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Development Update, 2008-01   (News)

.8 Final: the next step after RC3
Since the release of RC3, already a lot of bugfixes have been committed to the repository. The developers have agreed to address all new features to the .9 tree, where the two major changes (UTF-8 and gettext, see below) are already in active development. This should result in much shorter release cycles (and earlier release dates) also, and give module developers much more clarification on what to change in order to make their module work under the new major release. If needed, an final bugfizing weekend may still be organised for .8 final.
The upgrade from .764 installations on certain systems has been improved, by increasing the memory_limit to 64M. However, this only works for php version 5.2.1 and above.
Upgrading to .8 together with some 3rd party modules may raise problems when the modules upgrade process is not failsafe for .8 or if the upgrade function uses core functions of modules that are not available yet. Therefore the upgrade of 3rd party modules in general is avoided by following a white list of core modules.
Most site-specific data can already be easily overridden using the /config and /themes directories. The Multisites module however still needs some futher thought on the best way of running multiple sites from a single install. One method having multiple unrelated (i.e. non table sharing) sites of a single install would be to have config/site1, config/site2 etc., this will be postponed to a next release.
The Tour module is now in a state where it can be translated to other languages as well. Just translate the templates and put them in a subdir with the appropriate language abbrevation, all within the pntemplates directory.

MultiCategorization introduction and issues since
As earlier announced, a last fix for supporting MultiCategorization has been added to the core just before the release of RC3. Since those changes, another small fix was then required to be fully backwards compatible. On the module-devs list, the devs have discussed a lot on how to solve these issues. Chances are great that if the new (already committed) patches do not solve the problems, MultiCategorization might be postponed to later versions in order to fully test the new features.
For more information on MultiCategorization, visit this thread in the forum.

DOM extension to use correct paths in JavaScript
Some javascripts, eg. the lightbox, need to know the path to the system and the entrypoint as well (which can be configured in the settings), otherwise they may fail in case of short urls being enabled. Since dynamic javascript creation might be a performance problem, some inline javascript is added to the pagevars to extend the DOM:
- document.location.entrypoint: will be set to what is configured to be the entrypoint
- document.location.pnbaseURL: will point to the result of pnGetBaseURL();
Any ideas on how to make his more unobtrusive are very welcome!

PostNuke Upgrade Distribution
In previous articles and posts, the term '.8 upgrade pack' was used to represent a full .8 package, including 3rd party modules, to upgrade to .8 from an existing .764 installation. However, the term 'upgrade pack' is not quite correct and misleading, because it implies to be an upgrade package with changed files only, while the main parts remain as-is. The transition between .764 and .8 requires a complete exchange of all files, so the so called upgrade package is a complete distribution.
Now it remains what modules should be in an upgrade distribution, to be able to fully upgrade an existing .764 installation, including new versions of 3rd party modules. These include Downloads 2.2, pnMessages, Polls 2.0, bbcode / bbsmile, Weblinks, EZComments and MultiHook at least. This might need some additional testing with certain versions also.

Core changes and additions in the .9 tree
Mark has already overhauled some core API methods and calls. All systems modules are now using the Renderer Class instead of pnRender. Also, a first pass has been committed in changing all pn* function calls to new object method calls. For example, pnModGetInfo is replaced with ModuleUtil::getInfo and pnSecGenAuthKey is replaced with SecurityUtil::generateAuthKey.
For those who did not know: A class pnCompat.php still includes most oldstyle API calls for backwards compatibility.

GetText and Default DB Charset
Bernd is progressing rapidly on integrating gettext in de development tree, and has added po-files for all core modules. The required PHP version for .9 has already been set to a minimum of 5.1.6, and since version 5.0, MySql supports different character sets and corresponding collating orders. To run an application in UTF-8 (unicode) it is not sufficient to change the character set for PN; we needed to set the database encoding (actually server and client) to UTF-8 as well.
A user who wishes to run his site in multiple languages, needs to decide the database encoding at installation time. The default is UTF-8, because the current iso-8859-1 is restricted to too few language combinations. UTF-8 is a 'no-worry' setting because it will work with any language (as long as it is UTF-8 encoded.
This change is $PNConfig['DBInfo']['default']['dbcharset'] = 'utf-8';

To cache or not to cache, that's the question
Also discussed on the devs-list is the current (and future) state of output caching within PostNuke. Why should any application repeat the same processing tasks on a item that hasn't changed?
Not caching anything is fine if one has got infinite resources to throw at a site (and even then there are limits). But in reality there are finite resources and you need to take steps to ensure that those resources are effectively used. One method for that is not wasting precious resources repeating the same tasks time after time.
The key is effective cache management. Currently we put too much load onto the module to handle it's own caching. Once you then

Generated on March 2, 2008.

A Warm Welcome to Our Newest Member, Mateo Tibaquirá Palacios   (News)

Welcome Mateo, tell us a little about yourself. Who are you,
where are you from, and what do you do?
My complete name is Néstor Mateo Tibaquirá Palacios, but I prefer to be called Mateo. I'm from Colombia, a very beautiful country with some horrible problems; balanced, eh? I live in Popayán, where I'm finishing Electronic & Telecommunications Engineer Studies with an emphasis in Telematics (Information and Communications Technology). I chose Telematics because I like to program. Growing up, I did not have a computer, and from the distance I hated the idea of using a command line console. Now, it's different; I love my Ubuntu with the Yakuake console; and Eclipse PDT rocks!
At the University, I discovered that I had sufficient skills to write software. I began programming in C++ and Java some time ago,

Generated on January 26, 2008.

A Call For Volunteers   (News)

Layout and User Interface Team
Now PostNuke is nearing the final release of 0.8, we're beginning to look beyond towards the future development, both of .8 and .9. In that future, we'd like PostNuke to look better, be easier to use and to really stand out among all the competing systems out there. And all that while remaining standards compliant and accessible! We need a team of skilled people to take PostNuke to the next level. We're looking for those skilled in HTML, CSS, Photoshop and image design, Ajax (specifically prototype and PostNuke's Ajax framework), PostNuke's theme engine and those with a knowledge of standards and Section 508. Does any one of that list sound like you? If so, please contact us as soon as possible for more information!

ValueAddon Development
We're still looking for willing developers to take over development of all the old ValueAddons in SVN (see the PostNuke-devel/modules directory for a full list). The more modules from this selection that are adopted by third party developers the better - the core team can concentrate on faster and better releases of the core, moving us to .9 quicker. All the modules in SVN are .8 ready, they just need a little attention and new features adding. Please get in touch if you can adopt a ValueAddon.

Support
This is something every single PostNuke user can contribute to. We're always looking for help in the forums, answering questions and helping users both experienced and just getting started. The PostNuke community is a friendly place, so why not show that to those who join us by answering any questions they may have? Even better, if you could transfer whatever you write a detailed page in the PostNuke Wiki you'd benefit the whole community.

Marketing and Publicity
Following .8 we're planning a marketing campaign to show the world just how good PostNuke is. If you have contacts in the web development industry, are able to publicise PostNuke to clients, coworkers or write a series of articles for a magazine then you can contribute here! We're looking to form a team entirely focused on this goal, so please contact us if you can help out.


Of course, if there's nothing in the list above which appeals to you we can always find a use for a willing volunteer. If you

Generated on January 4, 2008.

What's going on?   (News)

know the Core team released RC2 of Postnuke .8 - the Steering Committee's report we are just working on will deal with the details.

2. Jørn Wildt released a first version of his "Content" module:
"Finaly I have finished the first version of my new Content module. With this little goodie you get HTML editing, YouTube video, Google maps and more features out of the box. This module was inspired by Typo3 and the never-finished PostNuke module Publish!" -- elfisk.dk

Content is a module that you can use to create static pages. It supports several predefined layouts (1 column, 2colums + header aso) and you can also add your own templates. In the editor you then can drag and drop content items like texts, images, youTube videos or Google Maps around and place them anywhere you like within the layout.

3. Together with "Content 1.0.0" a new version of Jørn's Mediashare gallery is available. Yet it still needs an installed Topics module to run under .8.

4. pnForum 2.7(.1) is finally released. A test version served the German Postnuke community for months and now he fixed the last bugs and made a public release.

5. Sven Schomaker is about to release Scribite 2.0 - It includes openWYSIWYG v1.4.6c as new editor and new versions of Xinha (v0.94), TinyMCE (v2.1.2), FCKeditor (v2.4.3), a lot of new module plugins and languages.

6. Axel Guckelsberger finished his diploma thesis that discussed the use of model-driven software development (MDSD) for Postnuke and resulted in his "ModuleStudio". Although ModuleStudio is far from complete it is way ahead in terms of modern software development. And if it turns out right MDSD is one of the next big things after object orientation (OO).

7. User ftree started work on a new gallery (pnAlbum) some months back and now published an article about his work. In preparation of the gallery he programmed some basic functions which turned out to be suitable for everyone who wants to program a module. If you want to you can take a look at his work.

8. There's a new pnCommerce team in formation: Rüdiger Hahn, Jim Hatfield, Chris Candreva, Bernd Plagge and some others are long time pnCommerce users and all maintained their own fork of the module. Now they are trying to put all their code together and a new version out for public use.

9. Marco Kundert is still working on his .8 follow-up for Pagesetter called Pagemaster. His first release will be 100% compatible to the latest version of Pagesetter so that you can simply import all you Pagesetter content into Pagemaster. Pagesetter introduced many ideas into Postnuke that have now become part of the core: Postnuke .8 has Workflows system and the idea of Pagesetter's form framework (Guppy) can now be found as Forms API in .8 and the WYSIWYG-Editor is now in Scribite generally available - Pagemaster uses all these features and thus can be much leaner.

10. Robert Gasch is working on a commercial shop module. He allowed me to take a look at it and it looks really great. Robert made his living for the last few years by setting up shop solutions for customers and now uses this experience for his new module.

11. Mateo Tibaquirá released a first version of his port of the standalone Relay AJAX directory management application. Includes drag-n-drop files and folders, a dynamic loading file structure, thumbnail views, multiple users & accounts, batch uploads, shopping-cart/batch downloads.

I am sure I forgot some people and I know there's a lot more going on in Postnuke land. But I'd like to leave some news for further articles.

If you are working on a news-worthy Postnuke project please contact me via personal message

Generated on December 22, 2007.

How to add icons to the Profile (0.8)   (News)

In the standard version the Profile contains just one icon to edit your personal data and one icon to logout.
So, I investigated how this works - as I never used it in over 3 years.
All modules are classified as 'admin' modules or user modules. Every user module and that is the vast majority of modules can have an icon in the Profile folder. What it requires is a pnaccountapi.php file in the modules directory. That means, if you want to show the Pages icon in the Profile folder you need a file named ./modules/Pages/pnaccountapi.php.
This program does not contain much but the definition of the icon to show. Sample content is like this:
[code]function Pages_accountapi_getall($args)
{
if (!isset($args['uname'])) {
if (!pnUserloggedIn()) {
$uname = null;
} else {
$uname = pnUserGetVar('uname');
}
}
// Create an array of links to return
if ($uname != null) {
$uid = pnUserGetIDFromName($uname);
$items = array(array('url' => pnModURL('Pages', 'user'),
'module' => 'core',
'set' => 'icons/large',
'title' => _PAGES,
'icon' => 'pages.gif'));
} else {
$items = null;
}
// Return the items
return $items;
}[/code]

That's it. Pretty easy.

Generated on September 19, 2007.

pnRender cheatsheet   (News)

espacially complicated: Some stuff you best read at http://smarty.php.net and you also always have to have an open pnRender plugins directory so you can open the plugins you need and look up the exact syntax.

I tried to put the basic smarty stuff and the most frequently used pnRender stuff on just one page. And the great thing is: I am willing to share it with the community.

Personally I already love the cheatsheet - It contains the syntax with the backticks! And the date specifiers!! And the parameters for pnmodurl, pnmodfunc, pnmodapifunc aso!!! And I always forget in which order truncates parameters are. That's all on that on sheet!

I hope you like it too.

Download: pnRender cheatsheet 1.

Generated on May 28, 2007.

DIY: Including Video in Your PN Site   (News)

complicated things there are. Netscape introduced the embed-tag with theit Navigator 2.0 but it never became part of the html standard.

Moreover a patent exists that forced Microsoft to implement embed even more complicatedly.. But there is an existing JavaScript-solution that functions as a nice work-around.

There are several reasons that make Flash Video the best choice for the video encoding: The quality is good enough for most purposes and the flash plugin is the most common. Every other method is limited to an operating system (wmv -> Windows) or to rarer plugins (Real, Quicktime aso.) Jeroen Wijering wrote a nice article about Flash Video.

I used Riva FLV Encoder 2 for the encoding. It is free and supports the codecs I needed.

Jeroen Wijering not only wrote an article about FLV he also wrote the Flash Video Player which can be used to embed the videos into your site.

I use Pagesetter to store the metadata. My publication type has three fields: title, description and filename. Filename is im my case also a string because the videos are too big to upload them via HTML forms. We upload them into a predefined directory and only enter the filename into the form field.

The flashplayer is stored inside the themes folder:
themes/myTheme/flash/flash_flv_player

And you have to add a javascript call to the site's header:
[code][/code]

The -list.html-template of the publication type looks something like this:
[code]

Generated on April 3, 2007.

Development Update, March 2007   (News)

Dot 8 evolving: language files progression and legacy functionality
Thanks to the testing of the community users (yes, YOU!), some legacy functions (residing in /includes/legacy/ have been updated by Simon to solve some bugs. This is another proof that we do need everyone to test the releases and help not only yourself to make this release a success! The following files have also been marked 'deprecated', with an accompanying comment in the DocBlock: admin.php, backend.php, banners.php, error.php, modules.php, print.php and user.php. These files shall be removed in the next (post-dot8) major release.
The overhaul of language files has also applied to the Groups, Theme, Users and Profile modules. These modules now have better multilingual options and (by using the pnML function), making it a lot easier to translate the package and showing better logic in grammar for localisations. Furthermore, lots of open bugs have been solved and the templates have been revised also. For example, the emails sent by the Users module can now be adjusted by just editing a template!
David Nelson has offered to completely review the language files for dot8, and we all have to thank Olaf Fichtner for helping revamp the current language constants. The PostNuke Languages Project is actively following the development!
Important change in the language strings is the use of the _CREATEDBY / _CREATEDON and the _UPDATEDBY / _UPDATEDON constants. For better support in other languages, these are replaced by the following:

'_CREATEDBY', 'Created by %username%'
'_CREATEDON', 'Created on %date%'
'_CREATEDBYON', 'Created by %username% on %date%'
'_UPDATEDBY', 'Last updated by %username%'
'_UPDATEDON', 'Updated on %date%'
'_UPDATEDBYON', 'Last updated by %username% on %date%'

and can now be accessed through the normal pnml plugin in the templates.

System modules: pnForm and PageLock
Jørn has moved the pnForm framework to it's own module location within the system directory. Major reason for this is to properly save some pnForm specific javascript and style files. Usage of the module should be quite the same. In addition, some new context menu plugins have been added. These plugins create a popup menu to be used as a right-click context menu. More information can be found in the added files in the pnForm plugin directory, and at the pnForm Wiki Pages.
Also introduced by Jørn is a new system module. The PageLock module is a module that helps enforcing single user access to a specific page, by blocking access to other users when one has it open.
Example: User A opens article X for editing. This is registered on the server. User B tries to open article X for editing too. But as soon as the article editing window is opened, it is overlayed with a transparent dark film and a box in the middle tells the user "Sorry this page has been locked by user A - please wait or come back later".
Functionality: The lock is maintained by an Ajax plugin that keeps pinging the server as long as user A keeps the editing page open. When user A closes the window then the pinging stops and the lock times out. If user B chooses to wait then his page keeps pinging the server for the release of the lock (also Ajax) - and when that happens he gains access to the page. The module can be used on all pages that edites a single item - articles, user data, news items, book pages, permissions settings - you name it.
To use this system, a module author has to use API calls in their own code for adding or releasing a block: pnModAPIFunc('PageLock', 'user', 'pageLock', ...) and pnModAPIFunc('PageLock', 'user', 'releaseLock', ...). To see al this in action, grab the latest nightly snapshot and play around with the HowtoPnForm module: edit a recipe in one browser, and try to edit the same in another browser.

ValueAddons modules: Members_List and EZComments
The Members_List module has been revised by Mark West, with some added configuration options. It is now possible to set the number of (allowed) registered users, and some new blocks (featured user last seen and last x users) have been added. Check out the latest nightly build to see the functionality and options.
Mark has now finished the integration of categories into the user side of the Reviews, Pages, FAQ and News modules. This way, migration of .7x categories into the new Categories module is now supported and can be tested by our users who want to upgrade their .7 site to .8.
Finally, there have been added configuration options for categorization and category titles in the permalinks with these modules.
One hot issue at the moment is the increasing amount of spam that is on lots of websites at this moment. More and more features are to be found on the internet to prevent spam showing on your site. Akismet / Bad Behaviour are one of these. As some already know, Akismet has been applied in EZCommnents for a while. For testing purposes, Mark has implemented a bad behaviour (http://www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/) function also for testing purposes (as Steffen has found that this could also be a good application). It does need some code hacking to pnApi.php at this moment, so only advanmced users willing to help integreating this feature are invited to test this and report any iussues to the EZComments tracker at the EZComments NOC project page.

Core and API: ThemeUtil and Categories
The pnTheme system has now been converted to the ThemeUtil class. With this conversion, all occurences in the core were updated too. Both the old and the new file are loaded in pnInit for backwards compatibility, but the old file (onTheme) and its functions are now marked as 'deprecated' and will be removed in the next major release.
Also added to the new ThemeUtil is a getModuleStylesheet method which contains the logic from the modulestylesheet plugin. You can do PageUtil::addVar('stylesheet', ThemeUtil::getModuleStylesheet('modulename')) to include the value of pnModGetVar('modulename', 'modulestylesheet') or style.css (in this order) or PageUtil::addVar('stylesheet', ThemeUtil::getModuleStylesheet('modulename', 'special.css)) to include the special.css file in your rendered page.
While unnecessary for correct functioning of the website, one is now allowed to turn off session regeneration completely. This is added because it may be helpful with a couple of undecided bugs in the tracker at the moment.

Module Development: information for 3rd party Devs!
Axel introduced a very nice application called EasyDist. This allows you to create your own PostNuke package easily. You can find it at modulestudio.de. It is still in a very early stage, but you should get the idea. This is all still in development fase and is just for testing purposes at this moment.
A preliminary for the (automatic) creation of packages using EasyDist is that module authors package their modules in a standard way. Right now, there are different file structures in the ZIPs or TGZs the authors distribute. We came to the conclusion that the preferred file structure inside the archive should be - modules - MyModule - pnuser.php etc so that an unpacked archive could be copied inside the pnroot. More information is in the Guideli

Generated on March 21, 2007.

Development Update, February 2007-02   (News)

release, and some is part of the current nightly build from SVN. The items that are part of the MS3 package are indicated with a (*).

Installer and upgrade path
The installer for .8 now also checks for a web-user writable pnTemp directory. Before, only it's subdirectories had to be writable. However, more and more modules need a (temporary) writable directory of their own (for example cache directories for image creation or rss feeds). With a writable pnTemp, these modules are now easily allowed to create that directory themselves if it does not exist. (*)
The upgrade path from the historic .7 family has been updated: Some code has been added to migrate blocks placements into the new block_placements table. (*)
Furthermore, old style (legacy) blocks can now be stored in the /config/blocks directory. The specific files do need to be copied manually from the old /includes/blocks directory to it's new location. (*)

Core (API) and environment variables
In the core pnAPI, get_magic_quotes_runtime() was called lots of times for different purposes. With an internal caching method, the result is stored in the global PNRuntime array. Big advantage is that the site's speed has been significantly improved. (*)
Robert has added an enhancement to allow the pnSessionGet/Set/DelVar functions to accept an (optional) path argument (arguments 'autocreate' and 'overwriteExistingVar'). This will allow for easy setting of complex array structures. The change only adds extra arguments to the existing functions and are backwards compatible. At this moment, no direct usage has been committed yet.

PostNuke Object library
At this stage of development, a lot of changes are (and have been) made to the object library. Most of them are 'simple' bug fixes, but some changes are worth mentioning here (additional functionality or changed methods).
In the DBUtil class, there now exists a new method to increment a field with the function incrementObjectFieldByID. This can be used by module authors for updating read counts of content items for example. (*)
Additionally, the function selectScalar has been added (which takes a SQL quesry as argument). This is mostly useful for places where you want to do a "select count(*)" or similar scalar selection.
The utf8 conversion functions (convertFromUTF8 and convertToUTF8) have moved from AjaxUtil to DataUtil when solving a bug to keep the users input in Ajax driven fields as they are intended.
While solving a Google AdSense script bug, where the script tags were automatically cleaned by the safeHTL output filter, a new feature has been added to FormUtil: Before cleaning posted input on an already installed site, the FormUtil now checks if the current user has overall admin permissions. This allows site admins to input potentially harmful tags (javascript for example), but it's their site after all!
Jörn has improved CSS style handling in pnForm plugins, as he has changed some pnForm classes to be derived from pnFormStyledPlugin, which in itself is derived from the original pnFormPlugin.
Because it's better to read the languages directory first for available languages and compare that result against the full list of languages in stead of the other way around, the LanguageUtil has a new function getInstalledLanguages. This now significantly reduces the number of directory checks.
To ensure that most commonly used plugins are found as early as possible, the order in the pnRender class, where the system is searching for plugins, has been modified. The current correct order for the 0.8 distribution is:

system/pnRender/plugins
system/Theme/plugins
config/plugins
current theme-directory/templates/modules/$module/plugins
current theme-directory/plugins
current module-directory/pntemplates/plugins

Furthermore, two new variables can be added to the rendered output page using the PageUtil class. First is 'description', which is default set to the current site slogan. Second is 'footer', with the ability to add custom content just prior to the closing body tag. The latter function is applied as an outputfilter.
Finally, an additional parameter 'display' is added to the pager plugin, which can be set to either 'page' or 'offset'. This is (why am I explaning, isn't this rather self-explanatory?) to allow paging by pages, rather than offsets. It also mirrors the 'show' parameter that exists in many templates (based on the example module) but was never actually implemented.
Last but not least, the Theme class has now added support for a filters section in a page configuration file. This allows for loading of, in the first instance, custom output filters. Note there is no user interface to the functionality the moment.And, why not, the Atom theme has been updated to Atom 1.0

Module modifications
The following modules have been updated for improved .8 compatibility, or just to make administering those modules easier.
The User module now has the long awaited alpha pager for browsing users. (*)
All occurences of the block rendering APIs (read by the Blocks module) have changed from the old style call "return themesideblock" to "return pnBlockThemeBlock". (*)
To the Settings module there has been added a configurable separator for permalinks (*)Furthermore, a switch to globally disable JS Quicktags (which adds a set of buttons for common html tags to enabled textareas) is now part of the Settings module. (*)
Both the Ratings and the Multisites module are modified to meet the new standards of coding and templating. Work still needs to be done to both modules, so testing functionality for these modules may not be that worthwhile as yet. (*)
The Theme module takes over from the Xanthia module in an upgrade. This doesn't mean that it is not Xanthia anymore: it still is actually the Xanthia 3.0 engine (*).
To the Recommend_Us module a display hook has been added. This will add a list of social bookmark links, like the Diggers plugin also does.

Language files overhaul
The language defines in some modules have been reviewed and adjusted to the naming conventions of .8 (see also Dev Update 2006-06). This means that module-specific language defines start with a module-name specific prefix. Additionally, some new general language strings (using the pnML function) have been added to the core language file. The major effect this will have is to subtantially reduce the number of strings that need translating.These changes are applied to the following system modules: Admin, Admin_Messages, AuthPN, Blocks, Mailer, legal, Settings and SysInfo. ValueAddons modules will follow later.

PostgreSQL DBMS testers wanted
The .8 DBUtil class, as mentioned many times before, makes it possible to run PostNuke on different DBMS platforms, like PostgreSQL, Or

Generated on February 20, 2007.

Development Update, January 2007-01   (News)

be productive and succesfull for all of us. And of course: a finished .8 version of PostNuke is something we are all waiting for.
MileStone 3 is waiting around the corner: A feature freeze so far has speed up the progress and only a few bugs are blocking a release. The next development update will probably be submitted after the MS3 release.
OK, here goes!

API functionality
Introduced is a pnShutDown function to gracefully terminate the application framework. This now replaces all use of exit or die and also fixes some oddities caused by PHP's shutdown process.
Mark has replaced all old themesideblock function calls with newer API call pnBlockThemeBlock. Furthermore, he has added a raw text option to the PageUtil::registerVar (former pnPageRegisterVar) system.
The AjaxUtil is now using internal json_encode() if PHP >=5.2.0.

Object Library and classes
For the SessionUtil / RandomUtil, Drak has put his hands on improving the randomness in the generation of the AuthKey and passwords. This is done by extending the possibly characters used, and the length of the key (length also now being random).
Also, the AuthKey generation makes now use of the (updated) RandomUtil class. A big advantage is that the random data generation is done in one place, so a change will affect the complete system. This is actually with the complete Object Library: changes can be made in one place with the benefit that all calls are updated.
The DBUtil has now a renameTable method and a renameColumn method for easy manipulation of table properties without having to worry about SQL code. The latter (renameColumn) is a quite new function, so there may be some adoDB bugs.
Finally, pnPage.php is converted to the PageUtil class. This means that any 3rd party module developers should update their modules to make use of the new class. A call to (for example) pnPageSetVar('title', $title_var) must be updated to PageUtil::setVar('title', $title_var). The pnPage.php does not remain for backward compatibility. Examples for the needed changes can be found in SVN submission 21099. The Wiki documentation for Page variables still needs updating however.

pnForms: functionality and documentation
Jørn has been updating the pnForms toolkit extensively. Most important is hat the documentation in the files is more complete, and the Wiki documentation page has been updated. A summary:

Added authkey checking to pnForms.
Added min/max validation for integers.
Changed "classHtml" to "cssClass" in "pnForm" plugin for consistency with the other classes.
Added a language selector "pnFormLanguageSelector".
and much more...

All plugins now render unknown parameters "as is", so you can add "onclick" and such like that the system doesn't know of.

System modules: Categories, Search and Blocks
In the Categories system, there has been added support for a 'field' parameter.
The search module is as good as finished, and also displays a sum of all search hits too. An additional parameter is added to allow for searches that aren't going to be performed on a DB. Finally, it is now possible to search in RSS feeds.
The Blocks module has been updated, and now has a user friendly functionality for drag-drop between block positions and placements in one screen. This is done with Ajax technology (thanks Frank for simplifying and enhancing this), so javascript should be enabled to use this (non-js fallback available). Furthermore a XML/XSL block has been added (a generic xml/xslt block and modifier).

ValueAddons modules
Faq: implemented custom short url handler and permalink structure
News: implemented cache handling
Feeds (was RSS): implemented categorisation in admin panel, added short url handler, added title field.
Also, the RSS module is renamed to Feeds to better reflect it's purpose and to prevent clash with rss theme when using directory based URL's.
TinyMCE: Upgraded tinymce to v2.0.9
Reviews, Referers, Stats: Converted to API and pnRender compliant module, updated table management code.

pnRender Plugins
Mark has added an output filter in order to auto-magically title the administration pages, which makes navigation a bit easier.Also, A

Generated on January 21, 2007.

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