Incoming!

There’s a new version of Gratian up on the admin site, version 0.9.1.4241 under the new major.minor.release.build numbering scheme.  The release notes have all the details, but the big new feature is: notes!  You can now add a private note to any person, branch, award, event or reign, allowing you to keep any comments or relevant details in a way that’s visible only to other users of Gratian.  I’ve already added a few here and there - see if you can find them!

In other news, the bug I was told about that resulted in the apparent deletion of an entire barony seems to be gone.  I probably fixed it in the course of other changes and just forgot I’d done so.  The symptoms were simple enough: some time after editing some branch details, you discover that the branch no longer shows up as anyone’s home, the host of any events, and so on.  The immediate solution is quick and simple but involves some SQL fiddling, so it’s best if I do it.  But it doesn’t seem to be happening now, so I guess you can stop worrying about it!

provided as an aide me memoir to me (I’ve already looked them up 3 times), not an implication that these need to be fixed very quickly.

*deleting (hiding) an entire Barony every time you change a branch’s details (I think it’s specifically when you change the type of the branch (using the History section? I think - memory is vague).

*If you edit someone’s awards, click save. Otherwise, if you edit other details as well, it may forget the edits to the awards.

To make it easier to get the updates out to Canon and her prospective minions, I’ve created an administrative section at sca.org.au/canon/admin. This is password protected, and will eventually contain the latest version of all files needed to run what I call CLAMPAGE: Canon Lore, Apache, MySQL, PHP And Gratian Etc. I mainly did it to save the hassle of sneaking attachments past Canon’s GMail account, but it’s a good extra backup too. I’ll throw a few other files there, like the installation instructions and the source code for Gratian, so that if the cat eats my laptop we’ll still have something to work with.

Bug 1

And it’s reproducible and troublesome….

Create a New person. Try to give them an award.

Error message upon entering details - “giving a null award”.

I’m not sure it does it for every new person, but it does for a lot, and it continues to give this error on a new person created in a previous session. (eg Athol Williams, Tamaly, Zyl)

This is also exhibiting with Royal & Queen’s Ciphers. (eg Vandell Lychea, Fineamhain an Einigh ui Concobhair). It may happen when records are merged together too (I think Vandell was merged, but don’t remember merging Fineamhain). In fact it’s now happening with other awards eg Fineamhain’s pelican (1/9/07). In fact I think it might be doing this to everyone now.  Maybe it was only in version 7 that i remember sucessfully adding awards.

Bug 2:

Pressing “guess” or “fix” on an individual’s record when there is nothing apparently wrong with the record gives an access violation error message. Not that I need those buttons.

I should preface this with a disclaimer:
“I analyse, I can’t help analysing how things could be better, no matter how good they are already. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate how good things are already. In fact, it tends to mean I think the product is good enough that it is worth tweaking, whereas a lesser product I won’t waste the time on suggesting improvements to because I don’t trust the authours to be able to implement them. So, these aren’t bugs, and these aren’t things I need, they are just the things that I notice I could use or think would be nice in a perfect world where I had an infinite number or bored programmers at my fingertips”.

so my wishlist (so far):
*a tiny unobtrusive indicator of the number of search results (maybe on the serach icon? or in the bottom bar)
*search by event date
*ability to merge events
*(automatically?) render names (and branch names too) with special characters in them into the closest standard character, and enter that version as an alternate name, or in some invisible field. This is so that people can be easily searched for (search will need to check alternate names too), especially when electronic communications or pegasus listings may have been rendered in plain text. The website may need this too - I haven’t checked it. In the meantime, I will be manually entering such names in this way.
*Something that makes it clearer that a branch is closed or in permanent abeyance (colleges). The “became” is not very clear. Perhaps a field for branch closed, which shows up on the website as something like “branch closed May 2006, became part of Stormhold”. The date field could not be a simple date field of dd/mm/yyyy, but would have to have some flexibility for answers such as “before 2004″, “may 2006″, etc.
*the ability to denote that only one sovereign attended an event
*not sure if I want this one or not (can see arguments against it): a name registered date field, and ditto for armoury (and an armory field)
*very low priority - jump from branch to it’s members in gratian
*notes fields - for editors viewing only. In a perfect worlds there would be no need for this, but sometimes there is. To stop the next user (or myself on a tired day) from fixing an error that isn’t really an error. (eg a person has really got 5 copies of that award), or for stopping new mistakes (eg there are 2 people with that name - check which one it is). Also the easiest place to write about awards given back, or deaths, and details like that that are useful to know. Or to mark a suspicious record for later fixing. This would never appear on the website.

and for the website:
*a previous reign, next reign link on each reign of lochac
*reverse the order of reigns of Lochac so most recent appears at the top
*overhaul news, faq, homepage and other bits of random text, and make them easy for any canon herald of dubious computer skills to edit.

Well really this post is just an excuse to test this blog.

But I’m Tiffany, known in the SCA as Teffania de Tuckerton, and I’m the new obsessive-whose-life is-being-taken-over-by-the-lochac-OP also known as canon herald.

And now I’ll return to that pile of fix me’s that is teetering on the electronic desk, threatenign to fall over. But before I do, I don’t think people realise how snazzy and user orientated gratian is, when they haven’t used it - trust me people - it’s very friendly.

The new Canon Herald steps up as Queen of Lochac tomorrow afternoon, so she’s found a stand-in for while she’s away. Meanwhile, I’ve been rebuilding my primary work computer (and incidentally breeding), so things have been up in the air for a while. But last night, after much wrangling and fiddling with settings and configuration files, I sent the Acting Canon a ZIP file containing everything she needs. Once she’s worked her way through my verbose and possibly incomprehensible instructions, she’ll have a working copy of the Canon Lore site and the Gratian editing software on her computer. Changes I made to Gratian have made it at least vaguely possible to do site updates, so she’ll be able to maintain the online awards database in more-or-less real time. This is a Good Thing.

There’s a way to go yet before I can call the thing finished, but this is a good next step. I just wish there was a competent PHP and Delphi programmer out there who wanted to take over so I can get back to changing nappies…