Since I put it into testing over at the ABe board already, I might as well make a thread here to discuss my latest project.

http://wakaba.c3.cx/notes/notes.pl

In a nutshell, it's a script for putting notes on images. This is from an idea of whispers', about collaborative translation - several people can work on a translation by creating and editing notes for text on a comic page. There are probably other uses too, if someone can be bothered to think about them.

It's definitely not done yet, but it's open for public scrutiny for bug testing and to gather ideas for features it needs to be useful. Some signs of it being unfinished are:

• No deletion of notes, and no reverting to older versions.
• Lack of other unspecified backend features (for instance, discussion threads for each image)
• It would be useful to have differently coloured notes, but that's not done yet.
• Some newline issues with certain browsers. Not sure which ones, but that should be easy enough to fix.

Well, have a look. Try not to mess it up too badly. If you want to do some heavy testing, add a new image to work on.

> other uses

Detailed art critique? Where's waldo? Labelling school/group photographs?

Hmm. Could you make the note icon partly transparent?
Is there a way to search for text within notes?

A little bit of CSS trickery should take care of transparency. Or even better, maybe I should make an alpha-channel PNG icon, just to annoy IE users. Ok, that's a little bit mean. Actually, I could detect IE and give them a crappier icon... ANYWAY.

No way to search for text, but that's not a bad idea, I suppose. I should add that to the list.

How about being able to integrate it with imageboards? i.e. when a post is made, it creates a link to a notes page for it (for translation boards or art boards).

That's part of the plan. That's really easy, actually, just need to make a link with the right URL in it on the board.

Updated!

• Cute coloured notes!
• Cute transparent icons!
• Deletion and reverting now works!
• Better code!

Doesn't look as good in IE as it does elsewhere, but that's what you get. At least it works in IE, which is a small miracle in itself.

...as usual, make sure to reload the page to get the new Javascript and CSS.

Is "Show 'x' color only" on the list? How about a bubble maker to preview text positioning? Associate a second text area anchored to the pushpin but movable so you can preview english text without the kanji and discussion in the main note. Maybe with selectable fonts and font sizes. An option to show note on mouseover? Oh! And add a Thumbtack-tan pushpin!

This is gonna be so awesome for my site! n_n

Have you thought of a name for it? Wakaba Notes, WakaNotes?

No, this is unique enough for its own name!

Kareha is old leaves,
Wakaba is new leaves,
how about naming this one floating leaves or something like that?

Hmm, sprouting leaves? budding leaves? cloverleaf(for multiple-in-one deal?

It doesn't work in Safari :(
http://img169.exs.cx/img169/7678/safaribrokethingy5xh.jpg
Also, the page doesn't quite validate, but two of the errors are just the validator being stupid.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwakaba.c3.cx%2Fnotes%2Fnotes.pl%3Fimage%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fhaibane.finito-web.com%2Fgazou%2Fhaibane_memorial03.jpg

>>8

Aiee!

>>9

I am open for suggestions for names, because I haven't been able to think up anything good.

>>10

"Futaba" is already "sprouting leaves", or at least "sprout" as a noun. I've been wondering if it's a moe pun...

>>11

Ugh, Safari. KHTML is kind of broken... And Safari doesn't have a Javascript debugger, does it? So finding out what breaks is an utter pain in the ass, especially since I don't yet have a Mac to test on.

wikiba note

>>12
A little overboard on the suggestions? n_n;

Names... Clusterleaf? Multi/Manyleaf? Some sort of reference to climbing vines(I think they're called ivy)?

Now this is a neat and useful script.

After a few days of use, all the doubleclicking is really making me itch for a mouseover reveal option.

>>12
Akiha

Oh, or Aoba.

>>16

Seems far too epilepsy-inducing. I've been considering single-click reveal, though.

>>17

I am sort of tempted by that one. The danger is that I'd end up making all error messages start with "Nii-san, ..."

>The danger is that I'd end up making all error messages start with "Nii-san, ..."

I see nothing wrong with that.

XD

>>20
nigga stole my post

> # Deletion and reverting now works!

uh, how?

Also, needs more discussion thread on same page.

>>22

Click "More..."

>>23

o i c
(* ´－｀)

>9

Hmm,
落ち葉(Ochiba) = fallen leaves

>>25

Too late: http://ochiba.x-maru.org/

( ・ω・)

>>26
Hey fuck that software ok. I hope it dies.

The notes script works properly on Safari v1.3/OS X 10.3.9.

That a newer version than the one you tried earlier? Safari still has some catching up to do with the standards compliance - hell, every browser does - but it's nice to see that they're working on it, at least.

It's new, just came out today.

And by today I mean "recently", but who's counting.

I think it's around time to implement a simple function, by which you can create a project or close a project. ( I don't know a proper word for it. Project Manager?).

I made a draft.
http://hinatama.net/~hinata/goodies/thingy.html

If it's okay, I'd like to join this project and add some codes for it.
If GDBM or other DBM is used at the moment, each project may have its own dbm file after the modification.

Probably, WAHa already gets to it, though.

>>32

I have also been thinking that it needs a way to organize pages better. I have been too busy with another crazy project to do any work on it, though, so it's stayed as it is for now.

It uses an SQL database internally, and has just a single table that contains columns for the image URL, an ID for the note, a timestamp, and the data for the note. The idea is that when saving, I just add another entry to the database, and all the old ones stay in the database. When showing a page, I pick all the entries with the correct image URL, and select just those with the newest timestamp. This lets the script show the entire editing history for a note.

There's not really any way to add projects to that, so I'm thinking there could be another table that contains the project information for every URL. When you add a new page, it doesn't automatically get added to a project (so you can have a section of unorganized pages for simple things), but you can then use the project manager or whatever to assign it to a certain project.

I would be interested in help with it, since I've got other things I'm busy with too, though. I think I'll upload the code somewhere later tonight.

I think the system needs at least three tables.
One for projects, one for pages in projects. The last one is for for notes in pages. I'm going to submit details tomorrow.

Thank you for your interest. If you possibly want to handle the source code and SQL a bit internally , please send them to my address( hinata ＠ sc.openbit.net ）

So this is a draft.
http://hinatama.net/~hinata/goodies/karehatan.pdf

Any way to hide the menu window in the upper right corner?

Feature I'd like: Being able to export projects and import them into other projects. This could be useful for projects carried out on URLs that would eventually expire and similiar stuff.

>Being able to export projects and import them into
>other projects

It may be useful to transfer some pages on a project to another project. And it's rather easy to implement.
Similarly, updating the URL which expires is doable with a little difficulty.

>>38

It'd be easy enough to add a button to change the URL for a page that just asks for a new URL and does an UPDATE entries SET url=(newurl) WHERE url=(oldurl);

Did I call it "url" or "image" in the database? I forget.

url, isn't it.
You must be a wizard. I've nerver seen such complex,compact and efficient codes.

>>1 put on his robe and wizard hat

Edited these with your translations.

http://img33.echo.cx/img33/7120/os16nx.jpg

http://img38.echo.cx/img38/3522/os23sf.jpg

http://img38.echo.cx/img38/8638/os36qc.jpg

http://img55.echo.cx/img55/4071/os45xs.jpg

http://img55.echo.cx/img55/4216/os52fz.jpg

http://img55.echo.cx/img55/1072/os68md.jpg

>>42

Er, it is of course appreciated that you want to help out, but those have all been edited already. http://cerealandmilk.net/iichan/img/res/543.html

This thread is for technical issues only, really, and if you want to contribute it is better to hang out on the translation and OS-tan boards, or whereever else the script is being used.

How about an editable field for a title, so we don't have to guess what the older filenames contain?

Hinata's working on some organizational improvements. Let's see how that turns out.

Upgrade complete!

Added a bunch of Javascript magic to better handle cooperative editing. The page will now periodically check the server for changes to the notes, and mark notes that have changed. Checking will also be done when saving, or if you click "upgrade" in the menu.

The script will now also warn you if you overwrite edits done by some else while you were working.

There are also some minor cosmetic changes, and a collapsible main menu just for >>36. Maybe something else too, but it's late and I'm too tired to remember what I've done.

Er, there seems to be some bugs. Please stand by...

Bugs fixed. (Hooray for mysql! Worst database EVER!) Now let's get this show on the road.

Hello! There is still something in javascript.
All notes, "Recent edits" and "Deleted notes" don't appear.
(I'm IE6 user, and its works several hours before.)

FireFox seems okey. (I installed it just now.)

I'll have to check that... It might be that you just need to use shift-reload to get the new Javascript code to reload, though.

Ah, you're right, there was a bug that made it not work in IE. Now it should work (if you reload). I do recommend using Firefox though, because some of the features don't work in IE (Notes do automatically update in IE too, but they don't get marked like they do in Firefox so you can't see which ones have changed unless you look at the list).

I also fixed the bug where editing an older note would give you the "sombody has edited this note" message once for no reason.

54GET

Could you include the note's position in the history page? Sometimes that's the only thing that's changed.

How about an option to change the source image address when it registers 404? In case it expires and needs to be re-uploaded somewhere.

>>55

I guess, but it doesn't seem all that important... Any particular situation where it would be useful to see it?

>>56

I've been wondering what to do about that. Changing the image URL is a somewhat destructive thing (as there's no obvious way to revert to the old one), so I'm not sure if normal users should be able to do it.

What if it kept a sort of meta-log for URLs? So they're treated as another note.

I think it would be better if the projects announced on the frontpage got a specific (UNIX timestamp?) value assigned to them over which you could access them even without the (original) image URL.

>>56
Perhaps we should just copy the picture in somewhere before starting the translation, instead of introducing complicated methods.

Does your browser display the picture of this?
http://wakaba.c3.cx/notes/notes.pl?image=http%3a%2f%2fcerealandmilk%2enet%2fiichan%2fimg%2fsrc%2f1115320074792%2ejpg

My IE6 and Firefox1.0.3 don't, even though the image file itself can be reachable via http://cerealandmilk.net/iichan/img/src/1115320074792.jpg.

Strangely, after I access this URL, the former page also works. And when I click the reload button of the brower, the image disappears again.

Seemingly this happens only when the image file is stored in the image board of iitran.

Possibly... redirection does something.

Perhaps they made some changes to cerealandmilk.net's antileeching and inadvertently cut off access?

Yes, that's it. I'll talk to squeeks about it.

Fixed a small bug that prevent the script from working in Safari. Hooray.

I made a quick little addition of a feature that may turn out quite useful:

If you open a note and click "More...", there's now a "Rikai" button to open up a new window with the contents of the note run through rikai.com's popup translator. This will give you a popup window containing a translation of words when you hover over kanji on the page. This should make translation work a lot easier for those of you (ok, ok, us) who haven't managed to memorize many kanji.

Check it out, and remember to shift-reload to get the new Javascript file for this.

>>65

That's a pretty nifty addition!

Popping over from the other board as directed :D

I'm still interested to test the script out. Looks like the perfect <strike>toy</strike>tool between my friends and I when we do some random translations.

Any chance of releasing the source a little early? (;´Д`)

Well, I packed up the current version here:

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/other/notes.zip

Should be straightforward enough to get running. Just edit config.pl to put in the proper settings for your SQL database. I've tested it with mysql and SQLite. Also, there is a risk that future versions will be incompatible with this one, so that's the risk you take running unfinished software.

Grabbed it, thanks! I got it running on my side now and am in the process of reading thru the code. I'm still new to xml-http requests.

Anyway, I was going thru the older topics and wanted to throw in some input:

1) Regarding individual projects and all, there's always the quick-n-dirty way of introducing a new field in the table containing the project name, and let mysql group the entries by it, then output them sorted. I thought creating a few new tables just for that purpose might be a little overkill. After all, the front page just outputs everything in db anyway.

... but then everyone will want more extended features later so introducing new tables might be good (*´¬`)

2) An additional "Save" option on the menu which saves the positions only (or perhaps all info for the image) might be nice. When I was fiddling with it, I would often move the note away from the original spot just to refer to the image and then forget to move it back after I started on the next. Then I find a few of the notes are scattered around after saving the last one. And I'd end up re-saving a note without making any changes just to update the new positions.

3) This may not be practical for everyone, but how about introducing an export feature? Ie. output all notes for the current image into a text file. For what purpose? Well now ... collaborative translation is interesting but it might be nice to be able to save the text if we're working on one project instead of just random images :D

1. I've considered doing something like that, too.
2. I've seldom found that a problem in normal use, so I haven't seen a need for it...
3. This is something I have wanted too, but there's one big unsolved problem: In what order would you print the notes? None of the easy orderings are useful (by creation date, by last edit...). Adding a manual ordering attribute is really far too much work.

Re 3: Hmm, you don't think the creation date would be adequate? I think that in the practical sense, new notes would be added in sequence.

My initial idea was to introduce a variable to keep track of the count of the notes. So creating a new note would increase/assign that number to the current note. But yeah, if someone wants to re-order things, that would be too much work.

Initially, I wanted to try adding some features I'd like to the script, then I found out that the bulk of the script's operation was in Javascript, rather than in Perl. This is going to be hard =_=

Well, I know I don't always create them in order. Actually, I seldom do, I start out with the easy ones. And if you later delete and add notes, it messes everything up. So that's not very useful...

I don't know much about Perl so I have no idea how feasable this might be, but what about a mode where you might "drag and drop" notes into an export bucket, and then have it generate a text file based on the order of placement in said bucket?

Hmm, how about this?

Each new note has a visible & editable text field containing the count, which increments by 10 (or whatever) each time.

Note A: 10
Note B: 20
Note C: 30
Note D: 40

So when they want to export the image and need to rearrange the notes (whether it's new notes or deleted ones), they can enter anything between the number for both notes and it'll be sorted ascendingly at the end.

So to push Note D between B & C, they change the number to something between 20-30. And there's more than adequate space to move other notes in between the two (and recursively)...

>>74 is really too complicated and arbitary.

>>73 might be on to something, though...

I wish I had SVG, because then I could make a system for drawing connections between notes with lines. That would be truly intuitive.

>If you can come up with some good suggestion for an official name, feel free to post it in the thread linked in >>7

I'm Japanese.
So, I suggest some Japanese name.
(Because I can't suggest cool name with English.)

ザ・翻訳(Za・HONYAKU)　(The・trastlations)
翻訳コンニャク(HONYAKU KONNYAKU)　(Translation of devil's tongue jelly.)
(This is name of Doraemon's Item.
http://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/doraemon_2005/contents/tool_ha/0001/)
翻訳今夜食う?　(HONYAKU KONYAKUU?)　(Do you eat translations tonight?)

I tried running notes on Dreamhost, but it wouldn't. All .pl-files were CHMOD'ed 755.

Invalid [] range "}-\x" before HERE mark in regex m/([\x{100}-\x << HERE {ffff}])/
Compilation failed in require at templates.pl line 3.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at templates.pl line 3.
Compilation failed in require at notes.pl line 12.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at notes.pl line 12.

On dealing with expiring images, how feasable would it be to have a menu item where you enter a URL or local machine pathname to temporarily replace the background image? Something that would load only for your own session without requiring modifications to the database.

Or a list of URLs where people can add alternate locations to the original file, then switch between them in the same way wakaba/kareha switch between board looks?

>>77

notes.pl requires Perl 5.8, Dreamhost only has 5.6. This is just a side project, so I probably won't work around this anytime soon.

>>78

This sounds like a pretty good solution. I am not sure how easy it is to get at files locally (might be prevented for security reasons), but it's not a bad idea overall. I'll look into it (at some point).

Some good news is that DreamHost is upgrading (from Woody to Sarge), so Perl will finally be 5.8.

すてきなツールをありがとう＝）
使い心地や機能には満足しているのですが
私のISPからだと頻繁にtimeoutが起きてしまうようで
save/update がうまくいかないようでこまっています
もし可能でしたら、offline mainで動いて、最後に一括saveできるような
仕組みに変更していただけないでしょうか？

from japan and with my ISP, got network trouble often.
seems timeout during save and update.
can you make this tool working on offline mainly and possible save collectively.

Ah, I see. It would be a lot of work to do that, though, and I am always busy (and lazy). If you have your own webhost somewhere that can run Perl scripts, you could set up your own copy where it would be easier to reach, maybe? If you want to try that, you can download http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/other/notes.zip.

thank you responce, I'll try

May I borrow the script?
My ISP offers its customers some MySQL servers which are accessible from its web servers (and Perl 5.8 is also available). I never used any SQL servers, but perhaps what I should do is to replace 'host=localhost' and 'user/pass' in config.pl with some appropriate names.

Yeah, that should work.

Incidentially, I've been meaning to put in a quick hack for better organization of the front page by grouping pages by domain name and path. It's getting a bit hard to find stuff in there now. But first I've gotta finish this other stuff I'm working on... orz.

>>85
It worked. Thanks.
http://www.local-domain.com/notes/top.html

I simply used Javascript's sort method of an array object to sort the front page's items. A script in "./notemenu.html" sorts "li" DOM objects at the result of "notes.pl".

This is only a trail. My script sometimes does strange action. I'll make this better.

>>81
a decayed japanese, I'm going to install the tool in my web site. Perhaps the server has fewer visitors than wakaba has, so the new page gives you fewer timeout, I guess.

>>86
oh thank you htsuji.
can I borrow your page ?
I tryed but couldn't setup thingy tool to some my web space :/

>>87
Sure. Though it is yet testing phase.

I mean to set two or three entry pages -- at least, for general mangas (for all ages) and for special ones.

By the way, picture files in Gurochan aren't accessible if they are referred from my site or other outside of Gurochan except that original thingy page. The image of Gurochan you see in my site is a cached data in your web browser.
(see also >>61-63)

> I tryed but couldn't setup thingy tool to some my web space :/

The script requires an SQL database engine (for example MySQL, SQLite) to store notes. Once upon a time, you must pay additional charge when use an SQL server with your web site, and almost all of SQL servers were very expensive. Thanks to today's blog boom, some ISPs now offer one or more simple SQL engines to their personal customers because some popular blog softwares need them. I guess your ISP might prepare "DBI:SQLite module" for its users, which is a perl library with an embedded SQL engine that runs as a part of Perl(CGI) programs.

Anyway, I'll fix my site in a few days.

This might be just my imagination, but when notes.js running in the browser requests a lot of notes icon images to the web server at once, the server's TCP wrapper or something that watching DoS attack blocks most of the connection. The browser receives only 4 or 5 icon images. After a while (for several minutes) the server keeps refusing to connect any connection (not only port 80 but also port 23, 25 etc) from the ip address of the pc where the browser is operating.

>browser requests a lot of notes icon images

I don't think. Stock config in firefox only requests 8 documents at once from a server.

I tried with IE6.0, Firefox 1.07, and Opera8.5.

Firstly I cleared each browser's cache. (if caches are already filled with icon images, this "resusal by the server" doesn't happen.)

When I use IE, it happens more frequntly.
It it rare with Firefox and Opera. (not never)

When I limit Opera's maximum connection to 1 or 2 (or maybe 4), it seemingly never happens, and when I set the limit to 16, it almost always happens.

I don't know either how my ISP set the server or the current load on the server, so I'm not sure what I wrote in 89 yet...

I'm THE STUPID!

The firewall in MY router does! Not ISP nor the web server.

I found my router's log reports "SYN flood to HOST" from my pc.
Then I turn off the router's firewall function, the problem doesn't happen even I set opera's maximum connention count to 16. I'm sorry.

> I'm THE STUPID!

つ http://4-ch.net/dqn/

Recognition:
http://lists.sourceforge.jp/mailman/archives/wema-users/2005-May/000009.html

>>94

Reminds me of the times I spent hours trying to get Windows Networking to work when I should have just configured my firewall correctly. And yes, that was two separate occasions...I didn't learn the first time.

By the way, I wrote:

> the problem doesn't happen even I set opera's maximum connention count to 16.

Opera has other problems and doesn't work correctly after all.
"the problem" means a network problem I encountered. I only used Opera to get any hint.

>>97
I should have checked my network at first... <sigh>

>>19

>mouseover reveal
>Seems far too epilepsy-inducing. I've been considering single-click reveal, though.

Perhaps mouseover reveal after a timeout?

Imagine if this were just a Firefox plugin so that you could do it to any image on the entire internets without having to leave the site...

we have incorporated notes.pl into one of our wakaba boards. check it out here: www.wtfux.org/cams/

no "how to config" board or post :/

I think this script is pretty damn cool and I'd hate to necropost. Oh well, I wanted to know if you have to use a new SQL DB for each install of Notes? Notes isn't quite that documented it seems.

I'm guessing that you need to get in a browser and head to
.../notes.pl just like .../wakaba.pl where it then creates the HTML everyone can view?

I hope I'm right.

This is a cool script and I could eventually find a bunch of uses for it.

Just asking a bunch of stupid questions for a PDF I'm writing. so I may have more noob questions.