Excellent! You just made my whole day!!! Thanks for all the upgrades. Enjoy your coffee.

Thanks!  Two of those were my request so I feel especially proud to have contributed in a small way.  Also, this reminds me that I haven't bought you a coffee in a while, so I will go buy another.

Thanks so much, jase, for all you do and for providing us this free site, amazingly devoid of ads, Facebook tracking, etc.

Zag

Awesome work, Jase!


So, I'm not a huge fan of this, but it's not awful and I'm willing to suck it up since other people like it...

But, if you get a chance, could you make the checkbox grid for regular Groups function like it does for Language Groups? (In the Private/Language Groups section, when you hover over a box it highlights the name of both the character AND the corresponding Group # that align with where your mouse is - which makes it easier to not screw up what box is being checked. Edit Groups (despite returning to the checkbox grid) doesn't have that bonus screw-up prevention.


YAY! Thank you.


Fantastic - can't wait to check this one out! (Edit: Just...as soon as I figure out how. I'm not seeing an option to do this on the GM Menu... Nevermind, found it!)

Post-test edit: All right, now that I figured out how to upload an image, and found an image of the appropriate size...it's showing as a broken link in the upload page, and on the selection page, and when test-posted with the new uploaded portrait, it's the old red-silhouette "Who is this masked person?" portrait. I'm definitely on responsive, and uploaded the image myself so I know it went through (as far as the page for doing that would tell me), so either something's still not working there, or I need to do something else in order to make it start working...


SWEET BABY JESUS. Thank you, jase. THANK YOU SO MUCH. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.
Edit: Incredibly sad to note that this is only on the responsive site, and since people can still use the old site (and you can't tell which of your players are using which site), the anxiety/issues/general PITA-ness is still there. Any chance this can be implemented on BOTH sites, Jase?
This message was last edited by the user at 18:34, Fri 03 Nov 2023.

Ugh, forgot about all the skulduggery I had to go to get responsive to work (as an independent site) while accessing the old/main site's data.  Did another quick hack, hopefully you can see the game portraits now.

The old site will eventually go, responsive is the new code that will eventually get rolled into the main site once it's ready.  Responsive is where all edits and changes are done.

Other replies to come when I've got some more time.

10-4.

Confirmed that I can see the uploaded game portrait, now. Fixed!

Who says you can't have it both ways?  Enjoy.


Technical?  Nay, there was a manual bottleneck in the process and I've removed it completely.  ^{It was me!}
This message was last edited by the user at 04:16, Sat 04 Nov 2023.

Sweet! \o/

Both ways AND a bonus safety-highlight. You're on a roll today, good sir!

I bump this regarding a previous request (in #522):



And while I’m at it… link to a message in this forum ?



Obviously not a huge thing, but it could be cool! Even better if it could show images, but… I won’t be greedy. Much.

---

_{(Oh and it’s not a short reply despite the quotes. See, there’s lots of text… I’m going to have to add some Lorem Ipsum if you insist…
Fine, you asked for it.
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.")}

In reply to Imladir (msg # 541):

I did address that, inline replies follow on from the last message in the thread so it'll inherit that subject.  But I now see there's a bug where it didn't, so fixed.

I do also notice that opening the quote/reply link a new window does inherit the subject you're directly replying to... will need to think which way we want it to behave and standardise if possible.
 
Personal tooltips would be possible but we'd have to differentiate it from "official" tips.  I think I've already snuck enough responsive-only tweaks for now.

Currently need to concentrate on finalising any layout issues and, ugh, recreating themes.

I tested just now and indeed it's fixed, great, thanks!

Another update.

• Fixed GM option for posting as option coming up as "or as2" instead of "or as".  Where's the proof reading?  (c;
• Replaced a bunch of internal PHP functions that will be deprecated in future updates.  If I got it right you won't notice a thing.
• Standardised a few screens that had special styling only used on that page, contrary to the rest of the site.
• Removed a bunch of superfluous CSS classes.
• Removed a bunch of JavaScript includes that were from testing about 3 years ago.  Oops.

But what I've really been fiddling with is the themes, and I'd like to reiterate my displeasure and discomfort when working on this.  I'm good at binary not beauteousness (sorry, I was desperate for a "b"-word) and find it takes an extraordinary length of time to come up with something sub-par.

I simplified a few options so the custom page is a little shorter and as a result slightly easier to manage.  Reworked the dark red theme so it doesn't have any bright red hovers plus a bit more red in various spots.  Also (re)created the black theme.  A little more greyscale than the old black theme but still has some of the blue link colouring and the like that harks back to the old site's theme.

Also, and hopefully helpfully, added a test screen to view your custom theme.  Still have to save your theme to see it but found it really helped when creating/editing black and dark red.  Link appears in the theme customisation screen once you save.

See how the themes go for you and let me know any feedback.  Feel free to recreate the other 10 or so themes for me.

Oh, if you do have a custom theme then please update it, I changed a few things so you'll probably find a few random colours are wrong until you do.

Ooh, nice test screen.

Since you chided us for not proofreading, "a hyperlinlk" on the test screen failed the proofreading test. =D

You passed my test!

(Does anyone ever believe that?)

• Ran a stack of pages through https://validator.w3.org/
• Replaced a plethora of old HTML with newer stuff (e.g. <font> is obsolete so used <span> instead)
• Added "alt" (alternate) text to a stack of images to appease w3 plus (more importantly) it's a nice thing to do for those to rely on screen readers.
• Changed the hover-over tips from using "alt" as the tip source as it's actually invalid (and upon reflection not nice for screen readers).  For those who care about such things, used "data-*" attribute instead.
• Removed a whole stack of "self closing" HTML tags, again are obsolete.
• Fixed a stack of other closing and misc errors that the validator found for me.
• Renamed "white" and "black" to "light" and "dark" as they're not monochrome themes.  A little pedantic but someone will mention it (besides me!).
• Changed all the charset (character set) encoding to UTF-8.

That last one is of moderate importance.  Whilst it doesn't change how the website works it might change how browsers choose to display non-standard characters, such as "€" (€) and "ö" (ö).  I don't expect any issues but do recall some oddities with character sheets or similar from ages ago, so thought it worth a mention/warning.

Another bonus to switching to utf is that it'll stop messing with Asian character sets, e.g. i.e. when you saved a post with や in it, it will actually save as &#12420;.  Not friendly for those trying to edit such messages as it's just a pure mess of &#; and numbers.  Now it'll just save the actual character.

I mucked with a bunch of other stuff but can't remember what it is, so my usual "good luck" signoff!

The character changes are fantastic, especially for the fixes for editing with Asian characters, and a heads up to everyone who now sees their special characters as the busted diamonds - just paste the words in again fresh with an edit, and it'll fix that! (Or it did for me)

Thanks, jase!
This message was last edited by the user at 19:16, Sat 18 Nov 2023.

Yup, getting reports of special characters not displaying eg accented e é (I typed that using ISO Entity so it'd display properly) showing the diamond/question mark broken indicator.

Since such characters are relatively common in say French, is there any other option for a fix aside from SunRuanEr's Edit/Retype workaround ?   Maybe reboot PC, restart browser if it just needs to clear/reload, OR some browser setting that can be tweaked ?  (forgive my ignorance, I don't know how UTF or other methods of encoding are actually implemented, so I don't know what's needed to resolve)  :>

I checked with a reboot and a restart of the browser, Skald, and it didn't seem to fix the issue with the diamonds. If there's a browser setting that can get rid of them, I don't know where to find it.

Are you seeing freshly-typed accents not showing, or just ones from before jase's updates?

Every accent I can find that hasn't been edited /today/ is displaying as a busted diamond, now, although before it was hit-or-miss as to whether or not they would work or not - I assume depending on what kind of format they were entered in, not sure because that's above my pay grade. They're also all showing busted diamonds in their edit screens regardless of whether they worked or not previously, which is a new behaviour. I used to have no idea whether or not an accent was going to show properly until entering it and then reading the post.
This message was last edited by the user at 05:29, Sun 19 Nov 2023.

Freshly-typed accents, but not ones keyed as ISO entities - eg ALT+130 is a problem, but &eacute; and &#233; are not.

From what I can find, and bearing in mind I don't speak HTML that well (just the basics), I'd be adding <meta charset="UTF-8"> to specify the character encoding ... but even if that's anywhere near ballpark, RuBB might work very differently ! :>

OK so we've got an annoyance with switching to UTF-8... which we basically have to do at some stage.

Currently everything is saved as iso-8859-1, basically think Latin.  Works fine and renders everything nicely but some stuff has to be converted to HTML codes to work.  Just the way the old web worked, not a RPoL specific thing.

Now we want to use UTF-8.  UTF-8 is awesome because it properly supports a huge character set, no issue.  Responsive is now displaying the webpage in UTF-8.

So.  File in iso being rendered by a website that's using utf = triangles.

I've written a few hackery adjustments to convert, which is relatively straightforward.  Basically "if this string is iso encoded then covert it to utf" before displaying.  Any new posts are fine 'cos it's utf all the way through.. old ones need some converting.  Should work.

I've done some detect/converting for thread listing and displaying, however the rest I unfortunately don't have time for right now.

Now my concern is the opposite of what's responsive is seeing.

In responsive:

 * File in iso
 * Converted to utf (due to by recent hackery)
 * Rendered in utf

My concern is the old site for new messages that are posted from responsive, 'cos that'll save the entry in utf:

 * File in utf
 * Rendered in iso ... will it be bad?

So anyone using responsive and non-English characters... let me know if people using the old website have problems viewing your messages.

Solution would be one of three things:

 * Try to hack in the same for the old site, though the other way around.  I don't relish this idea.
 * Undo the UTF-8 update for responsive, only push it out once we go live.
 * Rush the responsive release (is getting fairly close to release anyway, isn't it?)

Apologies for the rush, supposed be somewhere else!

If Responsive is working fine, then my vote is not to worry about the old site, and not to rush the responsive release.  :>

Reasoning:

a) we have a workaround/fix = switch to Responsive, and
b) the sooner we can consolidate to just one site, the better (for all that I still like the old site personally) and any effort spent on the old site is effort that could be spent working on the Responsive release.

Yay, no more busted diamonds on old messages on responsive!



So....yeah. NEW messages posted on the responsive site using non-English characters are complete gibberish on the old site. Old messages render fine on the old site. It's almost like every character is appearing as individually a different, wrong character. (For example, á on responsive is rendering as á on the old site.) Strings of Chinese characters are particularly amusing, one I tested coming up as “顯然，他們以為是我，直到我出現並沒有死。” on the old site.

But I agree with Skald. The more people that go ahead and get on responsive, the better. =D

Truthfully, too, I wonder how much of an actual /problem/ it is? (I have no idea how many people are still on the old site. Does anyone?) It's disconcerting when single characters render wrong - like the á example, but it doesn't make the word unreadable, and at least in the games I'm familiar with, when we see entire strings of other characters they usually have an English translation provided afterwards, which IS readable even if the non-English string isn't.

Of course, I have no idea how many actual games ARE being run in other languages, so it might be a much bigger problem...but still one that can be solved by switching to responsive!
This message was last edited by the user at 11:57, Mon 20 Nov 2023.

In reply to SunRuanEr (msg # 554):

Ahem!  I still use the original site.  :)  Will probably be the last one to move (don't worry jase, I'll remember to switch off the lights when I leave).  But I'm only involved in one game at the moment, and certainly none in foreign languages.

Then again, in the past I have been known to post Swedish words and phrases, just for fun, in my own games (Swedish uses a 29 letter alphabet, compared to the English 26, so a few strange ones in there).  :p

I played around with this today. Desaturated the light theme down to grayscale with the exception of hyperlinks, private lines in messages, and the traditional colors for public/private message notifications. Its not an exact replica of the 'White' theme from the old site, but has a very similar feel.

I'm happy to plug away when I have time and save you the headache.

I apologize.  It's late, and I'm not really sure I read all the posts (again, late) - so if this has been discussed, again, I apologize...

While I haven't seen any issues with special characters in the 'new' rpol, I'm noticing it with one or two people's posts using apostrophize and quotation marks.

I've tried to get it to replicate on desktop (pc), laptop (pc), ipad, and iphone, but everything I'm posting is showing correct.  I've tried different types of punctuation (such as on ipad swiping to get punctuation on the keyboard, using separate keyboards, pressing and holding for special characters)

I'm seeing it on EVERY post made by one or two people (including posts made today), including posts they've made within the last couple of hours.  In looking historically, I've seeing it on some of my own, older posts (I post across multiple devices).

I'm seeing it in Edger, Opera, and Chrome (again, across multiple devices). I've seen it in multiple games.

I HAVE cut and pasted the text, both from the reader and from an edit, and from the reader when I C&P into a new post, it's showing a square with a question mark in it.

When I C&P from a thread edit screen, I'm getting the black diamond with a question mark.

I guess it's probably a none-issue, and might be impossible to trouble-shoot/investigate with such a low impact and without being able to replicate it, but figured I would toss it in just in case it's something that helps.

It's possible those quote characters (whether single or double) are actually special characters, ie the prettified curly quotes, rather than the basic quotes that come on a keyboard ... and bearing in mind some software will convert standard quotes to curly quotes automatically.

Ah, that's 'straight quotes' to 'smart quotes' checkbox per Microsoft Word (Options | Proofing | AutoCorrect Options button | Autoformat AND Autoformat as you type tabs).