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#1 ilko

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Posted 15 December 2012 - 04:52 PM

This code box
http://reboot.pro/to...ne/#entry164102

was displaying fine a couple of days ago, now is messed up, everything is on a single line, just like how this one became too:
http://reboot.pro/to...e-7#entry164106

#2 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 15 December 2012 - 05:09 PM

Yes, we have a new version of the software that fixed some of the previous bugs, once again introducing some new ones, and much worse than that and once again, altering pre-existing contents, making them more difficult to read (in the case of code/codebox items), making clickable links become unclickable and what not. 

http://reboot.pro/to...855-once-again/

Not testing software before release (and applying senselessly UNtested updates on the "live" board)  is obviously by design.

 

:cheers:

Wonko



#3 Brito

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Posted 15 December 2012 - 08:55 PM

Ok my friends, let's agree on one thing: from now forward I see the forum software as perfect.

 

When I mean perfect, I mean that I will not be applying any further upgrades for at minimum a year unless some security issue is necessary in between. I'm getting tired of seeing the older posts getting butchered with these "upgrades".

 

Ilko, my apologies. Unfortunately it seems that the posts in question need to be manually edited to be back in place. When we apply patches to solve some defect then something worse seems to come along with each upgrade.



#4 Sha0

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Posted 15 December 2012 - 09:26 PM

Ok my friends, let's agree on one thing...
It is unfortunate that such a strategy must be adopted, but stability certainly makes me happy. :) Thanks.

#5 Brito

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Posted 15 December 2012 - 09:57 PM

Yes, let's just freeze on the upgrades for a good while.

 

As Wonko mentions, new upgrades will first be placed at a dummy board with a copy of the contents of what we have around here and then tested by members of the community. It is quite an effort to get this done, so I'd say once a year we should be able to do this.

 

Let's try to get some stability. Just too bad about the botched content. IPB oughta learn that our writings are the only part of the forum that should remain immutable as years pass, it is only the thing that matters. The rest are just fancy bells and whistles.



#6 ilko

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Posted 16 December 2012 - 02:59 PM

Ok my friends, let's agree on one thing: from now forward I see the forum software as perfect.
 
When I mean perfect, I mean that I will not be applying any further upgrades for at minimum a year unless some security issue is necessary in between. I'm getting tired of seeing the older posts getting butchered with these "upgrades".
 
Ilko, my apologies. Unfortunately it seems that the posts in question need to be manually edited to be back in place. When we apply patches to solve some defect then something worse seems to come along with each upgrade.
Thanks Nuno.

A few remarks- parts of the content in the codeboxes was changed, besides the changed formatting, for example "echo". That's worrying, formatting is fixable, but changed content could be tricky and not that easily spotted. It might be worth checking some more posts with codeboxes if their content was changed.

I wonder- isn't this board software paid? Is the company behind aware of those issues? Do they care? What is their response?
Breaking contents and formatting with upgrades is not acceptable at all, as you mentioned, that's all that matters- all the information, ideas and help posted, not fancy toolbars, editors, improved SEO or whatever.

#7 Brito

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Posted 16 December 2012 - 03:17 PM

I wonder- isn't this board software paid? Is the company behind aware of those issues? Do they care? What is their response? Breaking contents and formatting with upgrades is not acceptable at all, as you mentioned, that's all that matters- all the information, ideas and help posted, not fancy toolbars, editors, improved SEO or whatever.

 

We are allowed to use perpetually the IPB software at no extra costs. Back in 2006 they made available a "perpetual" license shortly before changing the licensing scheme to semester-based subscriptions or whatever they call it. This means we (here) upgrade to newer versions *always* and at no cost.

 

The part where content is broken is not new. I don't know how this is in other forum sites but I remember reboot and MSFN both experiencing the broken links with the upgrades. For me, even worse is seeing these problems occur in other boards and knowing that sooner or later we will pass through the same. There is really no concern on their side, I'm not a paying customer.

 

Ask Wonko to tell you how easy it is to explain those guys that something is wrong. I don't even try any more.

 

For now we'll just freeze all upgrades. Not all is bad on the forum software but the content should never, never, never, never be touched by any upgrade.



#8 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 16 December 2012 - 04:02 PM

Ask Wonko to tell you how easy it is to explain those guys that something is wrong. I don't even try any more.

@Ilko

http://reboot.pro/to...again/?p=163945

http://reboot.pro/to...with-the-board/

http://community.inv...-version-r37167

 

:cheers:

Wonko



#9 pscEx

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Posted 16 December 2012 - 04:03 PM

@Nuno, I agree with you, and I'm sure that during next days, ... , centuries, I'm becoming familar with the new glitches / workarounds. :cheers:

OffTopic: Is that your bad experience with the board software, that we do not try to introduce WinBuilder 083 (084)?

Peter

#10 Brito

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Posted 16 December 2012 - 07:59 PM

OffTopic: Is that your bad experience with the board software, that we do not try to introduce WinBuilder 083 (084)?

 

Yes. This is off-topic and should be moved to its own discussion.

 

The first question to ask: Are users demanding a new version? And I guess they aren't. They would prefer to see simpler projects and just upgrading winbuilder.exe to a new version does not make these projects simpler. So we break our "content" (app scripts) and don't really get any simpler projects to work with them.



#11 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 16 December 2012 - 08:09 PM

The first question to ask: Are users demanding a new version?

Actually - and just for the record - that is the second question, the first one being (complete with usual answer):

 

 

Do we care about users' opinions?

NO, or at least we haven't much till now.

 

It's a very good piece of news :thumbup: that the answer to first (real) question has changed to:

 

 

YES, at least we try doing that.

 

:worship:

 

:cheers:

Wonko



#12 ilko

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Posted 19 December 2012 - 09:51 AM

Uhh, did they also depreciate usage of codebox tags?

http://reboot.pro/to...nix/#entry79834

http://reboot.pro/to...ing/#entry64641

http://reboot.pro/to...ge-2#entry84461

http://reboot.pro/to...ge-2#entry91962

http://reboot.pro/to...ge-4#entry76965

 

This one is completely gone, what the heck in it triggered to get so severely screwed  :

http://reboot.pro/to...ing/#entry64856



#13 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 19 December 2012 - 11:31 AM

Uhh, did they also depreciate usage of codebox tags?

 

No, but seemingly they didn't unsderstand what BBcodes are for:

CODE <- anything inside CODE tags is text EXACTLY as typed, including TABS, more than one space, etc, in a non-proportional font (example Courier)

CODEBOX <- exactly as the above but in a panning window.

 

They took the route (and this is not the first time, the new approach is since a few revisions, only now it has been profoundly worsened) to have the CODE or CODEBOX work like a formatting interpreter, not entirely unlike SCITE, capable of colouring commands etc.

 

Now when you insert some new code you can choose between:

  1. PHP/Generic/Autodetect
  2. Javascript
  3. HTML
  4. SQL
  5. CSS
  6. XML

Of course, senseless as they might be the last 5, the real issue is the first one, particularly the "Autodetect",

Additionally they somehow decided to re-parse all previous CODE/CODEBOXES (most of which already botched by the previous update with the completely senseless html code for a number of plain ASCII characters such as colon, brackets, etc.).

This has led to at least two new different causes of corruption:

  1. removing of all CR+LF from inside of some
  2. adding senseless line numbering to some

the second all in all does not make that much damage as much as the first.

 

:cheers:

Wonko



#14 Brito

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 09:26 AM

Hey look, a new version of IPB was released: http://community.inv...d-342-released/

 

Take attention to the second post, it seems that the new version manages to break up even more stuff inside the posts than before:

Dates in Languages are Malformed
Old style post specific links not correctly redirecting

 

Just for record, we're only planning to upgrade the board on the end of this year and even that will be subject to testing before changing upgrading anything around here.

 

:)



#15 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 03:06 PM

Take attention to the second post, it seems that the new version manages to break up even more stuff inside the posts than before:

And proofs (if needed) how the good guys there suffered from the known accident, they seemingly live with the (completely and utterly wrong) idea that the main scope of ANY software is NOT that of mantaining the integrity of pre-existing data, which are actually the ONLY items of value for anyone, be it the final "end user", an internet board or a company.

 

I will tell you an episode of my professional life.

Many, many years ago a software company (that made the accounting and connected fiscal inventory software the company I worked with was using since several years) decided to change the program in a new release using a different database engine and providing no certified converting utility for the "previous data", as a matter of fact providing no converting utility, but rather a (half @§§ed) import utility that only took care of the base "fixed" "standard" fields and ignored all the (many) "custom" fields that we added to it (BTW using the original software functions) that contained VITAL data).

The at the time "IT manager" stated how the ONLY solution would have been to import the archives with the provided tool and then re-type all the data in the custom fields. :w00t: :ph34r:

It took to me one week (day and night) with a couple of colleagues to find another software that provided the same functions and had a "flexible" import/convert utility and test it thoroughfully.

You know how grumpy I can be, can you imagine how long the IT manager kept his job afterwards? :unsure:

Spoiler

 

:cheers:

Wonko


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#16 Brito

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 03:32 PM

Thanks for sharing the personal episode.

 

I just wonder how hard it would be in PHP to automate some validation test that would verify if new versions don't screw up the forum contents. This kind of things can't really be good for business. Especially when someone might google for:

 

IPB forum is buggy
IPB forum breaks post content on new versions
Invision Power Board breaks forum content

And finds this topic filled with some nice thoughts to digest. Watch out IPB.. we want software that can be trusted.. :)



#17 pscEx

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 03:49 PM

To give fun, I can report a personal experience wich may be just the opposite of Wonko's experiences.

 

Long time ago, in the end of the seventies, I had to port an existing system. Not only to a new database, but also to a new hardware.

Therefore a "Write new from scratch" was the best solution at that time.

 

When I explored the existing system, I got a database key, let it name "xyz" here, where I could not identify how it was used in the running system.

 

Asking the users for the purpose of the key, gave such senceful replies like "We need it". The most sophistcated reply I remember was "That is real money for us"

 

I decided to include xyz in the new entry mask, and to store in WOM (Write Only Memory) :buehehe:

 

The porting has been a full success, everything worked well, and all users were happy.

 

I would like to know how many time has been accumulated in the life time of the porting, by typing xyz sencelessly into a field.

 

Peter






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