that indexes post content for search: