———–
– 2.4.5 –
———–
* Frontend:
* new languages (zh-hans/zh-hant) are now correctly handled.
Fixes #770810
* hybrid image generation support was added to uck-gui (#830146)
* oneiric language packs support was added
* Backend:
* /etc/fstab is not mandatory in the squashfs file system (#808506)
* /var/run is now a symbolic link to /run (#812418)
* Oneiric alternate support was added (#842487)
* mkisofs calls were replaced with genisoimage (#836350)
* isohybrid support was added (uck-remaster-pack-iso -h) (#830146)
* manifest diff now checks if manifest files really exist
* lxterminal support was added (#865295)
* mksquashfs now uses XZ (lzma) compression if available
(squashfs-tool => 4.1 and guest kernel => 2.6.30)
(#654234)
* gfxboot-theme-ubuntu download method was rewritten
(question #157847)
* firefox locale auto-remove workaround was added (#886838)
* Package:
* suggestion for syslinux (isohybrid) installation was added

Download UCK 2.4.5 or use our stable PPA.

- “meta viewport” tag was added to mask’s HTML for a better mobile rendering
- P4A::getMetaViewport() and setMetaViewport() methods were added
- p4a_center_elements() javascript funcion now removes marginLeft/paddingLeft
from the first visible column of the first P4A_Frame widget
- a bug with P4A_Frame and multiple CSS classes was solved
- P4A_Table’s arrow symbols were because the past ones weren’t shown on mobile
devices
- an ob_clean() call was added to P4A_Thumbnail_Generator::outputThumbnail()
method
- Zend Framework was updated to 1.11.10
- P4A_Table’s image cols do not throw exception anymore if the image
does not exist
- P4A_Field_loadSelectByArray helper now supports a second parameter to specify
the array’s primary key field name

Download P4A 3.8.4

- P4A_DB_Navigator now supports query defined sources
- a bug with P4A_Data_Source::saveUploads() was solved
- a bug with P4A_Table’s image cols (without GD installed) was solved
- P4A_DB_Navigator now triggers a beforeclick event
- all p4a_load_js calls were migrated to require.js
- a bug with P4A_DB_Source::deleteRow() called when in newRow state was solved
- p4a_ajax_enable javascript function was added
- a bug with P4A_GD constant default definition was solved
- P4A_Mask::restart() method was added
- Zend Framework was updated to 1.11.7
- translations were updated
- P4A_DB_Source::load() method now checks for duplicate calls and throws an error

Download P4A 3.8.3

- Zend Framework was updated to 1.11.6
- CKEditor was updated to 3.6.0
- jQuery UI was updated to 1.8.11
- requirejs was added
- P4A_Dir_Source automatically sorts files
- P4A_Dir_Source::setPageLimit() calling was disabled
- P4A_Dir_Source’s page limit is now set to 0 (disabled)
- autocomplete values are now sorted and unique
- P4A_Field::getSource() method was added
- p4a_load_js now uses requirejs
- P4A_Field and P4A_Data_Fields now support the “datetime” type
- P4A_Field and P4A_Data_Fields now support the “time” type
- P4A_Object::dropImplement() now turns the action to lowercase
- deprecated method P4A_Object::dropMethod() was removed
- a javascript bug with P4A_DB_Navigator’s drag&drop functionalities was solved
- P4A_DB_Navigator now correctly supports source with non-default DSN

Download P4A 3.8.2

It reads Esprinet’s dispoP.txt export file and convert it to CSV, passing it to a patched version of the great Magmi importer.

I also features a category choser/renamer/remapper to add some flexibility.

———–
– 2.4.4 –
———–

* Frontend:
* Fixed usage message in uck-remaster to match the parameter handling
that was already implemented.
* Start message now contains output of uname and lsb_release. This
should help to better diagnose problems.
* customize script now outputs kernel and lsb_release info. This
should help to better diagnose problems,
* uck-gui now gives proper usage message and outputs uname and
lsb_release information.
* uck-gui now passes REMASTER_HOME to uck-remaster. Necessary for
changed behaviour of sudo in Natty. Fixes (#748209). Answer
questions #151311, #151108, #150223
* Backend:
* Extract proxy environment variables in uck-gui and pass them on to
the chroot environment around sudo calls. Solves (#111253)
* Modified customize_iso to correctly use REMASTER_HOME if SCRIPT_DIR
was not specified.
* Documentation:
* Fixed uck-gui man page: uck-gui does not accept a customization-dir
parameter.

Download UCK 2.4.4 or use our stable PPA.

Some time ago we discussed about the rendering layer, at the moment we generate all the HTML and we use our custom CSS + some jQuery/jQuery UI goodness to enhance everithing a little bit. Point is that jQuery UI is growing too slowly and we need something bigger and more RIA oriented, like Dojo, ExtJS or Qooxdoo. We discussed about which one would be better and at the moment I’d go with Dojo, it has a great FLOSS license, it’s supported by a lot of major players, it’s highly modular and it has my preferred way of including modules. At last I cannot avoid talking about the new wonderful “Claro” graphical theme, simply amazing.

So I started coding some of P4A’s widgets just to test something out and everything was pretty easy, I’d choose to use the declarative syntax because it was the fastest way to have everything running but now I’m running into a few major problems.

First of all I faced a performance issue, maybe it’s due to dojo’s declarative syntax I chose and I should definetively do a comparison test with the programmatic syntax (also if I do not like generating javascript too much). Another problem is due to the fact that most P4A developers tend to use the easiest P4A’s AJAX stack, which actually redraws all the mask (the body tag) without a full page refresh. To do the dojo has to redraw all the widgets in the mask and so the performance issue is not only visible during the first page loading but on every page redrawing. The user would see the page flicker (if we decide to hide the DOM while dojo is rendering) or the unstyled elements for a sec and than the styled widgets. This is not the best way to go…

But here we’ve the most critical issue, every time the page is redesigned (not using a full page refresh) we’ve a noticable memory leak, dojo keeps allocating memory and this is very very bad. That’s not a dojo problem, I mean, I replease the DOM nodes and recall the dojo parser, but the previously built dojo objects are not removed from memory. Actually I hoped that dojo would have recognized that an element was already parsed but this is not happening. Thus we would have to destroy all dojo objects before redrawing them but this operation will make the page flickering longer.

Conclusions? Hard to tell at the moment. I think I want to try a different way doing a quick test using only dojo’s CSS instead of the whole javascripts also because in a P4A application all the events have to be managen by the server and not by the client. I’ll try to do this kind of test ASAP and let you know some more considerations about this topic.

- jQuery was updated to 1.4.4
- a bug with multiple p4a_load_js calls (with the same url and within the
same loading cycle) was solved
- a bug with MSSQL and query limits was fixed (thanks to Diego Fattori)
- CKEditor was updated to 3.5
- P4A_DB_Source::getRowPosition() now returns 1 if the query throws an error
- P4A_DB_Source::addHaving(), setHaving() and getHaving() methods were added
- Zend Framework was updated to 1.11.2
- a bug with P4A::restart() method was fixed (thanks to Daniel Carrero)
- a bug with P4A_Data_Source::saveUploads() and custom file paths was solved
- a new technique to unload CKEditor was implemented

Download P4A 3.8.1

- UPDATE: due to a SourceForge downtime P4A 3.8.1 tarballs can’t be downloaded at the moment, I’ll update this post when everything will be up again, in the meanwhile you can check out the P4A SVN (tags/3.8.1).

- UPDATE 2: SF should have fixed the problem, P4A 3.8.1 packages are available right now.

———–
– 2.4.3 –
———–

* Backend:
* uck-remaster-prepare-alternate and uck-remaster-finalize-alternate now
support all architectures (and not only i386)

———–
– 2.4.2 –
———–

* Backend:
* Added code to remember kernel update state (shared /var/run
issue). (#682108)
* yaboot dep was added (only for ppc)

———–
– 2.4.1 –
———–

* Backend:
* Applied patch to handle changed named of syslinux config file.
Thanks to Tom Freudenberg for this patch. (#681032)

Download UCK 2.4.3 or use our new PPA.