yawr
yet another webcomic reader 

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  [16.08.10] Last Post
Hi, just dropping in to let you know there probably won't be any more updates until I rewrite yawr completely in the language I am currently creating a compiler for.
Features planned: proper GUI, generic site analysis, less memory rape.
In the mean.."time", this is where I get off.
:adjusts tie:

  [08.11.09] Wow. Now there's a long time.
I think YAWR has settled into a kind of uncomfortable stability - the code has grown so dense any significant improvements would first require rewriting the UI (and probably porting to D2), and that won't happen until there are more GUI toolkits for D2, and that won't happen until D2 is stable, which won't be until next year.
In the meantime, I'm committing a few changes that should further aid the ailing GC and improve stability somewhat. Our current state is 536 supported, which is pretty decent in my book.
As always, email or post in the forums if you need a specific comic (or a feature) supported.

  [24.10.08] Long time no see
1.0.8 is out. Not many changes to the previous version. It should run a bit more stable and smooth now. By the way, the download page indicates a few people use this tool, but nobody gives me any feedback. Remember, if you want support for a specific comic, or several, or some plugin or feature is broken, don't just sit there and wait for the next version. Drop me a line.

  [29.04.08] Changes, changes
Nevermind the previous post.
I switched YAWR over to storing plugins in folders. Example: "plugins/sinfest/plugin.txt, plugins/sinfest/data". The data file is zlib compressed separately.
To distribute a plugin, just zip up the folder and unpack it at the target.
This removes completely pointless complexity from the plugin storage system.
Old-style zip files and single .re are still supported for reading.
Furthermore, a while back one of my friends had an idea that could simply be described as brilliant.
Autoplug works for about half the comics out there. So why not simply take a public list of webcomics, and automatically have autoplug .. plug those that work?
The result is the current number of 421 supported comics in SVN. I could have autogenerated more, but there's too many broken as it is.
In case this has been missed before, if you want any specific comic(s) supported, just drop me a line.

  [28.04.08] Wow .. it's been a while.
Finally utterly disgusted as I am with the sheer moronicness of D's implementation of ZIP, I decided it's time to switch to a homegrown alternative.
And if I'm not constrained by zip anymore, I might as well switch to .tar.bz2, which is conceptually cleaner as well as easier to write.
There's only one problem - all existing plugins, .zip based as they are, will fail to work on the new version.
I might provide a self-contained conversion tool if there's significant demand for it (hah - like anybody is reading these), but apart from that, all current plugins will cease to work on this new implementation.
I need to know if this is a problem for anybody. If it is, please contact me under my SourceForge mail address. Thanks in advance.

  [06.02.08] I just completely changed the user interface.
Gone is the treeview .. it was mostly useless anyway. Instead, it has been replaced with a small toolbox-type thingie that contains buttons for "skip 100/10/1", update, remove, and opening the traditional strip list.
[edit] removed the skip buttons, they were Ugly and Pointless. Sorry.
This thingie can also be docked at the top of the comic list so as to not get in the way.
I also fixed one or the other bug along the way, and probably introduced some new ones :)
Autoplug is really coming along nicely; it can even detect the most common types of titles by now! That means you only need regular expressions in few cases.
Nutterscript has also been rewritten to be easier to parse and extend, as well as use.
I'll release a new version once I get some nasty compiler bugs sorted out. I'm trying to time this so as to coincide with 256 plugins :)
That's it for now. Have fun!

  [26.11.07] 1.0.5 and a couple of changes
I just released YAWR 1.0.5, sporting 205 plugins.
The addition of more than a hundred plugins in the space of two months, constituting a tremendous speed-up, is primarily due to the creation of Autoplug.
Autoplug is a small tool that is included with YAWR; the code for it is officially the ugliest source file in YAWR.
Don't look at it.
Anyway, the improvement is not so much that autoplug makes the creation of plugins easier, though it does do that.
The primary change is less repetitive RegEx. As a result, creating a plugin is now actually fun :) Try it out!
In most cases, you will only need to provide a single regex, to extract the page title.
The other changes in this release come down to internal clean-up and bugfixes (for instance, the console handling was sanitized).
.. Oh, and the download bars are colored a bit differently now :)
Have fun with it!

  [15.09.07] One fucking hundred fucking plugins!
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee [...] eeeee :pant: -eeeeee :wheeze: -eeeeee!!
One hundred plugins! Now we're getting somewhere.
With the 100th plugin, Fortune's Fools, comes a change that is somewhat .. controversial. You see, Fortune's Fools lives on Comicgenesis.
Some of you might know that Comic Genesis prevents hotlinking, which normally prevents YAWR from working.
So with this comic, I added Referrer support. This means that plugins can now bypass simple hotlinking prevention.
I urge anybody who is looking to write yawr plugins (yeah right) to only use that capability for sites whose authors don't have a problem with hotlinking.
And _please_, don't use it on sites who are likely to sue me. :)
Meanwhile, unless I find any more uber-critical bugs, the current SVN version will become yawr2v1 when I push a windows release later tonight.
Sorry for the long delays. Look forward to it!

  [10.09.07] Big changes are coming to deadworld ..
While idly musing random stuffs, I came upon an important realization - one of the worst things to happen to an opensource project can be nearing completion, especially if the project is for personal use.
To sum it up, the reason for the recent lack of activity was primarily that, well, yawr worked for me :)
However, being slightly pissed at myself for caring so little, a few weeks back I spontaneously decided to continue working on it after all, leading to the creation of the current SVN version of yawr (tentatively available on here, though keep in mind the link is .. unstable).
Changes in this version include:

• A separation of active/available plugins, the difference being that "available" comics don't get updated automatically
  
• Simplification of the regex format, as well as further expansion of nutterscript
  
• Lots of crash fixes, as well as improvements to the download code (we support persistent connections now!)
  
• A backwards-incompatible change to the storage format, replacing the "read/unread" page flag with a per-comic "current page" value
  

Maybe the most important change for plugin authors, however, is that plugins that are in "available" mode are not stored in the storage.dat.zip, but in a separate zip file per plugin in the plugins folder. This allows plugin authors to easily distribute .re files with the associated data files in a simple and straightforward manner.
I'm currently in the process of getting some people's feedback on this version (if you have any, post them in the forum!), but barring that, this version is going to become yawr2!
Happy reading :)

  [20.05.07] RC7! Also, we got a wiki!
We got a Wiki!
Now, some of the more perceptive among you may ask yourselves, what does a project with practically no users need a wiki for?
Well, regarding that question ... um ... actually .. I'll get back to you, mkay?
In the meantime, here's RC7, the last release before a proper 1.0!
There's only one feature left to implement, and that's staged plug-ins. Once that is implemented, I'll release version 1.0. Look forward to it!

  [03.05.07] RC6!
Just pushed RC6. Amongst some minor crash fixes, it also allows you to just type a part of the name of a comic and have it light up immediately (or press Return to cycle through all matched comics).
INNIT NEAT :D

  [02.05.07] A 1337 h4xx0r is me!
I just quadrupled the serialization speed, significantly reducing the time it takes for the program to exit. Paradoxically, I achieved this by performing a computation twice instead of once. Intriguing result. Also, there is happiness.
A comparison.

  [30.04.07] Order is restored!
There's more plugins in SVN than in Release. Good triumphs once again!

  [30.04.07] I am a nutcase!
Because seriously, how often does it happen that somebody creates a scripting language just for the purpose of supporting one comic?
...
I call it Nutterscript! :D
Oh by the way, The Regex Coach is extremely useful for debugging regex scripts. :tries desperately to ignore the fact that he's the only one writing plugins:

  [26.04.07] Anecdote of the day
Kara, Kali and the Wind is probably the most absurd comic I ever added support for .. seeing as it's only nine strips long.
In my defense, the "Last" link is broken so I didn't notice .. and now I don't have the heart to remove it.
Ah well ~ at least I found an improvement to regex handling along the way. ^^

  [26.04.07] RC5 is out! :D
Built with DMD no less! Also, more stable - it only crashes now when there is a problem in the main thread.
There's still one or two crashes I haven't identified the source of, including one I believe to be caused by minimizing the window during a redraw :shrugs:
But it should work acceptably well under normal conditions. Have fun!
Oh, and until I ported the remaining DLLs over, this version will continue to be listed under SVN.

  [23.04.07] Why are there suddenly less plugins in SVN than in the release?
That's because I'm switching the whole program over to No DLLs, and moving all the DLL plugins into the main program or rewriting them as regular expressions.
From the time I put them in, DLL plugins have been nothing but trouble and hindering compatibility. With this change done, YAWR will work exactly the same on Linux and Windows, as well as DMD and GDC, which is a tremenduous improvement.
Wheee ~ !

  [12.04.07] Update!
yawr2-1.0RC4 is now available for download. Along with new supported comics, it contains a preliminary fix for the data corruption bug. Also, the "mysterious crash bug" is close to finally being solved!

  [20.03.07] Update!
1.0 RC3! They grow up so fast ... :weeps:
Get it while it's fresh!

   Update!
During the last weeks, I have rewritten YAWR in the D Programming language, which is neat. :D
After about five minutes counting from :now:, this new version will be in SVN to try out.
So instead of myriads of library dependencies, it's now down to four very common ones: SDL, SDL_ttf, freetype and libgd.
Oh, and the compiler dependency. Ah well. :goes svn commit:

   Old news ...
If you want to try out YAWR, please build a working copy from cvs. Thanks.
Use plugins.cfg in the main directory to decide what plugins you want to load. The format of this file is prone to sudden and violent changes on update, so beware.
A screenshot is now available here.

 Release version: Supported plugins: 462

SVN version: Supported plugins: 535

By the way, this project is hosted by the nice Peoples @SourceForge (click here!)