Awasu 2.3.1.alpha1

IMPORTANT: This is an alpha release (what's this?). Some features may not be complete and there will probably be bugs!

You must be already running 2.3.

To install:

• Read the release notes below first!
• Backup your Awasu installation directory and keep it, even if the alpha appears to work correctly.
• Unpack one (!) of the following zips on top of your existing installation:
  • Personal Edition
  • Advanced Edition
  • Professional Edition
• Run admin.exe to upgrade your database (this will be quick).

Also, please check the note below about the switch in DEBUG.INI you can experiment with.

New way of tracking read/unread items

Items are now tracked as read/unread in a different way. Previously this was done by URL but this caused several problems:

• Marking an item as read would cause all other items with the same URL to also be marked as read.
  This was actually the intended behaviour and why items were being tracked by URL but in practice, when publishers were giving multiple feed items the same URL, this is not what the user would generally want to happen.
• If an item had been marked as read and a new item arrived with the same URL, the new item would not be flagged as new.
  This was particualarly an issue with plugins and other feeds where items don't really have a URL so were all given the same one.

The age-old problem of uniquely identifying items and figuring out which one corresponds to which when doing a sync still remains (and unavoidably so) but a new algorithm is in place which seems to work pretty well.

NOTE: All your items will be reset back to being unread.

Optimized how new feed items are saved in the database

The new read/unread framework has the side-effect of running much faster and Awasu should have less impact on other applications when it's busy updating feeds.

Another optimization was added to how new feed items are saved but while it's quicker on paper, I'm not convinced that the overall impact is an improvement. So, run the new version for a while and then try adding the following to your user's DEBUG.INI file and let me know which one works better for you (in terms of the responsiveness of the UI when Awasu is busy updating channels).

    [Debug]
    EnableSaveFeedMultipleTransactions=1

Dropped support for legacy template parameters

The following parameters are no longer available:

ITEM-ID ITEM-URL ITEM-TITLE ITEM-TITLE-FORMATTED ITEM-PUBDATE ITEM-TIMEMODIFIED ITEM-TIMERECEIVED ITEM-TIMESTAMP ITEM-DESCRIPTION ITEM-DESCRIPTION-MARKEDUP ITEM-DESCRIPTION-EXCERPT ITEM-DESCRIPTION-PLAINTEXT ITEM-AUTHOR-NAME ITEM-AUTHOR-EMAIL ITEM-SOURCE-NAME ITEM-SOURCE-URL ITEM-COMMENTS-URL

ITEM-NO IS-ITEM-READ ITEM-TITLE-FORMATTED ITEM-DETAILS ITEM-RELATED-LINKS LAST-SUCCESSFUL-UPDATE-TIME-FORMATTED FEED-ITEM-COUNT-INFO-FORMATTED CHANNEL-URL CHANNEL-HOME-URL CHANNEL-NAME CHANNEL-DESCRIPTION CHANNEL-IMAGE CHANNEL-DETAILS

In channel reports: CHANNEL-NAME ENCODED-CHANNEL-NAME CHANNEL-URL ENCODED-CHANNEL-URL CHANNEL-HOME-URL CHANNEL-NAME ITEM-URL ITEM-TITLE ITEM-TITLE-FORMATTED ITEM-DESCRIPTION

Minor changes and bug fixes

• Fixed a problem that was stopping Awasu from starting if the user's account name had non-English characters.
• Changed the way Awasu, Awasu Administration and Awasu Server detect if each other is running.
• Correctly handle some types of HTTP redirects.
• Fixed some issues that were stopping Awasu from shutting down properly.
• Handle malformed INI files a bit better.
• Show a better error message if a plugin fails because it didn't generate any output.
• Don't show anything in the esync export options mini-dialog for the feed items interval if feed items are disabled.