MySource Matrix Developer

MySource Matrix Developer Newsletter Issue 91
Friday 8th September 2006

covers versions 3.8.6 stable, 3.10.1 stable, 3.11.0 development

News

MySource Matrix 3.10.1 and 3.8.6 Released

Two new minor releases of MySource Matrix were released last Monday. Versions 3.10.1 and 3.8.6 are the newest versions of the current stable branches of MySource Matrix.

Version 3.10.1 is predominantly a bug fix release, containing 48 bug fixes. It also contains a couple of new features - a new "Show Result Asset in Lineage" option in Search Page, and an update to the Set Cache Expiry trigger action.

Version 3.8.6 also contains these features, as well as some Data Source Graph asset features backported from the 3.10.x branch. It also contains 28 fixes to bugs found in the previous version.

Users of previous versions are strongly encouraged to upgrade to the new releases.

Next Release Date

Due to the first Monday of next month being the Labour Day public holiday, the next release will instead take place on the following Monday, 9th October, when versions 3.10.2 and 3.8.7 will be released.

Linked Name Keywords Now Escape Entities

One bug fix this week deserves special attention, as it changes the behaviour of a certain group of keywords within the Listing Engine asset.

The fix to bug #1563 ("Asset listings do not convert & characters to html entities") means that keywords that produce HTML links in Listing Engine type assets now escape characters such as "&", "<", and ">" into their HTML entity equivalents (eg. "&amp;").

In particular, the following keywords are affected:

- %asset_name_linked%

- %asset_short_name_linked%

- %linked_lineage_full%

- %linked_lineage%

- %group_name_linked%

Although this fixes problems with these "linked" keywords, any workarounds that may have been implemented to address this issue should to be reviewed. This applies to 3.10.x branch and 3.11.0 development systems only. Any clients who rely on the old behaviour of these keywords are strongly advised to contact Squiz for further information.

New Features

Paint Layout/Designs Usage Screen

Added to: 3.11.0 development

Paint Layout and Design assets now contain a "Usage" screen that shows the top-level assets where that Paint Layout or Design has been applied (in the case of Paint Layouts, it will show assets where it has been applied to at least one URL of that asset), and the number of children underneath each.

This feature allows users to quickly identify which asset trees a Design or Paint Layout is directly applied to (rather than inherited from).

Cron Manager: View Jobs Screen Paginated

Added to: 3.11.0 development

The View Jobs screen on the Cron Manager page is now paginated, so it will display 20 jobs at a time. This will help reduce or eliminate the number of time-out issues on this page, arising from a large number of Future Status or Future Lineage Cron Jobs.

Orphaned HIPO Jobs Interface

Added to: 3.11.0 development, 3.10.2 stable, 3.8.7 stable

A new "Orphaned HIPO Jobs" section has been added to the back-end interface of the HIPO Herder. This section lists the current orphaned HIPO Jobs (ie. parent job is no longer in the system) and allows the user to remove them, using an interface similar to that used for killing running HIPO Jobs.

Rolling Calendar Page Improvements

Added to: 3.11.0 development

The Rolling Calendar Page has undergone a number of improvements this week. The most significant is that instead of selecting a number of days ahead and/or behind to view, you can now also select to view weeks or months.

Events are grouped by the time period specified - so if a number of weeks is specified, events are grouped by week). An additional "time unit" bodycopy has been added, allowing customisation of the printing of each day/week/month - something which was not possible before.

Finally, keywords in the "time unit" bodycopy specifying the start and end dates of the time period shown implement the "dynamic date keyword" system previously implemented for Calendar Events. The keyword accepts a custom date format in the format of the PHP date() function. For more information on how this works, see the previous newsletter.

Add Bodycopy DIV Interface Improved

Added to: 3.11.0 development

The interface for adding a DIV to a Bodycopy has been slightly modified to make it more consistent with the interface for modifying the properties of a Bodycopy DIV asset.

Add Bodycopy DIV Interface Improved

Added to: 3.11.0 development

Listing Engine type assets previously used a GET variable called "result_page", which caused problems when two paginated listing-type assets appeared on the same page.

Listing type assets now use a variable in the format "ASSETID_result_page" to determine which page is displayed. The old "result_page" variable is still accepted, but will be overridden if the asset-specific variable is present.

Customisable Asset Names in Asset Map

Added to: 3.11.0 development

Currently the Asset Map shows the short name of the asset by default. This can now be changed in the development version through the System Configuration screen, using any keywords generally applicable to an asset..

The option is located under the Asset Map Settings section of the System Configuration screen as "Asset Display Name", and as the constant SQ_CONF_ASSET_MAP_ASSET_DISPLAY_NAME in the main.inc file.

Planned Development

No new generic features are currently scheduled for development.

Upgrading

3.11.0 Development

Additional queries: No additional queries are required for upgrades.

Additional comments: No additional upgrade steps are required.

New Bugs Added To Bug Tracker

Notes:

Bug #1616 (Adding access history design area causes errors) was submitted by Anthony Barnes on 31st August 2006 but was marked as Can Not Replicate as the bug could not be replicated locally and the design customisations were changed on the affected system, thus preventing further debugging remotely.

Bug #1623 (Allow calendar events to link to redirect pages) was submitted as a feature request by Nick Ashton on 1st September 2006, but the feature was considered invalid. The recommended way to replicate this feature is to hold calendar events in a folder, then apply a Paint Layout to the folder, the format of which contains an Asset Listing with its root node dynamic parameter set to "Current Asset". The feature request has been marked Will Not Fix.

Bug #1627 (Custom Form: Uploaded file is different from the file received in the email) was submitted by Christophe Olivar but was marked as a duplicate of bug #1618 (Spaces in attachment name break email attachments) submitted by JP. This is the same bug, with the difference in symptoms depending on whether or not there was a File asset with the same web path as the file being uploaded through the Custom Form. The latter bug has been marked as Fixed; the former closed.

Bug #1632 (Email Options Screen - put the Receipt Email section at the top of the screen) was submitted as a feature request by Deborah Braithwaite, but the feature was considered invalid due to the Recipient Email being more important (as a record to the owners of the site, rather than a record to the submitting user) and used more often in client systems. The feature request has been marked Will Not Fix, however documentation on the screen will be improved slightly.

Bug #1635 (Web Paths to do not change when moving assets (3.10)) was submitted by Richard but was marked as not being a bug after the issue disappeared after two files on the system were re-updated to the 3.10.0 version.

Bug #1637 (Hipo does not report errors when Squiz Server is running) was submitted by Richard but was marked as a duplicate of bug #1256 (No errors reported with Squiz Server) submitted by Avi Miller on 8th April 2006, which has been fixed in the current development version, 3.11.0. The duplicate bug has been closed.

Bug #1639 (Paint layouts references get modified when url changes) was submitted by Andrei Railean but was marked as Can Not Replicate after another developer was not able to replicate the bug in any current version.

Bug #1640 (FR: Tool for sorting assets in the asset map) was submitted as a feature request by Andrei Railean but was marked as a duplicate of bug #234 (Feature to sort children alphabetically in the asset map) submitted by Avi Miller on 4th November 2004. The duplicate feature request has been closed.

Bug #1641 (The key words for the News Items.) was submitted by Rohini Goyal but was marked as not being a bug. It appeared that the wrong keyword was used by the reporter to display the body of the News Item.

Bug #1645 (Asset metadata not printed by asset listing if attributes not used) was submitted by Andrei Railean but was marked as Can Not Replicate after another developer was unable to reproduce the bug.

New Feature Requests Added To Bug Tracker

Bugs Fixed In The Bug Tracker

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