Rakontu

These are changes for each version of Rakontu, starting after version 1.0.0 beta 1. Please note that as of mid 2010, the Google App Engine version of Rakontu is no longer under active development.

• Improvement: Changed the home-page timeline so that entries show the most recent annotation rather than the whole list. You can see the whole list of annotations when you look at the story; but in the timeline what you usually want to know is why the story jumped ahead to the present time. This indicator shows even if you have "details" turned off. The hover-over text shows the display text for the annotation.
• Improvement: Changed how language-specific files are imported/used to make partial translations possible. If any of the seven language-specific files is not available for a chosen language, Rakontu will "fall back" to the site default (usually English). This should make it easier to see how translations are working as they are being completed.
• Improvement: Changed display so that links to stories attributed to characters do not show who created them (because sometimes it is someone who said they were a character, and that shows who told the story).
• Bug fix: Fixed problem where last site resource was not read in correctly.
• Bug fix: Fixed problem in Wiki markup where phrases with underscores in them (like this_text) were being partially italicized (because underscores are used to mark italics). Now only words with underscores and spaces are italicized. So "this_text" is interpreted as this_text, but "this _text_" is interpreted as this text.
• Bug fix: Fixed problem where sending a second message was calling up the previous addressees.
• Bug fix: Fixed problem where the "'" XHTML character code for an apostrophe was not displaying correctly on IE7. (Replacing "'" with "'" works, if anybody else wants to know.)
• Bug fix: Improved loading of resources from CSV files to better accommodate UTF-8 encoding for non-ASCII characters.

• New feature: Curate-Add new tags page helps curators add tags to lots of entries at the same time. This should make tagging go faster. Once entries have tags, those can be changed on the Curate-Tags page.
• Improvement: When creating or changing a filter, instead of blank text boxes for tags to search for, you see all available tags in the Rakontu. This is so that instead of having to guess at what they are, you can choose from those available.
• Improvement: Curate-Tags page now has more information on each entry. Multiple tags per entry are now shown together. It is now possible to choose from a list of tags as well as edit tags directly. Counts of tags entered are shown, so that tags with few entries can be found and removed.
• Improvement: Simple search can now show ALL items of a type (story, etc) if you don't enter any search terms. This is a quick way to look at everything in a category. Warning, if there are a lot of items the response may be slow.
• Improvement: "Suggest a topic" changed to "Start a topic" in the menu, to be even broader in connotation.
• Improvement: Changed default settings so that all entry types and annotation types appear when the account is first created. Had thought it was less confusing to have fewer things showing, but people are having problems not being able to find things.
• Improvement: You can now cc a copy to yourself of any message you send from Rakontu through email to another member (or a question you ask of a guide).
• Bug fix: Existing tags now show up when adding optional tags to new entry.
• Bug fix: Fixed Manage-Appearance page where a change removed the skin choice.
• Bug fix: Fixed problem where help resource categories were coming out in random order on Help page.

• New feature: Changed screen for adding a new comment, request or tag set so that you can see those that have been previously added for that entry.
• New feature: Added optional comment, request and tag set entry when a person is first entering a story. This allows people to add more information to the story while they are adding it (if they like) without having to add the annotations in a second step.
• New feature: Added the user-preference option to show only dates and not times on all items. This is less "busy" if the pace in a Rakontu is slower and times of day are not very important.
• Improvement: Renamed "invitation" to "topic" in order to make it a broader category that can handle more non-story items such as announcements, plans, reminders and opinions as well as story elicitations. Made appropriate changes to all help resources etc.
• Improvement: Removed resources from timelines. Help resources appear in the Help page, and non-help resources appear in the "About this Rakontu" page. Guides still create resources, but they are for information only. They cannot be responded to with a story, nor can you nudge them since they are no longer in the timelines. This change is because the help resources and "reminding" resources being the same type of item was confusing. Also, the new "topic" can serve as what the non-help resources used to be.
• Improvement: Changed interpretation of plain text format so that you don't have to put blank lines to separate paragraphs. People were not doing that.
• Improvement: Changed |< timeline buttons to icons. (Note, if you see nothing in that spot, reload the page.)
• Bug fix: Fixed problem where newly added question did not appear at end of question list.
• Bug fix: Fixed formatting bug in email sending.

• New feature: Added a Manage-Skin page with previews of all built-in skins, to make it easier to choose a look for each Rakontu. Had been wanting to do this for a long time.
• New feature: Made it possible for managers to remove inactive members (ie, people who left) if they have not contributed anything.
• Improvement: Improved process of canceling the joining of a Rakontu so it is less confusing.
• Improvement: Changed how newly invited member emails are matched with Google account emails to stop checking for a case-sensitive match. This is to deal with the fact that for Gmail at least, what is displayed to the user is not what the Google App Engine system tells Rakontu that person's email address is. The likelihood of two people having the same email provider and the same email address (except for a case difference), invited to join the same Rakontu at the same time, is small enough that the inconvenience of getting the case perfect is not worth doing. (However, managers need to be aware if the situation does come up of two invitees with nearly the same emails, that they should invite them one at a time.)
• Improvement: Put a change-your-nickname link on the new-member page, as a sort of subtle message that calling yourself "Member 23" forever doesn't have to happen.
• Improvement: Added more information for managers to see how long it has been since each member has been active in the Rakontu.

• New feature: Added "quick nudge" option for nudging a story (or other entry) up or down while looking at it. Quick nudge is faster and more obvious than the "complete" nudge option (which remains) because it doesn't require visiting another page. However, it has fewer options. In particular there are only a few fixed values to choose from, no comment is allowed, and attribution is only to the member making the nudge. I've wanted to make nudging easier from the beginning, because a lot of the sorting depends on it but it's a bit hard to get at.
• Bug fix: Fixed a few bugs in allocation and usage of nudge points.
• Bug fix: Fixed bug in timeline displays that was preventing older items from "jumping forward" in timelines when they are annotated after having been left along for a long time.

• Improvement: Changed how timelines work. There is a tension between always seeing the latest changes as they happen and moving around through time. If you are moving around through time, you want to preserve the view of whatever time frame you are looking at. This is what Rakontu has done so far. But it is confusing when you add things and they don't appear, which is because the system is trying to keep whatever time frame you were looking at last. So I decided to reduce the functionality of moving around in time a bit to make updating easier. Unless you set an option otherwise (in Preferences), the timelines all track the current moment for any view other than if you click the |<, < or > buttons.
• Improvement: The "About this Rakontu" page no longer labels the description and "etiquette statement" explicitly.
• Improvement: Improved the look of the members page to show more members in less space.
• Improvement: Nudge entry page now shows the member's nudge points remaining.
• Improvement: The "relate" page now shows the entry text at the bottom for reference.
• Improvement: Changed method of defining links in Wiki markup to [[link]] instead of [link], which messed up square brackets in quotes.
• Bug fix: Fixed problem where going to a URL without being signed in to Google always brought you back to the site home page instead of the page you had been heading for.