Double release day

All right, the long-awaited (by me, if nobody else) new release of Kareha 2.0.0 is here! I've been fighting with this for months now, but finally it is in good enough shape to release. There are no doubt many bugs still left in here, and the .0.0 version number should be a hint that it will not be the most stable version ever.

Well then, the news:

• Kareha now has several different operating modes - at the moment, the old message board mode and a futaba-style mode.
• Kareha now supports images, both in the old message board mode and, needless to say, in futaba mode.
• Kareha will, therefore, replace Wakaba Zero.

The following posts will describe various changes in more detail, and explain how to upgrade from Wakaba Zero to Kareha 2.0.0.

The different operating modes for Kareha are implemented using different sets of template.pl & config_defaults.pl files. The template.pl file contains all the HTML generation for the board look, while config_defaults.pl is set to use the appropriate options for the board type, so you do not have to worry about setting all the esoteric options correctly yourself.

These files are stored in the mode_message/ and mode_image/ directories. To install Kareha, you pick the board type you want and copy the files from the corresponding mode_ directory into the main directory. If you forget to do this, you will get a message telling you to do it.

Those who are upgrading from older versions of Kareha can just treat this as any other upgrade, and use the files from mode_message/. Those upgrading from Wakaba Zero will have some more work to do, which I will explain further down.

Smaller changes are:

• The XHTML and Javascript have been updated to be as correct as possible, allowing you to set Apache to send pages as application/xhtml+xml. You can find out how to do this in an IE-friendly manner in the example.htaccess file. The thread views will always do this automatically. So keep your HTML code correct (close all tags, use lowercase, and never use & on its own).
• Disabled automatic thread deletion entirely in the default config for message board mode.
• Implemented rel="nofollow" for external links, to make search engines happy.
• The >>1 link parser was fixed slightly to be less stupid.
• Uses the updated tripcode parser that's also in Wakaba 2.1.0, so exotic tripcodes work better.
• Lots of internal changes I've already forgotten about.

There are loads on new configuration options, too many for me to list all of them here. Here are some new and some that have changed, though:

• VISIBLE_ADMINS makes Kareha mark those who post with a tripcode that's listed in ADMIN_TRIPS (capcodes, essentially).
• FAVICON lets you specify where Kareha looks for its favicon.
• DISPLAY_ID and SILLY_ANONYMOUS now give you much more control over how the ID code is generated. The can contain any of the words "day", "thread" and "board" to make ID codes unique per day, thread or board. The default is now "thread board" instead of "day", which means that ID codes stay constant inside a thread as time goes on, but differ between threads and boards. To disable the "Heaven" ID, leave EMAIL_ID empty.
• PAGE_GENERATION selects how pages are generated. "single" is the old single-page mode, "paged" is futaba-style, and "monthly" make a single frontpage like "single", plus pages for each month. The last one is for blogs, obviously, but I have yet to make a blog mode.
• DELETE_FIRST lets you decide what to do when the first post in a thread is deleted.
• The old Futallaby/Wakaba options SHOWTITLEIMG etc are now implemented in Kareha too, both for message and image board mode.
• Some new old thread deletion modes: MAX_POSTS and MAX_MEGABYTES that act the same as the Wakaba options of the same names. Limit the number of posts, or the image disk space usage of the board.

How to upgrade from Wakaba Zero:

• The res/ files of Wakaba Zero aren't entirely compatible with Kareha, and need to be updated.
• The script zeroconv.pl does this, and creates a new directory named _res that contains the updated files. Run this script in the Wakaba Zero directory first of all. It will not convert ALL information, sadly - image checksums and passwords are lost, so users can't delete old posts, and people can post dupes to the old images. This didn't seem like a big enough problem that I felt like fixing it.
• Make a completely fresh installation of Kareha, and use the files in the mode_image/ directory. Edit config.pl to your liking - copying the old directly will probably not work. Some options are the same, some aren't.
• Finally, copy the src/, thumb/ and _res/ directories from the old Wakaba Zero directory to the new Kareha directory. Rename res_/ as res/.
• Rebuild caches.

Hopefully, you should now have a working board again.

Finally, as you can see there is lots of new stuff in this release. I am not sure how well all of it works, so testing is very much appreciated. Expect some bugfixes releases soon.

Also, I am not sure if the packaging of this new version is a good or bad idea (with the mode_*/ directories and such). Any feedback on the installation process is welcome, too.

Incidentially, this board has been upgraded to the new version, and thus you may need to force-refresh to get the new Javascript.

>>5

Addendum: I seem to have forgotten to implement an easy way to rebuild caches from the web interface in the image board version, so to do it you'll either have to hit http://.../kareha.pl?task=rebuild&admin=ADMIN_PASS or just delete index.html and hit kareha.pl.

Super awesome! ( ^－ﾟ)ﾉ♪

A few remarks:

> To disable the "Heaven" ID, leave EMAIL_ID empty.

May I suggest to change the whole "Heaven" ID thing in the following way or to give an option to let it get handled in this way:

Apply "Heaven" only for mods/admins or if you use sage.

Also: Needs more option for automatic closing of threads and archiving!

Again: super awesome! ( ﾟ－ﾟ)人(^－^ )

> Apply "Heaven" only for mods/admins or if you use sage.

Hmm. What is your reasoning for this?

> Also: Needs more option for automatic closing of threads and archiving!

I'm still undecided on closing threads. On the one hand, it's nice to be able to declare a thread over and archive it, but on the other hand, it's a pretty artificial limit... Who's to say a discussion is over after 1000 posts? Or isn't over before that?

> Hmm. What is your reasoning for this?

I think we've been talking about this before, but I am coming from a 2channel perspective here where bumping threads is also a semi-form of trolling. Trolls are easier identified when ID: is showing. But if you just want to contribute to a thread (which interested persons should remember anyhow even without the thread getting bumped to the top all the time), there's nothing wrong in disguising your ID. Kind of a bonus for normal users and a downside for trolls, really. Maybe in the future bannings could be carried out by IDs also?
It's really more of a general thing which I have no idea if it will / would play out as I think. Maybe Kareha will simply go its own way somehow, but I just wanted to raise the issue again.

> Who's to say a discussion is over after 1000 posts?

A: The Admin. Could be lower treshold, could be higher treshold. But I think it's good to have threads closed after some time. Elsewise they'd probably run down into a really long IRC chat log or something, I assume. A fresh start keeps people attentive, fresh with their reasoning and it's easier to collect achieved information and collected insights at the beginning of a new thread.

http://hotaru.freelinuxhost.com/w/res/80.html

That was quick.

I suggest setting PAGE_GENERATION to 'monthly', and putting the page list in there somewhere... Look at mode_image's template to see how to use the page list.

Also, I was thinking: Think it'd be possible to turn that upload board into a Kareha mode? It might need an extra feature or two to run smooth (say, turning off thumbnails entirely), but it'd be pretty handy.

>>15
http://hotaru.freelinuxhost.com/wu/

On 2channel, threads that are still going after post1000 just start over as part2 immediately, I think.

>>16

Needs more pseud0ch

> The default is now "thread board" instead of "day", which means that ID codes stay constant inside a thread as time goes on, but differ between threads and boards.

I like this solution. Most of the paranoia related to ID codes is that they can be tracked across threads, so being Anonymous somewhere could be matched to a name and tripcode somewhere else.

plz 2 fix SILLY_ANONYMOUS
http://hotaru.freelinuxhost.com/k/kareha.pl/1110065919/

in config.pl i have:

use constant SILLY_ANONYMOUS => 'day thread board';

>>20

As you wish:

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/kareha_2.0.1.zip

I also added a USE_XHTML option to disable application/xhtml+xml mode for those who don't like it.

Fixed a bug in the Last N posts view, where the <!DOCTYPE> headers would be included twice if you requested /lN when there where N-1 replies, thus breaking the XML.

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/kareha_2.0.2.zip

Changes to kareha.pl, wakautils.pl, and the various config_defaults.pl.

Is it considered a "feature" to cram all the HTML of every page onto a single line?

On the reply pages, the HTML for each post is on a single line. That's by design. On the main page, it just ends up on a single line because the templating code strips all newlines to make it possible to get the individual posts on single lines.

> On the reply pages, the HTML for each post is on a single line.

Oh, my mistake then. At a glance, I thought that everything was on a single line for the reply pages too.

> On the main page, it just ends up on a single line because the templating code strips all newlines to make it possible to get the individual posts on single lines.

I don't follow that logic. I tried looking in the Perl code for answers, but my possibly-mistaken interpretation says that when someone posts, thread pages are generated/updated first, then the main page is assembled from those. How does putting everything on one line on the main page have any effect on the thread pages?

>>25

The thing is that since the replies need to fit on a line, the templating code strips out all newlines. So when you run the REPLY_TEMPLATE you get a single line.

The side effect is that when you run the template for the main page, you also get a single line of everything.

I see, I see. It's an issue with compile_template() and not any of the individual templates or functions that use them.

That's fine, I guess, since it doesn't affect the way the page is displayed and we're not supposed to edit the HTML files by hand anyway.

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/kareha_2.0.3.zip

Apparently I forgot to ever include the correct updated CSS files with 2.0.0. Here they are - no more white borders and ugly images when allowing images in mode_message.

Changes to all files in mode_message/css/, and the various config_default.pls, just for the version number.

http://orz.gurochan.net/dis/kareha.pl/1106894994/51

The page is killed when someone writes a long post alpha-numeric. Should be fixed somehow, right?

PS. It probably depends on your resolution, but it's stretching the site a lot on my computer (I'm running 1280x1024 resolution).

>>28

I don't notice anything in that .zip regarding the Japanese version which is mentioned in the docu. Mistake?

>>29

What happened there is that they accidentially stuck spaces at the start of each line, triggering a <pre> block... So it's actually correct behaviour and I'm not sure what could be done.

>>31

To use the Japanese version, use mode_message/templates_jp.pl instead of mode_message/templates.pl.

>>32

Gotcha!