Contemplate Formulator

1.0b

27 May 2003
Initial release. No known issues.

1.0

29 Aug 2003
The Start page now includes a delete option for removing definitions from your page definitions file.

The Formulator now correctly reads page definitions from their default location if you do not specify a page definitions file in your Contemplate preferences file, or if you do not use a preferences file. Previously, the Formulator would not show a list of existing pages at the Choose step if you did not specify a location for the page definitions file.

The get_setting function now contains an extra line to ensure that Contemplate will evaluate a setting of "0" in the preferences file as false in every language. The ASP version was evaluating "0" as true, resulting in some preference settings not taking effect.

1.0.1

30 Oct 2003
The PHP and Perl versions of the Formulator were timing out on the Fill step when form tags in the content files contained some special characters, such as the parenthesis that comprise a part of a reference to a JavaScript function. This behavior is fixed.

If you're using Apache's mod_rewrite or other software to rewrite dynamic URLs, you no longer need to use "assembled" as the string that triggers the rewrite. If you wish to use a different string, you can open each of the server-side scripts included with your version of Contemplate, look for the $URL_rewriting_flag variable definition, and change it in the script. (This setting is not available in the preferences file because the scripts need it in order to read the preferences file.)

1.0.2

21 Nov 2003
The Formulator now supports the use of content files in other directories besides the content directory. When you store your content in other directories, and list those directories in the "read files from" setting of preferences.ini, the Formulator will display paths relative to the site root in the fill menus; otherwise, it will just display paths relative to the content directory as before.

By default, Contemplate will read files in all the subfolders of the content and templates folders and the additional folders you specify in the read files from setting. However, you can now disable this recursiveness by adding a "read files recursively" setting to your preferences file and setting it to 0. This can be useful if, for example, your content folder contains a subfolder of media files that you don't wish the Formulator to try processing. If you use this setting, you can still direct Contemplate to read from specific subfolders by adding those subfolders to your "read files from" setting.

The $URL_rewrite_flag variable is now properly declared as a global in PHP functions. This problem primarily affected the Flattener and only affected the PHP version of Contemplate.

Several script errors that occurred when using the ASP version of the Formulator with passthru tags have been corrected.

1.0.3

18 May 2004
If you click a template or page link on the Choose page of the Formulator, the template or page will open in a new window rather than in the main frame, preserving Formulator workflow in the main window.

The Organize page now updates the textarea in a way that's compatible with the current version of Safari.

1.0.4

06 Aug 2004
The primary purpose of this release is to improve security. The Flattener and Formulator scripts no longer allow users to override your Contemplate preferences by passing values in through the query string. Since these are the two scripts that can write files, this change prevents a malicious user from manipulating these scripts to overwrite your content files.

We've also corrected a bug that prevented the content inspector links on the Fill page (indicated by the magnifying glass icon) from loading the correct URL. Thanks to Nicolas Mongeot for discovering and diagnosing this problem.

1.1.0

10 Dec 2004
Since the new page name splitting option in the Assembler can dramatically reduce the number of arguments in your page definitions, the Formulator now checks to see if any embed tags need arguments when you choose a page for creation or editing. If a page definition requires nothing but a template setting, the Formulator will skip the Fill step and take you directly to the Preview step.

The PHP versions of the Formulator scripts now run without warning messages if you've lowered your PHP error reporting level to show warnings. All internal variables are properly initialized to enable this change.

Previously, Contemplate did not support dashes in page, field, and form element names. It should now.

The Fill page in the ASP version of the Formulator used to fail with an ASP script error if the "read files from" setting in preferences.ini contained a nonexistent directory. Now the Fill page displays as expected whether the "read files from" directories exist or not.

The Fill page should show both states of any conditional tags if the states contain an embed tag, regardless of the current condition. Otherwise you may not see all embed tags and may not be able to fill them in. This was not working in the ASP version of the Formulator, and it is now.

The problem with the content inspector link that we attempted to fix in the last release was actually working inconsistently across browsers. We believe that it is working consistently now.

1.1.1

19 May 2005
No changes were made to the Formulator in this release.

1.2.0

19 Dec 2005
If you fill a passthru field with a value that contains spaces or other non-URL-safe characters, the Formulator will no longer encode the value on the Fill page.

If you fill a passthru field with a value that contains an apostrophe, the Formulator will no longer display a JavaScript error on the Fill page.

The Formulator doesn't support references to content files stored in your templates folder. However, it will no longer display a JavaScript error on the Fill page if you try to edit a page definition that contains such a reference.

Editing a manually-created page definition that included some empty arguments triggered a JavaScript error and halted the functioning of the Fill page. This has been corrected.

1.2.1

01 Mar 2006
No changes were made to the Formulator in this release.

1.2.2

01 Mar 2007
Contemplate relies on several environment variables to find files on different kinds of servers, and it used to use the "OS" environment variable to decide which additional environment variables it could look for. However, the "OS" environment variable itself is not available on all servers. Contemplate now simply tries a couple different environment variables, and shows error messages if at least one of the required variables is not present.

The Formulator sometimes didn't show an editable field for a passthrough tag when it should have. This has been corrected.

1.2.3

04 Nov 2008
No changes were made to the Formulator in this release.

1.2.4

30 Nov 2009
No changes were made to the Formulator in this release.

1.3.0

1 Dec 2009
No changes were made to the Formulator in this release.