GNO Apple II Archive "To Do" List

The following is a list of changes that are known to be needed for the GNO Apple II Archive web interface. If you have comments, suggestions, or additions, please follow the instructions in the "Feedback" link shown from within the archive application. (Archive maintainers may submit on the assigned mailing list without a specific subject line.)

Critical

• (none, currently)

Non-Critical

• Insert db prefetches and investigate other performance improvements to reduce page load time.
• Implement the "Manage Licenses" link in the preamble. If you need additions or corrections in the interim, contact Devin to do the change to the database manually.
• Implement the "Manage Account" link (for password and email changes). If you need changes in the interim, contact Devin to do the change to the database manually.
• Implement user notifications for archive changes (such as new files)
• Implement cron job interface for:
  • Ensuring the ftp-visible hierarchy is in sync.
  • Reporting published files that don't have categories.
  • Reporting on duplicate files.
  • Mailing out archive notifications to users.
• Enforce a non-empty editoral notes field in submit and editFile run modes if the license or originator is 'other', or (for the editFile run mode) if the state is 'on hold'.
• Make permissions model be based on groups, and not just on users.
• At some point I seem to have broken the code that lets us assign users to particular groups. Fix it.
• Add a section to the editorial section about emulators and disk archives, etc.
• Reenable renaming of categories. Make sure when we rename categories that we check for duplicates and rename in the ftp tree, too.
• Watch out for "mid-air collision" case between editorial staff. Because there is no transaction between the http get and post (but only during the post itself), the db doesn't detect such a conflict. I could put a sentinel column in the archiveFiles table and detect this case explicitly.
• Index files seems to be not quite right; it appears that maybe they're one update behind? (Try adding categories to, or deleting categories from, a given file.)
• When moving a file into the deleted state, its categories are getting removed. They should not.
• When running from arcshell, the umask might be wrong as created directories are coming out 0700. The group is also not the same as that used when creating directories from web side.
• The uploaded byte count at the bottom of each page is misleading. It says bytes, but the value may be in kB, etc.

Enhancements

• On the main login page, show a "Top Ten" list in terms of files/bytes uploaded (excluding batch importers).
• Make the feedback link go to a web form rather than requiring them to send email.
• Extend search capabilities.
• Nicely format outbound email (confirmation and otherwise)
• Validate common formats (binscii, shrinkit, etc)
• Keep personal statistics current.
• Add online help.
• Have a way to de-binscii a file and convert it to a new file. If there are attached comments, put them into the comments field.
• For shrinkit and other selected archive types, maybe optionally display the extracted table of contents and related information.
• Optionally show file and category history to editorial staff.
• On the top page, add links to the following preset searches:
  • New today
  • New this week
  • New this month
  • Updated today
  • Updated this week
  • Updated this month
• Change things so that SSL is used only when logging in and selected administrative tasks, thus hopefully speeding up both ends.
• Make use of the hashValidated column for the archiveFiles table to periodically validate the hash of the file on disk, with the intent of catching bit rot early enough to recover from backup.
• When submitting a file, if the warning is generated that the file is a duplicate, and if the duplicate is published, then the name of the file should be a hyperlink to the details page of the published file. (Otherwise just showing the name as it is right now is fine.)
• Add lines to the category hierarchy tree to make the hierarchy easier to see (a la windows file browser)
• In the create category mode, we should display the hierarchy in which the category will get displayed.
• In browse mode, if the viewer is editorial staff then they should see an extra column that indicates whether or not the subcategory is in "subcats only" mode.
• In Manage Users mode, the uploaded byte count should be shown as approximate (using kB, MB, etc).
• The file details page should list categories.
• We should allow for filename aliases (ie: sym/hardlinks within the same category)