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[drupal-devel] [bug] Preview themed as a node list (no way to detect preview)
by elonen 15 Mar '05

15 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/18792 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: node.module Category: bug reports Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: elonen Updated by: elonen Status: patch Hmm.. How about changing the $page boolean to a more generic $context[] instead of adding a new flag? It'd be nice if the themes could also explicitly detect, for example, taxonomy node listing context or a node embedding context. Individual modules could then decide if they wanted to expose themselves to the themes or not and could even do... <?php $context['foo_module'] = 1 + @$context['foo_module']; $foo = theme('node', $node, $teaser, $context); ?> ...if they wanted to let the themes detect multiple nested calls. elonen Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 19:21 : elonen Function theme('node', $node, $teaser, $page) can't detect a preview and therefore often renders it incorrectly. The problem is that !$page is usually interpreted as "the node is part of a listing" in the themes and therefore the previewed page may look, depending on the theme, very different on the actual page. Perhaps theme() should get somewhat more detailed context info than just $page? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 17:02 : Geary Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node.module_5.patch (384 bytes) Here is a patch to node.module that adds a $node->preview flag which themes can use to display previews appropriately. This seems like the simplest possible core change to support styled previews. For more information, screen shots, and a working demo using an updated FriendsLight theme, see: http://mg.to/2005/03/13/drupal-preview-confusion and http://drupal.mg.to/2005/03/13/friendslight-theme-with-styled-preview I am submitting a similar patch to comment.module. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 17:03 : Geary Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/comment.module_5.patch (290 bytes) Here is a patch to comment.module that adds a $comment->preview flag which themes can use to display previews appropriately. This seems like the simplest possible core change to support styled previews. For more information, screen shots, and a working demo using an updated FriendsLight theme, see: http://mg.to/2005/03/13/drupal-preview-confusion and http://drupal.mg.to/2005/03/13/friendslight-theme-with-styled-preview I am submitting a similar patch to node.module. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 17:07 : Geary Oops, one of my patches above says "4.5.2". Both of these patches are actually against the CVS code. Sorry about the mixup. (Other than line numbers, the same patch works for 4.5.2 or CVS.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 17:16 : Geary It seems that when I enter a title in one of these comments, it changes the title on the main entry I'm replying to. Since my previous comment left a title that made no sense out of context, I'm adding this comment in the hope of changing the main title so it makes sense again. Sorry about that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 23:31 : moshe weitzman seems like we'd want a similar flag for a node preview. yours is a comment preview. would be a nice enhancement to this patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 01:34 : Geary Hi Moshe, Yes, I did both the node and comment. Just got a little mixed up about how to post the patches. They should both be in this thread, or the 4.5.2 versions are on the page I linked to above.

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[drupal-devel] [feature] Trim username at login
by tangent 15 Mar '05

15 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/11791 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: user.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: kps Updated by: tangent Status: patch RE #11, if whitespace is not checked for in the password validation it should be. Preventing whitespace from being used is preferable to simply stripping it. tangent Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 20, 2004 - 12:29 : kps They create an account. They get a password by email. They select the password plus the preceding blank or following newline. They paste it into the 'Password' box. They can't log in. They write to me complaining. I get tired of complaints and patch user.module to strip leading and trailing blanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 20, 2004 - 12:39 : kps Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/user.module_0.patch (766 bytes) I claim I'm not *really* dumber myself. Drupal timed out on me.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 20, 2004 - 13:02 : moshe weitzman makes sense to me ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 20, 2004 - 16:54 : rkendall +1 FWIW - I could see this being useful, and don't really see any practical drawbacks. I does smell of hack, but is that really an issue? I mean, it might not be the 'done' thing to mess with passwords, however, I can't imagine any regular user intentionally putting leading or trailing whitespace on a password, but I can imagine it being done accidentally fairly often (either when setting a password, or when logging in). To be consistent, it would make sense to trim passwords when setting them as well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 20, 2004 - 18:09 : Bèr Kessels -1 from me. I think we should nstart meddling with passwords by trim()ing them. If you have dumb users, you should fix it in the mail that is send to them. That is really easy. For example: add a word after the passwords: your password is WKDKAFAJ34 please mind capital letters. or so. Bèr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 20, 2004 - 18:36 : Steven I don't agree with Bèr... copy/pasting is a fiddly business, especially because when pasting a password all you see is asterisks and you don't notice if there is an extra character. Trimming the password won't hurt, I very much doubt that there are people who consciously use a space at the beginning or end of their password. +1 on trimming, it is a usability improvement. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 20, 2004 - 18:51 : chx +1 here. Bèr, if you write a sentence around it, you can still copy-paste the whitespace before and after it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 20, 2004 - 20:18 : Uwe Hermann I'm unsure if I really like this, but if this really gets applied, please make it a configuration option. Do not hardcode it for all Drupal installations. Thanks, Uwe. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 21, 2004 - 00:06 : robertDouglass +1 I can confirm from my logs that the typical user bungles initial login 1-4 times, with each bungled attempt making an all-out failure more likely. Not only am I in favor of trimming, I am much in favor of investigating other means of initial password assignment like on the initial register form or by generating a unique URL that gets mailed and only has to be clicked or pasted into the browser address bar. Sorry if those alternatives have already been widely discussed here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 21, 2004 - 01:21 : stefan nagtegaal I am all for trimming the spaces in front of the username and after it, but I am absoklutely against another option for such thing. IMO this is only a usability improvement and it is not needed to make it a configurable behaviour.. We have enough options already, and if you'll ask me I'll tell you that we need less options instead of more.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 21, 2004 - 04:58 : Bèr Kessels Admitted: no one will conciously add spaces to his or her passwords. So i will pull out my -1 hereby. but -1 for making ot an option. As steef syis: its useability. I still stick to the -1 for applying this specific patch. I beleive that we should be 1) consitant, and strip /all/ password whitespace. 2) use drupal_set_message() to warn people when whitespace was stripped. And so to educate users to be aware of whitespace when copying passwords. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 21, 2004 - 06:39 : kps My proposed patch also strips white space when the user changes the password, so it's not possible to create an unusable password. I agree that a warning message would be a good idea. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 21, 2004 - 11:10 : Chris Johnson Part of the problem with users copying and pasting extraneous whitespace around passwords (or userrnames) is the inconsistent behavior in GUI windowing environments. That is to say, in some applications in some GUIs, double-clicking on a word will copy the word and its surrounding white space, for example. In others, it will not. One might think it would be visibly obvious that the surrounding white space was included in the copy operation, but that's not so. The words might be displayed in a very small, proportional font (and further might be justified or kerned in unpredictable fashion) which make it hard to see just where the highlighted copied text begins and ends. This is under the control of the application and the user. Or, the user might think logically that since all he or she wanted was the word, and likewise that "whitespace" is irrelevant, the user may assume that what was copied was only the desired word even if they can visibly see that the adjacent spaces are highlighted. I'm well aware of this behavior myself and even I sometimes get tripped up when copying and pasting bits of data here and there by the occasional undesired white space. My vote would be to always trim leading and trailing white space, and to document in the help that such white space is not valid in passwords. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 13:25 : killes(a)www.drop.org The patch still applies. Apart from Ber everybody liked it. I also like it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 08:42 : Bèr Kessels "apart from Ber everyone liked it", so here a short comment: I still beleive modifying what a user inserts should never be modified. But the current situation is far worse, so I guess it *gets a +1* from me now too :).

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[drupal-devel] [feature] introduce a "cron" user to fix various cron related issues
by Philippe 15 Mar '05

15 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/5380 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: user system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: ax Updated by: Philippe Status: patch The reason why I created the "ugly" user interface, and let the site admin choose a cron-user ID in the settings page is because of backward compatibility with existing installations. (guess what: my site IS an existing installation) Perhaps another option is to give special users a user ID close to 2147483647 (MAXINT). That way it won't interfere with existing users. Philippe Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 24, 2004 - 01:33 : ax we currently have some problems caused by the undefined state of $user in the cause of cron runs. sometimes it's "Anonymous", sometimes it picks up the currently logged in user (i think). I stumbled upon this when reading issues closed by "Anonymous" caused by the automatic cron closure when issues are fixed. i always think "isn't it strange that "Anonymous" can close issues just as she feels like?" there are quite some related issues - search this site for "cron user". couldn't a cron user solve these problems? a la if (REQUEST_URI) == cron.php then $user = <cron_user>, with <cron_user> having some special properties such as showing "Automatically" for closed issues, being possible to excluded in statistics, putting the rss author from imported rss nodes into nodes author field, having special access checks etc. i didn't think about this much, but thought it is worth filing here. please discuss, elaborate - and don't flame me if i'm too off ;) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 11, 2004 - 07:04 : Chris Johnson Sounds like a good idea to me. It's one of many things I'd like to change if I get time to work on it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 27, 2004 - 21:25 : Philippe Couln't we just write this in cron.php: <?php $cronuser = variable_get('cron_cronuser','nobody'); if ($cronuser = 'nobody'){ $user = user_load(array()); //I believe this results in Anonymous?? }else{ $user = user_load(array('name' => $cronuser)); } ?> We can set the variable cron_cronuser in a page like admin/cron. If the site administrator doesn't set a value, cron uses Anonymous for everything (not some user that happens to be logged on). If a valid user name is set, the site admin can give the cron user special privileges. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 1, 2004 - 20:41 : Philippe Setting the user like this in cron.php sends a cookie. (How? Where? Can we prevent this?) So everybody can get "cron" privileges by loading cron.php once. We could fix this by making cron.php accessible only from localhost (in .htaccess). Any ideas? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 1, 2004 - 23:11 : Philippe Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid.patch (3.62 KB) This patch lets the admin select a UID for cron in the admin/settings page. The variable name in which this is stored is 'cron_uid'. When cron.php is loaded, it sets a variable $cron_is_running. If this variable is set, no session will be opened (and no cookies will be sent). The cron page will use the Anonymous user (uid==0) if cron_uid is not set. Note that the site admin should create a "cron" user before setting the UID. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 21:18 : Chris Johnson Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid2.patch (3.19 KB) Previous patch still applies cleanly to HEAD and code algorith looks good on inspection. However, there are some style problems and one ugly bit using StdClass(), so I have re-rolled the patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 21:37 : killes(a)www.drop.org I like the idea, some comments, though: +if (!$cron_is_running) { + session_start(); +} Is this neccessary? 'User ID '.$cron_uid.' does not exist' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 22:11 : killes(a)www.drop.org 'User ID '.$cron_uid.' does not exist' < == needs to be made translatable. Setting to active. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 07:56 : Chris Johnson Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid3.patch (3.29 KB) Ooops. Sorry I missed that text that needed translating. New patch attached with that bit corrected. Yes, I think the if (!$cron_is_running) code is needed to keep the cron user from creating many unneeded sessions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 11:48 : stefan nagtegaal I am all for the idea of introducing a special id for running the cronjobs, but the approach you took here is far from perfect imo.. After looking at your patch, there are several questions and remarks that came up to my mind: I agree with Gerhard that the $cron_is_running is probably unneeded, I think it's better todo: <?php if (!variable_get('cron_busy', true)) { session_start(); } ?> I think that this is much to technical. Severa newbies will probable ask what a user id is, or what cron jobs are.. From both usability and userfriendlyness this patch is a big -1 from me.. I would suggest todo the following: - Make a new user in the db called 'Cron' with a user id -1, or something like that.. That way you don't have to add extra options to the administration, and the way of implementing should be much cleaner. Also does it improves usability... What do you think? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 15:11 : Anonymous Hi, The functionality is great, but your interface is not. IMO you should just choose good defaults and leave it with that. Why would users want to choose "UIDs" ofr "cron Jobs". Joe user should not have to think about UIDs and Crons. IT should Just Work[tm]. I know there are lots of places in Drupal where this is not the case either, but we are working on that. So when we introduce new functionality we should do it good at once. Why not go for Stefans suggestion of choosing a cron UID and jsut leave it like that. UIDs are not really used anyway, so you can choose just any UID (just the next one available, most often will be '2'). Bèr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 15:45 : javanaut "Make a new user in the db called 'Cron' with a user id -1" Just on a technical note, the database type for uids is "unsigned" and -1 won't work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 21:08 : killes(a)www.drop.org @Chris: I am pretty sue that this patch will not be usefull if the cron user does not get a session. Drupal relies on the session to authenticate the user. If you are worried about too many sessions, you should make sure the session is clossed at the end of the run. his could be done in cron.php. @Stefan, Ber: I think we should introduce just a standard user and assign the "authneticated user" role to him. The set the variable to that uid so we can check which user it is. The problem is that we cannot create the user from database.mysql beacuse the next uid would be No. 1 which is reserved. So we would need to create the user on the first visit to the admin/settings page. We could also use drupal_set_message to inform the admin of this. We should also extent the relevant help text. While we are at it we could make the anon user use the db tabe for its name too and not a variable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 22:33 : Chris Johnson Looks like we are sort of in a corner. Really the cron user should be in the database at install time, but we have to reserve uid 1 for the first user. Maybe there is another way to do that without having the first entry to admin create the cron user? That seems hackish to me. I agree that the anonymous user should also be completely coded into the database, and not a variable. The current methods causes anomolous behaviors. I, in fact, wrote several patches to do that a long time ago (http://drupal.org/node/5639) I looked at updating that patch a couple of months ago, but the new unregistered user comment capability where the user can enter his name made the code a lot more complicated. Maybe I will get motivated to try it again. If only my patch had been applied the first time! :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 23:21 : Olen How about creating a bunch of "reserved" users (like most linux distributions do)? uid 1 = root uid 2 = cron uid 3 - 8 = reserved for later use uid 9 = anonymous And then let the admin log in as root the first time. We still let him/her change the username of any of these users, so it should not cause to many problems for new installations. Older ones would either just have to live with it, or do a lot of 'UPDATE module_table SET uid=X WHERE uid=2'-queries. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 15, 2005 - 00:33 : Bèr Kessels What about following the linux thing, and start counting at 500 for normal users? That way people will recognise it, and numbers do not matter anyway. I mean, there is really no difference between 4 and 500, other than thats its a different number. 500 makes just as much sense as 10, or 2 or 4. Bèr

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[drupal-devel] [feature] common.inc Move textarea pre hook between title and textarea
by jbond 15 Mar '05

15 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/18828 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: base system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: jbond Updated by: jbond Status: patch http://www.voidstar.com/node.php?id=2263 [1] If this patch gets accepted I'll drop this into contrib. It's similar to quicktags but *I* like it better. ;-) [1] http://www.voidstar.com/node.php?id=2263 jbond Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 09:52 : jbond Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/common.inc_10.patch (1.8 KB) This patch moves the textarea hook for 'pre' between the title and the textarea. This makes it easier for simply textarea enhancements like quicktags to add a toolbar just above the textarea. It doesn't appear to have any effect on the fckeditor or htmlarea modules. It doesn't introduce any new hooks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 17:56 : killes(a)www.drop.org Guess that is a patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 13:38 : Bèr Kessels +1 From me. Any module that adds something, will want to add it after the title. I really cannot think of any case where aditional content should sit above the title, but I can think of loads of cases where content needs to sit between the title and textarea. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 23:20 : stefan nagtegaal Indeed, nice and simple patch! +1 from me either..

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[drupal-devel] Folksonomy: No taxonomy.module Changes / URL Design
by Morbus Iff 15 Mar '05

15 Mar '05

Ok, apparently. I'm starting on this "now", even more sooner than before. I've named it folksonomy_shared so as not to interfere with the existing folksonomy.module API by Moshe. I've dubbed it "shared" as it is the key term that distinguishes it from the future direction that Moshe was thinking (per-user-vocabularies). I confess to not really knowing the direction that jbond wants to head in. And, unlike awTags (which, at face value, seems to do most everything I need), folksonomy_shared tries to integrate as tightly as possible with the existing Drupal taxonomy. This gives me the benefit of RSS feeds (an absolute requirement), as well as using synonyms to store similar keywords. * I've started a sandbox for this: sandbox/morbus/folksonomy_shared/ * Only one database change is needed: adding a uid to term_node. http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-devel/2005-03/msg00422.html This morning, I took a look at all the places in taxonomy.module that used term_node, so as to properly handle the new database addition above. At first glance, I don't see /any/ place that requires changing: * The most important thing that distinguishes a folksonomy from a taxonomy ISN'T the I of UI, it's the U. As such, when looking over term_node mentions in taxonomy.module, there were no places that I felt REQUIRED the addition or understanding of the uid. For a "taxonomy" (or, really, a "controlled vocab"), the uid is irrelevant. All normal taxonomies would log the uid as 0, with no change to the existing code. * taxonomy_node_get_terms_by_vocabulary "finds all terms associated to the given node, within one vocabulary." This would seem to be the most immediate and obvious place to include the uid code ("here are all the terms applied to this node, and here are the people who applied them"). But doing so here would be a bad idea: it'd unnecessarily complicate the code (especially when you think about the $key), and ultimately overload the meaning of the function name. Same with the regular _get_terms. * taxonomy_node_save doesn't need to be modified. Without the uid specified, it'll default to 0, which is a proper value for non-folksonomies. folksonomy_shared would save its values with folksonomy_shared_node_save on a nodeapi 'save' hook. * taxonomy_term_count_nodes wouldn't need to be touched, because the number of nodes with a term cares little for uid assignment. * taxonomy_select_nodes would be handled with a folksonomy equivalent version which would allow tids and uids to be passed as params. One of the next usability issues I've been thinking of is URLs, and I've been having some conceptual issues of how to get them right. Your comments will be heartily appreciated. The following are known possibilities: drupal.org/taxonomy/term/34 drupal.org/taxonomy/term/$tid del.icio.us/jagbot del.icio.us/jagbot/origami del.icio.us/origami del.icio.us/$uname del.icio.us/$uname/$term del.icio.us/tag/$term autowitch.org/tags/861 autowitch.org/usertags/1 autowitch.org/tags/$tid autowitch.org/usertags/$uid I heartily agree with jbond: the URL should use $term, not $tid. The problem is that it becomes an either/or situation. Drupal prefers using the $tid (see the first example above), but there's no way to distinguish a $term of "1984" or "666" or "101" from the $tids of the same value. So, using $term is arguably "more" folksonomish, but breaks Drupal tradition. The current format I'm thinking of implementing is as follows: /folksonomy/1 # show all tags in vid 1 /folksonomy/1/term/hello # show all tags in vid 1 for "hello" /folksonomy/1/term/1984 # show all tags in vid 1 for "1984" /folksonomy/term/hello # show all tags in any vid for "hello" # see below for my concerns on this one. The problem with the above is two-fold: * if we want to support multiple folksonomies, the $vid needs to be part of the URL. Otherwise, there'd be no way to distinguish which "hello" from which $vid we'd like to look at. The current taxonomy doesn't do this because we always have the unique $tid. But, if we're going to put $term in the URL, we need a further bit of information to properly assert it. Using the path module would have a similar problem. * if we're using $term and not $vid, why not $vname? As for users, I'm leaning toward: /folksonomy/user/41/1 # show all vid 1 tags for user 41 /folksonomy/user/41/1/term/hello # and so on and so forth. I feel /folksonomy/user/41/1/term/1984 # like these URLs are horrendous. /folksonomy/user/41/term/hello The most immediate problem is, again, the lack of standards. If we're using $term and not $tid, why shouldn't we use $username and not $uid? The URLs become even worse and sometimes broked: /folksonomy/user/morbus/1 /folksonomy/user/rogue_githyanki/1/term/hello /folksonomy/user/killes(a)www.drop.org/1/term/1984 /folksonomy/user/ohmygodicantdecidemyusername/term/hello Help! This design is the next big hurdle in my head. -- Morbus Iff ( you are nothing without your robot car, NOTHING! ) Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/ Spidering Hacks: http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005776/disobeycom icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus

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[drupal-devel] [bug] image.gd.inc isn't compatible with gd 1
by Bèr Kessels 15 Mar '05

15 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/18700 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: base system Category: bug reports Priority: critical Assigned to: stefan nagtegaal Reported by: stefan nagtegaal Updated by: Bèr Kessels Status: patch I like this approach because it: uses a good default, and uses that well. Provides flexibility for those not wanting that default, without extra complexity. Uses modules to add extra functionality instead of configuration options. big +1 from me. Bèr Kessels Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 10, 2005 - 19:13 : stefan nagtegaal The idea behind the image.gd.inc file is that it should be usable for people who are using GD 1 and GD 2. Unfortunatly, the way it is written now, only support for GD 2 can be given because: Current way of determining GD 2, is not right: if (function_exists('imageCreateTrueColor')) { // GD 2 Handling; } else { // GD 1 Handling } this doesn't work.. imageCreateTrueColor() was already implemented in GD 1, only it failed to work properly.. See these pages: http://www.php.net/imagecratetruecolor#25234 & http://www.php.net/imagecratetruecolor#25487 According to this comments, we should implement this like this: // Silence errors using the @ $image = @imageCreateTrueColor(......); if (!$image) { // GD 1 Handling; } ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 11, 2005 - 19:03 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/image-inc.patch (2.26 KB) Attached patch improves: - the way which deals with the detection of GD 1 or GD 2; - error messages as reported by Steven here: http://drupal.org/node/17645; After applying this to HEAD/Drupal 4.6 RC, we can close the following issues: - http://drupal.org/node/17645; - http://drupal.org/node/13027; Please test/comment and apply attached patch.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 09:41 : Dries Isn't the approach taking in http://drupal.org/node/13027 nicer? It doesn't surpress warnings/errors. Maybe that approach doesn't work? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 09:50 : Bèr Kessels -1 on supressing errors with @. Its ugly, and hardly used in Drupal. We should use our own error handling at all times. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 10:42 : stefan nagtegaal I will make a new patch, with the more elegant approach you mentioned Dries... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 18:05 : stefan nagtegaal As noticed before in this issue.. The function imageCreateTrueColor _does_ exist, even in versions of GD before 1.8 only it was broken.. So, function_exist() doesn't work on that the function, because it really _does_ exist, but the fact is that it's simply broken.. So unfortunatly, the more elegant solution doesn't seem to work.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 19:01 : pz Stupid question, why not just use the gd_info function? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 09:54 : Dries What versions of PHP have those old GD toolkits? PHP 4.3.10 comes with GD 2.0.28, it seems, as does PHP 5.0.3. PHP 4.3.3, Drupal's current minimum PHP requirement, comes with GD 2.0.15. >From the looks, we don't need GD 1 handling at all ... (but we might need a global version check). Thoughts? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 11:32 : stefan nagtegaal PHP 4.1.2 comes with GD 1.62.. The nasty/hackish code with the build-in GD toolkit, is exactly why I proposed to split the image.inc into a separate image.gd1.inc and image.gd2.inc. I would propose a patch which does: - remove all the GD < 2 function calls like imageCreate() and imageCopyResized() and have a real GD 2 compatible image.inc; - introduce a new image.gd1.inc file into Walkahs sandbox; If the module is being moved to the contributions, the image.gd1.inc is also available for people without proper GD 2 support; - more userfriendly and helpfull error reporting for the image-api.. If we agree about this, I'll make patches for inclusion into 4.6.. Which does contain the before mentioned problems with the current usage.. Please, I would like to have some feedback about this... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 13:55 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/image-inc_0.patch (2.99 KB) As proposed above, patch for image.inc.. Please comment or apply... The image.gd1.inc file wil be posted after this post... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 13:57 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/image.gd1.inc (2.07 KB) And the image.gd1.inc file for Walkahs sandbox... Tell me what you all think about this.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 16:11 : Dries I'm OK with this! I'd like to await James' input though. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 15, 2005 - 11:16 : stefan nagtegaal Walkah, are you out there??? Ber, do you agree with Dries that this is a better approach?

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[drupal-devel] [feature] Improve functionality of block generation for book module
by Paul Iliano 15 Mar '05

15 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/14120 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: book.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: andremolnar Reported by: nysus Updated by: Paul Iliano Status: patch This is exactly the functionality I have been waiting for. As I can see many uses for showing a book menu on all pages, I never really understood why book menus could only be shown on book pages. I'm still at DP 4.5, but as soon as 4.6 is out I will install and try it out. I'd love to see this kind of functionality in core! Paul Iliano Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 07:12 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_19.patch (4.85 KB) Attached is a patch for the book module that does the following: 1) Allows book blocks to appear on any page at any time, not just when a node from the book is being viewed. 2) Allows multiple book blocks to appear on the same page. This functionality is achieved by the automatic creation of individual blocks for each book when the book is created. Simply enable the book's block to enjoy the benefits of 1 & 2 above. If the blocks are not enabled, the blocks will appear only when a node from that block is being viewed (the same way it works now). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 13:35 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_19_1.patch (4.84 KB) +1 This is great. A good many people have asked for something like this, and I think its a nice solution. But in the end this isn't up to me. One minor error in the patch... + $result = db_query('SELECT n.title, b.block, b.nid FROM {book} b INNER JOIN {node} n on n.nid = b.nid WHERE b.parent = 0'); b.block is not a valid field in this query. this updated patch removes reference to it. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 14:54 : nysus Glad you like it and thanks for fixing that up. It was left over from an older version of my patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 14:54 : andremolnar Steve, If I apply this patch, and I attempt to configure one of the newly created blocks. I noticed that for some reason the block.module is returning "true" at line 249 (of the block module)- and is creating a form for module-specific configuration. But all that shows up on the screen is the word "array". Can you trace this back to see why - and maybe update the patch. I can continue to test your changes - anything to help this patch make it into core. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 16:29 : nysus Hmmm...probably because I tested my patch on my version of Drupal, version 4.5.1. I'm having no problems. Are you using a cvs version of Drupal to test. If so, I'll set up cvs on my site and track this down. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 19:53 : drumm See http://drupal.org/node/12347 for information on how the block system has been updated. When I saw that the elseif ($op == 'view') was taken out I knew immedaitely that there was something weird about this patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 19:58 : nysus OK, thanks for the tip. Sorry for the confusion. Still kind of new to making open source contributions and it's easy for me to overlook some obvious stuff like this. I'll fix this up when I get a chance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 20:06 : Dries Please do, because this being a new feature, it has no chance getting committed to the DRUPAL-4-5 branch. The DRUPAL-4-5 branch is in bugfix-mode. New features go into CVS HEAD. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 23:32 : Dries There is quite a bit of duplicated code in the patch. Maybe it can be simplified (using a function)? Either way, it is a little weird. I haven't tried the path, and I'm not sure I understood the description. It's somewhat vague. Is the book module exporting multiple blocks that are nearly identical, yet have different display behavior? If so, why not add a simple block configuration setting to the original book block? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 03:51 : nysus Dries, Yes, there is some code that can be factored out and some general cleaning up that can be done. It was a little tricky to write so I left it kind of ragged around the edges until I'm sure there are no bugs. It has worked very well on 4.5.1 but I obviously need to update it to work with cvs. I'll be on that soon. As far as what it does: 1) For every new book that a user creates, a new block is associated with it. So if you create "Book A", "Book B", "Book C", you will get three new blocks visible on the block administration page called "Book A", "Book B", "Book C". The original "Book Navigation" block is still there, too. The functionality of the "Book Navigation" block is not affected at all by this patch. 2) If Book A's block is enabled, the block containing its menu will appear not only when a node within Book A is viewed, but at all times (unless the user suppresses it on certain pages with the "path" feature). When any node is that is NOT in Book A is viewed, Book A's menu still appears but it is fully collapsed. When a node that DOES belong to Book A is viewed, Book A's Book menu expands accordingly. 3) The user can also enable Book B & C's block, and have their menus appear in a block at all times as well. 4) If none of the book's blocks are enabled by the user, the module will behave just as it did without the patch. That is, when the "Book Navigation" block is enabled, the only time any book menu will appear is when a book node is being viewed. 5) It's important to note (and this was the tricky part to write) that if both the "Book Navigation" block is enabled and "Book A" is enabled, they will play nice with each other and not do nasty things like create the same book menu twice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 06:51 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_20.patch (5.37 KB) Andre, Attached is a new patch that will resolve the problem of the block-specific stuff showing on the block configuration form. Let me know if you spot any other bugs. If it looks good to you, I'll go to work making the code look leaner and prettier. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 08:26 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_21.patch (4 KB) Dries, Andre: Here is a new and improved streamlined version of the patch. Have a look if you get a chance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 09:11 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_22.patch (4.15 KB) Found a bug in the last version that would cause the block to jump to a different location. I think this should do it. Everything appear to work well (famous last words). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 15:49 : andremolnar Steve: bugs appear to be gone, and I didn't run across any other errors. This is functioning exactly as described. everyone: I personally would encourage support for this functionality. Book is a powerful navigation building tool in a site, not only with its ability to move next and back through a hierarchy of pages - but also its ability to build the appropriate navigation block without further user intervention (unlike the admin features in the menu module or taxonomy). The most frequently cited complaint about the book module is its inflexibility when it comes to when and where the block shows up. I also frequently hear requests for the ability to show multiple book blocks at the same time. Up until now the best alternatives suggested required users to do a hack (e.g. build a custom block that calls such and such a hook). Most abandon their request at that point because its over their heads. With this patch all those requests are covered and more. Now all books can automatically have their own block and admins can easily decide when and where each of those individual blocks show up (left right, up down) and coupled with the new configuration features of the block module - its very easy for admins to decide on which individual pages a block will show up. I would be interested what other have to say about this feature. My only reservation (which is minor compared to the benefits of the functionality offered) is that there is no way to turn this functionality off. i.e. The default behaviour is to build individual blocks for each book. If there could be a way to toggle this feature on and off somewhere - it would be perfect. Still, AS IS - this is a major improvement and offers great flexibility to admins and site creators. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 16:04 : Anonymous Andre, Thanks for the feedback on the usefulness of this module. Glad I could pitch in and help. I agree about the inability to turn the feature on/off and I was thinking about that myself. I think it could easily be accomplished by creating a checkbox in the "book navigation" block individual configuration's settings. Call it "Enable individual book blocks." When enabled, the individual book blocks will appear on the block administration menu. One question: Where would the state of this checkbox get saved? Has Drupal moved away from serializing data in the data base? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 19:36 : Dries I'm afraid that 'Enable individual book blocks.' is not descriptive/clear at all. Are you suggesting a setting to toggle between 'show block on all pages' and 'show block on book pages only'? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 20:45 : nysus Dries, No. Andre and I suggest a setting within the "Book Navigation" cofiguration page, that would toggle whether or not individual books appear on the list of all blocks on the block administration page. Hence the name 'Enable individual book navigation blocks.' The help text for this checkbox might read something like: "By default, a book's navigation block is visible only when a page from that book is being viewed. Check this box if you want more control over where and when an book's navigation block is visible. You will then be able to control the book's navigation block location and visibility settings on the "admin/block" page." Hope this makes it pretty clear. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 21:08 : Dries I understand what you are trying to do, but not how you are trying to do it, or how the setting is supposed to work. I guess I'll have to try it when a new patch lands. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 10:52 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_23.patch (5.02 KB) Alright, fellas, I'm proud to unveil my crowning achievement in the open source development world (no big deal to most of you guys but pretty good for a hack like me). Thanks for all the input so far. It's been helpful. I've streamlined the heck out of it per Dries suggestion and I've created an option to turn this functionality on an off per Andre's suggestion. Does this look good to you guys? Anything else I have to fix or improve? Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 14:02 : Dries I tried the patch. It works great but to me, the 'Give books their own block' settings seems to be redundant. Why not export the current book navigation block, along with an additional block for each book? Looks a lot simpler to me. I think I spotted a bug: orphaned book pages (or possibly book pages that are unpublished) appear to be getting book navigation blocks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 18:34 : nysus I'll see if I can fix the bug. Might be tricky. But I don't understand your recommendation to "export the current book navigation block, along with an additional block for each book". Can you expand on this thought? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 19:06 : nysus Dries, I am unable to duplicate the bug. I have three orphaned pages. I also tried unpublishing some pages. But as far as I can tell, the patch works as expected. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 20:00 : Dries If you can't reproduce the problem, chances are my node/book table is somewhat fubar. As for the configuration option. I suggest removing it and to always make these new blocks available on the /admin/block configuration screen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 20:52 : moshe weitzman I am hoping that we maintain the option to keep the behavior where the appropriate book block only shows up when its book page viewed. this is a nice, tidy arrangement. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 21:03 : nysus Yes, if you don't enable any of the individual book blocks, the a book's block (i.e. navigation menu) will only appear when a page in a book is viewed. In other words, you have the option to have the book block act like this patch isn't even installed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 21:54 : Dries I guess I'll have to try the patch again, because I don't understand why it works like this -- or at least, why it can't be made simpler. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 22:13 : nysus Can you be more specific? Why it works like what? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 22:24 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_24.patch (4.1 KB) This patch reverses a change made in the last patch which required a user to enable individual book block before they could enable any individual book blocks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 22:41 : andremolnar As I mentioned earlier I am *fine* with either version of this patch as long as it makes it to core. But, as I said earlier, I clearly think the preference for admins would be to have the option to enable or disable this functionality. BTW - if this does make it in, I would be happy to create a Handbook page that describes the new features - something like "how to build robust site navigation using the book module". (on or after December 17th). andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:11 : Anonymous I am not at all happy with these features. They are incosistant, confusing and should use exising methods and UIs. May main concern is the incosistancy: it is confusing, will require extra attention with each core code change, adds extra logic to the core, and is not re-useable. so here are my questions: 1) why do we not use the menu system and apis to build and adminster the trees? Saves code, does not add extra UIs, and gives users more power. 2) why do we need that extra showing logic? a book block should not get exeptional if clauses, it should use the existing path setting methods on block admin. extra logic is confusing for administrators (hey, i set the path so that the book-block should show up here, but it does not, why?) we should really not provide extra logic in the block hook, but should rather use default settings in block admin (the book could fill the bookblock sql cells with custom paths, for example) 3) we should avoid extra UIs. We already have far too much, and far too much different ones. Please rather improve the block admin, than add new separate interfaces. 4) why do book blocks need al these expeptions in the first place? If they are so exeptional, we could consider not using blocks, but something else, like in-line book layout (pages with the index etc) 5) why did you not choose for a general, standard, block gerneation API? that way modules, such as taxonomy, image gallery, weblinks, article, etc can reuse it and introduce block gernation. All that sayd, i like the idea of this functionality, but i fear for a great useability downfall if we start introducing all sorts of exeptions for all sorts of modules. Because now chances are very big that taxonomy, image gallery etc will need to introduce other UIs, other code, new methods and new documentation, if they too want some sort of better block handling. so a -1 from me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:12 : Bèr Kessels ^^--- That was me (bèr kessels) forgot to log in..... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:34 : nysus I'm not going to pretend I can argue if my patch does or does not fit well into Drupal's larger architecture. My motivation for writing it is that I had an immediate need to create an easy way to make it easy for users to create menus. I'll let others decide whether or not the patch has merit from the big picture perspective. But if it doesn't, why not just use it for its immediate benefits and then throw it away when something better comes along? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 14:01 : Dries My summary is this: +1 on the functionality, -1 on the implementation. The code itself is good, but the usability/integration is not. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 14:13 : nysus When you say "usability" is that from the user's perspective or the code maintainers? I'm guessing it's the latter but I'm unsure. What about the idea of using the patch until a more permanent solution comes along? Yes, it's much better to live in a home with indoor plumbing but why not use the outhouse while you wait for a toilet to get installed? Or are there other considerations I'm overlooking that would make this a bad idea? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 14:20 : Goba nysus it is just generally against the Drupal philosophy to add improperly implemented functionality until something better comes along. There even used to be ocassions in Drupal releases, when some functionality was removed (not fixed) for a release, because its implementation was not adequate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 14:55 : Dries Usability for the user. The extra setting on the block configuration page is both confusing and awkward. I don't understand why things must be configured/enabled that way (see my and Ber's previous comments on this issue). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 15:03 : nysus Well, just for the record, I reversed that functionality per your suggestion and uploaded the patch. The indiviudal book blocks now appear automatically. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 14:56 : Bèr Kessels Hi, I am sure you can make not only simpler, but better usefull for admins and users. All you need to do is use the menus for this. i.e. make a menu entry for each book page. For each book make a menu on level 0, without a parent. that way they become a seoprate menu, each with an own block. it saves code, makes things more consistent, and most important, uses drupal functionality where it should. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 15:50 : nysus Ber, Are you suggesting that for every single book page that a menu item be created? That's really not practical. That was my main motivation for writing this patch: to make it easy to put links, not necessarily related to one another, into a block. Any more pages than 10 and the sheer tedium of the job would prevent anyone from ever doing that. The menu.module is great, but adding new menu items is far from quick and painless. I just added about 10 to my menu for different taxonomies on my site and it wasn't fun. Plus, if you do as you suggest, there is also the problem of the book showing up twice. It will be generated by the menu and then it will be generated again by the book module which is programmed to design a block. You'd have to put some logic in the book.module _block hook to try to anticipate if a user has enabled a book in the menu. That wouldn't be pretty code. I'm all for putting automatic generation of book navigation blocks as part of the menu module. It does make more sense to have it there. But it forces me to ask the question: "Then why do we currently have code in the book module that generates a menu? Shouldn't that belong in the menu.module, too?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 23:31 : killes(a)www.drop.org I think what Ber is trying to say is that you can write a contrib module that monitors the changes to the book table and creates menu items automatically. nodeapi is your friend. I would also prefer this solution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 15, 2004 - 17:39 : Anonymous ""Then why do we currently have code in the book module that generates a menu? Shouldn't that belong in the menu.module, too?" " Because it's old code. It would be nice if book.module generated this block using its _menu hook, so that the admin would have a few options in terms of configuration. "Plus, if you do as you suggest, there is also the problem of the book showing up twice. It will be generated by the menu and then it will be generated again by the book module which is programmed to design a block. " No. The old code which manually builds a block in book.module would be removed. Book blocks would only be generated by the menu. This would also have the added benefit of allow the administrator to easily place a book in an appropriate spot in the menu tree, while still allowing the possibility of displaying it in a separate block. Because of menu caching, I don't expect a large performance hit for creating the menu items. "That was my main motivation for writing this patch: to make it easy to put links, not necessarily related to one another, into a block. " It sounds like instead of (mis)using book.module, your time would be better spent in a usability improvement to menu.module so it's easier to do this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 07:55 : nysus Thanks for the feedback and input. I appreciate it. However, I would also appreciate if you took more care to avoid the condescending tone in your post: "It sounds like instead of (mis)using book.module, your time would be better spent in a usability improvement to menu.module so it's easier to do this. " It's really quite unnecessary and off-putting. Though it won't stop me from contributing to Drupal in the future, I'm sure others would be really turned off by such a patronizing comment and it could dissuade them. I'd like the Drupal community to be a welcoming and friendly place that will inspire people to contribute, not discourage them. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 11:07 : Bèr Kessels nyesus, Please do not start /that/ discussion here. :) Drupal community is known fo being direct, maybe because of the big number of western-Europeans attending, maybe because of other reasons. No-one commented that you are wasting your time. But the commentor was telling you somthing likethis: "If you would follow the previous sugeestions, your added feature would be much better appreciated, and will probably work much better for you too". He/she was by no means telling you to stop your silly coding, or anything in that line. He/She only wanted to show you the obvious and better direction. We often deal with issues that add some feature, and a complete new UI, because the author does not like, or cannot use the existing UIs and features. This is nogt good, because if that same author would have spend his/her time on improving that existing functionality or UI (improving is not neccesarily the same as extending!!) that code and time would benefit all much better. Thats what the commentor tried to say. And so is it here: If you dislike the way the books handle the blocks, and if you do not want to use the menu, because you do not like its UI, then do not add another UI and more features, but rather merge these, and improve the parts (in the menu) you dislike. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 11:35 : Dries We can worry about the menu integration later. Let's focus on the new option's usability/interaction design first. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 15:51 : nysus I understand what the commenter was saying and like I said, I appreciate and understand it. I'm not upset and I'm not looking for an argument, I was just being direct as well. :) As part of the Drupal community (albeit a minor player), all I'm saying is that I would like to see folks not have a tin ear to the humanity in all of us. It will help make Drupal an even stronger community and attract even more talented developers. Human interaction is part of the development process. Whether we like it or not, we must cope and deal with it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 18, 2004 - 10:54 : Dries I thought some more about this and am starting to believe that integration with the menu system should take priority. Here are common cool scenario's: I want to create a separate navigation block for the 'Drupal handbook'. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the user block. That is, I want the book navigation to be part of the existing user navigation block. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the top-level navigation menu. How would that work from a user's point of view? What do I have to click and where to configure this? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 21, 2004 - 19:47 : andremolnar I was actually thinking about the same thing last night (must have been something in the arctic air). / 2. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the user block. That is, I want the book navigation to be part of the existing user navigation block. 3. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the top-level navigation menu. / This is already possible (to a certain extent) with the current Book.module and Menu.module - A 'Books' menu item is created in the user navigation by having the Book.module enabled. Menu.module allows you to enable/disable this menu item. Menu.module also allows you to re-name this menu item. But, this only helps if you only intend to have 1 book (or else the name 'Handbook' is misleading if the user finds more than 1 book listed). - so this isn't good enough (or is it). /1. I want to create a separate navigation block for the 'Drupal handbook'./ This is what I was trying to figure out. Not just this, but a different way to do what Nysus was attempting. i.e. create a menu block for each and every book that is created. There is a way to write code that would (re)build a 'custom menu' on every add/edit/update to a book page - or book outline update. Custom menu's automatically have a block created for them. But, this I think would be a misleading use of the 'custom' menu - as the menu would not be custom if they are a part of core. So, I would think that two new constants could be added to the menu.inc file - MENU_BOOK_MENU - and MENU_BOOK_ITEM - each would behave as custom menu's, but would be reserved for books. These menu types should NOT show up in the Menu.module administration - because the administration of the book_menu items would be done by administering the book itself (adding an item, removing an item, moving an item up/down in the hierarchy, assigning parents etc.). However, the blocks that the book_menus would create would show up in the block administration (so users could enable/disable each block - and decide where on the site they show up). The existing book block logic would be removed. So the logic would be: If a creates a book in the book administration page - the Book.module automatically creates a new MENU_BOOK_MENU Any time a user adds to or updates or delets a book page - the entire book menu is deleted and recreated based on the hierarchy defined by the book itself. The blocks for each book would show up in block administration. Any thoughts - I know that this doesn't exactly address points 1 and 2 - but it could act as a first step. Is this approach a bad idea? It would add special conditions for the proposed book menu's - but books would be a special case. Even if people don't like this solution, maybe it will give someone a better idea. I'd love to hear them. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 21, 2004 - 23:55 : Boris Mann +1 to this andre I had promised to put down my thoughts on this matter, as it relates to 1) primary and secondary links and how they are managed and 2) auto-generation of primary/secondary navigation based on book outlines So, for 1), we currently have functional-but-not-very-usable plain textfields to manage primary and secondary links. I would like to see menu.module used to control all navigation links, whether it is the navigation block or primary/secondary links. What is needed: a) default system menus labelled "primary" and "secondary" which would store; this is where modules could insert navigation b) support for full URLs (e.g. http://myexternaldomain.com) instead of just path 2) if we got 1 working, and andre does his book menus, this could get taken care of automatically. Basically, for brochureware/business/etc. sites that have static content, you could have a root book as one of the primary navigation links, and then the secondary links are generated automatically. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 22, 2004 - 22:02 : Dries I agree with Andre that the book module's integration with the menu system needs to be worked on. I support any effort that makes it easier to structure pages and that makes it easy to link pages/nodes from within a menu. However, I'm opposed to putting book module specific names in the menu system (eg. MENU_BOOK_MENU and MENU_BOOK_ITEM). I can imagine a handful of modules that want to maintain a menu tree (or part thereof) so I'm in favor of generic names. I'd have to read up on the menu system code, but last time I checked there was a MENU_MODIFIABLE_BY_ADMIN flag. You could choose not to set this flag for the menu items generated by the book module. Maybe it's already possible to implement to implement Andre's suggestion without having to modify/extend the menu system. Are you exploring this path? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 24, 2004 - 11:01 : andremolnar I've had a few spare hours to work on this. I've started to cobble together a solution - but in doing so I discovered a bug in the menu module (for which I will submit a seperate issue - if one doesn't already exist). The principal I suggested works. I added some code to the book module that creates custom menu's (MENU_CUSTOM_MENU with MENU_CUSTOM_ITEMs) for each Book that exists in a site. This is just as a proof of concept - I chose this menu type to start with because they automatically have a block created for them in admin/block (which is ultimatly the functionality we want). I ran a test and the menus are created as expected - the blocks are also created. But when I tested the menu blocks by enabling them I ran into a problem. It seems as though the menu system does not expand/explode sub menu items if the node type is book. I'm not sure why this is, and I haven't traced the source code yet - I thought I would ask if anyone has intimate knowledge of the menu system if they can point me in the right direction. No patch attached because until that problem is fixed this proposed change won't fly :( andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 24, 2004 - 12:11 : Dries Just a wild guess: maybe it doesn't work because the book module's URI scheme is not hierarchical? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 7, 2005 - 11:45 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_1.patch (5.1 KB) I finally took some time out to do some work on this. As mentioned in a post to dev the problem I was having with menus not expanding/contracting properly was some crud in my database. Once that was cleared up my changes worked fine. I am attaching a patch for comments and for the brave willing to give it a test drive. History: This thread and http://drupal.org/node/15198 and http://drupal.org/node/15153 node/15198 has a patch that is required for this patch to work. What this does: Pretty straight forward. Any time a user adds/updates/deletes book or book pages (including via outline) - a function is called to create a new menu for each book. Any existing book menus are wiped out and then the new book menus are inserted - and the system menu is rebuilt to reflect the changes. The menus created consist of type MENU_MODULE_MENU and MENU_MODULE_ITEM. These menus show up in the menu/admin page so that admins can be aware of them, but the menu types are not editable via menu/admin (all changes are handled by the book module). Since the menus are in the menu table, the menu_block() hook handles the creation of the blocks for each of them. The blocks can then be administered in the usual ways via the block/admin interface. KNOWN ISSUE: (suggested solutions welcome) Since the menu table is updated on every change to books - the blocks associated with the menus are also recreated with default settings (i.e. disabled, and with no path or throttle settings) requiring a user to take an extra step and re-configure the book blocks for viewing on their site. I think this is unacceptable. For the casual user of the book module that only has a single book that doesn't change often, this would not be a big deal. But, if anyone wanted to make use of book module to handle dynamic site navigation this would create more work than it saves. Looking forward: If the block generation issue can be solved in a tidy way, this patch could allow users to use book to handle all their site navigation generation needs. Also, this patch could allow for the removal of a large chunk of code in the book module dedicated to building its own block via the block system. I left it there for now because I suppose there may be those out there that want to have book.module work the way book.module always worked (only show the book block when viewing a book page). Even so, since each book would have its own block, an admin could specify when and where the block shows via admin/block. I would appreciate feedback. If nothing else I hope this gives someone some new ideas. I'll continue to work on the block regeneration issue. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 7, 2005 - 11:47 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_2.patch (4.98 KB) sorry - here's a patch with prefered line breaks. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 7, 2005 - 17:47 : nysus Andre, I've been meaning to give this a throrough look when I get a chance. Hopefully this weekend. ---Steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 03:02 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_3.patch (6.66 KB) Here is an updated patch. Same comments as followup 51 - except that the known issue has been resolved. This changes book module so that any action taken on a book, including adding new books or book pages will create a menu in the menu system for that book - and thus create blocks for those menus that can be administered in the usual ways. This is my first attempt at a major patch to core - comments are welcome I will be happy to update documentation once revisions to the code have been taken care of. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 03:53 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_4.patch (6.17 KB) Sorry - would be nice if I removed some debugging code - ;-) also previous patch also would have introduced a need for a change to the menu table that isn't required yet. This patch is a correct version andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 20:16 : Dries The menu is recreated every time a book page is updated. I believe this is unwanted behavior because it requires the book block to be reconfigured upon every update. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 20:32 : andremolnar The menu is indeed re-created with every book page edit - because if the book page title changes the menu needs to reflect this change. The book block re-configuration is not required by the user. The code stores this information and re-sets the block settings. I will see if I can test for 'title change' before forcing the re-build of the menu - It would save a bit of processing power. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 21:21 : andremolnar Took another at this - and it turns out that I already have a check to see if title or weight change (rather - they already existed in the module and I used them). andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 24, 2005 - 03:22 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_6.patch (7.42 KB) Feedback received indicated that the original block generation code in this module should be removed - since this patch hands block generation off to the menu and block system. This patch removes that code. BUT - It should be noted, that in order to have book blocks only show up on pages of node type book - an additional patch found at http://drupal.org/node/16074 is required. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 24, 2005 - 19:36 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_7.patch (7.43 KB) Yet another patch: Brings this patch in line with - http://drupal.org/node/16074 (i.e. the column name change in {block} table) andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 25, 2005 - 19:56 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_8.patch (7.53 KB) And another minor patch to cover coding style and variable names. Just to bring everyone up to speed: 1) Each book and its children pages have a menu created for them (on any add, edit, delete to a book or book page). 2) Those book menus automatically have a block created for them via menu_block hook. 3) Block settings are preserved any time there is a change to a book that requires the menu and its associated block to be re-built. 4) book_block hook is removed because it is redundant. 5) With the addition of the configuration option in blocks to only show blocks on certain node types (see: http://drupal.org/node/16074) administrators have full control over when and where a book block shows up (including maintaining the status quo of only having book blocks show up on book pages). 6) This patch does require http://drupal.org/node/15198 andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 25, 2005 - 22:49 : Boris Mann +1!! Book-based automatic navigation for corporate/brochureware sites! Fantastic! Chris Messina, get in here and add a +1 to this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 25, 2005 - 23:26 : Dries Boris, have you tested this patch extensively, or are you just giving this +1 based on what you've read? If you want to see this committed, take the time to review/test it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 26, 2005 - 06:45 : andremolnar Yes - please - testers are welcome. Nysus (aka Steve) has already agreed to give this a test drive when he had a spare moment. I hope for some feedback in the near future. But if you have a moment Borris I would appreciate it. OR - If someone would just like to demo this: http://s92258948.onlinehome.us/greenbeach/ UN: drupaldev PW: drupaldev Don't mind the mess - it is my test environment and there is a lot of junk data and settings floating around - but this patch is running there along with the additional block configuration settings. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 20:12 : Boris Mann You got me, Dries... I have since spent time testing the module on andre's site, and it does everything I can foresee needing at this point, with no functional errors. This functionality alone will make creating standalone sites that are composed of mainly static pages very, very simple. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 09:58 : Dries The demo-site appears to be down. Bummer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 23:59 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_9.patch (7.58 KB) Sorry - demo site was down while database was being cleaned and latest CVS modules were being installed (general site maintenence for testing). The site is up now with a fresh database and install of Drupal CVS. UN drupaldev PW drupaldev (has access to manage blocks, books, and menus to see this patch in action) Attached is an updated patch to make use of db_rewrite_sql (instead of node_rewrite_sql). Also fixes a minor bug that appeared if you were creating the first book in the site. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 4, 2005 - 00:13 : Anonymous This patch seems to modify the blocks and menu tables directly from within book.module. (in the new book_build_menu_module_menu function) This sets a terrible precedent for other modules. IMO, these tables should be modified by functions defined within the block module or menu module (or menu.inc). Modifying the tables randomly throughout many other points in the code makes changes to these tables difficult and makes troubleshooting problems much trickier. Let's not sacrafice code organization for the sake of making the patch as small as possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 4, 2005 - 07:25 : andremolnar With regard to the blocks - the block module is doing all the block building (with the call to _block_rehash) - the only thing that this code does is preserve block settings (the select sql) before the menu is updated - and then restores those block settings (with the update sql). "Modifying the tables randomly throughout... " While I appreciate the point you are making, I would hesitate to call this random. After all the menu items being added to the menu table 'belong' to book module. There is a little bit of a discussion about the best way to go about doing this sort of thing (i.e. allowing modules to build their own menus) over at http://drupal.org/node/15198 - which includes the patch required to make this patch work. Right now there is no existing hook or method of doing this. hook_menu does not have anything in place as of yet. I have suggested the introduction of a new hook (name yet to be determined) that would be in charge of these menu_module_menu type inserts. But, I haven't heard any feedback on whether that is a good idea - or if anyone has a better idea. Anyone else have thoughts on the approach taken here or suggestions for a different/better approach? I'm willing to write the code, I would just like a little bit of input. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 4, 2005 - 07:46 : Dries I added a test page and all book blocks dissapeared? I also got an SQL error (check your watchdog messages) upon pressing the 'Submit' button. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 5, 2005 - 08:31 : Steven Doesn't this patch still suffer from the inability to show the menu block only on the relevant book(s)? I know we can now restrict blocks per node type, but that still doesn't help with multiple books. By the way, big code style violation: $menu_block_settings[$menu_block->path][weight] "weight" should be surrounded by quotes. Right now it is being treated as an undefined constant. This is not a good idea. Other than that there's a bunch of missing spaces... if the code looks cramped, it usually violates the coding style. + $menu_block_settings[$result->path] = array('status'=>$result->status, 'weight'=>$result->weight, 'region'=>$result->region, 'throttle'=>$result->throttle, 'visibility'=>$result->visibility, 'pages'=>$result->pages, 'types'=>$result->types); + db_query('DELETE FROM {menu} WHERE type=%d OR type=%d', MENU_MODULE_MENU | MENU_MODIFIED_BY_MODULE, MENU_MODULE_ITEM | MENU_MODIFIED_BY_MODULE); //restore menu_module_menu block settings There are several more examples. Please pay attention to this. It's incredibly annoying to have to fix it later, and it makes the code harder to read as you cannot make certain assumptions about how it is layed out. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 5, 2005 - 23:56 : andremolnar I am fixing up the code as we speak. I actually made a bigger faux pas by not escaping my INSERT sql string properly - (There is a quick fix, but I understand 'addslashes' is not good enough for drupal ;-). (Thank you to Dries for catching this right away on his test of the demo site). As for multiple books - you actually have more flexibility to enable as many book menus as you like - not only based on type but also by path. e.g. Could allow for: drupal.org/handbook (with some general book menu blocks enabled) drupal.org/handbook/developer (with developer book menu blocks enabled) drupal.org/handbook/developer/theme (with theme developer book menu blocks enabled) etc. (the sky is the limit). I will resubmit a patch with all of the coding style fixes requested - and I will be more careful with the coding style in the future. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 6, 2005 - 01:05 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_10.patch (7.7 KB) Updated Patch, Implemented code style improvements as per Steven. Fixed unescaped sql INSERT string (turns out that addslashes is more than enough in this situation, because the 'title' string has already been valided and properly inserted into the database before any of this code ever runs - i.e. this isn't coming directly from user input, but rather from the drupal database). Demo site is once again live and welcomes all testers (Thank you again to those that have already tested this out). andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 23:11 : killes(a)www.drop.org Still applies. Andre: Please create patches from the Drupal root directory.

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[drupal-devel] [bug] image.gd.inc isn't compatible with gd 1
by stefan nagtegaal 15 Mar '05

15 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/18700 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: base system Category: bug reports Priority: critical Assigned to: stefan nagtegaal Reported by: stefan nagtegaal Updated by: stefan nagtegaal Status: patch Walkah, are you out there??? Ber, do you agree with Dries that this is a better approach? stefan nagtegaal Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 10, 2005 - 19:13 : stefan nagtegaal The idea behind the image.gd.inc file is that it should be usable for people who are using GD 1 and GD 2. Unfortunatly, the way it is written now, only support for GD 2 can be given because: Current way of determining GD 2, is not right: if (function_exists('imageCreateTrueColor')) { // GD 2 Handling; } else { // GD 1 Handling } this doesn't work.. imageCreateTrueColor() was already implemented in GD 1, only it failed to work properly.. See these pages: http://www.php.net/imagecratetruecolor#25234 & http://www.php.net/imagecratetruecolor#25487 According to this comments, we should implement this like this: // Silence errors using the @ $image = @imageCreateTrueColor(......); if (!$image) { // GD 1 Handling; } ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 11, 2005 - 19:03 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/image-inc.patch (2.26 KB) Attached patch improves: - the way which deals with the detection of GD 1 or GD 2; - error messages as reported by Steven here: http://drupal.org/node/17645; After applying this to HEAD/Drupal 4.6 RC, we can close the following issues: - http://drupal.org/node/17645; - http://drupal.org/node/13027; Please test/comment and apply attached patch.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 09:41 : Dries Isn't the approach taking in http://drupal.org/node/13027 nicer? It doesn't surpress warnings/errors. Maybe that approach doesn't work? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 09:50 : Bèr Kessels -1 on supressing errors with @. Its ugly, and hardly used in Drupal. We should use our own error handling at all times. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 10:42 : stefan nagtegaal I will make a new patch, with the more elegant approach you mentioned Dries... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 18:05 : stefan nagtegaal As noticed before in this issue.. The function imageCreateTrueColor _does_ exist, even in versions of GD before 1.8 only it was broken.. So, function_exist() doesn't work on that the function, because it really _does_ exist, but the fact is that it's simply broken.. So unfortunatly, the more elegant solution doesn't seem to work.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 19:01 : pz Stupid question, why not just use the gd_info function? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 09:54 : Dries What versions of PHP have those old GD toolkits? PHP 4.3.10 comes with GD 2.0.28, it seems, as does PHP 5.0.3. PHP 4.3.3, Drupal's current minimum PHP requirement, comes with GD 2.0.15. >From the looks, we don't need GD 1 handling at all ... (but we might need a global version check). Thoughts? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 11:32 : stefan nagtegaal PHP 4.1.2 comes with GD 1.62.. The nasty/hackish code with the build-in GD toolkit, is exactly why I proposed to split the image.inc into a separate image.gd1.inc and image.gd2.inc. I would propose a patch which does: - remove all the GD < 2 function calls like imageCreate() and imageCopyResized() and have a real GD 2 compatible image.inc; - introduce a new image.gd1.inc file into Walkahs sandbox; If the module is being moved to the contributions, the image.gd1.inc is also available for people without proper GD 2 support; - more userfriendly and helpfull error reporting for the image-api.. If we agree about this, I'll make patches for inclusion into 4.6.. Which does contain the before mentioned problems with the current usage.. Please, I would like to have some feedback about this... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 13:55 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/image-inc_0.patch (2.99 KB) As proposed above, patch for image.inc.. Please comment or apply... The image.gd1.inc file wil be posted after this post... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 13:57 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/image.gd1.inc (2.07 KB) And the image.gd1.inc file for Walkahs sandbox... Tell me what you all think about this.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 16:11 : Dries I'm OK with this! I'd like to await James' input though.

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[drupal-devel] Random: Drupal Relationships
by Morbus Iff 15 Mar '05

15 Mar '05

5 6

[drupal-devel] [feature] introduce a "cron" user to fix various cron related issues
by Bèr Kessels 15 Mar '05

15 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/5380 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: user system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: ax Updated by: Bèr Kessels Status: patch What about following the linux thing, and start counting at 500 for normal users? That way people will recognise it, and numbers do not matter anyway. I mean, there is really no difference between 4 and 500, other than thats its a different number. 500 makes just as much sense as 10, or 2 or 4. Bèr Bèr Kessels Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 24, 2004 - 00:33 : ax we currently have some problems caused by the undefined state of $user in the cause of cron runs. sometimes it's "Anonymous", sometimes it picks up the currently logged in user (i think). I stumbled upon this when reading issues closed by "Anonymous" caused by the automatic cron closure when issues are fixed. i always think "isn't it strange that "Anonymous" can close issues just as she feels like?" there are quite some related issues - search this site for "cron user". couldn't a cron user solve these problems? a la if (REQUEST_URI) == cron.php then $user = <cron_user>, with <cron_user> having some special properties such as showing "Automatically" for closed issues, being possible to excluded in statistics, putting the rss author from imported rss nodes into nodes author field, having special access checks etc. i didn't think about this much, but thought it is worth filing here. please discuss, elaborate - and don't flame me if i'm too off ;) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 11, 2004 - 06:04 : Chris Johnson Sounds like a good idea to me. It's one of many things I'd like to change if I get time to work on it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 27, 2004 - 20:25 : Philippe Couln't we just write this in cron.php: <?php $cronuser = variable_get('cron_cronuser','nobody'); if ($cronuser = 'nobody'){ $user = user_load(array()); //I believe this results in Anonymous?? }else{ $user = user_load(array('name' => $cronuser)); } ?> We can set the variable cron_cronuser in a page like admin/cron. If the site administrator doesn't set a value, cron uses Anonymous for everything (not some user that happens to be logged on). If a valid user name is set, the site admin can give the cron user special privileges. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 1, 2004 - 19:41 : Philippe Setting the user like this in cron.php sends a cookie. (How? Where? Can we prevent this?) So everybody can get "cron" privileges by loading cron.php once. We could fix this by making cron.php accessible only from localhost (in .htaccess). Any ideas? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 1, 2004 - 22:11 : Philippe Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid.patch (3.62 KB) This patch lets the admin select a UID for cron in the admin/settings page. The variable name in which this is stored is 'cron_uid'. When cron.php is loaded, it sets a variable $cron_is_running. If this variable is set, no session will be opened (and no cookies will be sent). The cron page will use the Anonymous user (uid==0) if cron_uid is not set. Note that the site admin should create a "cron" user before setting the UID. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 20:18 : Chris Johnson Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid2.patch (3.19 KB) Previous patch still applies cleanly to HEAD and code algorith looks good on inspection. However, there are some style problems and one ugly bit using StdClass(), so I have re-rolled the patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 20:37 : killes(a)www.drop.org I like the idea, some comments, though: +if (!$cron_is_running) { + session_start(); +} Is this neccessary? 'User ID '.$cron_uid.' does not exist' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 21:11 : killes(a)www.drop.org 'User ID '.$cron_uid.' does not exist' < == needs to be made translatable. Setting to active. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 06:56 : Chris Johnson Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid3.patch (3.29 KB) Ooops. Sorry I missed that text that needed translating. New patch attached with that bit corrected. Yes, I think the if (!$cron_is_running) code is needed to keep the cron user from creating many unneeded sessions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 10:48 : stefan nagtegaal I am all for the idea of introducing a special id for running the cronjobs, but the approach you took here is far from perfect imo.. After looking at your patch, there are several questions and remarks that came up to my mind: I agree with Gerhard that the $cron_is_running is probably unneeded, I think it's better todo: <?php if (!variable_get('cron_busy', true)) { session_start(); } ?> I think that this is much to technical. Severa newbies will probable ask what a user id is, or what cron jobs are.. From both usability and userfriendlyness this patch is a big -1 from me.. I would suggest todo the following: - Make a new user in the db called 'Cron' with a user id -1, or something like that.. That way you don't have to add extra options to the administration, and the way of implementing should be much cleaner. Also does it improves usability... What do you think? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 14:11 : Anonymous Hi, The functionality is great, but your interface is not. IMO you should just choose good defaults and leave it with that. Why would users want to choose "UIDs" ofr "cron Jobs". Joe user should not have to think about UIDs and Crons. IT should Just Work[tm]. I know there are lots of places in Drupal where this is not the case either, but we are working on that. So when we introduce new functionality we should do it good at once. Why not go for Stefans suggestion of choosing a cron UID and jsut leave it like that. UIDs are not really used anyway, so you can choose just any UID (just the next one available, most often will be '2'). Bèr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 14:45 : javanaut "Make a new user in the db called 'Cron' with a user id -1" Just on a technical note, the database type for uids is "unsigned" and -1 won't work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 20:08 : killes(a)www.drop.org @Chris: I am pretty sue that this patch will not be usefull if the cron user does not get a session. Drupal relies on the session to authenticate the user. If you are worried about too many sessions, you should make sure the session is clossed at the end of the run. his could be done in cron.php. @Stefan, Ber: I think we should introduce just a standard user and assign the "authneticated user" role to him. The set the variable to that uid so we can check which user it is. The problem is that we cannot create the user from database.mysql beacuse the next uid would be No. 1 which is reserved. So we would need to create the user on the first visit to the admin/settings page. We could also use drupal_set_message to inform the admin of this. We should also extent the relevant help text. While we are at it we could make the anon user use the db tabe for its name too and not a variable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 21:33 : Chris Johnson Looks like we are sort of in a corner. Really the cron user should be in the database at install time, but we have to reserve uid 1 for the first user. Maybe there is another way to do that without having the first entry to admin create the cron user? That seems hackish to me. I agree that the anonymous user should also be completely coded into the database, and not a variable. The current methods causes anomolous behaviors. I, in fact, wrote several patches to do that a long time ago (http://drupal.org/node/5639) I looked at updating that patch a couple of months ago, but the new unregistered user comment capability where the user can enter his name made the code a lot more complicated. Maybe I will get motivated to try it again. If only my patch had been applied the first time! :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 22:21 : Olen How about creating a bunch of "reserved" users (like most linux distributions do)? uid 1 = root uid 2 = cron uid 3 - 8 = reserved for later use uid 9 = anonymous And then let the admin log in as root the first time. We still let him/her change the username of any of these users, so it should not cause to many problems for new installations. Older ones would either just have to live with it, or do a lot of 'UPDATE module_table SET uid=X WHERE uid=2'-queries.

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