klog

For those that don’t know, KFM (Kae’s File Manager) is an application which allows a user to edit/move/delete files online. With some plugins, you can even view videos, listen to your music files, etc.

There are a number of interesting improvements in 1.3.

The configuration methods have been improved. To set up your new KFM, simply copy configuration.dist.php to configuration.php, remove the bits you won’t be changing, and edit what’s left. As an example, here is my entire configuration.php:

<?php
$kfm_db_type = 'sqlitepdo';
$kfm_userfiles_address = '/home/kae/websites/kfm/1.3/files';
$kfm_userfiles_output = '/get.php';

Plugins!

The point of plugins is to enable actions for various file types. We have plugins for the default actions such as image resize, editing text with codepress, etc. You can download new plugins from here to supplement the default ones (I recommend jwplayer and malsup_media_player) - just unzip them in your /plugins/ directory and refresh your KFM.

The most important part about plugins is that they are easy to write. You don’t need to understand all of KFM to write your own plugin. Just copy an existing plugin that’s similar to what you want to do, and then edit it until it’s like what you wanted.

Another important part is that it helps to keep the size of KFM’s core down. We are aware that KFM is “bloating”, and are trying to keep an eye on that while still increasing its capabilities.

The list-view has been improved, along with a vast number of other things.

We have more new languages - Swedish (thanks to Aram Mäkivierikko), Persian (thanks to Ghassem Tofighi) and Hungarian (thanks to Ujj-Mészáros István).

There is a new strings translator on the way in 1.4, along with a new method of submitting translations. I’ve learned a lot in the last few months and feel I can do this better so I’m rewriting the translation methods. I’ll announce more as it becomes more complete.

A lot of work went into allowing KFM to be templated. This is not quite mature yet, so I won’t say too much about it, but it is now possible to design KFM the way you want it. If you have a design you’d like KFM to fit into, please contact me so I can help out. Documentation will come soon.

To download KFM 1.3, get the tar bzip (840k) or the zip (1M).

Please report any bugs to the usual place.

That time of year again, kiddies! KFM 1.2 has been released. This is the last KFM version (apart from bug-fixes on the 1.2.x tree) which will have support for PHP4.

New Features

• a file selection clipboard.
• choice of icon-view or list-view.
• IIS is now basically supported.
• New language: Czech (thanks to Petr Kamenik).

Improvements

• Better SVN layout, so older versions (starting with this) can be bug-fixed, instead of requiring full upgrades.
• Default file permissions may be configured.
• CMS users may choose to return the file ID instead of the URI.
• Filename-shortening may be configured.
• Custom names for the ‘root’ directory.
• Image manipulation permissions may be turned off.
• Some objects were changed to use Singleton patterns (helps speed up KFM).

Bug Fixes

• lots… 306, 301, 298, 295, 284, 293, 291, 289, 287, 286, 283, 281, 285, 282, 277, 280, 272, 267

I’ve been doing well over the last two weeks - I started with an ANN which can balance a pole, and upped that by then creating a net which could recognise letters.

The plan for today is a bit more ambitious. I’m writing it down here in case it takes longer than a day to write it. In general, I want to write a PHP application which will allow you to upload images, which the ANN will then try to recognise. If it gets it right, all well and good. If it gets it wrong, you can correct it.

Some milestones for the project:

• readers can upload images and have them tested and/or added to the training sequence
• extraction of image pixels using <canvas>
• automatic creation of new neurons as they are required
• best net is stored on server, so new readers always start with a working net

I think this may grow into a damned cool thing - I’m already thinking of other cool features like distributed nets, or background nets which can be placed in other pages of a site so the thing can continue training even though the user is not actively viewing the thing (that might be a bit cheeky though).

Anyway - now that I’ve written what I intend to do, I suppose I’d better actually do it.