Version 1.8.9 : Ergonomy, sources and maintenance

lun. 31 octobre 2022 - Journal - fr

Index

1. Got plans for October?
2. About sources
3. Ergonomy
4. Thanks to the NLnet
5. Some clouds in the sky
6. You can help the project, with just an email

This is an unexpected new release, made possible by the support of the NLnet, that covered the elapsed year and extended one more month.

Mozilla’s statistics show that around 50 daily users are stuck since 2 years with the version 1.6. Meta-Press.es have been greatly improved since. To get the lastest upgrades you might have to activate auto-upgrades for this addon or remove it to re-install a newer one from addons.mozilla.org.

1. Got plans for October?

Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2022 14:55:22 +0200
From: Jos van den Oever <…>
Subject: Got plans for October?
As we make up the balance at the end of NGI0 Discovery, we still have a bit of
budget left that we’d be glad to put to good use — but with less than a month
to spend it.

Given your project’s proven productivity, we thought you might be willing and
able to still complete a planned task; or to add another task to your project.

Are you interested ?

I just spent months working hard to complete all the due tasks of this 2nd round of support, and well I was feeling sorry regarding some unfinished business… The 150 broken sources that the new test source procedure was reporting for instance.

So, I gladly accepted to post-pone everything for one more month.

And here we are, this new version of Meta-Press.es is delivered with 667 tested working sources (against ±450 of the previous version). No secret : sources were fixed one by one.

2. About sources

I got some help from Benoit Lanceau in this task, as he spent 6 weeks of internship with me at Pougne-Hérisson. He also added 40 more languages for GlobalVoices.org. It’s this kind of initiatives that extends the country and languages coverage of Meta-Press.es to 64 countries and 71 languages !

This version also brings its batch of new sources : - for kids sources (kids.keskonfai.com ; science-et-vie-junior.fr …) - independant sources (mostly via the automated source creation form : Causette.fr, Vert.eco, Chut.media, fij.ng, LeQuotidien.re, Pieuvre.ca…) - Mobilizon sources

And for this last point I thanks Matthieu Rakotojaona. He selected the 10 biggest instances of Mobilizon and provided their definition JSON object.

3. Ergonomy

I fixed a bunch of declared bugs. Don’t hesitate to declare more of them via Framagit.

I worked on the ergonomy fixing the appearance of the timezone widget in the settings, or adding a "clear input" cross button in the main search input…

4. Thanks to the NLnet

I want to thanks the NLnet for it’s support. They will open more calls, I can testify that you won’t loose your time trying this application if you develop good internet related libre software.

I can help you with some details if you want to apply but feel shy about it.

With the NLnet : one short online form, a few emails exchanged with meaningful content and you’re set for a year or more.

5. Some clouds in the sky

To finish, some clouds appeared in the sky of Meta-Press.es… more and more sources are trying to protect them against DDOS attack via their search features, requiring a cookie or a token to respond. This we’ll be able to deal with, it just requires some more code.

But some sources also started to remove their online search feature or to make it available only for registered users, and this represent a threat.

6. You can help the project, with just an email

To finish, there is a lot of sources that should be contacted to signal them that they miss dates on their search results (like Arte.tv, Reflets.info, Regards.fr, Socialter.fr, CourrierDesBalkans.fr or YemenPost.net, and a lot of others…), or that they are missing a search feature or it’s broken (like Philstar.com) or it’s not providing date sort for results (like Marianne.net, Nation.co.ke, Timesofindia.Indiatimes.com, Haaretz.com…) or they provide content in several languages but a search feature only for the main language (OpenDemocracy.net, cn.helsinkitimes.fi, …).

All of this is listed here : incompatible_sources.

Reaching sources requires just to write an email, it’s accessible to non-programmers, please help me on this.

Oh, and I also need help with arab (urdu ; farci ; arz) RTL dates and month name parsing (for instance with Aawsat.com). Don’t hesitate to reach me out about it.

Meta-Press.es