Wedge

Public area => The Pub => FAQs => Topic started by: Nao on October 1st, 2010, 06:30 PM

Title: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on October 1st, 2010, 06:30 PM

WHAT is Wedge?

(http://wedge.org/askme.jpg)

- Wedge is a fork of SMF. To be clear, SMF is Simple Machines Forum, a forum (bulletin board) system that is free to use on your own web server. When it became apparent that SMF 2.0 would be released in an open source license, we used the opportunity to 'fork' it, that is, create a new software based on the same code, going in a different direction. Hopefully an interesting one!

- Our current target release dates: early 2012 for the demo, an alpha version one to three months later, a beta version one to three months after that, and summer/autumn 2012 for the stable release.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Dismal Shadow on September 13th, 2011, 07:00 PM

But will it blend? :p

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on September 13th, 2011, 07:08 PM

Probably not, unless you want to feed your server to the Blendtec blender.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Dismal Shadow on September 13th, 2011, 07:13 PM

That would be epicly awesome. :D

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on September 13th, 2011, 07:18 PM

Buy me a server and I'll do it.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: live627 on September 13th, 2011, 07:28 PM

Would my old PIII work? Oh wait, can I remove the graphics card first? :LOL:

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Powerbob on November 17th, 2011, 07:09 AM

Quote

- Our target release dates: late 2011 for the beta, late 2011 to early 2012 for the stable release.

Answered my question before I asked it lol :cool:

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on November 17th, 2011, 07:23 AM

Oh the dates have changed now...

All is postponed to 2012.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Powerbob on November 18th, 2011, 11:38 AM

end 2012?  :sob: :whistle:

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 11:42 AM

What, the day after Windows 8 is scheduled?

(Yes, that's right, Windows 8's scheduled ship date is the day 'before the Apocalypse'. Now you know what causes it.)

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on November 18th, 2011, 04:35 PM

Demo site: cancelled... (originally autumn 2011)
Using Wedge on Wedge.org: coming in 2011 (same as originally planned)
First alpha: early 2012
First beta: hopefully 2-3 months later
First stable: hopefully 2-3 months later

Note that if we add any other 'big' features during the alpha or beta sessions, we'll postpone the stable release accordingly.
Wedge is a huge project, much bigger than when SMF went from 1.0 to 2.0, which is why I like considering Wedge as 'SMF 3.0', so we're still on schedule even if we release in 2014... The goal is to be faster than SMF2 :P
Of course, if the first stable version is not out by mid-2012, I'll go crazy... We're already 15 months into development, with no signs of slowing down (apart from Skyrim and things like that...), so the only thing I can safely say is that we're certainly going to put these 15 months to waste, and we'll release it.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 04:48 PM

The truth is that it's going to take as long as it takes. There's dates we'd love to hit but if we go by dates, rather than when we feel it is ready, it's going to go awry.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: AngelinaBelle on November 18th, 2011, 05:11 PM

Feature Lock!

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 05:12 PM

Quote from AngelinaBelle on November 18th, 2011, 05:11 PM

Feature Lock!

Wash your mouth out :P

Half the problem is that a lot of things that we already decided to do are still in figuring out the details, like some of the Aeva integration, some of the plugin system and so on.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on November 18th, 2011, 05:44 PM

And the other half of the problem is that we probably forgot most of them :P

As I told you by PM, one of my biggest concerns right now is that we have so many topics left in a corner, either because you posted a long message and I left the tab aside to answer it later (and never did), or because I posted a long message and you left the tab aside blabla (:P), so in the end there are things that *could* be done immediately, but aren't because we simply forgot about them.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 05:45 PM

That's what alpha and beta periods are for, for mopping up the stuff we didn't remember to do the first time.

Right now I'm more interested in the big stuff, not the (theoretically) smaller stuff.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Dismal Shadow on November 18th, 2011, 05:45 PM

Quote from AngelinaBelle on November 18th, 2011, 05:11 PM

Feature Lock!

An excuse that SMF uses for years. :P

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 05:48 PM

Yup, to put it in perspective, SMF 2.0 was feature locked in early 2007, and that didn't make a lot of difference to development (not only did it receive feature enhancements in every release candidate, it was already then at least a year late)

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on November 18th, 2011, 05:52 PM

Quote from Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 05:45 PM

That's what alpha and beta periods are for, for mopping up the stuff we didn't remember to do the first time.

Ah, but sometimes the devil is in the details...
There may very well be a stable release that ships with a ton of silly bugs or behavior issues that no one will ever notice...

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 05:54 PM

Quote

There may very well be a stable release that ships with a ton of silly bugs or behavior issues that no one will ever notice...

Like either SMF 1.1 or SMF 2.0 for instance? There are numerous little foibles that most people never realise in there.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on November 18th, 2011, 06:02 PM

Many of which we fixed in Wedge, I know, I know...

It's just that I don't like the way I work these days -- leaving all of these posts unanswered is something that will bite me in the ass eventually. (And same for you, but shh :P At least you come back to older topics from time to time but posts that are lost in topics that are about everything -- like this one or Miscellaneous etc -- will be lost forever...)

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 06:05 PM

Quote

Many of which we fixed in Wedge, I know, I know...

Most of the 1.1 ones were fixed in 2.0, but there's still some that haven't been fixed and likely won't be for a while; at least one of them requires completely rewriting the preparser, and at least one requires overhauling parse_bbc, and as you can understand I'm not enthusiastic about either of those things.

(Which is part of the basis for the discussion about dropping bbcode and going over to pure HTML, assuming we create some kind of short code... which even WP has these days)

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on November 18th, 2011, 06:12 PM

Ah, another of these discussions we dropped...
Well, we didn't find a 'clean' solution for this anyway. I know Nightwish implemented his own, and seems to be happy with it, but for now I'll just let it be that way.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 06:14 PM

There isn't a clean solution, that's the problem. You either have a half and half approach like there is currently (only with a less buggy editor), or an approach that drops bbcode for the most part and just uses regular HTML with appropriate filtering and maybe some short codes.

For my part, I'd actually rather a half and half approach, unless someone comes up with a *good* way of doing HTML with 'quick codes' that don't feel hackish.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: AngelinaBelle on November 18th, 2011, 07:32 PM

wiki parsing

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 07:58 PM

Wiki parsing doesn't solve either problem, plus the fact I find it even more irritating for anything than truly basic markup. I'd rather do Markdown than wiki formatting.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: AngelinaBelle on November 18th, 2011, 08:09 PM

The wikimedia parser allows lots of html, some of it "sanitised".
One can nick the parser, if one's license is compatable, and avoid having to write it.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on November 18th, 2011, 08:09 PM

I don't like wiki code either though.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 18th, 2011, 08:30 PM

MediaWiki's parser is ugly and sluggish (having actually written parser extensions for it, I never want to set eyes on it again!) but even if it wasn't, it doesn't solve the dilemma, wiki use of HTML is clumsy for small things and it just escapes back to regular HTML for bigger things, and neither plays that well with WYSIWYG.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: AngelinaBelle on November 28th, 2011, 09:57 PM

I suppose that explains the lack of WYSIWYG support in wikimedia.
It's a shame. I've always enjoyed USING wiki formatting.
I've never worked my way through very much of the wiki code, though.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 28th, 2011, 10:00 PM

Wiki code is fine until you want anything even remotely complex, like the table syntax, I have yet to fully understand how that is "easier" than either the HTML or bbcode equivalent.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on November 28th, 2011, 10:05 PM

Back on 2003 I used Spip.net and it had a much better presentation code system. { for italics, {{ for bold, it had code for footnotes too and intertitles. I missed footnotes, hence why they're in Wedge.
http://dossiers.cyna.fr was built with Spip.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: AngelinaBelle on November 29th, 2011, 02:18 AM

I tend to use html tables on a wiki. I like the html passthrough.
I'm not sure, either, how wikitable syntax is easier than HTML.
Either wikitable or HTML beats BBcode for tables. No styling, no padding, no margins = ugly BBcode tables.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on November 29th, 2011, 02:27 AM

Let me clarify one thing right now.

The lack of styling, padding and margins is not a flaw of bbcode as a whole. It's a limitation *solely imposed in SMF* through one of the more... irritating 'features' it has, one of which I will be happy to note is the source of a bug that's *years* old and still not fixed because no-one wants to do the work required to fix it, which is more than a few lines of tweaking but gutting the bbcode preparser and rebuilding it.[1]

The other thing about using the html passthrough is the inherent insecurity of doing so...

As far as wikitable syntax, I'm assuming we're both thinking of the same thing, using | and - and { and } to indicate structure *shudder*.

1.

Specifically, while there is, on the surface, nothing preventing adding such attributes to the table bbcode, the way certain common structures are validated will specifically break doing so, because it will assume that it's invalid markup simply because it's not a basic table tag containing a basic tr tag. It's a flaw of a specific implementation, not of the overall concept.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: AngelinaBelle on December 1st, 2011, 05:03 PM

Starting starting over from scratch with parse_bbc might be in order.
The current design requirements for a replacement would be a bit different from the original design requirements. Times have changed.

Not only "better formatting" but also ways to use a limited bbcode set in an embedded AJAX thingy (chat or other thingy) without affecting the bbcode set available for rendering the main content of the page. etc.
Not to mention -- optimization. [Unknown] said he had to reject regexp in parse_bbc, because he realized that, though it would normally be faster, there could be some "weird posts" that would take ridiculously long to parse using a regexp-based parser.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on December 1st, 2011, 05:18 PM

There is already a shortened version of parse_bbc for such inline purposes, as it happens.

As for the rejection of regexp, yup such things are called ReDoS situations where a badly crafted post could tie the parser up, denying service to others. I actually don't dislike what Unknown has done in the original parse_bbc actually, I just wish it were faster, but the real problem isn't the parser, but the pre parser, which I think is ultimately going to have to be rewritten.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on December 1st, 2011, 07:54 PM

I've proven recently that a series of strpos calls could actually be faster than even a well crafted regex. The regex is still available for comparison in a comment.

That reminds me. Pete, could you deal with adding the prepare code to thoughts? It shouldn't be too annoying as they're only treated in Ajax.php. Or just remind me when I'm on my pc.

Posted: December 1st, 2011, 06:16 PM

Added it myself...
Just one thing to note.
Before wedit::preparsecode, used in various places around Wedge, there's always an htmlspecialchars() call.
Well, while I'm wary of this kind of thing being done (because maybe it should be done inside preparsecode itself if we're going to make life easier for modders...), I did notice an intriguing detail: sometimes it's called without arguments, and sometimes it's called with ENT_QUOTES.
I have a feeling this is something that is due to different devs doing the code at different points in time, and maybe we should harmonize everything. Shouldn't we...? I'd suggest removing all ENT_QUOTES and maybe even push for ENT_NOQUOTES... Because I can't think of a reason to protect parsed BBC against quotes.

Also -- maybe add the double_encode param while we're at it?

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on December 2nd, 2011, 01:01 AM

Hmm. Such a thing is not simple because the preparse step is called in different ways at different times (like it's called inside sendpm as opposed to sendpm expecting it to be already done like createPost does)

The times it's called with ENT_QUOTES is where it expects to see a ' and/or a " to deal with. In posts, that is a valid situation to deal with, especially since it can manifest itself in a slightly disturbing way, notably that not doing it might potentially lead to a vulnerability. I'm not sufficiently comfortable with turning it into NOQUOTES for that reason.

Harmonisation, yes. Probably even moving it all into preparsecode, but with the caveat that it will require more than just moving a few calls, as sendpm will need updating.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Bugo on January 11th, 2012, 01:56 AM

Quote from Nao on October 1st, 2010, 06:30 PM

Our target release dates: late 2011 for the demo

Where is demo?

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on January 11th, 2012, 02:50 AM

I'm sorry, I missed the part where 'target' became 'irreversible deadline'. Probably all the personal crap I had going on made me miss that memo.

There is a demo. It isn't public, but invitation only at this time.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on January 11th, 2012, 07:24 AM

Chuck Norris is already using the final version. He's also the one who edited the original post for more realistic dates. :P

Anyway... I'll do my best to have the demo online this months. i.e. within the next two weeks.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on January 11th, 2012, 12:47 PM

/mejust gets annoyed when people don't realise that deadlines are a fiction created by an arbitrary guess at the future based on incomplete data at the time and are thus entirely prone to being changeable.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Nao on January 11th, 2012, 01:36 PM

You can reasonably expect a film producer to give you a deadline, but not someone working on something without any constraints. As long as it doesn't end like the DNF story... :P

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Dismal Shadow on January 11th, 2012, 03:32 PM

Amy: Why did you say 5 minutes?

"Why did you say five minutes?!"(Eleven/Amy;Vidlet)(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZsBskY0pkQ#ws)

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: Arantor on January 11th, 2012, 03:36 PM

The Doctor: Oops.

Title: Re: [FAQ] What is Wedge?
Post by: stackmouse on January 11th, 2012, 07:16 PM

 :bravo: (http://www.smileyvault.com/albums/userpics/11195/TARDIS.gif) :youretheboss: