Welcome Back!

[Zherog]

Kitchen

Appears to trigger the word filter... It makes it hard to talk about kitchen-sink fantasy.

Fixed.

In the same boat as Dogbert. Old account Artless appears to not send the password reset email to any account I currently use so I assume it was something I abandoned forever ago.

You have a PM from me.

[Artless]

Sent you a PM, I'm all set. Thanks!

[FatR1]

It seems, I'm in the same boat as some of the posters in this thread. My old password (for FatR username) does not work anymore (even though I'm pretty sure it is correct), resetting cookies did nothing, and restoring password through e-mail does not work, maybe because the e-mail address I used to register that account is now defunct. I've created this dublicate account because writing to the admins also did not result in any reaction.

Can someone please send a password restoration link for the FatR account to chronic1979@gmail.com or do something else?

[Zherog]

It seems, I'm in the same boat as some of the posters in this thread. My old password (for FatR username) does not work anymore (even though I'm pretty sure it is correct), resetting cookies did nothing, and restoring password through e-mail does not work, maybe because the e-mail address I used to register that account is now defunct. I've created this dublicate account because writing to the admins also did not result in any reaction.

Can someone please send a password restoration link for the FatR account to chronic1979@gmail.com or do something else?

You have a PM from me.

[Zherog]

UPDATES!

Current Known Issue List

• I will update the site format / appearance in a week or so once we're stable. I forgot to install the package for that while upgrading, and I'd rather wait a week or so at this point.

Current "Feature Request" List

• Dark/Night Mode display

These should both be available now. To change your "style" for the forum, up at the top-right click your username and choose User Control Panel. In the UCP choose the "Board Preferences" tab.

Roughly in the middle will be an option named "My Board Style" with a default value of "prosilver". Clicking the dropdown will now provide you with two different choices:

1. AllanStyle-SUBSILVER
2. prosilver (Dark Edition)

The first new option should be much closer to the old format. I think I'll need to update some colors, but it should get us much closer. The second option should fulfill JigokuBosatsu's request for a dark/night mode display.

Please take a look at them and let me know if there's any issues. Assuming there are no issues, I'll change the forum's default style to SubSilver in a day or so, but I'll leave this current style available as an option for those who have gotten used to it and like it.

--Z

[JonSetanta]

Great! I've missed you all. Welcome back.

[Zherog]

I'm working on the various tags for building tables. Can somebody let me know if the various tables seen here: https://web.archive.org/web/20190208040 ... 4a4bee0741 are representative of how they looked? Were there any features previously that don't seem to be demonstrated on that page?

Thanks!

--Z

[Zherog]

Roughly in the middle will be an option named "My Board Style" with a default value of "prosilver". Clicking the dropdown will now provide you with two different choices:

1. AllanStyle-SUBSILVER
2. prosilver (Dark Edition)

The first new option should be much closer to the old format. I think I'll need to update some colors, but it should get us much closer. The second option should fulfill JigokuBosatsu's request for a dark/night mode display.

--Z

And, of course, with my journey back through time via the Wayback Machine, I now see that the style that I thought was close to the old one is in fact nothing like it. I'll take a look through the available styles again to see what I can find...

[Trill]

I mean, the style is noticeably closer to the old one than prosilver. Just not the same.

[Zherog]

Yep. The biggest difference seems to be the names/avatars still on the right, where they were on the left previously. I'm still digging to see if I can find one that's any closer; if so, I'll try to modify it to have the old colors, and if not I'll have to look at how to move the username / avatar block to the left and either modify this one or (*shudders*) make my own.

---

In other news, I've been playing with trying to build a new table tag...

The tl;dr version: I can't do the codes the same way, and need to investigate what the posts with tables actually look like in the database to see if I can script a fix that will use the new format I'll need to develop.

More detail that probably doesn't interest anybody, but here it is

The good news is that this version of PHPBB seems to be VERY robust about closing tags, unlike older versions where we had to make a customization to the code to prevent that.

The bad news is that the way they do so will prevent our table tags from working the way they used to. Trying to keep it as short and as un-technical as possible, the TABLE tags we had previously took advantage of HTML not giving a flying fuck about extra "close" tags that didn't match to anything. So for example, when you wanted to make a new column in your table you put this in your post:

Code: Select all

[/td][td]Hey, look! I'm a new column!

Note that there's no closing tag there, unlike what you have for bold or quote or so on. When the software parsed your post, it effectively replaced the COL tag with this HTML code:

Code: Select all

</td><td>

Yeah, HTML looks a lot like BB Code. In HTML "TD" is the tag for table data - it tells HTML to put the data into a new cell within the table. You'll notice that the HTML has a "close tag" first. It's a pretty poor way to do the coding, but it worked because, as I said, HTML doesn't give a shit about the unmatched close tag; it just ignores it. So when you put it all together the table came out more or less correct. The problem really comes down to the MROW and ROW tags. You would enter something like this:

Code: Select all

[ROW]This would be in the first cell of the row

And the HTML that would get substituted in would be:

Code: Select all

<tr><td>This would be in the first cell of the row

TR for "table row" and then the TD for "table data" to account for the first cell. That worked on the old forums because there was nothing that went out and closed unmatched tags. We then modified the base code to parse the post text at the very end looking for unclosed tags, and added whatever was needed to make things match. Now, with the way I have to add custom codes and the way the software parses the post to replace those codes with HTML, what we end up getting in the HTML code is this:

Code: Select all

<tr><td></tr></td>This would be in the first cell of the row

For whatever reason, it doesn't put it after the associated text. I have a hunch why, that I probably can't explain without making this post rival War & Peace in length.

So, with all that said... at the moment, I can pretty easily create tags that will have tables working. But they would only work for new tables because they'd have to be formatted differently than before. Essentially, I would have to do this:

Code: Select all

[/td][td]Hey, look! I'm a new column![/col]

That is, I'd have to require you to enter a closing tags, for both columns and rows. And since none of the old tables would closing tags they'd still be borked. So next up on my list when I find an hour or two is to look closer at the posts as they reside in the database, and see if I can do any SQL scripting to "inject" the necessary closing tags into the post. There's just under 2,000 posts with at least one table. Hopefully as I dig through them there will be patterns I can use to make the code work. SQL development has been my "day job" for 25+ years, so hopefully I'll be able to figure something out.

So, stay tuned...

[JigokuBosatsu]

For some reason I completely missed your post, the prosilver (dark) theme is great!

[Zherog]

For some reason I completely missed your post, the prosilver (dark) theme is great!

Great to hear! Thanks for the feedback!

[Zherog]

I'm working on the various tags for building tables.

So, some updates on this.

1. I believe I have the tags figured out. Bad news, they're going to be different from previously - biggest difference is that I need to require closing tags.
2. A small benefit of that is that I think I can add a few more formatting options to rows and cells.
3. And finally, I think I have various search/replace strings sorted out so I can update values already in the database so they'll format correctly. I want to pull a few more samples from the database to try out my patterns just to be sure.
   • I already know that these patterns will not work on any tables created back on the original version (BbBoy, anything prior to some point in 2008).
   • I also know they won't work - at least as currently written - on tables that took advantage of the "COLOR" option that existed. (Josh's "Tome Armor" tables come to mind as a good example of those.) I'm still trying, but those may need to be done manually after I've converted.
   • And the last sub-point here, even after I update the DB, I'm pretty sure they still won't display correctly. If what I'm interpreting what I've read on the PHPBB support site and forums is correct, I'll need to run a command line utility to reprocess the posts. But I'm hoping I'm wrong on that one, because it sounds like a giant pain in the arse.

In other news, I've also found a mod that should give us back our "Announcement Banner" at the top of the site. And while researching the TABLE tag options, I found a few other tags that may be useful - in particular "ANCHOR" and "GOTO" tags that would be helpful for anybody maintain really long posts with a "table of contents" at the front - or one that could benefit from a table of contents at the front. I also have an "ALIGN" tag, that should work with the one we had previously - though that still needs tested.

I'll add the new table tags in the next day or so, and post how to use them. Given the way my schedule works out, I likely won't run the code to fix anything until the weekend. So, stay tuned...

[Zherog]

New Stuff!!

1. GOTO and ANCHOR tags
2. ALIGN tag
3. BACKGROUND tag
4. FONT tag
5. SPACER tag
6. TABLE tags

GOTO and ANCHOR tags

We now have GOTO and ANCHOR tags. These two work together to allow you to give links to jump around the page.

Code: Select all

[goto=anchor_name]Whatever text here[/goto]

and

[anchor]anchor_name[/anchor]There is an anchor in front of this post

Will give you:

Whatever text here

and

There is an anchor in front of this post

However, the better example is probably the "Table of Contents" list at the top of this post. Each of those "links" are GOTO tags that will jump to the associated anchor, which is at the beginning of each section. I just now learned you cannot include an ampersand within the anchor; it fails to render. I'm not sure what other characters will have that same effect. I can also tell you from experience while playing with the tag that they are case sensitive. If you put "TAG" in your goto and "tag" in your anchor, it won't work. If you click on a goto link and it goes nowhere, that means that the corresponding anchor doesn't exist. Double-check your spelling, capitalization, etc.

At the moment, I don't know if a goto / anchor combo will jump posts or not. But I'm about to find out, by trying to make this text here jump to the next post.

I figured these were great tags for those who maintain various lists, or for large posts containing things such as multiple monsters or multiple prestige classes.

ALIGN tag

The CENTER tag I created originally still exists, but is now "hidden" from view on the posting screen. I did that so anybody who used it won't end up with broken tags. This is the same as the format we had previously.

Code: Select all

[align=right]This text is right justified[/align]

[align=center]This text is left justified[/align]

[align=left]This text is left justified, though it's also the default so you probably will never use it.[/align]

[align=justify]And finally, this text will be justify aligned, so that the text goes from margin to margin. However, to fully demonstrate it, I need to ramble on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on ....[/align]

Will give you:

This text is right justified

This text is left justified

This text is left justified, though it's also the default so you probably will never use it.

And finally, this text will be justify aligned, so that the text goes from margin to margin. However, to fully demonstrate it, I need to ramble on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on ....

At the moment, existing posts with the ALIGN tag in them will NOT render correctly when you view them. If the post is yours, you should be able to edit and then submit without changing anything and have the post update. I'll be scheduling a small maintenance window in the very near future where I'll run a backend command to reprocess every post.

BACKGROUND tag

This one changes the background color of text. Fair Warning: If this gets abused, as determined by fbmf, I will remove it.

Code: Select all

[background=yellow]This text will be highlighted in yellow.[/background]

[background=#9acd32]This text will be highlighted in "yellow-green".[/background]

Gives:

This text will be highlighted in yellow.

and

This text will be highlighted in "yellow-green".

The tag takes a color parameter, which can be entered either by name or hex code. The name must be a valid HTML name for a color. You can find a list of color names and their hex codes Here among many other places on the web.

FONT tag

This one sets your font. Again, Fair Warning: abuse, at the sole discretion of our great and mighty fence building overlord, will result in the tag being removed.

Code: Select all

[font=ariel]This line will be in ariel font[/font]

[font=Brush Script MT]This font will be in cursive[/font]

[font=Courier New]And this one is monospace[/font]

Gives:

This line will be in ariel font

This font will be in cursive

And this one is monospace

A list of web-safe fonts can be found here among many other places on the web.

SPACER tag

This one is similar to the tag we had previously; however, it's now a fixed length - currently set at 5 spaces, though if consensus says a different number is better I can easily change it.

Code: Select all

[spacer]This sentence has 5 spaces at the beginning, making for a nice "indent".

Gives:

     This sentence has 5 spaces at the beginning, making for a nice "indent".

Old posts with the spacer tag will not render correctly; when I do the backend mojo mentioned above, these will fix. Any old post that used the optional number (spacer=3 for example) will have that part stripped from the post. As above, you can edit your own post prior to me doing the backend voodoo; if you have the spacer= format, you'll want to remove the "={number}" to get it to render correctly.

TABLE tags

And finally, the tags to make tables. There are four tags: TABLE, TR, TH, and TD. Those are the actual table (duh), a table row, a column header, and a data cell.

A plain, basic table is done as such:

Code: Select all

[table][tr][th]Header 1[/th][th]Header 2[/th][th]Header 3[/th][/tr]
[tr][td]Entry 1[/td][td]Entry 2[/td][td]Entry 3[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Row 2, Entry 4[/td][td]Entry 5[/td][td]Entry 6[/td][/tr]
[/table]

Gives:

Header 1	Header 2	Header 3
Entry 1	Entry 2	Entry 3
Row 2, Entry 4	Entry 5	Entry 6

The biggest difference is that I needed to add closing tags because of the way custom BbCodes are created in v3 versus v2. I found it easier to use different lines and indents to make sure I had all my tags where they needed to be, like this:

Code: Select all

[table]
   [tr]
      [th]Header 1[/th]
      [th]Header 2[/th]
      [th]Header 3[/th]
   [/tr]
   [tr]
      [td]Entry 1[/td]
      [td]Entry 2[/td]
      [td]Entry 3[/td]
   [/tr]
   [tr]
      [td]Row 2, Entry 4[/td]
      [td]Entry 5[/td]
      [td]Entry 6[/td]
   [/tr]
[/table]

That still renders the same::

Header 1	Header 2	Header 3
Entry 1	Entry 2	Entry 3
Row 2, Entry 4	Entry 5	Entry 6

You should be able to use any tag within a cell to format that text. However, there are some options built into the tags. The TABLE tag itself has no options at the moment, but I'm looking to add a couple that I'll document in another post. The TH tag also has no options. I'm likely to add some options there as well.

The TR tag has two options: COLOR and FCOLOR

COLOR sets the background color for the entire row; FCOLOR sets the font color for the entire row.

Code: Select all

[table]
   [tr color=SlateGray fcolor=#F5F5F5]
      [th]Header 1[/th]
      [th]Header 2[/th]
      [th]Header 3[/th]
   [/tr]
   [tr]
      [td]Entry 1[/td]
      [td]Entry 2[/td]
      [td]Entry 3[/td]
   [/tr]
   [tr]
      [td]Row 2, Entry 4[/td]
      [td]Entry 5[/td]
      [td]Entry 6[/td]
   [/tr]
[/table]

Header 1	Header 2	Header 3
Entry 1	Entry 2	Entry 3
Row 2, Entry 4	Entry 5	Entry 6

The TD tag has the same two options as the TR tag; hopefully it's obvious, however, that for the TD tag it applies only to that specific table cell.

Code: Select all

[table]
   [tr color=SlateGray fcolor=#F5F5F5]
      [th]Header 1[/th]
      [th]Header 2[/th]
      [th]Header 3[/th]
   [/tr]
   [tr]
      [td]Entry 1[/td]
      [td]Entry 2[/td]
      [td]Entry 3[/td]
   [/tr]
   [tr]
      [td color=Turquoise]Row 2, Entry 4[/td]
      [td fcolor=RebeccaPurple]Entry 5[/td]
      [td fcolor=#FFA500]Entry 6[/td]
   [/tr]
[/table]

Header 1	Header 2	Header 3
Entry 1	Entry 2	Entry 3
Row 2, Entry 4	Entry 5	Entry 6

You can use one or both options for both TR and TD, and you can use the color name or the color hex code.

As with the other tags here, previous posts that include tables will not render correctly. I'm 98% certain I have the SQL replace commands all set to cycle through the database and update MOST of the previous tables to render correctly. There are some that I haven't figured out yet - Josh's Tome Armor is one example. That one is difficult because Josh took advantage of some of the options in the old tag, such as background colors. I'm hoping the exceptions end up under 50 total; I'm likely to go ahead and try to update them manually after the automated stuff is done. If you have a post with a table, you are certainly free to go ahead and manually update it before I do the automation. If you do, the automation will exclude your post. (Well, technically, it'll exclude it whether you updated the table or not, as I'm specifically ignoring any posts with a "Last Updated Date" that's greater than 11-May-2021, so that I specifically don't fuck up this post or anything anybody else adds or edits. So if you edit a post with a table to do something other that update the table (or SPACER tag for that matter) just be aware that after I run the updates and re-parse the posts, your post still won't render correctly.

So, I think that's it for now. Any questions about a tag, of course, just ask.

[Zherog]

And we'll see if goto/anchor will jump between posts.

edit: The answer is YES

[Kaelik]

FYI, Tables very hard to read in Dark mode because the text is a very light grey that doesn't show up well.

Entry 5 in the very last table is readable, so not sure if you can add the fix on the Dark Mode side or not. But potentially adding color changes for the text will make them readable.

[Zherog]

Thanks for the info. I'll have to play around a bit to find default colors that look good on the different Themes. It might be as simple as removing the default background color I chose - I'll have to check the theme templates to see if they include default colors for tables or not.

[Zherog]

Alright, I've removed the default background color from the TABLE code. It should now be the same color as the post background. One of the options I was looking to add anyway was a background color for the table. But for now, the default will match the post background, and the only ways to change that would be the TR or TD color option, or the BACKGROUND text format option.

[Trill]

I think in the bbcode example of the last table you forgot the f's for the middle and right cell
as it is they are all color, not fcolor

[Zherog]

Good catch, thanks. The example is fixed.

[Zherog]

Alright, gang. There are two new options available for the TABLE tag: COLOR and NAME.

The COLOR option sets the background color for the entire table. You can still change individual columns and/or rows by using the COLOR options for those elements.

Code: Select all

[table color=white]
   [tr color=SlateGray fcolor=#F5F5F5]
      [th]Header 1[/th]
      [th]Header 2[/th]
      [th]Header 3[/th]
   [/tr]
   [tr]
      [td]Entry 1[/td]
      [td]Entry 2[/td]
      [td]Entry 3[/td]
   [/tr]
   [tr]
      [td]Row 2, Entry 4[/td]
      [td]Entry 5[/td]
      [td]Entry 6[/td]
   [/tr]
[/table]

Will give you:

Header 1	Header 2	Header 3
Entry 1	Entry 2	Entry 3
Row 2, Entry 4	Entry 5	Entry 6

The NAME option puts a "caption" above the table.

Code: Select all

[table name=Z'sDemo Table:]
   [tr color=SlateGray fcolor=#F5F5F5]
      [th]Header 1[/th]
      [th]Header 2[/th]
      [th]Header 3[/th]
   [/tr]
   [tr]
      [td]Entry 1[/td]
      [td]Entry 2[/td]
      [td]Entry 3[/td]
   [/tr]
   [tr]
      [td]Row 2, Entry 4[/td]
      [td]Entry 5[/td]
      [td]Entry 6[/td]
   [/tr]
[/table]

Will give you:

Z's Demo Table:

Header 1	Header 2	Header 3
Entry 1	Entry 2	Entry 3
Row 2, Entry 4	Entry 5	Entry 6

You can optionally enclose the title within double quotes and it'll still work. I was actually a bit surprised it worked as-written above, figuring the apostrophe would fuck things up. I like good surprises when writing code!

I may go back and do some formatting on the NAME tag - either optional or (more likely) built-in to it. But for now, that's fine the way it is. I'm still futzing with the SQL replacements to fix the old tags; it's something I don't want to fuck up if I can avoid it, even if I will make a backup of those rows in the DB before I do the updates. So stay tuned for that...

[Niles]

This still doesn't fix old tables. Which might be impossible or way to much work, but would be nice if it's practical to do.

[Orca]

FWIW the 'site-wide' announcement banner only appears at the top level of the forums, http://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3

[Omegonthesane]

It also stays dismissed when dismissed once. This may be intended behaviour until and unless it is changed, e.g. to announce a new site wide announcement; but I don't know the design brief.

[Zherog]

Edit: Now that I've had caffeine, I can see that I quoted one post and replied to another. Let's fix that...

FWIW the 'site-wide' announcement banner only appears at the top level of the forums, http://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3

Correct. I set the "Only on Site Index" option this time. The admin who sets the announcement can determine whether it's index page only, or all pages. The admin can also determine whether or not the announcement can be dismissed or not.

It also stays dismissed when dismissed once. This may be intended behaviour until and unless it is changed, e.g. to announce a new site wide announcement; but I don't know the design brief.

That's also correct. The idea is that you've seen and (presumably) read it, so whether or not to keep seeing it is left in your hands.