The Coppit Family Daily News

The last few weeks I’m been spending all my non-teaching time implementing the next version of Spotlight. Spotlight is a plugin for Eclipse that implements the notion of software plans.

Software has been traditionally implemented in one view, compared to the multi-view representations used to represent designs in other disciplines. Source code is a lot like cubist art–every perspective in one representation. My research has tried to provide multiple views of code, thereby more naturally representing concerns of interest separate from irrelevant concerns.

The new implementation is coming along nicely, and hopefully will be ready for public consumption soon.

I’ve released a new version of the Category Order Wordpress 2 plugin. This plugin allows the blog administrator to set an explicit ordering, spacing, and indentation of categories in the category list that appears in the sidebar. The administrator specifies the ordering in the new “Category Order” management page. There is also an option for placing the category post count inside the link.

New changes:

• If categories are filtered out in wp_list_cats, empty list elements will now not be created.
• Instructions now make it clear that the plugin directory must be “category-order”.
• Added a message when the category list HTML cannot be parsed.
• Fixed the error some users have reported about the management page being included twice.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the buttons on the management page not to work.
• Fixed a problem where images would not show up if the blog was hosted on a non-standard port like http://myblog.example.com:85/

Many thanks to David Lucash for his help on this release.
A screenshot shows the management page. Download it on my code page.

I’ve released a new version of the Category Access Wordpress 2 plugin. This plugin allows the blog maintainer to restrict access to posts belonging to particular categories on a user-by-user basis.

New changes:

• People with the category management capability (typically Editors and Administrators) now have access to all categories regardless of visibility settings.
• New option to show a post if the user can view any of the categories, rather than all of them.
• A post will now be hidden if its category, OR ANY PARENT CATEGORY is protected.
• Fixed a major bug where multiple categories could not be excluded–just one.
• If a person selects categories that they do not have access to when editing or writing a post, these categories are removed. If no categories remain, the post is put into the uncategorized category and not published.
• Added check all and uncheck all buttons to the categories checkboxes on the options page.

Many thanks to Paul Magnowski, Pierre Lauvergnier, and David Katz for their work and input on this release.

Download it on my code page.

I spent my spring break climbing Mount Eclipse. Eclipse is a programming environment, and has a nice plugin architecture that allows people like me to extend it to do new things. We’re using it to implement our prototype software plans tool. I’m currently doing a reimplementation of my students previous prototype, cleaning up some of their suboptimal design decisions.

The problem is that Eclipse has a pretty steep learning curve. My students implemented the functionality we needed using some “hacks” that are hurting us now. So I’m trying to figure out the right way to do things. It took me several days to get productive, but it looks like things are moving along now.

I’ve released Category Access 0.4.0. This plugin allows the blog maintainer to restrict access to posts belonging to particular categories on a user-by-user basis.

This plugin was previously called “Category Limit”, but I’ve renamed it to reflect its new WordPress 2.0 compatibility. (Control is no longer based on user levels.) The plugin may still work with WordPress 1.5.2–please report your experiences.

Download it on my code page.

This plugin allows the blog administrator to set an explicit ordering, spacing, and indentation of categories in the category list that appears in the sidebar. The administrator specifies the ordering in the new “Category Order” management page. There is also an option for placing the category post count inside the link.

This version supports WordPress 2.0.

A screenshot shows the management page.

The plugin overrides any ordering or indentation of categories created by the list_cats() Wordpress function. It works by dissecting the normal <ul> or <br /> formatted list that Wordpress creates, then reconstructing a custom <ul> or <br /> formatted list based on the new custom ordering and indentation. Since the plugin modifies the display only, you can revert to the default ordering by simply disabling the plugin.The plugin handles subcategories (by overriding the parent-child relationship), and the post count on categories. If the plugin fails for you, it is likelythat your category list HTML is somewhat different than what the plugin expects. In this case, please email the HTML snippet to the me and I’ll try to fix it.

Download it on my code page.

This plugin allows the blog administrator to set an explicit ordering, spacing, and indentation of categories in the category list that appears in the sidebar. The administrator specifies the ordering in the new “Category Order” management page. There is also an option for placing the category post count inside the link.

A screenshot shows the management page.

The plugin overrides any ordering or indentation of categories created by the list_cats() Wordpress function. It works by dissecting the normal <ul> or <br /> formatted list that Wordpress creates, then reconstructing a custom </ul><ul> or <br /> formatted list based on the new custom ordering and indentation. Since the plugin modifies the display only, you can revert to the default ordering by simply disabling the plugin.

The plugin handles subcategories (by overriding the parent-child relationship), and the post count on categories. If the plugin fails for you, it is likelythat your category list HTML is somewhat different than what the plugin expects. In this case, please email the HTML snippet to the me and I’ll try to fix it.

Download it here: Category Order 1.8.0

I’ve released Category Levels 0.2.0. You can now remove categories from the category list in the sidebar, if the user does not have sufficient privileges. You can also customize the showing of padlock and user levels independently.

There’s still one outstanding issue: If you show the number of posts next to the monthly archives, the total will not be reduced by the number of hidden posts. I’ve submitted a feature request to the Wordpress folks so that I can implement this.

The hiding categories functionality requires Wordpress 1.5.2. The plugin should work otherwise for prior versions of Wordpress.

Get the new version here.