HCMC Blogs

Ran over doing backups, and trying to figure out why the blogs DB has tripled in size in the last two weeks (still haven't found out).

Wrote the outline/plan for the presentation. I'll flesh it out with text and graphics tomorrow.

The viewer program is now working completely with the Ext 1.0 library code (that is, as completely as it was with the .40 code). The administration program is mostly working with Ext 1.0, but there are problems with the action list editor grid, and a few cosmetic problems. All will be resolved soon.

Also found and squashed a few bugs and cleaned up some messy code.

Sorry, nothing new to see today; it was all internal changes. Maybe tomorrow.

We determined that we need to go for a static menu in a conventional location for the main site pages, so the main pages are obvious, and perhaps make the same menu available as a popup from a button in the top right of the image markup pages. There should also be a gallery of images, using thumbnails which expand on hover to show slightly larger versions of the images. All the documents could do with some editorial introduction; at the very least, it could be a more chatty version of information which is already in the teiHeader, but ideally it would also include explanations of the significance of the item, reason for choosing it, and so on. This would enable us to make the TOC and gallery more tempting for readers.

Printed off 30 copies on the ETCL printer.

After much struggle, finally figured out how to specify a text file on the local computer for upload into specified fields in a specified table in the sql db running on the university's server.

With Greg confirmed from sys-admins that they will not allow direct connection from a client program running on my computer to their db - you must use the phpmyadmin interface.

With Martin confirmed that both comma-delimited files from windows and tab-delimited files from unix (\n line ends) can be imported successfully. A secondary problem with multiple line imports was at least partially explained by the fact that that "auto-increment key field" flag was somehow switched off on the target table, so each line in the text file was written into the same record in the db, with result of only one record in the db - either the first or last record from the text file depending on other variables. Also discussed with David, who confirmed our theories.

Now ready to accept data files for times-colonist - they need to have the topic code strings turned into integers.

Problems with the horrible phpMyAdmin interface and unreliably-encoded tab-delimited text files eventually succumbed to a two-headed attacking force armed with two operating systems.