@vrijvlinder said:
Sorry for what you perceive as tone is actually irritation because I have mentioned this same this at least 10 times and not just me, which you have ignored and now passed on a plugin which was not yours and promulgated irregular code.. It irritates me that people ignore my advice. I never ignored your advice if it was good advice and never cared what tone was used to impart it...
You mentioned it twice. I can't find anyone else mentioning about JQuery, and 2 < 10 if I can still count correctly. Both times you mentioned it in the context of troubleshooting, not as a coding standard. If you hadn't ignored my comment about me having tested manually inserted HTML code in old mans site, you would have known at that point that it wasn't a JQuery issue. So yes, I ignored it since it wasn't a solution that would fix old man's issue.
And sorry, "If you do not define jQuery then $ is undefined" does not give me any information. If jQuery is undefined obviously jQuery functions do not work.
If I had been told it was good practice to do it the way you do because there are other javascript libraries also using "$" for their functions, I'd have listened. In your second comment you mentioned again something as a solution to a problem that wasn't there, and I'm magically to know it's a good practice in general?
There are certain rules here that I have been made to comply with. Plugins distributed by the community must be uploaded to the addon section. Not shared in discussions. Specially if the author is not around.
Well, if people also already were irritated to you while you had no idea of the rules and no way of knowing them, I'm sorry for you. I don't think that's the most constructive thing people can do, and I would understand you getting upset about that.
Honestly, people taking offence to people stealing their code is common sense. People taking offence to fixes of their code while keeping intact the author information so it's still clear who wrote the plugin in the first place less so, so that might be a worthwhile rule to communicate.
Hell, normally my changes to the code wouldn't have been extensive enough for me to bother doing anything except instruct old man to change them in the code himself. I changed one line of code, and moved the jquery bit to a different file. That's all.
But since I'm not sure of old man's coding prowess (no offense meant old man) so I thought I'd make life easier for him. I now understand that's not allowed.
You need to remake the plugin in your name and upload it as a new plugin. New name. You can't distribute someone else's plugin without their approval. You need to take that plugin fix it and only name the original author as the basis for the new plugin at the very least. That is the only way you can legally do it. Otherwise people will get their plugins from discussions instead of where they should , the addons section, Undermining the quality control of plugins.
I understand your kindness in wanting to help fix a plugin, but please stick to protocol , otherwise things will go down hill and nothing will work.
To be honest, for me that feels more like stealing than posting a specific fix for a specific situation in the discussion. 99% of people can and will use the original plugin. 1% of people might want to look through the discussions for the fix, since the original plugin doesn't suit their needs.
If I upload a new plugin that's 99.5% the same as the old one, I "steal" 50% of attention. If I keep it in the discussion, I "steal" 1%.
Again, now I understand that uploading a new plugin and stealing 50% of attention is apparently the way things are done here, but how was I supposed to know the protocol if no one told me?
@Caylus said:
Again, now I understand that uploading a new plugin and stealing 50% of attention is apparently the way things are done here, but how was I supposed to know the protocol if no one told me?
Obviously that is not done here. Having a dozen clones per plugin, only differing by a handful of lines of code would be a) against user interests and b) disrespectful against the original author.
So please keep on contributing in the sane way you already do.
@vrijvlinder
I agree in that it should be easier to find, how about changing the title? Do you have a suggestion? Maybe something like "Small fix and enhancement for Countdown"?
But I disagree that there is a protocol which obligates people to contribute in a special way: every form of contribution is welcome. Insisting on non-existant protocols feels like a being forced to play calvin ball
I am only repeating what Linc recommended. For a while we were not allowed to upload files because of this. We rebelled and the function was restored. But not to be abused. Because who takes responsibility of the fixed plugin floating around in a discussion? Improved and fixed only for those who participate or find this discussion. Or distribution of bad code?
Then they ask why is the fixed plugin not in the addon section ?? Are plugins shared in discussions safer or work better than the ones in the addon section ? Why have an addon section at all if that is how it's gonna be?
Not a good thing.
Improving an abandoned plugin for the community is not stealing. It is propagating someone else's idea made to work with the newest version of Vanilla. If the author never comes back and the original plugin has an open license or none at all, it is not stealing.
The issue is , are you willing to maintain it ? If the answer is no, then the plugin only has value to the one person. Not the rest of the community as it should be.
@Caylus said:
Slight update: I send an email to the original author a few days ago with my fix so he could decide whether or not to update the plugin.
No update yet.
@R_J said:
But I disagree that there is a protocol which obligates people to contribute in a special way: every form of contribution is welcome. Insisting on non-existant protocols feels like a being forced to play calvin ball
We had a very long discussion about this like 3 or 4 years ago. We all came to an agreement that that would be an acceptable protocol if the original author never returns and the plugin is still useful to someone.
You may have not been around yet or forgot about it if you were here already.
I will try searching for it so you can desist from calling me a liar or making shit up.
Whatever R_J ... spin it any way you like. You don't seem to grasp what a fact is.. in this case.
The fact remains that this was discussed before at length with the owners of this company and the staff and WE ALL came to the agreement for the protocol if a plugin was abandoned and the author gave it up, that one could fix the plugin and release it under another key/name and give credit to the original author. All this as long as their License permits it.
Whether you want to abide by this or not, is your problem. But that is the correct course of action if indeed a plugin can be fixed and is still useful to someone.
My apologies that I contributed to heating this already heated topic up with my wall of text a few posts back.
I think the problem here is that it was a very specific scenario, almost specifically designed to make us clash.
I think we all agree that if an author is around and the plugin can be improved / fixed there's a clear way of action.
I think we also all agree if an author is not around and the plugin simply does not work, there's also a 100% clear way of action: Upload a new plugin that does work to the addon section. No one is helped if fixes for plugins are kept in comments while plugins in the addon section don't work anymore.
The problem that arose here is that the original plugin still functions 100%. That's where the ideological clash comes from. For R_J and me (if I can speak for R_J), there's not much difference between posting a comment "replace this and this line in the code and it'll work for you" and simply adding a zip to the thread with those lines changed if it's mostly a fix for a single person. For you vrijvlinder, there is a clear difference and you see it more as a separate plugin than just a few lines of code changed.
If it makes any difference, the reason why I was also hesitant to upload a new plugin is exactly because I'm incredibly afraid of distributing bad code. The old plugin works, and any change I make may therefore cause it to interfere with other unexpected things and make it stop working, making me responsible.
I'd therefore suggest I give the original author another week to respond to my email, and after that that I'll upload my fix to the addon section?
(To make it a real improvement, I'll also implement a permission system so normal posters can't add more than one countdown to every post, so this doesn't work anymore. I feel better about uploading a new plugin if it's a safety feature I improved.)
Yes,If a plugin works , it works. And people can modify it to suit their own needs further. If a plugin works but the author is not around anymore to be able to improve it and upload a new version and attempts to reach him are not successful, then the protocol I mentioned above is the correct course of action.
Even changing one line of code to improve it would call for new plugin if author of original is gone permanently.
I've also tried to fix a problem that anything >3 months countdown doesn't work with this plugin, by switching to a different Countdown library (when the counter hits >100 days weird things happen).
But I've ran into a CSS problem. Test.html looks nice and well, but the clock that results from [COUNTDOWN] is ugly:
I suspect it's due to some layout rules by Vanilla (because I copy pasted the HTML of the clock into test.html and then it looks good), but I haven't the foggiest which rule that would be? It seems like it turns the clock into a list.
Anyone got any ideas?
(Sorry I can't share a forum link; it's a localhost test forum.)
You could upload the page to jsfiddle or something similar. Without being able to inspect the html it is very unlikely that anybody would be able to assist...
Comments
Personally, I don't think that providing a fix to a plugin will have that consequences.
You mentioned it twice. I can't find anyone else mentioning about JQuery, and 2 < 10 if I can still count correctly. Both times you mentioned it in the context of troubleshooting, not as a coding standard. If you hadn't ignored my comment about me having tested manually inserted HTML code in old mans site, you would have known at that point that it wasn't a JQuery issue. So yes, I ignored it since it wasn't a solution that would fix old man's issue.
And sorry, "If you do not define jQuery then $ is undefined" does not give me any information. If jQuery is undefined obviously jQuery functions do not work.
If I had been told it was good practice to do it the way you do because there are other javascript libraries also using "$" for their functions, I'd have listened. In your second comment you mentioned again something as a solution to a problem that wasn't there, and I'm magically to know it's a good practice in general?
Well, if people also already were irritated to you while you had no idea of the rules and no way of knowing them, I'm sorry for you. I don't think that's the most constructive thing people can do, and I would understand you getting upset about that.
Honestly, people taking offence to people stealing their code is common sense. People taking offence to fixes of their code while keeping intact the author information so it's still clear who wrote the plugin in the first place less so, so that might be a worthwhile rule to communicate.
Hell, normally my changes to the code wouldn't have been extensive enough for me to bother doing anything except instruct old man to change them in the code himself. I changed one line of code, and moved the jquery bit to a different file. That's all.
But since I'm not sure of old man's coding prowess (no offense meant old man) so I thought I'd make life easier for him. I now understand that's not allowed.
To be honest, for me that feels more like stealing than posting a specific fix for a specific situation in the discussion. 99% of people can and will use the original plugin. 1% of people might want to look through the discussions for the fix, since the original plugin doesn't suit their needs.
If I upload a new plugin that's 99.5% the same as the old one, I "steal" 50% of attention. If I keep it in the discussion, I "steal" 1%.
Again, now I understand that uploading a new plugin and stealing 50% of attention is apparently the way things are done here, but how was I supposed to know the protocol if no one told me?
Obviously that is not done here. Having a dozen clones per plugin, only differing by a handful of lines of code would be a) against user interests and b) disrespectful against the original author.
So please keep on contributing in the sane way you already do.
@vrijvlinder
I agree in that it should be easier to find, how about changing the title? Do you have a suggestion? Maybe something like "Small fix and enhancement for Countdown"?
But I disagree that there is a protocol which obligates people to contribute in a special way: every form of contribution is welcome. Insisting on non-existant protocols feels like a being forced to play calvin ball
I am only repeating what Linc recommended. For a while we were not allowed to upload files because of this. We rebelled and the function was restored. But not to be abused. Because who takes responsibility of the fixed plugin floating around in a discussion? Improved and fixed only for those who participate or find this discussion. Or distribution of bad code?
Then they ask why is the fixed plugin not in the addon section ?? Are plugins shared in discussions safer or work better than the ones in the addon section ? Why have an addon section at all if that is how it's gonna be?
Not a good thing.
Improving an abandoned plugin for the community is not stealing. It is propagating someone else's idea made to work with the newest version of Vanilla. If the author never comes back and the original plugin has an open license or none at all, it is not stealing.
The issue is , are you willing to maintain it ? If the answer is no, then the plugin only has value to the one person. Not the rest of the community as it should be.
❌ ✊ ♥. ¸. ••. ¸♥¸. ••. ¸♥ ✊ ❌
Slight update: I send an email to the original author a few days ago with my fix so he could decide whether or not to update the plugin.
No update yet.
We had a very long discussion about this like 3 or 4 years ago. We all came to an agreement that that would be an acceptable protocol if the original author never returns and the plugin is still useful to someone.
You may have not been around yet or forgot about it if you were here already.
I will try searching for it so you can desist from calling me a liar or making shit up.
❌ ✊ ♥. ¸. ••. ¸♥¸. ••. ¸♥ ✊ ❌
Dictionary says
But maybe you have alternative facts.
Whatever R_J ... spin it any way you like. You don't seem to grasp what a fact is.. in this case.
The fact remains that this was discussed before at length with the owners of this company and the staff and WE ALL came to the agreement for the protocol if a plugin was abandoned and the author gave it up, that one could fix the plugin and release it under another key/name and give credit to the original author. All this as long as their License permits it.
Whether you want to abide by this or not, is your problem. But that is the correct course of action if indeed a plugin can be fixed and is still useful to someone.
❌ ✊ ♥. ¸. ••. ¸♥¸. ••. ¸♥ ✊ ❌
Before this gets out of hand:
My apologies that I contributed to heating this already heated topic up with my wall of text a few posts back.
I think the problem here is that it was a very specific scenario, almost specifically designed to make us clash.
I think we all agree that if an author is around and the plugin can be improved / fixed there's a clear way of action.
I think we also all agree if an author is not around and the plugin simply does not work, there's also a 100% clear way of action: Upload a new plugin that does work to the addon section. No one is helped if fixes for plugins are kept in comments while plugins in the addon section don't work anymore.
The problem that arose here is that the original plugin still functions 100%. That's where the ideological clash comes from. For R_J and me (if I can speak for R_J), there's not much difference between posting a comment "replace this and this line in the code and it'll work for you" and simply adding a zip to the thread with those lines changed if it's mostly a fix for a single person. For you vrijvlinder, there is a clear difference and you see it more as a separate plugin than just a few lines of code changed.
If it makes any difference, the reason why I was also hesitant to upload a new plugin is exactly because I'm incredibly afraid of distributing bad code. The old plugin works, and any change I make may therefore cause it to interfere with other unexpected things and make it stop working, making me responsible.
I'd therefore suggest I give the original author another week to respond to my email, and after that that I'll upload my fix to the addon section?
(To make it a real improvement, I'll also implement a permission system so normal posters can't add more than one countdown to every post, so this doesn't work anymore. I feel better about uploading a new plugin if it's a safety feature I improved.)
Yes,If a plugin works , it works. And people can modify it to suit their own needs further. If a plugin works but the author is not around anymore to be able to improve it and upload a new version and attempts to reach him are not successful, then the protocol I mentioned above is the correct course of action.
Even changing one line of code to improve it would call for new plugin if author of original is gone permanently.
❌ ✊ ♥. ¸. ••. ¸♥¸. ••. ¸♥ ✊ ❌
So, I've been tinkering with this plugin again, because I never came around to upload it.
(Current code on github: https://github.com/Caylus/vanilla_plugins/tree/master/Countdown)
I've also tried to fix a problem that anything >3 months countdown doesn't work with this plugin, by switching to a different Countdown library (when the counter hits >100 days weird things happen).
But I've ran into a CSS problem. Test.html looks nice and well, but the clock that results from [COUNTDOWN] is ugly:
I suspect it's due to some layout rules by Vanilla (because I copy pasted the HTML of the clock into test.html and then it looks good), but I haven't the foggiest which rule that would be? It seems like it turns the clock into a list.
Anyone got any ideas?
(Sorry I can't share a forum link; it's a localhost test forum.)
You could upload the page to jsfiddle or something similar. Without being able to inspect the html it is very unlikely that anybody would be able to assist...
Just remembered you can save complete HTML pages with chrome! This should work:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByREgP3QqCQ8QTdOR2NId2JuQVk/view?usp=sharing
Found what did it.
.Message ul li { list-style: disc !important; }Messed up the style. This line fixes the problem:
div.flip-clock-wrapper ul.flip li { list-style:none !important; }