On the value of learning to say no

Ari Rahikkala · Post by **Ari Rahikkala** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 7:27 am

I'm working on manually adding the CashMod changes to a copy of phpBB 2.0.20 <s>augmented with</s> replaced by the Category: Hierarchies installed set... man, that thing would have been a pig to install without using the preinstalled package. As if it wasn't enough that CashMod touches a jillion different places in the code, the phpBB modding community apparently lives in the time before 1985, before Larry Wall wrote patch... instead of a perfectly well-working system that's been in use for over 20 years (and that doubtlessly has had predecessors), for some reason these folks have decided to use an ill-defined, poorly specified hack that encourages more work by humans that could easily have been done by a CPU, can't handle ambiguity without human input, can't handle more than one source of modifications to a file gracefully... hell, the software for automating *any* installation of phpBB modifications, easyMOD, only went out of alpha in 2005, and that still doesn't handle Category: Hierarchies properly - and once you've installed Category:Hierarchies, it'll have touched so many places that easyMOD won't be able to install *anything* anymore...

... so I'm adding CashMod manually to a phpBB with Category: Hierarchies now. This far I haven't encountered any places where I can plainly see I have to actually study the code and possibly make changes that are different from the ones in the instructions... however, it's entirely possible that such places are hidden and that I have to read through gobs of ugly code to identify them. Even if I do manage to install CH + CM, it'll be on the SubSilver template, and I don't know what template Shireroth uses, so the changes won't be immediately addable (in fact, I'm not even entirely clear on what phpBB's template system *does*, but that will probably be rectified in the near future).

Ari Rahikkala · Post by **Ari Rahikkala** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 8:48 am

Well, that's all I was able to do tonight. I now have a phpBB installation with a working CH and a bolted-on partially operational CashMod. CH apparently confuses CashMod in quite a few places, and fixing that does require me to at least understand phpBB's template engine... though that shouldn't be the hard part - the hard part will probably be handling settings that might need to be inherited from parent fora to subfora. I'll investigatate how those things work on my next vacation... starting next thursday evening (well, I probably won't be in Oulu until Saturday). Fortunately I've gotten over the boring part now...

Bill3000 · Post by **Bill3000** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 11:34 am

I really don't see the point of Heirarchies mod. I believe there are other subforum mods as well, but was it really necessary for it to change so many things in it? The description of the mod seems to say that it is more than just the subforums - why is it needed? More importantly, why is it so useless due to this? It's so incompatible with even the simplest mods because it changes everything.

I applaud your work, Ari. It must be extremely hard to work on, and as usual, I admire you.

Fax Celestis · Post by **Fax Celestis** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 4:17 pm

All you've really got to do to install it into another template is copy and paste files.

Kaiser Alejian II · Post by **Kaiser Alejian II** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:11 am

Ari, you are extremely favored in my court!

Ari Rahikkala · Post by **Ari Rahikkala** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 9:12 am

Ah, so *that's* how it works. I have a mental block against using comments, whether in HTML or any other language, to communicate data to software, so I ignored the comments saying "BEGIN forum_icon" etc. because I didn't want to think of them as containing anything but information meant for humans. Now, one day I will find the peace of mind that will allow me to put down Civ4 (*) and figure out why all the stuff that has anything to do with subforums in admin/forum_index_body.tpl in ptifo, which definitely supports subforums, is commented out...

(*) Experimenting with history is fun. Scott's Moses being eaten by a bear is one thing... but I also like my own accomplishment of inventing civil service before agriculture.

Bill3000 · Post by **Bill3000** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:26 am

Hah, have you seen the Civ4 SDK by any chance?

Kaiser Alejian II · Post by **Kaiser Alejian II** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:52 pm

Did anyone just understand what Ari just said? WAY over my head.

On the value of learning to say no

On the value of learning to say no

Who is online