2003-05-04

Well, it was long in the making, but finally the stable version 3.0.15 of mod_survey is available. It has taken almost a year since I started talking with Mathieu Jan about the feature improvements he wanted to add, and since then many a hundred k of patches has been flying around.

The feature improvements are quite numerous, so rather than trying to recount them here, I suggest you read about them in the changelog. Just to mention one feature I think many users will find useful, there's now internationalization functionality available, currently with complete translations to italian and swedish and with partial translation to french. Another good feature is the much improved installer.

On the more sober side, there was also a new security vulnerability discovered the day before I was going to release this version (a week ago). Functionality solving this has been included in the release though, so all users are encouraged to upgrade. If you find you cannot do so right now, and if you have 3.0.14 (with or without d or e) installed, you could also download a fixed Document.pm and use it to replace the one you have in your Survey directory in the installation folder.

A few words about the future too. This is likely the last "feature improvement" release in the 3.0.x series. There will be more bug-fix releases of course, but all new development will be concentrated on the 3.2.x series which will contain things like conditional branchin (first suggestion, Demetra's answer, a syntax draft, chat log and latest syntax suggestions). The development here is conducted in close cooperation with the YaaCs crew.

2003-03-23

Today, I'm releasing two new versions of Mod_Survey: 3.0.14e and 3.0.15-pre6. The reason is a security vulnerability described in this security advisory. The issue concerns ENV tags, and the problem is that it is theoretically possible to insert arbitrary data into the data repository by exploiting the vulnerability.

3.0.14e contains a fix for this, along with a bug fix for the incorrect numbering of MATRIX column labels in the meta-data export.

3.0.15-pre6 contains the two fixes from 3.0.14e, along with a few other changes: There is a new example showing off advanced layouting of surveys, the italian and swedish translations have been finished (this time for real), and there are minor updates in docs and in installer.

2003-02-28

It is now possible to dowload the next pre-release, 3.0.15-pre5. The main changes in this release are layout updates, several bugfixes in the installer and some updates to make everything work with Apache 2. With some luck this will be the last -pre release, and the next one will be stable 3.0.15.

We're now running 3.0.15-pre5 on this server, so all the examples you see run smoothly (I hope) with the newest code. New for the -pre release is the web root alias which points to a directory containing the newest documentation and similar things. There you can answer the example survey and see an example of how a presentation looks.

2003-02-20

Today the first Mod_Survey IRC meeting was held, and great strides were taken towards the implementation of branching logic. A transcript of the whole meeting is available in the IRC log. There is also a summary of the decisions made during the meeting.

2003-02-18

ANNOUNCEMENT: The first ever Mod_Survey IRC meeting will be held on thursday, feb 20. The topic for the discussion will be "Branch logic, page sequences and routing". If you want to participate, join #modsurvey on Undernet at 16.00 swedish time (CET/GMT+1).

Update: if you intend to participate, please read the discussion material

2003-01-30

In the half a year that has passed since the last stable release, a number of bugs have been found and corrected. So far, the fixes has only been implemented in the 3.0.15-preX releases, since the bugs they corrected were not all that critical.

Now, however, it seems it might take some additional time to make 3.0.15 stable enough for a release, and the ammount of found and fixed bugs is growing. Thus, the bugsfixes have been backported to the 3.0.14 branch, and released as 3.0.14d. Yes, I know the version numbering may seem strange, but at this point of time if felt as if it was the best way.

If you have 3.0.14 installed, there is no need to download the whole 3.0.14d tarball. Instead download the patch and apply it via the following (assuming you downloaded the patch into /tmp, and that mod_survey is installed in /usr/local/mod_survey) If you do not want to do it this way, or if you have not got 3.0.14 installed, download the tarball as usual from the download section.

2003-01-15

image image image

Today, the two master students Christina Nilsson and Cecilia Bäckström submitted the final version of an article describing their thesis work, Mixed Mode - Handling method-differences between paper and web questionnaires. In this article, the authors show that in spite of identical design of a web questionnaire and a paper questionnaire (in principle the web questionnaire was printed), test subjects give significantly different answers depending on which version they fill out. Further, they give a few practical pieces of advice to people intending to do mixed mode and/or web surveying.

This article is highly recommended reading for anyone working with web questionnaires, not only because the students used Mod_Survey for the web part of their study. :-)

The pictures above are from the examination conference held in Bispgården on January 10-11. The people shown are (on left picture) Christina Nilsson and (on right picture) Cecilia Bäckström.

(Or, in truth.. Only the middle picture was taken on the actual examination. The others were taken on the pub late in the evening between the two conference days. :-) )

We are currently working towards the goal of keeping the authors here on the university as post-graduate students.

2003-01-13

The "pre" release 3.0.15-pre4 was released today (see download section ). The focus of this release is consolidation and bug-fixing. We are approaching a feature-freeze, and it is time to tie in all the loose ends.

In this release you will find a new installer, making it really easy to get Mod_Survey up and running, even in the case of missing libraries. You will also find an updated internationalization layer which now contains translation support for most messages in Mod_Survey. Futher, the said layer has been used to write translations to italian, swedish and french (partially). Thanks to Silvia Mattarello, me and Jean Paul Chiron respectively (I think Mathieu Jan did parts of the french translation too).

Apart from this, a lot of minor things have been cleaned up. Examples of this is that profane language has been removed from code comments and error messages, the presentation layer now takes into account non-standard web ports, and the creator subsystem works with PostgreSQL.

Note that this is still a development test release, not fit for daily use. Starting from this release, however, it is good enough to start testing (chances are at least good you'll get it up and running).

2003-01-05

Are you bored with the lack of news found here? There's quite a lot of action at the mailing list. Even if you don't want to subscribe to that, you can get updated on what happens through the list archive.

2002-10-13

A new "pre" release, 3.0.15-pre3 is now available for download. This release contains massive code updates and numerous bug fixes. Examples of new features are: Examples of fixed bugs are: To install this package you will have to untar it in /usr/local, cd into the mod_survey folder, run the "pre" script found there and add Include "/usr/local/mod_survey/survey.conf" in the bottom of your httpd.conf. Please note that this is a development test release, not fit for daily use. There are a lot of things known to be broken in the code.

2002-09-07

As you have probably noticed, the homepage has been redesigned. The information is pretty much the same, I have just restructured things a bit. There are possibly a few broken links around now though.

2002-08-11

The next "pre" release, 3.0.15-pre2 is available now. It contains a new patch from CRU, which enables partial filling of a questionnaire. In other words the user can fill out half of the questions, click "Save" and the come back later to fill out the rest of the questions. Further there is a skeleton for a new installer (which still does not work), and some basic attempts at user management scripts (which do not work either).

Observe that this is a test release, and that the installer currently does not work. Instead, to use it, you will have to unpack it in /usr/local, cd into the new mod_survey folder and then run the "pre" script found there.

2002-08-01

As it will be a while before all the new stuff in 3.0.x stabilizes, I've decided to release a few "pre" releases. The first, 3.0.15-pre1 is available now. It contains all the new fancy stuff as mentioned in the previous news entry. Observe that this is a test release, and that the installer currently does not work. Instead, to use it, you will have to unpack it in /usr/local, cd into the new mod_survey folder and then run the "pre" script found there.

2002-07-29

That I have not written any news here for a month does not mean I'm dead. In fact, there are a lot of interesting things going on in the background. Mathieu Jan, associated with the sympa crew, has contributed a working base for an online editor for survey files. Currently we're working with knitting it together with the main distribution and add a security layer on it. Apart from that I've started to work on a presentation layer for dynamically displaying tables and charts of submitted data.

It seems it will be a while until all this can be released as stable release. However, I think we will release a number of "pre" version in the meantime.

2002-07-01

Stable release 3.0.14 is now available. This release supports RANDOM order in MATRIX and OTHERFIELD in CHOICE/MULTICHOICE. These features are demonstrated in the example survey (to actually see the RANDOM effects in the MATRIX in the bottom of the questionnaire, you will have to reload the survey). Further, some minor polishing with layout has been implemented (there's a larger space between caption and fields in basic theme layout now, and the alignment for LICKERT in table layout has been updated).

The main changes compared with the patch (mentioned in last news entry) is that some horribly ugly flaws in OTHERFIELD tablelayout has been fixed. The OTHERFIELD layout is still a bit crude, but probably not horribly so.

2002-06-29

The daring can now download a patch with support for RANDOM order in MATRIX, and OTHERFIELD in CHOICE/MULTICHOICE. The former allows you to randomize the order of which the MATRIXELEMENTS in a MATRIX are displayed. The latter displays a text field as the last element of a CHOICE or a MULTICHOICE, in order to let the respondent enter an unlisted value as his response. Apply the patch by: The patch does not contain any documentation updates.