sometimes i feel like building software is akin to throwing myself off a cliff and then hoping i can build the thing i envisioned a moment ago before i hit the ground. does anyone else get that?

i decided to tear apart the monolithic editor in #ktistec and to replace it with a configurable system of editing components. how hard could that be, i thought... well, the ground approaches and i only just got a just-about-works proof-of-concept complete!

The two big features in release v3.2.7 of Ktistec are back end support for creating polls (the front end is coming in the next release) and advanced theming support—specifically, a rich vocabulary of CSS class values and data attributes on which to build a theme. The full set is documented in the README. I'll post more on how I'm using these later this week.

Here is the full set of notable changes:

Added

• Back-end support for creating polls.
• Advanced theming support with new classes, data attributes, and view helpers.
• Task status display on admin page showing running and imminently scheduled task counts.

Fixed

• Poll vote form now correctly submits Question ID.

Changed

• Move location of Ktistec version notice. (fixes #133)
• Updated admin page for better accessibility and less clutter.

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

working with ameba has been a treat. #ktistec is now all properly linted.

out of a few dozen rules, i disabled only five and tweaked the configuration of five more. that's a pretty good set of defaults. i also added a few custom rules covering spec hygiene. i highly recommend it!

#crystallang #ameba

adding ameba to #ktistec.

#crystallang #ameba

I took a detour and worked on alt text editing in release v3.2.6 rather than continuing with the polls backend. I also continued to fix bugs and to add polish. Here's the full set of changes:

Added

• Support for editing alt text in the Trix editor. (fixes #52)

Fixed

• Render fallback icon when actor is down.
• Remove blank figcaption elements.
• Emojify display names in notifications.

Changed

• Color notifications label by type of unread notifications.
• Render lines instead of points for server starts in metrics.

(I'm editing this post in Markdown—the new feature in the last release!)

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

Would it be useful to customize the rendering and presentation of posts by actor?

I follow a lot of actors and I get a lot of posts, and I'd like the posts from some actors to stand out, and I'd like the posts from others to be more inconspicuous. Or maybe I want to use color to help visually categorize posts from actors I follow, based on subject matter.

Does this sound like a useful feature?

#ktistec #fediverse

I rolled out a lot of features over the last several weeks and created a lot of bugs in the process. Release v3.2.5 of Ktistec is mostly about fixing those bugs. I did implement two requested features, however: support for editing posts in Markdown and support for Open Graph metadata. Here's the full list of new features:

Added

• Support for editing posts in Markdown. (fixes #25)
• Support for Open Graph metadata on actors and objects. (fixes #71)
• Support for uploading a site image.
• Internal table of contents page.
• Poll expiry notifications.

🎄 I'm working on support for poll creation and management now. It's also time for a performance improvement pass or two.

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse