Alex Günsche · November 24, 2006
You might wonder how you got from contutto.com to this site.
This is because I have moved all software and documentation as well as nearly all blog posts and comments to zirona.com and now have a redirection to this very site. The reason for this is that I started to use Contutto as a development platform for my WordPress related work, while Contutto is actually only a platform for dynamic PDF applications. Of course, the ContuttoPDF and the Advanced Search plugins would fit there, but there also are other plugins, and I don’t want to host them on two different locations.
Zirona is the base for all Open Source related work projects. This is why I decided to make a cut and from now have all past and future software, downloads, documentation and discussion at this site. I hope you understand this and enjoy being here. If you encounter 404 errors or other quirks or inconveniences, please drop a comment here. I’m thankful for any hint.
0
Wissenswertes, Zirona-News, Miscellaneous, Software
Alex Günsche · November 2, 2006
“Headache with Pictures” is a small, but usefull plugin for your dashboard: It offers an area to quickly write down things you’ve got on your mind. This can be things to blog about or your shopping list. (The title is an allusion to Futurama.)
If you blog with multiple persons, you can leave a message for the others. In the plugin file, you can determine, what capabilities a user must have to read the notes, and what capabilities he must have to write/modify them. By default, Authors and higher can write, and every registered user can read.
The idea for this plugin came from tboggi on the German WP forums. To use it, download it, unpack it, put it in your plugin directory, activate it. Then go to your dashboard page and enjoy.
18
Miscellaneous, Software
Alex Günsche · October 28, 2006
Today, WordPress 2.0.5. has been released, mainly as bugfix release. The plugins developed by Contutto, ContuttoPDF and AdvancedSearch, work perfectly with the new version, so no need to worry about incompatibility. Let’s see how that will be with WP 2.1. 
0
Miscellaneous, Software
Alex Günsche · October 24, 2006
The Advanced Search plugin is featured on today’s WP podcast. 
Thanks to Charles and the WP podcast people for covering us.
0
Miscellaneous, Software
Alex Günsche · October 19, 2006
A new version of the Advanced Search is available. The one and only new feature is search term highlighting (multicolor!). I decided to call this version
The “Frankie” release
This is because I was urged and finally convinced by Frankie (and others) from the German WordPress forums that an Advanced Search doesn’t deserve its name without fancy highlighting.
I was opposed to this, and I’m still sceptic; simply because all them Regular Expressions eat quite some CPU bandwidth, which can result in a significant CPU impact at very large sites (or lame servers ).
However, on smaller sites as well as with short results lists and few search terms, it’s sweet eyecandy. That’s why this feature is on by default, while you can easily deactivate it at the beginning of the plugin file. Leaving highlighting on will definitely not break anything, in the worst case a term just won’t be highlighted. This can happen due to the complex technology of the MySQL FULLTEXT search.
Ok, actually there is another change: We now have a Spanish translation of the Search form as well as the hints popup (!), thanks to Trebol-A. And in order to tidy up the plugin’s base directory, I put all translations into the subdirectory l10n.
The plugin is as always available from its home page. Have fun with the new version and let me know how you like it. Also, please help out with translations, and report bugs as well as improvement ideas! 
8
Miscellaneous, Software
Alex Günsche · October 13, 2006
First of all, I want to thank all the people who installed and tested the Advanced Search plugin and of course also those who have written about it and who are using it. I had a some hundred downloads in a single week! I hope you all enjoy the Advanced Search.
Now for the news: A new version of the plugin is available. The interface has been improved, and there are some minor bug fixes. Upgrading is easy. However this release is not security-related, so if you’re happy with v0.1, you can keep it.
Changelog for version 0.2
- Only one search field instead of three. This allows a more flexible search with boolean operators. An explanatory “help” popup is offered.
- In the simple searchform and in the sidebar, the correct search term is shown instead of “advanced”.
- Categories are displayed hierarchically now. Subcategories are toggled via JavaScript. The display of categories can be tuned, similar to the WP template tag
list_cats (with fewer options, though). Categories can be excluded, empty categories can be shown or hidden, and sorting can be done by name or ID, ascending or descending.
- If there is only one author or category, the respective section is not shown. (This should have worked with 0.1 already, but it didn’t, due to a bug.)
- When all categories are unselected, it acts like if all are selected. Same with authors.
- XHTML has been improved to validate as XHTML 1.1 and to reflect the semantic structure better. This however makes it a good idea to style the form with CSS. The plugin package therefore contains a CSS sample
ctas.css to be attached to your template’s style.css (you can of course modify it to fit your taste).
- French translation for the Advanced Search form is now included, thanks to Luc Saint-Elie. (Slightly foozled by me, for the new version.) Other translations are highly welcome.
The new version is available from the also revised plugin’s page. If you want to be notified on future releases, you can subcribe to our new notification service.
Have fun with the new version!
0
Miscellaneous, Software
Alex Günsche · October 12, 2006
Contutto has now an update service where everybody can subscribe who wants to receive a short message upon new software versions.
Your e-mail address will be kept confidential, it will not used but for the update service, and it will not be given to third parties.
0
Miscellaneous, Software
Alex Günsche · October 7, 2006
Contutto releases the first version of the ContuttoAdvancedSearch plugin for WordPress. Not only does this plugin provide a large set of extended search options, but it also uses a powerful search method: MySQL’s fulltext search.
You’ll find downloads and usage instructions on the plugin’s page. have fun with the Advanced Search! Feedback and improvements are always highly welcome.
0
Miscellaneous, Software
Alex Günsche · September 30, 2006
The Contutto project releases the first version of the ContuttoMSfonts package, which includes the Microsoft TrueType Corefonts, the ttf2pt1 utility and some scripts to include the Corefonts with the ContuttoPDF plugin. This means, you can now include the most widely used fonts into your PDFs. More info on the ContuttoMSfonts Howto page.
Special thanks to all parties who made this possible: Microsoft, the ttf2pt1 project, the Freetype project and the zlib project!
0
Miscellaneous, Software
Alex Günsche · September 30, 2006
A new version of the ContuttoPDF plugin is available. It contains some improvements on the PDF generation in the plugin code as well as in the default theme.
Changes for version 0.3
- Compatibility check for webserver/PHP configuration, accessible via WP’s Plugins page
- Fallback charset conversion with
mb_convert_encoding() *
- Cleaner plugin directory, DOMPDF moved into subdirectory
- Import module for Microsoft TrueType Corefonts (obtainable via a separate package)
- post and comment content are preformatted like screen output with WP’s
wpautop()
- Charset information
meta tag added to default template *
* While I was working on a charset conversion with mb_convert_encoding(), I got a friendly e-mail from Jocelyn, who has found out that defining the the charset via a http-equiv makes DOMPDF display accented characters correctly with a UTF-8 charset. I think this is very good news for international users of the ContuttoPDF plugin, and it has been inserted into the default template. Many thanks to Jocelyn. The (now fallback) mb_convert_encoding() solution is nonetheless included, but deactivated by default.
The new version of the plugin is available from the (also slightly revised) ContuttoPDF Howto page.
5
Miscellaneous, Software
