patrick.net

Stupid PatNet filtering inline styling, ruining the joke.

Joke received, looks ok to me.

I was going to displace the HTML I wrote in the post so as to cover the header produced by PatNet. Then you'd see one post header, not two. But PatNet had to filter out inline styling.

@Patrick, how about an "unfollow thread" feature that marks a thread unread by the user. Lots of time I read a thread, find it uninteresting and don't want to follow it, so I don't want the "new posts" icon to appear for it since that icon is most useful for continuing conversations that you are interested in.

Basically, let the user mark threads as unread like one does for email.

Thanks! Yes, some things are kinda abgefuckt, as they say in German, but that's the old php code.

The new version of the site is here:

http://node.patrick.net/

Not yet finished, but very close. I hope that users who know Javascript will read the source and submit patches to make the site better:

https://github.com/killelea/node.patrick.net

Interestingly, this very comment is being made via the new code and the bold text error is still there. So I propagated the problem by simply translating large swathes of php code to javascript, lol.

end bold

At least another person is realizing just how much PHP sucks.

Yes, thus the conversion to node.

OK, up next, ignore feature.

Patrick says

OK, up next, ignore feature.

Here's how to implement that feature.

On the home page
1. Actually deliver the content, but hide it in a div with display: none.
2. Show a link "Show N ignored messages".
3. If you click that link, set each ignored thread's div to display: block.

On a thread page
1. Again, deliver the content, but hide it in a div with display: none.
2. The reply index should not be affected. Even ignored posts get a post index.
3. Each ignore post should have a visible link like "index. [username] Show". For example, "23. Blue Sardine Show   Show All".
4. Clicking the "Show" link shows that post. Clicking the "Show All" link shows all posts for that user in the current thread.

Layout bug: When quoting someone, lots of line breaks are being added. See prior post.

Also, the "new post" bug when you post a reply is still there.

@Patrick, new bug.

1. Go to any thread.
2. Select text from a post.
3. Click the quote link.

The text inserted into the comment box reads "[username] says" where username is the name of the logged in user rather than the name of the user being quoted.

Dan8267 says

The text inserted into the comment box reads "[username] says" where username is the name of the logged in user rather than the name of the user being quoted.

You're right! Thanks for telling me.

OK, fixed now. Here is the fix:

https://github.com/killelea/node.patrick.net/commit/281f687970ecc34598d23c1018c07f25afb71253
One more problem I'm having: since moving from php to node, certain characters are not displaying correctly. I don't understand why, since I am using <meta charset='utf-8' /> in the html just like before.

Patrick says

One more problem I'm having: since moving from php to node, certain characters are not displaying correctly. I don't understand why, since I am using <meta charset='utf-8' /> in the html just like before.

Example? A guess: it may be that your font doesn't have glyphs for those characters.

Check out https://patrick.net/post/1309428/look-at-the-democrats-trying-to-weasel-out-of-their-confederate-heritage
Here are some of the characters that won't display properly:


Happens the same on multiple browsers.

The characters "“inspiration”" appear in the post. In hexadecimal the post is
C3 A2 E2 82 AC C5 93 69 6E 73 70 69 72 61 74 69 6F 6E C3 A2 E2 82 AC C2 9D.

The offending characters are codes
C3 A2 E2 82 AC C5 93 before "inspiration" and
C3 A2 E2 82 AC C2 9D after "inspiration".

C3 A2 should be rendered â, the Latin lowercase letter a with cricumflex.
E2 82 AC should be rendered €, the Euro symbol.
C5 93 should be rendered œ, the Latin lowercase ligature oe.
C2 9D is unused and should be rendered as blank space.

I doubt TPB knows how to add any these characters to a post, so it might be something screwed up in your processing of the posted text. Also, if you are using a varchar instead of a nvarchar, only Latin characters would be supported.

See http://utf8-chartable.de/unicode-utf8-table.pl for details on Unicode codes with UTF-8 encoding.

test

@Patrick, there's a major bug or bugs with posting comments to some threads.

I've notice that when I've clicked on certain threads with the "new comment" link, the thread shows no new comments and the page is at the top of the thread. For example, the Funny Picture thread.

I've also notice that all the comments are missing from the thread "Too soon for Texas & Harvey jokes?" if you go it via a link with the offset parameter like
https://patrick.net/post/1309403/?28758#comment-1437445 but they are there if you go to the link without the offset parameter
https://patrick.net/post/1309403
This means that if you post to a thread, you don't see your comments or anyone else's.

Dan8267 says

I've notice that when I've clicked on certain threads with the "new comment" link, the thread shows no new comments and the page is at the top of the thread. For example, the Funny Picture thread.

Did you mean the "latest" comment link on a list of posts? That was broken until just now:

https://github.com/killelea/node.patrick.net/commit/8abd294ffdf7d8266f5016732882b4b88245cd39
Dan8267 says

This means that if you post to a thread, you don't see your comments or anyone else's.

Seems to work OK for me. I just posted this comment to a thread, and upon posting, I see it.

Patrick says

Did you mean the "latest" comment link on a list of posts?

yes

Patrick, it seems the Like:Dislike quotient is always one for one in the latest comments. It's too much of a coincidence that a comment has 2 likes and 2 dislikes, or 4 likes and 4 dislikes, etc.

Or maybe we have reached brainwash parity on PatNet?

If it actually worked in Chrome on an android phone, that would be an improvement.

Philistine says

Patrick, it seems the Like:Dislike quotient is always one for one in the latest comments

So, Patrick, did you fix this, or did it just fix itself? Everything back to normal now. Bizarre-o Land!

I did not change anything about like vs dislike lately.

@zzyzzx is the site still broken in Chrome on Android? If so, what happens? Just blank, hang, or something else?

This comment is being made with Firefox on Android.

Well, Firefox on Android seems OK.

This is a comment from Chrome on Android.

Dan8267 says

@Patrick, there's a major bug or bugs with posting comments to some threads.

I've notice that when I've clicked on certain threads with the "new comment" link, the thread shows no new comments and the page is at the top of the thread. For example, the Funny Picture thread.

This is because @Patrick replaced ban with ignore. There are all sorts of bugs with ignore including showing the "new comment" link for ignored users and then when you click on it, you don't see a new comment.

Ignore and ban should be independent features, but if you are going to marry the two, and I advise against that, then at least make the ignore go both ways, so that the person you ignore cannot see your posts. Also fix the new comment bug with ignore, as that's a very annoying bug that alone makes ignore not worth using. This could be done using a left join with your ignore table and checking for null in the where clause.

Still no problem. So I cannot reproduce it.

Dan8267 says

showing the "new comment" link for ignored users

Ah thanks, will fix that.

@patrick, I suggest setting up URL forwarding from old URLs to new site's URLs. Google search results yield error pages. That's not good for your ranking.

For example, https://patrick.net/Leftists+and+Social+Justice+Warriors+are+Conservatives 404: LeftistsandSocialJusticeWarriorsareConservatives was not found

@Patrick, the links to posts are frequently messed up. This includes the "first unread post" on the index page and the links to posts in the user's comments page.

Here is an example of one of the links from a user page that takes you to a page with no comments.
https://patrick.net/post/1310376/?29093#comment-1444009
I do not know the cause of this bug, but a good place to start looking is at edge cases like the first or last comment on a page.

@Patrick, may have been suggested before. Have you ever thought about allowing a post to be saved prior to posting? Not comments, but originating a new post. Sometimes life happens and you're getting something good down and have to run off. I know you could always just create your posts in word or some other program and then copy and paste. So this may be a silly suggestion.

@Dan8267, noticed the same thing. You beat me to it.

@Patrick, another bug. Some HTTP requests for images are returning the text "content was not found". It's also returning a 404 status.

Thanks Dan, that /uploads/2011/12/excuse.jpg link refers to an image which is simply not on the server. I did not delete it. Kind of disturbing that it's gone.

Other images from that month are still there. I'll check my backups to see the last time I had excuse.jpg.

Dan8267 says

Here is an example of one of the links from a user page that takes you to a page with no comments.

OK, at least all the comment permalinks should work correctly now. So when you click on the date/time of any comment, even in a user's comment list or a search result, you should go to the right comment.

I want a live post/comment editing preview. I'm always frustrated editing the raw html every time I quote someone - it's hard to read with no indentation to help me decide what parts to remove. Being able to see it rendered as I type would at least help with that a bit. It's easy too:

<textarea id="textArea"></textarea>
<h3>Post Preview</h3>
<div id="preview" style="padding: 1em; border: 1px solid #aaa;"></div>
<script>
var textArea = document.querySelector('#textArea');
var preview = document.querySelector('#preview');
textArea.addEventListener('input', function updatePreview(){
preview.innerHTML = textArea.value;
});
</script>

On the same note, it would also be nice if the html presented to me when I quote someone was just plain easier to read. Use indentation and newlines to help. Eg

Formatting example: https://codepen.io/anon/pen/zEdRqr
Ideally, it would support adding a new additional level of indentation for each nested quote, like shown above. But, that's harder to code because you'd have to parse it and reassemble it with indentation. But, it should be very easy to make at least the top level a & blockquote tags be formated, and the content indented 1 level, and that would still help most use cases.