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Tuesday, April 9, 2002

Upgraded Post to Weblog Menu
4/9/02; 10:30:11 by MB

Replace all instances of renderCss in s l a m with renderOpml. -- Done

Create a story to explain how renderOpml works. -- Done

Announce renderOpml in radio-dev.

Here is another cool way to link an outline with a weblog's HTML content: Dave has quietly released an upgrade to the Post to Weblog outline right-click menu.
In the previous version it would just take the text of the cursor headline. In the new version it traverses the cursor outline, marking it up with <ul> and <li> tags. [Radio.root Updates]
It's all a matter of when the linking occurs. The Post to Weblog menu is totally static linking. The opmlRender macro is publishing time semi static. XSLT filters are dynamic.

6:33:48 PM      Google It!

opmlRender: An Expanded Outline Rendering Macro
I've added standard URL compliance and expanded/collapsed state rendering to renderCss, my previous attempt at using Frontier macros to render opml outlines.
renderCss is born again as opmlRender, here is a full tutorial on how to use it.
URL compliance can be fun: whose outlines are those ?

Status:
11/14/02; 1:37:53 AM by JES -- new betas coming...
A bunch of minor crashing bugs have been fixed over the last month or two.
Also some DLL-related fixes have been by Andre Radke: better performance and stability are both in the works.
Still working on the latest MacOS X crash(es), but as soon as that's figured out, a new beta of Frontier and Radio will be posted.
Most likely timeframe is some time next week...
11/13/02; 10:06:54 PM by JES -- working on crashes in MacOS X 10.2.2
Trying to track down a crashing bug. Seems to be caused by some heap corruption, and is only present in MacOS X 10.2.2. It's a little difficult to work on because the CW 7 debugger doesn't work in Jaguar, but I have a couple leads...
11/13/02; 6:35:00 PM by JES -- What to do for dinner?
My stomach is complaining. I drank too much coffee, and I'm feeling jittery. Dinner would probably solve that. But what to eat?...
Time to walk to Safeway and see what catches my eye.

11/16/02; 10:55:02 AM by DW
Working on an issue reported by Roger Turner on Radio-Dev list.
In xml.rss.compileService, our support for guids and permalinks is horribly confused. The confusion doesn't show up in Radio-generated RSS files, not surprising, but did show up in this feed, http://www.raibledesigns.com/rss/rd, which is a correct feed, the problem is with our code.
The first problem is when isPermalink is explicitly present as an attribute. You can't just dereference adrguid to get the value of the permalink. If you do, you get a table with a /atts and a /pcdata. A permalink should be a URL. It's a lot simpler.
The second problem is if it's not a permalink. Hey, we're still supposed to respect the guid. I'll deal with that fix second.
11/15/02; 1:21:10 PM by DW
Working on restoring from backups.
11/14/02; 12:10:34 PM by DW
To do
New things we're backing up
Things I'm not comfortable backing up
Parts
11/13/02; 5:52:15 PM by DW
What I'm working on
11/9/02; 7:33:36 AM by DW
radio.weblog.init
radio.weblog.getSkipHours -- New
radio.weblog.writeRssFile
radio.data.localization.languages.english.outlines.prefs
11/5/02; 10:25:14 AM by DW
Getting mail-from-aggregator ready for release
10/20/02; 10:37:38 AM by DW
After more testing.. Changes needed in these parts:
10/20/02; 9:52:27 AM by DW
Parts I'm going to release:
Announce the spec
10/14/02; 10:15:44 AM by DW
Projects on my plate
8/29/02; 6:15:31 PM by DW
A fresh start for my instant outline.

Of course, this is publishing time static rendering. For anything dynamic, XSLT is the way to go. Joshua Allen has a head start.

5:13:36 PM      Google It!

SOAP::Lite Vulnerability Issue
I don't have time to check this exploit, but if the issue described below is verified, Perl web services are in a world of hurt :
IlyaM writes "About four months ago there was Phrack article named RPC without borders which describes quite serious security hole in SOAP::Lite module. In short, SOAP::Lite allows to call any Perl subroutine on side of SOAP::Lite based server. Strangely enough it has gone mostly unnoticed and it hasn't been fixed. I've tried to research it further and wrote a simple exploit which instantly gives remote shell access to computer which runs a SOAP::Lite based server. It took me less than two hours to write this exploit. So assuming that security hole in SOAP::Lite have been known for a very long time, there is no reason to think that nobody else (i.e. blackhats) haven't done it."
This is a big one, and relates to how SOAP::Lite dispatches method calls at runtime, and how Perl executes dynamic method calls. The very best thing you can do is take down your SOAP servers until an update is available. [use Perl]
I'm afraid the author is right, I do hope an update is under way. More on this later...

1:00:50 PM      Google It!

storyList and radioScan
Jon, author of the original storyList macro (among other things :-) had some intriguing comments on radioScan last night:
As I look at these things side by side, I wonder whether JavaScript compatibility is the major issue. In both versions, the category names are tucked into HREF TITLE attributes, which means they're only shown when you hover over an item title (and maybe only in IE).
Perhaps a table enumerating all stories, with titles, dates, and categories, is really what the storyList page wants to be. This kind of widget can be rendered statically in a number of ways, and you can give the illusion of sorting up and down on any column by caching these views. It can all be done with no JavaScript dependency.
This would work up to a few hundred items. After that, you'd need to start partitioning the display, but even this can be done in a dynamically-rendered/statically-served way. [Jon's Radio]
How interesting... Jon, may be you could be a little more specific about the 'give the illusion of sorting up and down on any column by caching these views' with 'no JavaScript dependency' part ?
I reckon I'm still learning html and javascript from a programmer's perspective. It's not as bad as I thought. With a little help, I may whip up the time to advance the storyList macro in the direction 'it wants to go'. Or maybe it's your turn now :-)

10:55:11 AM      Google It!