Fossil Forum
Post: New forum features (and where to go next)
Those watching trunk may have noticed that fossil's forum recently got two new features, one of them long-requested:
- File attachments for users with the new "B" permission. These work just like attachments to wiki pages, tech notes, and tickets.
- An optional per-thread status tag and the ability to filter the forum list on threads with that tag. The list of statuses is a per-repo setting which syncs with the other project-level config state.
These were both inspired by the recent influx of LLM-assisted/generated bug reports being sent to the SQLite bugs forum and more steps towards simplifying automated forum posting are planned. The new features are documented in what are currently the bottom-most sections of .
The UI/UX for these is currently a bit clunky, and that's my fault - the code long-since in place to handle much of this is built around a traditional HTML form model, not an AJAX-style form, so we inherit some limitations:
- Attachments cannot be added until a post is saved.
- Attachments must be added one at a time, and each goes separately into the moderation pool. Approving or rejecting a forum post also approves/rejects any moderation-pending attachments on that post (there's a race condition there, but let's ignore that for the moment).
- Changing the status of a thread should not require a full page reload.
How to overcome these limitations is clear - "ajaxify" the underlying pieces so that we can create richer input forms and do things like save a post and attach files in the same step, as well as support pasting a screenshot of an attachment. Part of that work is already in /wikiedit and can be reused here, but there's still much new code yet to write.
Suggestions and/or code for the UI/UX of these pending changes are welcomed.
Hi. Can you describe if and how these new features apply to the various "offical" fora? (sqlite, pikchr, althttpd, etc...)
Can you describe if and how these new features apply to the various "offical" fora? (sqlite, pikchr, althttpd, etc...)
The desire for these options only came about recently and we've not yet discussed how/whether they might eventually be used in this ecosystem's other forums.
So far the status is only used in the new SQLite bugs forum for keeping track of which have been addressed. It only shows up if the repo enables the new forum-statuses setting and the status of the top-most post in a thread may be changed by admins, moderators, and the owner of that post (the idea being that OPs could flag their threads as "resolved", but we may end up restricting it to admins and moderators).
Attachments are enabled for admins in all forums because that feature is built that way, but we've no current plans to apply the new "B" permission to non-admins nor do the admins in this ecosystem have any pressing need to use them. That's subject to change pending hypothetical future discussions.