Topic: Smilies and images in sigs

Hi
I think it would be very nice if it was possible for users to disable smilies and images in signatures without having to disable images all together.
Is this a planned feature for some upcoming release?
I know it could be done in a mod but as a user seeing punBB forum popping up around the web I think it would be nice if it was standard feature I always had when visiting a punBB based forum.
Great forum by the way, you must have some very inspiring people around having made such a nice forum :-)

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

I guess it's doable. However, with the current implementation, it will mean adding two new fields to the user table. Perhaps we should get a second opinion on this.

I can see why you would want to disable images in signatures since that can be quite annoying, but smilies aren't that bad, are they? :)

CodeDuck wrote:

Great forum by the way, you must have some very inspiring people around having made such a nice forum :-)

Hohoho

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

I totally agree with CodeDuck on this. Maybe skip the smiley-option though (No images -> No smileys either). Don't like it when there's images in the signature...

4

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

Why not allow a 0,1,2 or 3 on the existing field? You'd keep compatibility with all existing installs.

5 (edited by CodeDuck 2004-02-16 22:39)

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

Well, images in sigs are the top priority but I'd really like image emoticons to go as well, I personally see no use for them, they break the flow of the text and I find the text based ones easier to read ,just like ALL CAPS text isn't comfortable to read. (But anyone writing in all caps would of course be banned forever :-))

What I'm really suggesting is that the "Convert smilies to images by default." in the profile be changed to affecting not the posts I make, but the post I read.  That way everyone can decide for themselves wether they what to see smilies or text instead of deciding to force others to see smilies or text. It just make so much more sense (to me).

And I don't want to hear any "but xyzBB does it that way" or "it's been like that since 1.0a" this is your chance to stand up and change the world (or some small insignificant corner of it).

6

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

... make that accept 0,1,2,3,4,5,6... we've still got one full byte to fill, c'mon!

I must say, though, that what CodeDuck says makes sense: either you want to see imaged smilies or not, but why would you want others not to see yours, and still have to take other people's?

BTW, *I* like image smilies smile

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

MarcB wrote:

Why not allow a 0,1,2 or 3 on the existing field? You'd keep compatibility with all existing installs.

I'm not sure what you mean. One column could hold multiple boolean values by defining a few constants and then doing bitwise AND agains the column. E.g.

if ($cur_user['options'] & USER_SHOW_SMILIES)

Was that what you meant? If it was, I think it's a good idea.

CodeDuck wrote:

Well, images in sigs are the top priority but I'd really like image emoticons to go as well, I personally see no use for them, they break the flow of the text and I find the text based ones easier to read ,just like ALL CAPS text isn't comfortable to read. (But anyone writing in all caps would of course be banned forever :-))

I'll have a hard time disagreeing with that.

CodeDuck wrote:

What I'm really suggesting is that the "Convert smilies to images by default." in the profile be changed to affecting not the posts I make, but the post I read.  That way everyone can decide for themselves wether they what to see smilies or text instead of deciding to force others to see smilies or text. It just make so much more sense (to me).

It makes sense.

CodeDuck wrote:

And I don't want to hear any "but xyzBB does it that way" or "it's been like that since 1.0a" this is your chance to stand up and change the world (or some small insignificant corner of it).

Man, you know me too well. I was just going to post something about I being afraid of straying too far off the "de facto BB standard" that has evolved over the years :)

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

8

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

<lol> yeah, what I meant is exactly that. It's called flags. With one byte you can have up to 8 independent boolean values. 0,1,2,3 means the first two values, if we add another possibility, we jump to 8, etc...

That's the reason why I always wonder why mysql developers use bytes as the unit for integers, instead of bits. I guess a one for all is much easier to implement, otherwise it'd be just too much work just to avoid me being confused wink

Well, anyway it was just an idea, in order to leave you with one less excuse wink

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

Ok. I just didn't get the part about 0,1,2,3. You can't have that many different flags. One for earch binary digit, i.e. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128.

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

10

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

It's all different points of view, but the result is the same, and you can use 7 extra bits on almost every TINYINT(1) that you have.

Now, we must only find added functionality to give them wink

11

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

*smiles and nods*

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

Whoops, I forgot about this topic. Time to revisit it.

MarcB wrote:

That's the reason why I always wonder why mysql developers use bytes as the unit for integers, instead of bits. I guess a one for all is much easier to implement, otherwise it'd be just too much work just to avoid me being confused ;)

There's a very good reason, readability. Changing the value of a column from 0 to 1 to enable an option usually makes more sense than updating an "options" column from 0x98 to 0xB8 (or something). The only downside of multiple one-byte-columns is the extra space they will occupy. The speed of queries towards the table will hardly be affected unless we're talking about a lot of columns. Using one column and a number of numeric constants to check against is more space effecient, but it's also more "hackish".

Anyway, back on topic. My thoughts are these.

I agree that it's probably a good idea to remove the option "Convert smilies to images by default" and the per-post option "Show smilies as icons" in favor of a per-user setting for showing/hiding smilies all together. If you don't want to see other peoples smilies, you probably don't want to use them yourself either. Could someone propose a series of settings for the user profile to control these aspects? I get confused :D

Something we haven't discussed here is that I want there to be an option or a series of options that prevent PunBB from displaying any images at all. As it is today, if you disable "Show images" and "Show avatars", PunBB will not spit out one single image. No avatars, no [img]'s, no smilies and no "new posts indicators" in index.php and viewforum.php. I want to keep that functionality.

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

Come on! I need help with this. I can't focus for more than 20 seconds at a time :D

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

14

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

Only one small idea : Disabling totaly smilies for one post could be usefull, if posting something who include a smiley, "variable:PCHar;" or other text it could be usefull to diable totaly smilies.

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

blackfox wrote:

Only one small idea : Disabling totaly smilies for one post could be usefull, if posting something who include a smiley, "variable:PCHar;" or other text it could be usefull to diable totaly smilies.

Yes, you are correct.

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

Rickard wrote:

Ok. I just didn't get the part about 0,1,2,3. You can't have that many different flags. One for earch binary digit, i.e. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128.

Like a good reader, I started in the other thread and it said read this one first.....and then came across this. If you need a visual on this, let me know- I use 8 and 16 bit binary for settings (16 values for one integer field)- encode to integer for storage, decode to binary for checks and forms...works great...

Think of zero as 00000000 and 255 as 11111111 - each binary works as a flag. throw in an array an good to go.

Every Day Above Ground Is A Good One!!

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

I still think it's a bad idea. It might save you a few bytes in the user table, but what little you gain in space you lose horribly in readability and simplicity.

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

Re: Smilies and images in sigs

No problem- just thought I'd throw it out there.

Every Day Above Ground Is A Good One!!