Looking For Help Finding Files

[Doctordick]

As you may have discovered by investigating the actual links as they appear in your browser (hover over them, rightclick on link properties, or show source), you can use the URL

 

http://scienceforums.com/index.php ?act=findpost&pid={n}

getting the actual links requires a search of the entire thread for the post of interest which takes an astonishing length of time to accomplish (it took a long time with the old system but the old system was snappy compared to this new set up). It was the time such a search took which lead me to create my reference table. As I said, with my table of post numbers (together with a quick summary of the post) it used to take me about two seconds to open any specific post. Now, even opening a post takes 20 or 30 seconds even if you have the correct address.

 

As Tormod has commented the pid reference you give does not seem to correspond to the old post numbers. From my perspective, this forum is rapidly approaching unusably. I just spent the whole day today fixing one post (which I referenced in my most recent post) " Deriving Schrödinger's Equation From My Fundamental Equation". Fixing them all would take more time than it would take to start from scratch.

 

And, Tormod, I used to have a web site years ago and I discovered back then that subbing out operations to others was one of the worst things one could do. It invariably slows things down by unbelievable amounts of time. Particularly if a single post makes multiple calls on the provider of that service. You really need control of your own software or things will go down the drain fast.

 

I would say "Have fun" but I don't think you are going to -- Dick

 

Oh, by the way, I was unable to fix the links in that post I fixed.

 

This is an edit: As soon as I posted this post, I saw your post telling me that my old links would now work. I checked against my table and you are correct, they do work; however, I have not checked the post I fixed as the system is so slow that I just don't want to face the issue today. Simply getting back to this post so I could add this edit took almost three miniutes. I don't know what the system is doing but it seems to be reloading the thread about three or four times before it allows me to move the view. By the way, everytime it loads a thread, it first puts up what appears to be some sort of window which disappears immediately then it starts loading the actual thread. It appears to complete the load and then jumps back to the beginning and seems to load again and even after it seems to be finished, it won't let me move the view for another few minutes. ???? I suspect this is probably some "fixit" program running in the background ???

[Tormod]

DD, I am sincerely sorry for your situation.

 

I don't quite understand what it is that takes 20 seconds. All *old* links should now work automatically, without any updates.

 

The exception is those references where you are using the "post" bbcode to refer to a specific post without posting the full url. I have just received word from our host that they may be able to sort this out.

 

Please don't give up on us yet. There was a reason for this switch of forum platform. We still control it, but for the time being we're leaving the running of the hardware to professionals. I still sit on our old server and we may move back eventually. I just need some time to grasp the changes and consequences before I make further decisions.

 

I'd love to help you fix your post tables. Let me know what you need from me. Maybe we can help each other clear up the mess?

[Tormod]

For your info, I have now posted this as the first entry in our new bug tracker:

 

http://scienceforums.com/tracker/

 

Please follow this discussion up there so we can find a solution!

[Doctordick]

I am sorry if you intended for me to respond to the "bug tracking" thread but, when I looked at that thread, it didn't seem to be appropriate. Please let me know if you want that.

I don't quite understand what it is that takes 20 seconds. All *old* links should now work automatically, without any updates.

At the moment, neither do I; but I do know that I owe you an apology. As I have stated elsewhere, I am getting old and cantankerous and sometimes I do blame others for problems which are of my own making. I went to my wife’s machine and those delays I was talking about don’t exist. Your site seems to be working fine (except for the problems you are already aware of). Apparently the problem is in my machine. It seems to be stuttering with the loads; it starts to load a page and then stops and starts again. I don’t know what the problem is and I am really not sure how to fix it.

 

I may have to just start over with a different machine. I am currently running an old fedora Linux system (at least six years old; it quit updating a long time ago) on a relatively old e-machine (a demonstrator I bought cheap at Office Depot probably around 2000). Perhaps the thing is having memory problems (a senile computer ???) or perhaps it has an error in one of the browser functions.

 

At any rate, I apologize for adding to your problems.

I'd love to help you fix your post tables. Let me know what you need from me. Maybe we can help each other clear up the mess?

I have translated my post tables to a windows document and everything seems to be fine on my wife’s machine except for the fact that the post numbers are not correct; i.e., the response is back to about one second.

 

I have tried a number of entries from my table and they seem to go to the correct thread and the correct page; however, they appear to consistently go to the top of that page and not the actual post. If I go down through the page, I can generally find the post my table is referring to but the post numbers on those posts are your new numbers which makes it a little difficult to locate the things.

 

Apparently you have inserted some kind of translation between the old numbers and the new ones. Perhaps if I had a copy of that translation I could fix my tables; then the only problem would be the format of the correct url to access the actual post and not just the page.

 

Is there any help I can give you with this?? I really don’t know how much help I can be.

 

Good luck -- Dick

[Tormod]

Apparently you have inserted some kind of translation between the old numbers and the new ones. Perhaps if I had a copy of that translation I could fix my tables; then the only problem would be the format of the correct url to access the actual post and not just the page.

 

I am not sure if we can fix this but I will give it a think and see if there is a way. It may simply be the price we pay for me switching servers without enough planning. :(

 

Is there any help I can give you with this?? I really don’t know how much help I can be.

 

I just need feedback like what you have given me so far - explanations of problems and suggestions as how they should be solved. :unsure:

[Doctordick]

I just need feedback like what you have given me so far - explanations of problems and suggestions as how they should be solved. :)

Well, because Anssi is trying to follow my deduction of GR (and doing a good job of it by the way) I have tried to fix my opeining post to that thread. In doing so, I ran into a bug in the "latex" implementation. The following expression does not display correctly (I leave out the opening square brackets so you can see what my latex expression is:

 

latex]-\frac{\partial}{\partial r}\Phi®=r\omega^2/latex]

 

At any rate, the thing incorrectly displays as

 

[math]-\frac{\partial}{\partial r}\Phi®=r\omega^2[/math]

 

I noticed that standard functional expressions like F® does the same thing

 

[math]F®[/math]

 

Oh Oh, apparently their standard conversion strips out the parenthisis and puts in that strange symbol. What I actually typed in was F, open parenthisis, r and then close parenthisis; but that is not the text they came back with.

 

That should be a simple fix.

 

Have fun -- Dick

[Tormod]

I have some (hopefully) good news regarding latex. We are going to move back to a dedicated server so that we can install Cap'n Resmmat's IPBlatex addon. That should reinstate the "old" way of doing things. This will happen ASAP.

 

It won't solve the post issues but it will give me more control so we can see if we can find a solution to that soon.

[Doctordick]

I have some (hopefully) good news regarding latex. We are going to move back to a dedicated server so that we can install Cap'n Resmmat's IPBlatex addon. That should reinstate the "old" way of doing things. This will happen ASAP.

Does that mean that my specific changes to latex will have to be changed back?

 

And, by the way, I found a fix to that strange effect on functions like F®. First it is apparently only a problem when the argument is "r"; essentially from parenthisis around r. F(x) seems to work fine. At any rate, the problem with "r" can be fixed by putting spaces around the "r": i.e, ( r ) or F( r ). They seem to have decided that r surrounded by parethisis has to be that circled "r" whatever that symbol means.

 

It seems to me that they should have used a "special symbol" for that, not something common in algebraic expressions. You might point that out to whoever is in charge.

 

Please let me know when you solve problems

 

Have fun -- Dick

[Tormod]

The "new" plugin is based off the same code as the "old" plugin, so the code should work the same way it did before we switched forum software. I just need to find time to install it...!

[Tormod]

I tried to install the new latex plugin, but it caused the server to throw blank pages. I'll try to get in touch with the developer.

[Doctordick]

I tried to install the new latex plugin, but it caused the server to throw blank pages. I'll try to get in touch with the developer.

If you get the thing to work right, does that mean that the posts where I have edited the code to work correctly with the new software will no longer work correctly after you get the new plugin installed: i.e., am I just making more work for myself by correcting those posts?

 

By the way, you are aware of the fact that the new software has stripped all the backslashes out of the “math” expressions. The procedure I have been using to correct the thing has been as follows

 

First, I go to the edit button and get the original post.

 

Secondly, I copy the whole post into my open office word processor.

 

Third, I set “find and replace” to find all “math” and replace them with “latex”.

 

Fourth, I hit “find and replace all”.

 

Fifth, I set “find and replace” to find all “ilatex” and replace them with “latex”.

 

Sixth, I hit "find and replace all".

 

Seventh, I change the “find and replace” to find all “latex” and replace with “math”.

 

Then I go through the following process

 

I hit “find next”.

 

If the “find” is an equation, I go through the entire equation inserting the appropriate “backslash” to identify each and every LaTex command. (Catching all the “\left\{“ and “\right\{“ was a problem; I often failed to put in that backslash on the curly bracket).

 

If the “find” was “latexmatics” (or some variation) I hit the “replace”.

 

I then hit “find next” to find the next equation.

 

When I am finished, I paste the result back into the edit window and look at the preview where I catch my errors.

 

It is inserting those backslashes which takes all the time and create the most errors.

 

Finally I hit save changes and everything works fine.

 

At any rate, any competent programmer should be able to write a code to accomplish exactly that result. My problem is that I haven't done any coding since about 1985. Furthermore, all the coding I did prior to that was in machine language and I don't know the current machine language commands.

 

If I had a complete list of the valid LaTex commands for equation processing (which I could probably figure out from stuff on the internet) and the appropriate machine commands for the new intel chips, I could write you a binary code which would fix all the equation problems. Or better yet, one of those programmers you “have on staff” could probably do it in a heartbeat in some other "modern" language.

 

Have fun -- Dick

[Tormod]

For some reason I am completely unable to get the latex rendering files to work on our boards. It works perfectly on our test boards. It seems this will take a while to figure out. I am doing my best.

[Tormod]

Good news - the latex plugin is now installed and works fine.

 

Thanks to Cap'n Refsmmat for helping! :)