Qhanzi News

Problems with the image server continued

I was able to correct the error with the image storage which had been occurring. Examining the images which caused the errors, the person sending them was clearly trying to hack the server by sending requests he hoped would bypass some sort of security. It's a bit ridiculous since the only thing that https://www.qhanzi.com/sendpng-1.cgi can actually do is send a PNG image.

The point of saving and recording the errors was to detect problems in the JavaScript part of the website, but these have not occurred very often, and the flood of nuisance requests comes every few days, so I have decided to switch off the recording of errors and let the idiot go on wasting his time sending stupid, malformed requests.

Problems with the image server

A nuisance person has been sending broken requests to sendpng-1.cgi over a period of several years. Work is ongoing to resolve the problem.

Writing problems solved

The problem with writing qhanzi on phone screens and touch surfaces has been solved. This was due to a programming error in the JavaScript interface caused by the recent update. Thank you to the user who pointed this error out.

Problems with zdic and with the writing option

Some users have reported problems accessing zdic.net as well as unfortunately having the cookie for the "Accumulate characters as a string" option being deleted during the recent changes to the site. If you are experiencing difficulties with the text search, please go to https://www.qhanzi.com/option.html and switch that option back on again. I can't do anything about the problems with zdic, but I am investigating finding a better site to link people to.

Multiradical search problem fixed

The multiradical search was returning invisible results consisting of squares for some combinations of button choices. This was fixed by removing all the "CJK Compatibility Ideographs" (Unicode U+F900-FAFF) from the search results. These characters are not very useful. Unfortunately this also changed the ordering of the buttons on the multiradical page. I am sorry about that, and I will try to think of a way to prevent this from happening next update.

Sendpng rebuild

I've rebuilt the backend binary which sends the images of the drawn characters to the user, the part of the site which is accessed when you press "Download this image". This is due to having to fix some problems with people sending junk to it. It has not been rebuilt since 2019 so an overhaul was overdue.

JavaScript overhaul

I've done an overhaul of the JavaScript on the site. It is mostly cosmetic changes to aid maintenance and should not affect users. Because the changes were significant, I've changed the version number of the JavaScript files from 13 to 14.

Short explanations added

I've added short explanatory text on the multiradical and the four-corner pages.