Probable index errors

[GooRoo]

While updating indices for Wedrikul's recent submissions, I discovered that at some time ProBoards software began working differently when a thread was moved (as promotion from the BETA Board to the proper graphics Board). Previously, the thread number was retained for such a move; now, the thread in the new location is renumbered. For example, the V2 versions created in 2015, I found to generate an error when the puzzle name was clicked to view the thread. Perhaps the link error problem goes back further than December, 2015.

Please post any errors you find in this thread, so I may fix them.

[GooRoo]

I believe I have updated everything possible regarding the several Battlez CLz with activity during the past month or so that I have been occupied with other projects away from Gruntz. Now I can use the help of those who have been active in those threads to check up on me. Please let me know if there is anything that I have missed ... and should have been able to do something about, since the information is readily available somewhere in those threads.

[swietymiki]

Casino Arena still requires its release date to be changed to 4th April and the Statz page should be switched to the one provided in the thread.

Also Attila1992's index has various mistakes that could be fixed.

[GooRoo]

Apr 10, 2018 9:07:14 GMT -8 swietymiki said:

Casino Arena still requires its release date to be changed to 4th April and the Statz page should be switched to the one provided in the thread.

Also Attila1992's index has various mistakes that could be fixed.

"Murphy's Law" comes into play here ... when you set out to do something, something else must be done first! Creating an Announcement for the Battle (whose name is still 'up-in-the-air') to add to the Designer index ... and then to the three other indices (would have been four, if it were a Quest). Merging the 'standard' Announcement data into the original post is easy enough, and updating the graphicz area and Release Date indices not too difficult from there. The Alphabetical index is the effort which I am loathe to update, because if the name is changed, I have to move the entry from "G" into the more appropriate element.

That sort of effort falls into the category of "make work", which is why I have commented that a 'handle' should be chosen wisely. Follow the history of "Blaze, the movie fan", for instance, to see the confusion that causes. And poor Zazor5000, who forgot his login password, and has done so twice since, so there are three accounts for the same individual! And there is no mechanism in the ProBoards software for merging accounts and their associated posts.

[GooRoo]

Lunchtime. Will be back to continue updates in an hour or so.

[GooRoo]

I am now going to work on the Alphabetical index, to add the 47 (other) Battlez Custom Levelz into the overall indices, with red names and BATTLE in the walk-through column.

No one has commented on my example, so I figure no one cares one way or the other about the contents of the Alphabetical indices.

I wonder if anyone cares about the Battlez index!

[swietymiki]

That's because there's been almost no activity on this forum for years. I appreciate all the work you put into keeping this forum on a professional level but there just aren't too many people to make use of it. When I was looking for Battlez to play with MMM, I was only going through the forum threads and not the indices. The index is indeed more useful as a quick-to-read list with map thumbnails when you're looking for a particular map you played earlier or one of a specific difficulty. But I can't think of a good use for alphabetical order.

All this work would be much easier to do with some kind of database program, so that you'd only have to enter information about a level once and the program would sort all of them in various ways by itself, because having to remember about multiple mentions of a single map in various places will always induce some mistakes. But it's also way too late to make such a change now, transferring hundreds of files would take days of merely clicking to finish! I don't know if this was a possibility in the early days of this forum but it would've saved months of work. I've not seen such a developed online index on any other website, ever.

[GooRoo]

Apr 11, 2018 12:30:28 GMT -8 swietymiki said:

That's because there's been almost no activity on this forum for years. I appreciate all the work you put into keeping this forum on a professional level but there just aren't too many people to make use of it. When I was looking for Battlez to play with MMM, I was only going through the forum threads and not the indices. The index is indeed more useful as a quick-to-read list with map thumbnails when you're looking for a particular map you played earlier or one of a specific difficulty. But I can't think of a good use for alphabetical order.

All this work would be much easier to do with some kind of database program, so that you'd only have to enter information about a level once and the program would sort all of them in various ways by itself, because having to remember about multiple mentions of a single map in various places will always induce some mistakes. But it's also way too late to make such a change now, transferring hundreds of files would take days of merely clicking to finish! I don't know if this was a possibility in the early days of this forum but it would've saved months of work. I've not seen such a developed online index on any other website, ever.

I am not aware of any database program ever being made available from ProBoards. And it is definitely too late for me to learn database techniques, much less how to use a particular system that might be usable on this discussion Forum.

At 75+ years of age, I frequently make use of the Alphabetical indices to try to locate information about a particular puzzle. Puzzle names have not been the most thoughtfully considered part of creating a Gruntz puzzle. (I am particularly unhappy with the length of names ... simply because the evolution of the computer industry has allowed them. And extremely long strings which occur when "white space" is ignored make maintaining legacy systems difficult and very time-consuming. As a computer information systems specialist for almost 40 years, I am very well aware that over 80% of a programmer's time is spent in maintaining (updating) a system that is dynamic. Documentation is the only thing that eases the burden for the newbie given the task of continuing work on someone else's program(s). And in a program, a description of what is being done is especially necessary when an esoteric methodology is used. I could exchange strings of up to 256 characters each using instructions of exactly 16 bytes.

Ex R0,c (execute the instruction c ... 4 bytes)
xc b,a (exclusive or charcters, modifying field 'b' ... 6 bytes)
c xc a,b (exclusive or charcters, modifying field 'a' ... 6 bytes)
After the 3 instructions are completed, the original contents of field a are now in field b ... and vice-versa.
If you understand the exclusive OR process, you know that individual bits the same remain the same, and those that are different are changed. Work it out on paper.

A neophyte wouldn't have a clue as to what was happening without the description. Stringing things together without "white space" is foolish, since the largest monitors can only display about 1500 characters ... and I find strings of 4096 in length at times!