> If I create an entry via the web-interface, the defined encoding of the browser is used.
> If I create an entry via "elog", it is always stored in UTF-8 encoding.
> For the text I can overcome that with HTML encoding, but for attribute values the encoding does not show properly.
> The only solution I found was to convert the whole logbook to UTF-8 encoding:
> 
>  define "charset=UTF-8" in elogd.cfg
>  iconv --from-code=ISO-8859-1 --to-code=UTF-8 elogd.cfg >tmp;mv tmp elogd.cfg
>  iconv --from-code=ISO-8859-1 --to-code=UTF-8 resources/eloglang.german >tmp;mv tmp resources/eloglang.german
> 
> Has anyone any idea why ISO8859-1 does not work for me?
> 
> Or can anyone advice me of an editor similar to NEdit that is capable to display UTF-8? :-)

I just tried it submitting to the Demo logbook:

https://midas.psi.ch/elogs/Linux+Demo/15

using some German Umlauts, and saw that it works fine. "elog" does not do any conversion, just submits the text as is. 
If your text is ISO-8859-1 encoded, it will be submitted as such, and your browser will correctly display it. Have you 
tried removing the "charset=UTF-8" from your elogd.cfg?

Well, having two logbooks in the same subdirectory was initially a planned feature but really never worked. I re-visited this issue and made it working in the current SVN version. So the next release will contain the fix. 

I just ran into an odd bug with conditional attributes: If I add a certain attribute to "Required Attributes", none of the conditionals will work anymore. I have tried to create a small logbook definition that will demonstrate the problem (the original logbook is more complex and uses two sets of conditionals, both of which will be disabled when the bug hits):

; General settings
Menu commands = List, New, Edit, Duplicate, Delete, Reply, Select, Move to, Download, Find, Logout, Help, Config,Admin
List Menu commands = New, Select, Find, Logout, Help, Config, Admin, Import, Download
Date Format = %d/%m/%Y
List conditions = 1
List display = Edit, Type, Created, StatusA, StatusB, Archived, Test Text, Public?

; Attributes
Attributes = Type, Created, StatusA, StatusB, Archived, Test Text, Public?
Required Attributes = Type

; Attribute Types
Type Created = date
Type Archived = date

; Options & Tooltips
Options Type = Type1{0}, Type2{1}
Options StatusA = Status-A-red, Status-A-orange, Status-A
Options StatusB = Status-B-red, Status-B-orange, Status-B
Options Public? = yes,no

; Conditionals
{0}Show Attributes Edit = Type, Created, StatusA, StatusB, Archived, Test Text, Public?
{1}Show Attributes Edit = Type, Created, StatusA, Archived, Test Text, Public?

The above logbook definition works. However, if I replace the Required Attributes = Type with Required Attributes = Type, Public?, the conditionals will no longer work. I can see the difference in the reactions of the browser - with the extra attribute, nothing happens when I change "Type". Without, the browser will spring into action and reload as soon as I change "Type". I've tested this with both Firefox 3.6.13 and Konqueror 4.4.5 on Kubuntu 10.04 as clients. Fortunately, this is not a showstopper for me, as it is not mandatory to have this attribute defined as required, but I find it a weird issue nonetheless.

Cheerio,

Thomas

P.S.: I'm currently running the latest SVN version of elogd on OPenBSD as I ran into the same problem as described in Message 66984. The above problem also happens with the 2.8.1 I was using before. Some feedback: The SVN version compiled and ran without any further intervention on OpenBSD - very nice!

; General settings
Menu commands = List, New, Edit, Duplicate, Delete, Reply, Select, Move to, Download, Find, Logout, Help, Config,Admin
List Menu commands = New, Select, Find, Logout, Help, Config, Admin, Import, Download
Date Format = %d/%m/%Y
List conditions = 1
List display = Edit, Type, Created, StatusA, StatusB, Archived, Test Text, Public?

; Attributes
Attributes = Type, Created, StatusA, StatusB, Archived, Test Text, Public?
Required Attributes = Type

; Attribute Types
Type Created = date
Type Archived = date

; Options & Tooltips
Options Type = Type1{0}, Type2{1}
Options StatusA = Status-A-red, Status-A-orange, Status-A
Options StatusB = Status-B-red, Status-B-orange, Status-B
Options Public? = yes,no

; Conditionals
{0}Show Attributes Edit = Type, Created, StatusA, StatusB, Archived, Test Text, Public?
{1}Show Attributes Edit = Type, Created, StatusA, Archived, Test Text, Public?

Your problem is the "?" in the attribute Public?.  Attributes may only contain ordinary characters. Unfortunately I did not document this so far. Therefore I put some fix in SVN revision 2387 which allows your attribute Public?, but I'm not 100% sure if this works in all places. The safest is just to remove the question mark.

 Thanks Stefan, I'll try that. It's strange, though: At work, we're running 2.7.6 (and have used older versions in the past) and we have several logbooks with each at least one or two attributes with '?' and never had a problem with conditionals. Hence my surprise when this suddenly hit me with 2.8.1+ at home. Removing the '?' would be quite some work, as I'd have to change all logbooks and the associated data (the latter could probably be done with "rpl", I hope). I'll think about it.

I noticed a behavior that might be irritating. 

After attaching/uploading files to an entry and before submitting it, one might press 'Back' or close the browser window.

This in effect cancels the entry and sends into oblivion. HOWEVER the attachments and their thumbnail files remain on the server forever.

Would there be a way to either delete attachments after some time if they don't show up in an entry? Or some other magic trick with the browser? My logbook directories are already full of orphan files that I need to seek and destroy.

Also, any thoughts on automatically cleaning up a logbook directory when the damage is done?

Louis

Well, this is not so easy. When you leave the browser (via 'Back' or just by closing), it has no way to communicate with the elog server. I could put in some JavaScript, but if people switch off JavaScript there is no way. On the other hand it might be simple to write just a little shell script, which goes through all files on the server and checks if the file name occurs in some elog entry. This can probably be done with some combination of "find" and  "grep", but I'm not a shell script expert.

How about this:

Whenever a new file is uploaded, it would first be stored in a temporary directory. When the entry gets submitted, the files would be moved to the logbook directory and the entry edited accordingly.

Any wrongfully stored file would remain in that temp dir. Starting/restarting the daemon would cleanup that directory. Seems like a simpler approach and does not involve scripting the browser.