August 2013

Fixed a bug reported by Jeffrey Kishner.

How to reproduce

  • Open the Outline Settings dialog (File menu), turn on encryption, click OK

  • Activate another outline. Open Outline Settings, the default value for encryption will be on, which is not good. It should default off.

  • In Fargo 1.15 it does default off.

Diagnosis

  • Reason this was incorrect, this is the first new outline-level setting since the advent of the Outline Settings dialog, so this situation has not happened before. There's now a place in the code where new settings are initialized.
08/29/13; 10:59AM

With version 1.14 you can now encrypt outline files you edit with Fargo.

http://docs.fargo.io/fargo/encryption

I recommend starting with one file, to keep life simple, and put all the stuff in there that you'd like to keep away from prying eyes.

You can't encrypt files you want to publish.

Pick a good password. Don't store your password in your Dropbox folder. That would negate all the value to using encryption.

Please report any problems. Provide screen shots and details sufficient that we can reproduce the problem. If we can't reproduce it, there's no way to find or fix it.

If all goes well, I'll announce this feature on Scripting News tomorrow morning.

08/28/13; 16:44PM

I went on a hunt for docs I had written about Kim Parker's blog, and found a bunch of stuff, and probably will find more.

What happened to the blogging docs is what happened to the Fargo docs -- there's too much of it to put on one page. It works better if we break it up into topics, so each one can expand to include all the information we have, without overwhelming the other topics, esp the beginner docs.

So the blogging docs are now an index type.

http://docs.fargo.io/blogging

And the view-source docs are on their own page.

http://docs.fargo.io/blogging/theViewSourceOfFargo

This change means that some of the name anchors are gone, and therefore some links broke. But not many, and this change gives us room to grow, which we will definitely use.

08/25/13; 17:49PM

Added support for <category> elements in a blog's RSS feed.

Documented in the blogging section of the Fargo docs.

08/24/13; 19:45PM

There was a bug in the way flCommentsVisible att was implemented such that comments were always visible no matter how the attribute was set. Now we respect the attribute.

The <%breadcrumbs%> macro always had a white background. This is not good. It shouldn't specify the background at all. The background-color style was removed.

I added a breadcrumb trail to the default outline template, but it's hidden with a height of 0 by default. I've turned it on in the docs.fargo.io site with a bit of JavaScript that runs when the page loads. Having the crumb trails makes the docs site work a lot better, since things get pretty deeply nested and it helps to see what the context is when you arrive at a page through a deep link.

The next version of the index type template will have a breadcrumb trail in it, implemented the same way. A bit of JS in the page can make it visible if your site needs a crumb trail. I believe most sites do not. But a large structured site like the Fargo Doc site definitely needs it.

The first item in the breadcrumb trail is always Home. This makes it clear to the reader what the crumb trail is. It's especially confusing with first-level items, if the first item is the same as the menu title. It's just a word, hanging out there all on its own. If the word is Home, people have a chance of understanding what's going on.

08/24/13; 12:39PM

I figured out, with the help of some friends, how to do redirects on S3 files.

So now the old files redirect to their new locations. This is good because I can update every bit of documentation now, all from Fargo. Much easier.

Here's a list of the old URLs. Click on them to get redirected.

08/24/13; 10:20AM

We've had reports that the eye icon -- -- doesn't show up after someone goes through the outline naming process. So I'm doing a review of the code, and changing the sequence in which things are done to make the command more reliable.

New defensive driving techniques

  • If the user switches tabs while the outline is being named, we now apply the name to the correct outline.

  • If the server returns the name undefined, we put up an error dialog and the outline is not named. Previously we would go ahead and set the link to http://undefined/ with predictably bad results.

  • We get the public URL for the outline before displaying the dialog. So we know before-hand that it worked. It's possible this is where it's failing for people. Previously it was done as the first step after the user clicks on OK or presses Return.

  • We explicitly refresh the display of the icon chain after allocating the name.

What it means that the eye didn't show up

  • If you look in the OPML for an outline with a name, you'll see a <link> element in the head section of the document.

  • The link element points to the home page of the outline when viewed through the web.

  • If the outline's name is blue, the link is http://blue.smallpict.com/.

  • Simply, if the link element is there the eye icon will show up, and if it's not there, it's because there is no link element in the OPML file.

08/23/13; 16:57PM

New version of Reader strips <rules> from outlines before displaying.

You may have to reload to get the new version.

To test choose View in Reader in the File menu with an outline that has rules.

08/23/13; 07:30AM

Deployed the new docs site

  • The Fargo and Trex docs and worknotes have been Fargoized. This means they are no longer managed in the OPML Editor. Part of the growing-up process for our new JavaScript world. In most ways it's equal to the old way of doing things, and in other ways it's even better.

  • All the docs are on this site: docs.fargo.io.

  • The blog has moved there (you're reading it now) and the RSS feed. Redirects should be in place so that no URLs break. If you find breakage, please report it in a comment or an email to the smallpicture-web list.

  • The links to docs in Fargo itself have been changed to point to their new locations.

  • If you want to look at the site in Fargo, choose Open by name in the File menu and enter howto.

Two Trex issues

  • In doing this project I found two problems in Trex that I was unable at this time to fix. My Trex skills are not up to the level of my Fargo/Concord skills.

    • The archive type can't find your calendar structure unless it's at the top level of the outline. So I'm editing the Archive menu by hand.

    • Redirect nodetypes should be more powerful. If the walk goes through a redirect node, the page we redirect to should have the remaining path added to the end. This way one redirect node can work for an entire site. My workaround was to use a tool in the OPML Editor to do the redirect.

  • Observation: The reason Trex programming is so hard is that there is no ability to step through the code as it's running. If you're learning it, as I am, having the ability to watch it run makes a huge difference. Also makes it hard to fix problems. It's been many many years since I've not been able to step through code as it's running.

Cleaned-up after previous fix

  • In the last update, after closing the Edit Attributes dialog, we made sure that the visible display of comments agreed with the state of the isComment attribute. But we introduced a side-effect that caused an isComment attribute to be added that the user didn't add. While this didn't change the way the outline worked, it was annoying.

  • The fix was to only set the display of comments, not the attribute, if the attribute was undefined.

08/23/13; 02:51AM

When rendering an outline, if a headline has an invisible attribute with the value true, the node is not displayed. However, the walk will find it (i.e. it's not commented out).

This is useful when you need to place a redirect node somewhere but don't want it appearing in the rendered page.

Redirect to a post on Scripting News

08/22/13; 11:49AM

Last built: Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:39 PM

By Dave Winer, Friday, August 2, 2013 at 6:59 AM.