#so yes this is to say i actually am a (group of several) watcher(s)

[bad-traffic-smp-ideas]

I am personal friends with the admin of @bad-witchcraft-smp-ideas and neither of us are beating the "actually part of the series" allegations (see here and here) so we've decided that there are:

[ID: a discord screenshot saying "Two types of "bad ideas" users / Denier / Acceptor" across three lines. End ID]

[thewatchau]

The Origin of “Watcher Licenses”

A while back on discord, @autumnleafauthor asked about Watcher identification. After thinking about it for a while, I eventually settled on a concept that I jokingly called a “fantasy drivers license, saying:

“...each Watcher also carries a letter of certification with a bunch of stamps and signatures that confirm their membership with The Watch and a magical record of the owner's face. The Watch keeps records of their members, so these letters can be replaced if lost, but it's a bit of a hassle."

Fast forward several months, and while I was brainstorming various situations or stories that might arise in The Watch, I stumbled upon an origin story for why these certificates were implemented in the first place. 

Disclaimer: Major TW for an attempted massacre/implied murder-suicide. Someone once said that “safety regulations are written in blood,” and despite the fantasy setting, the same holds true in this case. I didn’t realize how much this resembles a mass shooting (all-too-familiar for Americans) until after I actually wrote it all down. I was very vague, but the description of the attack is under the cut just in case. 

___***___***___***___

In the early days of The Watch, most people were far more worried about protecting the garrisons and outposts from agents of The Enemy than ordinary citizens. Somehow, in the midst of planning for constant patrols, guard towers, spells detecting The Enemy’s magic, and other such security measures, it didn’t occur to anyone that it was shockingly easy for an ordinary person to just wander into a garrison or outpost without being noticed. 

In fact, this was encouraged. Both garrisons and many of the outposts were making extra revenue to sustain The Watch through passing non-Watchers who spent their coin in the workshops and taverns outside of the main building(s). Groups of citizens would regularly volunteer their time at an outpost or garrison for a day or two. Family visits to full-time Watchers were extremely common. 

Moreover, it was incredibly difficult to tell the difference between a Watcher and non-Watcher. The Watch provided its members with a green cloak, yes, but the design was easily copied and Watchers were not obligated to wear them. There are thousands of Watchers in Duilintinn, and thanks to the constant travel in and out of the garrisons and outposts, there’s no way to recognize whether that group of three heavily armed, angry looking fighters arriving at 2 am was a threat, or simply one of the returning night patrols.

And one night, at Fort Conchúr, that is exactly what happened. 

Unlike Fort Stiofán, the living quarters in Fort Conchúr are located outside of the central keep, featuring hostel-like rooms with several bunks that anyone could just fall into as needed. As a result, the doors to these rooms were unlocked. They were guarded, of course, but again, the living quarters in Fort Conchúr are not assigned; you just show up and find an empty bed. Assuming the group of strangers were fellow Watchers heading to bed, the guard on duty let them pass without a second glance. 

The good news was that they didn’t get far. Fort Conchúr’s living quarters are set up like this to accommodate the constant activity of Watchers working at all hours of the day, so many of the Watchers inside were still wide awake. Some hadn’t even removed their armor yet. Five Watchers were severely injured before all three attackers were killed or incapacitated. 

Thankfully, all five injured Watchers eventually recovered from their injuries. The two attackers who survived the initial response by the surprised Watchers both resisted medical care and died soon afterwards, refusing to explain their actions. 

An extremely in-depth investigation proved without a shadow of a doubt that  the detection spells around Fort Conchúr had not failed, and that these people were not suffering from the Influence Curse or any other form of The Enemy’s magic. To this day, we don’t know for certain why the attack happened. One of the most common theories is that they sympathized with The Enemy out of hatred for or disillusionment over the kingdom, but for all we know, they could have been completely unrelated to the war. 

In the aftermath, The Watch implemented a system of documentation that included a certificate of membership that Watchers carried with them at all times. The garrisons and outposts are still largely open to the public, but Watchers have to show this document to a guard at the doors before being allowed to enter areas exclusive to The Watch. It’s not a perfect system, but the certificates are complex enough that it would be a lot harder for someone to walk in unnoticed.

[hydrus]

Version 355

windows

zip

exe

os x

app

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a good week catching up on small jobs.

duplicates

I added a 'trash file' button to the duplicate filter hover window, tucked up in a new row with the cog button so they fit on thinner windows. If both potential files are worth deleting, hitting this is an easy way to dismiss them immediately. I also fixed some over-aggressive potential pairs removal from last week's alternates update. Users with many alternates may have lost some valid intra-alternate-group potential pairs, which I expect to add back in once this whole overhaul is complete.

The duplicate action buttons (and several others in the media viewer) are now aware of the shortcuts that can do their actions, and they will display these shortcuts in their tooltips! I am quite pleased with how this turned out, and as I slowly work on unifying program shortcuts to the new system, I hope to have this in more places.

Users in advanced mode get a new jpeg quality estimator comparison on the duplicate filter panel--when two jpegs appear to have fairly different quality, you will get a new 'A vs B' statement about it. This estimator is a bit hacked together, not totally precise, so I would be interested in your overall feedback. I expect to revisit it and add some options before I enable it for all users. Advanced mode users also get duplicate merge options back for 'alternates'.

the rest

I wrote a simple clipboard watcher for URL imports! Check it under network->downloaders. You can watch for 'watchable' URLs like imageboard threads and other 'recognised' URLs like booru pages. It checks for new text every second, adds URLs to pages just like a drag-and-drop event (i.e. to currently selected page if it is valid, otherwise the left-most valid page, otherwise making a new page), and can handle newline-separated lists of URLs. It is off by default.

Note that the client isn't happy about making new pages while it is minimised (their layout messes up), so if you clipboard-watch a bunch of URLs and it needs to make a watcher page for them, I have it set now so they will queue up until it is restored. If you leave your client minimised and want to send it URLs, I recommend you have a page set up for clipboard-watched (or Client API-added) URLs to land on until I can improve this.

The file viewing statistics system gets a pass this week--preview and media views now have minimum view times before they are counted, and they also cap to maximum values (so leaving a preview view up won't accidentally add a heap of time like 1 day 3 hours to your total viewtime. It is also now off by default for the duplicates filter. Check the new settings under options->file viewing statistics. If you got hit by some bad numbers before due to some accidental fast or prolonged views, check the new command under database->file viewing statistics->cull file viewing..., which will attempt to compensate for any bad values based on the new min/max caps. A yes/no dialog explains what it does.

There are several new shortcuts to help navigate the manage tags dialog, all under the 'main_gui' shortcut set: Four are called 'show_and_focus_manage_tags_XXX' and let you move keyboard focus to the various 'suggested' tag columns (recent/favourites/file lookup/related). Combined with 'set_search_focus', default Ctrl+S, which jumps you back to the tag autocomplete input, you should now be able to enter suggested tags completely without the mouse. Furthermore the new 'focus_media_window' will move focus back to the media viewer canvas if the manage tags window is launched from one (say for archiving or rating by shortcut without having to close manage tags).

You can now quick-enter 'namespace:' in a search page's autocomplete tag input to get the special (and efficient) 'namespace:*anything*' search predicate.

I fixed the popup-error problems that could come up when fading 'collected' thumbs! I apologise for the inconvenience here and have added some weekly pre-build tests to catch simple problems with collected thumbs in future.

full list

duplicates:

retuned the new alternate and false positive setting code to be less aggressive about removing potential pairs. users with alternate groups who updated to 354 may have lost some intra-alternate potential pairs, which I expect to fill back in once the potential pairs system is updated

the duplicate filter center-right hover window now has a trash button, which is moved to its own row with the cog icon where they will fit on thinner windows better

users who are in advanced mode now have access to duplicate merge options for 'alternates' again--but be careful with this, it is advanced. if you had merge options for alternates set up before, your old options _should_ return, but make sure to check it

if you are in advanced mode, the duplicate filter can now show an experimental jpeg quality comparison statement. if this works out, I will add custom scores and improve this otherwise based on feedback , so comments would be appreciated

.

client api:

the client api has a new 'manage pages' permission!

/manage_pages/get_pages now fetches a structure of the current page session! there's some help for it

in future, I expect to add a 'select page' command and get/remove/highlight URL(s) for downloader pages, and reveal the unique page identifier for better targeting here and for add_url commands

client api is now version 7

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the rest:

fixed a stupid issue related to drawing collection thumbnails that was causing a lot of errors. I apologise for the inconvenience and have added pre-build tests to catch these simple mistakes in future

added a clipboard url watcher! there are two options now under network->downloaders--one for watcher urls, and one for all other _recognised_ urls (i.e. post and gallery urls, and file urls that have matching url classes). it checks every second, sends urls to pages according to the same rules as a drag and drop event, and will handle newline-separated lists of urls

when the client is minimised and needs to create a new downloader page because of an 'add url' command through this new clipboard watcher or the client api, it will now queue up the url and its page creation for when the client is next restored (page creation while minimized causes layout bugs). it returns an appropriate result text to the client api in this case

added four 'show_and_focus_manage_tags_XXX' shortcuts to the 'main_gui' shortcut set that let you select and focus the four possible suggested tags panels on the manage tags dialog. these are slightly special focus events that do some 'first tag selection' work as well and should let you make the whole process keyboard-only

added a 'focus_media_viewer' shortcut to the 'main_gui' shortcut set that focuses the media viewer from a media viewer's manage tags window

file viewing statistics gets an update: it now has its own options page where you can set min/max for preview and media viewing times. the global turn on/off control is moved from database menu to this page, as is a new control for enabling it on the duplicate filter (where you will be flicking back and forth and perhaps do not want lots of views recorded). duplicate filter file stats now default to disabled

added a new command to database->file viewing statistics that will cull your current stats based on the new min/max values to compensate for previous accidental '3day 4hour' preview view that snuck in. a yes/no dialog explains how it works before it goes

wrote a 'mixin' class to let my buttons automatically note current shortcut mapping information to the bottom of button tooltips

the duplicate commands and a variety of other media viewer buttons that work in the new shortcut system now report their current shortcuts in their tooltips!

quick-entering 'namespace:' in a search page's tag autocomplete input will now automatically swap in the special 'namespace:*anything*' predicate

cleaned up code around setting a custom temp_dir through the "temp_dir" command, and made it test the given path is indeed a directory and writable-to. if not, the program dumps out with an error popup

the client and server now similarly test that the directory db is a dir and writable-to

rearranged some critical boot error handling code and made the client's boot error handling throw up some ui

fixed the client's repairdb function when needing to regen autocomplete caches

autocomplete regen now publishes status updates to the splash screen

fixed the client's repairdb to wait correctly for the ui in case the user wants to bail before repair

the client's repair db now repairs the new local_tags_cache table if missing

fixed an issue with showing the manage logins panel when the domain had some unusual cookie expiry numbers

to reduce initial load gui-event crunch (which affects some systems' layout reliability), initial session load now happens after a 0.5s delay

cleaned up some image load error handling

when FFMPEG version information cannot be understood in help->about, a popup note appears and debug information is printed to the log

the advanced content update panel now puts up a 'working...' dialog while it processed a job

in the client

all 4XX and 5XX network exceptions' error texts are now prepended with the actual status code

extended the hover window debug report mode

improved some misc temp and permission testing code

improved some misc testing code

next week

It is E3 next week, so I am going to take my shitposting vacation week as usual. 356 will therefore be on the 19th. I would like to convert same/worse/better duplicate relationships to the new duplicates system, as I recently did for alternates and false positives. Otherwise I will do a bit of code cleaning.