From what I can see in http://www.forummatrix.org/com.....acha+Vistix+XMB+Yazd there is only one open source, perl based forum package that supports unlimited levels of sub-forums, so here I am.

The main issue I had with the installation was that Setup.pl gave me form validation errors but did not explain what the errors were. I had to debug the script to find where the error was. It turned out to be that the password was too long. I think I also had problems with my email address though that is fixed now. I think these rules were not adequately documented.

The second issue is that no theme was loaded. I traced this to a mismatch between "x2" and "X2" in ThemesList.txt. I suspect that this was ultimately due to a permissions issue, so I cannot say I was not warned on that one.

Also in forum matrix E-Blah came up as having a mysql backend. This was a requirement so I was a little disappointed to find it did not have a mysql backend. I realize now that the mysql backend is in beta, but I think it should have been more clearly signposted that this was not production code. I am happy with going with flat-files for now, but is there an ETA on when the mysql backend will be available and what the transition process will be like.

Edit: A couple more observations. First on a successful installation you get a button "Delete Setup Files and go to Your Forum". One might think that this takes one to the forum. Instead it takes one to the upgrade run.

The other problem I believe is an actual bug. In my download there are Code/pm.pl and Languages/English/pm.lng but the code seems to be expecting those files to be PM.pl and PM.lng.

Edit 2: I did a reinstall and I am convinced that the X2 issue is real as well. Also I am using E-Blah 10.3.6 on a Debian Linux box with perl 5.8.

Okay the forum is set up on the production system and I am now encountering a few issues. I tried to turn on XHTML and I logged out to test registration. Then I got this (from an opera browser).

<tr>
70:   <td class="titlebg"><strong><img src="/blahdocs/template/tob/images/ban.png" alt="" /> Guest Access</strong></td>
71:  </tr><tr>
72:   <td class="win">Guest access has been disabled on this forum system. In order to browse and post on this forum system you must login with a valid username.<br /><br /><center><strong>Please <a href="Blah.cgi?v-login/" rel="nofollow">login</a> or <a href="Blah.cgi?v-register/" rel="nofollow">register</a>.</strong></center></center></td>
73:  </tr>
74: </table>
75: </td>

Edit: I traced this to line 105 of BoardLock.pl which should be changed to   <td class="win">$access</td> .

Found another error. In Register.pl, line 256 should be

     } else { $error .= qq~</ul></div><br /></td></tr></table><br />~;

I found another error in ManageForum.pl. Lines 544 and 892 should be deleted

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2;url=$surl\lv-admin/a-boards/">


The obvious issue is that the <meta> element is not closed properly. However also the meta element can only appear in the head element where as here it appears in a td element. I guess there may be other implications of my proposed change.

If it is not clear the reason I am getting these changes is that I have turned on XHTML.

I have now had my first user and I have hit a number of issues which I have not managed to look into in depth. However I have found a number of javascript issues popping up in the console. The last one in particular probably explains why I am finding the news functionality ropey (though it is working on some browsers).

CSS - http://www.silasthemonk.org.uk/blahdocs/template/tob/template.css
CSS - http://www.silasthemonk.org.uk/blahdocs/template/tob/template.css
Linked-in stylesheet
Declaration syntax error
Line 255:
   filter : alpha(opacity=85);
  ----------------------------^
CSS - http://www.silasthemonk.org.uk/blahdocs/template/tob/template.css
Linked-in stylesheet
text-color is an unknown property
Line 302:
   text-color: #C0C0C0;
  ------------^
CSS - http://www.silasthemonk.org.uk/blahdocs/template/tob/template.css
Linked-in stylesheet
Declaration syntax error
Line 640:
   filter : alpha(opacity=85);
  ----------------------------^
CSS - http://www.silasthemonk.org.uk/blahdocs/template/tob/template.css
Linked-in stylesheet
Declaration syntax error
Line 255:
   filter : alpha(opacity=85);
  ----------------------------^
CSS - http://www.silasthemonk.org.uk/blahdocs/template/tob/template.css
Linked-in stylesheet
text-color is an unknown property
Line 302:
   text-color: #C0C0C0;
  ------------^
CSS - http://www.silasthemonk.org.uk/blahdocs/template/tob/template.css
Linked-in stylesheet
Declaration syntax error
Line 640:
   filter : alpha(opacity=85);
  ----------------------------^
JavaScript - http://www.silasthemonk.org.uk/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.cgi/Blah.cgi?
Event thread: load
Error:
name: TypeError
message: Statement on line 95: Cannot convert undefined or null to Object
Backtrace:
  Line 95 of linked script http://www.silasthemonk.org.uk/blahdocs/news.js: In function start
              document.getElementById('ns6slider1').style.top=sheight
  ...
stacktrace: n/a; see 'opera:config#UserPrefs|Exceptions Have Stacktrace'

Edit Those errors are from Opera. Mozilla brings up similar errors. I cannot see how to get into the error console in Safari but the only browser I have tried where the news functionality works is Internet Explorer.

I have had some more problems:
1.) When I turned on the ages 13 question at first it worked. However once the first user was registered answering that I was over 13 always just took me back to main screen. So new users (actually test users) were not able to register.
2.) The first user to register repoted the following error:

Code:

XML Parsing Error: mismatched tag. Expected: </table>.
Location: http://www.silasthemonk.org.uk/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.cgi
Line Number 73, Column 4: </tr>
---^

I could investogate that myself, but the user was able to log on without my intervention and for the reason I cannot reproduce the issue.
3.) I cannot work out how to set up a moderator.

XHTML in Admin Center is experimental, anyway.  There are very, very few problems with XHTML (especially compared to other forum systems, as of 6 months or so ago).

You can remove the stuff in your style sheet if you don't want it.  It was there because Firefox uses one, IE uses the other and those help Admins not have to keep choosing colors.

As for your path errors, those are completely a problem with your server or user error (as are most of the other things you've mentioned).  If you're taking back to the homepage when you go to register it's simply because you did not read and chose the correct one.  You can change these to say whatever you want by editing Register.lng.

<meta> refresh is meant for a last resort and the page is kept minimal to help keep things going quickly.  The SQL version of E-Blah can be used for production.  There aren't many issues with it, but there are a few (though most were fixed with the last version).

Justin,

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately I do not think it quite addresses my concerns. If I may I will take the opportunity to reexpress (and perhaps reevaluate) the issues starting with the most important.

XHTML

Quoted from Justin

XHTML in Admin Center is experimental, anyway.  There are very, very few problems with XHTML (especially compared to other forum systems, as of 6 months or so ago).

I noticed the experimental comment in the admin Center, although the XHTML icon at the bottom of this forum's page suggests otherwise. I have experience of other foums' compatibility with with XHTML after writing a script to scrape data off one. And if I thought the XHTML compatibility of E-Blah was attrocious, obviously I would not attempt to use the feature. Can we agree that if a web forum is using this option, then any XHTML validation issue is a bug, albeit possibly not the most important in the E-Blah universe? As such can you assure me that easy fixes of such issues will be acknowledged and addressed in the next release? I am happy to pach my own installation, but obviously I will not upgrade if I lose these patches. What is the best way of reporting these issues from your point of view. To me it seems that pointing out the E-Blah version, file, line number and nature of the error is enough since in all the cases I have seen, inspection of the code shows the error and the fix. What procedures do you use to assess the XHTML compatibility of E-Blah?

Quoted from Justin

<meta> refresh is meant for a last resort and the page is kept minimal to help keep things going quickly.

I had two issues with this one. First of all the meta tag lacked a closing "/". Secondly the meta tag was inside the body rather than the head. As I understand that is not possible and I was questioning it.

PM.pl and PM.lng
I have two linux installations: a production one and a test one. To get files off this web-site and onto my two different systems, involves the files going through through quite different file systems. So as it happens these files got changed to "pm.pl" and "pm.lng" during my test install but not my production install. So yes again not a big issue for me. However the only way I can see that this could be happening is if your source code is held on a windows system (where capitalization is not respected) and that these files are in lower case on that storage.

Documentation
I would say that the documentation for someone familiar with perl is adequate. However I do believe it has shortcomings. Firstly I noticed that almost all of the posts in your installation forum are with people who need to go and modify Settings.pl. I was quite bemused by those at first. I thought haven't they read the documentation. However in reflection it occurred to me that this may be quite hard for people who do not know perl. I think that needs a bit more work.

My issue was with the fact I had to read and the debug the code to find out why Setup.pl was complaining. In fact it was mainly because my password was too long. Most forms requiring a password state the password validity rules on the form. I really think you need to do that as well. Similarly for the other fields.

CSS and javascript errors
These are all if I recall in the theme rather than the core code. As such I accept they are not really your problem. Also I am quite able to fix the CSS errors and that will go on my to do list. The javascript errors are a little harder for me. I am not at all sure what contract the javascript has with the rest of the code and that is surely defined in the core code. Is that documented anywhere?

Theme
This issue happened on both the test and production installation. Until fixed the web-site is very hard to use. I certainly don't think this is a user error.

XHTML
I am having issues with these lines of code

Quoted Text

          if(length($message) > 1000) {
               $message =~ s~\[table\](.*?)\[\/table\]~$var{'88'}~sgi;
               $message = substr($message,0,1000);
               $message = BC($message);
               MakeSmall();
               $message .= " ...";
          } else { $message = BC($message); }

from Post.pl. I am trying to reply to a post where $message is quite long and the substr happens to cut the HTML off in the middle of a &nbsp;. As a result the XHTML is not well-formed. I have replaced those lines with

Quoted Text

                        $message = BC($message);

One thing I noticed is that the offending line did not even appear in the final XHTML, which is somewhat worrying.

Quoted from silas_the_monk

PM.pl and PM.lng
I have two linux installations: a production one and a test one. To get files off this web-site and onto my two different systems, involves the files going through through quite different file systems. So as it happens these files got changed to "pm.pl" and "pm.lng" during my test install but not my production install. So yes again not a big issue for me. However the only way I can see that this could be happening is if your source code is held on a windows system (where capitalization is not respected) and that these files are in lower case on that storage.

Actually I cannot think what caused this except that ut was related to which filesystems the files passed through. (USB memory stick as opposed to ftp etc.)

"I noticed the experimental comment in the admin Center, although the XHTML icon at the bottom of this forum's page suggests otherwise".
No, the XHTML badge in the footer promise XHTML validation, which the default installation does. The XHTML Content type is different. Read the information provided by the link. It reduces backwards compatibility and provides no real benefit.

"USB memory stick as opposed to ftp etc." they're not filesystems. They're not even both the same medium. One is storage, which is filesystem indifferent, can be formatted in any filesystem and FTP is a protocol, not a filesystem. Also, none of that would have an effect on the outputted file. If a filesystem changed the data contained within it's files, it's failed.

You'll have to be patient for Justin's response I think, he's a very busy dude.