Need some help with exceptions please....

[ProxoDent]

(Oct. 15, 2009 03:46 AM)whenever Wrote:  Good Job!

Sarcasm?

(Oct. 15, 2009 03:46 AM)whenever Wrote:  Do the below urls interfere with each other?

Code:

[^/]++mail.live.com/mail/*InBox
[^/]++.mail.live.com/mail

Not in the sense that it breaks anything. At first glance, it might appear that:

Code:

[^/]++.mail.live.com/mail

would override:

Code:

[^/]++mail.live.com/mail/*InBox

in all circumstances. It does not, however. Without getting into details, the two exceptions share the load. Each exception does what I intended it to do per the comments I provided (as borne out by checking what Proxomitron is doing [http://local.ptron/.pinfo/lists/Exceptions-U]). However, when clicking on links in the Live.com mail module that fall outside the scope of the issues that the exceptions were designed to fix, then:

Code:

[^/]++.mail.live.com/mail

overrides (in most cases):

Code:

[^/]++mail.live.com/mail/*InBox

When I restrict '[^/]++.mail.live.com/mail' by changing it to:

Code:

[^/]++.mail.live.com/mail&(^[^/]++mail.live.com/mail/*InBox)

each act on the links I intended (as before), but on links outside that scope, the roles are reversed and:

Code:

[^/]++mail.live.com/mail/*InBox

gets the lions share of hits. I decided that this might be the better solution (again, either way works), and I have added it in along with some other changes I made (see next post).

I only suppose the behavior is related to how I have the following URL set up:

Code:

[^/]++.live.com/
    &(^([^/]++mail.live.com/mail)|
    ([^/]++.live.com/options/themes)|
    help.live.com/(help|/help|resources|
    thinservice)|calendar.live.com/calendar)
    $SET(0=a_noprint.a_rdlink.a_cookie.)

By the way, it would work, I guess, to keep only:

Code:

[^/]++.mail.live.com/mail

and delete the other one. However, I opted for two separate exceptions so I could disable them independently of each other. Of course, disabling '[^/]++.mail.live.com/mail' prevents Help from functioning, but that is fine depending on what you need.

Sorry for being so obtuse in the description of the behavior, but I was too lazy to better describe it. Which brings me to your question:

(Oct. 15, 2009 03:46 AM)whenever Wrote:  BTW, may I ask how many hours you have spent on the test?

Not sure how long.

I worked on it exclusively for several hours, but now it's just a matter of finding things as I go along. My goal really isn't to fix the site so much as it is to use the opportunity to figure out some things about how Proxo works. I'm decent at Python, Perl, HTML, PHP, etc., but staring at these long a** matching code strings and not having the luxuries of advanced, well-organized coding tools and great documentation is putting me in my place. I just added the Sidki config files as a project to Eclipse, so that helps keep things somewhat organized, using Mercurial as version control. It won't matter in a couple of days when I get burned out and move on anyway.

This exercise has really made me question whether I should continue using Proxomitron. I really like it and have used it for quite a while (just never dug that deeply into Sidki's config), but I am ambivalent. On the one hand, I'd like to continue to support Proxo and Sidki, but does my support show appreciation, or does it just prolong the torture of the few individuals that try to maintain a project that should, realistically, be maintained by hundreds of developers? I ask that only in half jest.