PHP, Zend Framework and Other Crazy Stuff
Archive for November, 2005
Quantum Star SE for the Visually Impaired
Nov 24th
After the recent (September) requirements review for QS, one of the areas which popped up as a medium level requirement was support for those with visual or hearing impairments. I know its a little presumptious to put this at medium – no offence to anyone affected by such – but it was dependent on other areas which got a higher priority – and it is largely a web design issue.
After looking through some of the current web design material at hand in the QS Installer, and testing it myself (for what it was worth) on a screen reader emulator, I think the installer at least is fairly safe. This is probably an area I need to go away over the Christmas and research properly. I validated the web pages so far against the 3 Priority levels of WCAG 1.0 and passed all three levels. I won’t celebrate yet – I haven’t heard from anyone who needs these measures.
A few other decisions were made as a result of the requirements review.
1. No red on green, or green on red colours in the web design styling
2. No use of CAPTCHA unless a logic alternative is available for the visually impaired 3. Availability of a high contrast b/w or w/b style via CSS
4. Addition of a javascript function to dynamically alter Font-Size on any page
5. Use of Header tags for all section titles, in correct order. CSS can manipulate the appearance all it wants so long as the HTML content is following a logical flow.
6. Use of / in all the right places – no or tags which are purely visual.
7. For alt/desc/longdesc attributes use full worded sentences.
8. Review current draft of WCAG 2.0 as available after above requirements are implemented.
These are just high points. There are a lot of other practical points the WCAG raises, and not all can be validated by an online engine without an actual person sitting at a monitor screen.
I’ve scheduled this segment of work for January, but keeping it in mind now will make it easier to make fewer departures in the intervening month.
Another ADOdb Update
Nov 24th
I have received a response to my post to the ADOdb forums. John Lim (ADOdb Developer) hasn’t noted any reason not to use pg_escape_string() once the Postgres version is 7.2 or greater. Hopefully it gets added for those applications I have using it. More importantly for Quantum Star SE followers, we will hopefully see it in a future ADOdb-Lite release!
Quantum Star SE Evolved
Nov 24th
Never hurts to repeat myself on the blog. To force some differentiation between the two QS branches, Quantum Star SE Main branch is now known as “Quantum Star SE Evolved”. Hopefully this will send out a message that QS2 is older, and therefore not actively developed. There’s a common misconception for players especially that the new versions are a continuation of QS2 – they’re not. QS2 was an extremely buggy, server intensive, insecure pile of code. QS Evolved is designed and written from scratch, and avoids those problems – at least it better 
.
There are still some sideline areas I need to address to QS before releasing the future stable versions. Problems fall into three camps; PHP Source, Licensing and Intellectual Property, and Transparency. My groupings might not be intuitive, but for what its worth Transparency applies to the internal running of the project, its policies and practices, and its financing (in a fit of optimism I declared QS a non-profit project). I’ve looked at a few areas, and had a go at implementing some solutions.
For example, the current available code carries both a human readable, and XML P3P Privacy Policy (not integrated into the HTML yet). It’s a nice idea, and the policy validates even on quite strict restrictions under IE6 (strict due its bugginess no doubt). As a result of that initial review, I removed the collection of demographics (one of those QS2 hack ons), sex, age and the requirement that was there for real names. I think this might even get us past the COPPA requirements – possible, but needs to be confirmed.
COPPA is a US Law governing access by under 13′s to registration on websites – basically if the website collects certain information, or targets certain age groups, it is required (internationally – don’t ask why) to collect written permission from the child’s parents or guardians. It’s a good-feeling policy – not well implemented (the child can simply lie obviously). It is still in force (unlike the much confused COPA).
Anyways, before I went on a rambling spree I was where again? Ah, policies, transparency, etc.
My current bright idea is to look into formalising the management of the project. The problem with a democracy of one, is that its suspiciously like a dictatorship. One man development holds a certain risk of losing sight of what your community wants, rather than what you think they need. I’m looking into the possibility of an initially informal arrnagement where two or three long time groupies and developers would have a little more power in how QS is run. If it works well, and smoothly, I might consider transferring a little more weight. That of course means we would need rules, and some long term goal in those rules (so there’s no sudden policy shifts down the line). I’m not up to paying solicitors, so an imperfect custom agreement is in the making
Update to the ADODB post…
Nov 22nd
pg_escape_string() requires PostgreSQL 7.2. Yep, now that’s a good reason to comment it out. Unfortunately it still means it’s not used for Pg 7.3 to 8.1 – which is a pity. Maybe PJ will oblige however…
Speaking of PJ, he has reformed and added RSS feed support to the blogs at AATraders. Once these S9Y plugins are put back, and I have this server fully cleaned up, sanitised and decontaminated to boot, I’ll add his feed to the growing list.
His latest blog entry illuminates the trouble with legacy apps. In timing SQL calls he has rectified overuse of SQL queries (a huge number apparently compared to what should have been there) and sped things up a little for the .30 version. Maybe he could visit the Solar Empire camp and offer suggestions…(and possibly assassinate this Lex Luthor chap!)
Calm, pills, shiny blue pills…
And the invasion continues…
Nov 22nd
The blog was struck by an attack of script kiddies yesterday evening. Plugins are now disabled – so no side bars – until I finally rectify this invasion and finish my cleanup of the server (probably a few weeks if my home connection doesn’t pick up – I hate 56k!).
In other news; an announcement by Lex Luthor (the previously unknown secret Admin of Solar Empire) has seen the more recent (and still highly insecure) version of SE Generic be licensed under a Creative Commons license. The high drama of Solar Empire never ceases to amaze.
The response to this move was predictably negative. In what appears to be normal behaviour, djcapelis’ negativity resulted in a awe inspiring charge that most of the SE Community (we’re a small bunch) does not respect SE’s open source nature. Hmm, I could easily be misquoting here – so:
You still don’t have to release you code but thats what most people want anyway. Seeing how is MOST of the people in this community have no respect for open source. This will protect Mjac’s code from anyone making their addons public.
Anyways, recent events have been resulting in some eyebrow raising. In the last few months, Lex Luthor has been placed as an Admin in the SE Generic project. The Generic codebase has seen renewed development by Mjac. Moriarty has returned from Limbo and noted that he has been removed (without announcement, warning, or even a friendly email) as an Admin. Now the newer SE versions have entered CC territory.
This could all just be innocent actions, but I’m a supremely paranoid person fresh out of a series of a nonsense emails challenging me over licensing by an LOGD developer. I’m allowed a little paranoid theorising.
In theory, if someone wanted to gain control over Solar Empire (a public domain codebase and predominantly loose affiliation of developers) they would require a number of assets.
1) Control over the solarempire.com domain
2) Control over the forums
3) Control over the primary project
4) Restriction of access by other SE projects to the source code
5) The stamp of “official”
6) As little publicity as possible
My god, they’ve managed all 6! 
Its not likely, probably not even intended, but Mjac and Lex Luthor could conceivably boot everyone out of Dodge without much effective resistance. They have all 6 factors in their favour.
Still hypothesising as an extremely paranoid (possibly delusional) person. Such an action might not work as cleanly as suspected. SE has severe limits in gaining acceptablility as a game you should host. It’s extremely insecure, may still (have not tested) be server intensive, and currently lack any large following of players (well, the closed source server do okay).
The forums are largely a collection point for the misfit SE developers (like me) to gather, ridicule, boast and generally keep in touch. We are an extremely mobile community who have mastered the art of switching forums and domains at a moment’s notice.
The domain would be a loss, but since there’s currently no concerted effort to develop an SE community (there being no stable open source variant) its not the end of the world. Alternate domain do exist, and not all are controlled by invisible malevolent forces named after a comic book villain…
Any move to control SE is therefore doomed to failure. Safe and secure in this knowledge, I shall now take those shiny blue pills and banish my paranoia. Ahh…
