1 (Note: this file has been re-arranged to be in reverse chronological
2 order, which is The Right Thing for ChangeLogs - DLC)
4 April 29, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.22.0)
6 SECURITY: Avoid some hypothetical buffer overflows in unstr, and randstr.
8 Modernize and refactor the code.
10 Avoid build targets' proliferation in CMake.
12 April 04, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.20.0)
14 Further avoid double traversal if FORTDIR == LOCFORTDIR.
16 Using clang-format to format the code.
18 Eliminate -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE warnings.
20 Modernize and refactor the code.
22 March 30, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.18.0)
24 Avoid double traversal if FORTDIR == LOCFORTDIR.
26 Typos' corrections and a new quote.
28 February 26, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.16.0)
30 Better portability to Microsoft Windows and other OSes
31 Thanks to AppVeyor (done by Shlomi Fish).
33 Add the -u flag [from debian]
35 Add fortune.desktop [from debian]
37 Remove backspaces in a cookie [from debian]
39 Complete the lyrics of a Leonard Cohen song [from debian]
41 Correct a misattribution.
43 February 23, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.14.0)
45 Correct some typos and add some new cookies.
47 Better Win32/Win64 Portability (AppVeyor is still failing.)
51 December 18, 2019 (fortune-mod 2.12.0)
53 Extract rinutils as a package and require it as a dep:
54 https://github.com/shlomif/rinutils/ .
56 Move some jokes to the offensive collection:
57 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/pull/38 - thanks
60 June 30, 2019 (fortune-mod 2.10.0)
62 Move strfile and unstr to /usr/bin :
63 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/issues/35
65 Code cleanups: warnings and portability.
67 Better porting to windows / appveyor-CI
70 June 07, 2019 (fortune-mod 2.8.0)
72 Add some quotes by amigojapan.
74 Some improvements for spelling, punctuation and grammar.
76 Extract a common C header.
80 December 19, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.6.2)
82 Fix the cmake files installation paths. See
83 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/pull/29 .
85 Some improvements for spelling, punctuation and grammar.
87 Normalize the numbering of "Great Moments in History":
88 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/issues/28 .
90 July 10, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.6.1)
92 Fix the previously rotated display of offensive fortunes (using the "-o"
93 or "-a" flags). See https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/issues/26 .
95 Incorporate several more minor patches from Debian.
97 June 26, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.6.0)
99 Incorporate patches from the Debian package.
101 Add the "tao", "pratchett" and many individual cookies.
103 March 22, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.4.1)
105 Add the missing cmake/Shlomif_Common.cmake file.
107 March 22, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.4.0)
109 Fix issue #24 reported by @pouar of an underflow error in strfile.
111 Fix some GCC warnings with the Recode flags.
113 Remove some trailing empty lines in fortunes
115 February 15, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.2.1)
117 Fix some mispellings.
119 Remove some duplicates.
121 Thanks to bug reporters on the bug trackers of Linux distributions.
123 January 31, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.2.0)
125 Add the "disclaimer" cookie file (thanks to mathew).
127 Correct some problems in the documentation.
129 Fix some memory leaks (thanks to valgrind).
131 Reenable the valgrind tests (requires Recode 3.7).
133 January 11, 2018 (fortune-mod-2.0.0)
137 Deprecate the BSD_REGEX - we now use only POSIX ones.
141 March 25, 2017 (fortune-mod-1.99.5)
143 Add a new cmake-based configuration/build/install system.
145 Converted the source files to UTF-8.
147 Added automated tests.
149 Removed trailing whitespace.
151 Reformatted long (> 80 chars) lines.
155 Fixed some compiler warnings.
157 Added a build-time option to remove the “-o” (= “offensive”) flag.
159 Incorporated some downstream patches from Linux distributions.
162 March 05, 2004 (fortune-mod-1.99.1)
164 Most of the changes have occurred at some point in time in the last
167 A high number of spelling, punctuation, formatting and grammar
170 Internationalisation support.
172 New -c option to see which file a fortune came from.
176 Incorporated a couple of minor changes made in the (old) Debian
177 fortune-mod package, including the addition of an extra data file
178 called 'cookie'. Renamed some documentation files, and included some
179 install information for non-Linux users. Added a "-v" option to
180 report the program version.
182 I intend to submit this distribution to SunSITE RSN.
184 -- Dennis L. Clark <dbugger@progsoc.uts.edu.au>
188 This release fixes many of the portability problems with the
189 fortune-mod program released by Amy Lewis in October, 1995. The
190 previous version had many Linux-isms in it, which left it unworkable
191 on any other platform. This version replaces most of these with more
192 standard calls, making it more likely to work under other platforms.
193 The Makefiles have been modified so that GNU's gcc and make are no
194 longer required: any standard make and ANSI-compatible C compiler
195 should work. Sorry, pre-ANSI compilers are not supported (c'mon, this
196 is the 90's, darn it!)
198 This version has been tested to work on SunOS 4.1.x as well as Linux.
199 All changes made to the sources were as platform-independant as
200 possible. Therefore, no "#ifdef LINUX" or "#ifdef SUNOS4" directives
201 appear in the code. An effect of this is that a number of 'implicit
202 declaration' warnings are emitted by gcc under SunOS 4.1.x, but this a
203 problem with SunOS's standard headers, not with the program or the
204 compiler. The benefit of this approach is that it eases the work of
205 expanding the port to include other platforms. Bug reports and fixes
206 for other platforms are most welcome!
208 A few "standard" C function calls were replaced with more standard
209 counterparts at various points. Generally, when there was a choice
210 between a BSD version of a function and a POSIX version, the POSIX
211 version was favoured (even though fortune originated on BSD). An
212 exception to this was the regex functions: either POSIX or BSD
213 versions can be used, with selection made via the top-level Makefile.
215 Fortune and strfile also compiles on Solaris 2.5, but a discrepency
216 between the declaration and implementation of 'struct dirent' on the
217 test platform caused fortune to execute incorrectly there. It is not
218 certain whether this is a bug in the header file, the C library, or
221 While the making of this release was not meant to become a bug
222 search-and-destroy mission, some bugs were inadvertently discovered
223 and fixed. including the known bug of using -a with a file that occurs
224 in both the offensive and inoffensive directories. Fixing this
225 particular bug required a way to be able to separately identify two
226 fortune files with the same name, with one in the inoffensive
227 directory, the other one in the offensive directory. Now, such a name
228 will be taken to be the inoffensive file by default. However, you can
229 now append '-o' to a fortune name, and the '-o' will be removed and
230 the offensive directory will be searched. Thus you can say (assuming
231 you use the distributed datfiles):
233 fortune 80% politics politics-o
235 Which has an 80% change of giving an "inoffensive" political fortune,
236 and a 20% change of giving an "offensive" political one. Note that
237 this makes fortune-mod backwards-compatible with BSD fortune, but only
238 for users, not fortune database maintainers.
240 Of course, this solution only passes the buck: with the above example
241 again, if you have a 'politics-o' file in your inoffensive directory,
242 you are back to square one. OTOH, seeing that '-o' originally was
243 meant for offensive fortunes, using it for inoffensive ones is simply
246 Bug fixed: Fortune's definition of a fortune length (for -s and -l)
247 was inconsistent. Unordered fortunes counted the 2 delimiting
248 characters (as hinted in the man page), but sorted or randomized
249 fortunes did not. Now the delimiting characters are _NEVER_ counted,
250 so you will always get the length limit you expect.
252 Another bug fix: -l and -s can now work together with -m. Previously
253 -l and -s were ignored when -m was in effect. The new behaviour helps
254 me count how many long or short fortunes there are in a file.
256 Ansify has been removed from the package, as well as some filter
257 scripts from NetBSD that no longer appear useful. Randstr has been
258 kept, but has not been improved in any way. It at least has a man
259 page: maybe somebody will find it useful.
261 Some of the documentation (including the man pages) has been improved
262 and updated, and some files have been renamed so that the package
263 looks less Linux-specific.
265 -- Dennis L. Clark <dbugger@progsoc.uts.edu.au>
268 Ansify has been abandoned. I'm going to distribute this working version
269 of fortune, and then see how difficult it would be to add termcap/terminfo
270 enhancements to fortune itself--I don't anticipate serious problems, but
271 I'd rather go ahead and get this on the net.
273 A last-minute change was made to the way that percentages are displayed
274 with -f; it is now in the format nnn.nn%. The reason for this is that
275 with the multiplication of small files, fortune -af displayed a large
276 number of "0%"s--no worse than the old version, but not helpful.
278 The fortunes database was finally cleaned up, and this version is now
279 being distributed (at least, I hope it is). I don't consider the current
280 division of fortunes among files absolutely canonical; some are certainly
281 in the wrong places. But things are *better*.
283 Amy A. Lewis alewis@email.unc.edu
286 Another utility, ansify, now compiles; it has not been tested at all, so
287 it may not work even slightly.
289 Ansify is a rather stupid program, all things considered, but the work on
290 it does raise an interesting possibility for an enhanced fortune. At
291 present, the fortune databases contain x^Hy sequences for underline and
292 special characters (and this can be extended to include bold, = x^Hx).
293 Ansify is stupid because it doesn't use the proper tools, ie termcap or
294 terminfo (hmmm ... since it works on files, that may not be so stupid);
295 it appears that if that can be done, then a termcap/terminfo enhanced
296 fortune could be produced, which would recognize the existence of ^H in
297 a string and attempt to display using appropriate control sequences.
298 This sort of modification would be of greater interest to casual users,
299 I think, than even the bug fixes, and since it would not force changes
300 in the storage of fortunes, it is eminently portable. Consider this a
303 Added (early October 95):
304 A new executable, rot, which is a rot13 filter (a caesar cipher). Most
305 probably have caesar, but on the other hand, if you compile this mess
306 as root, caesar probably isn't in the path.
308 A new parameter to fortune, -n, which permits you to specify the length
309 at which to break between long (-l) and short (-s) fortunes.
311 fortune -f now shows probabilities.
313 A bug: fortune -a nn% filename filename ... now fails without an error
314 message, if the filename named following the percentage exists in both
315 the inoffensive and the offensive directories (that is, if you have two
316 files containing definitions, one called fortunes/definitions and one
317 called fortunes/off/definitions, and call fortune as: fortune -a 10%
318 definitions religion politics ..., then fortune simply fails). This
319 appears to be an artifact of the changes that were made in storage/
320 naming of offensive fortunes. It only happens with the combination of
321 a percentage with -a and inoffensive/offensive files that share a name.
322 Temporary workaround: rename one or the other of the files (*sigh* I
323 don't like that as a solution).
325 The man pages have been updated. The old man pages are also available,
326 but are not installed unless you do it yourself (the new ones are). The
327 new man pages have the extension .man; the old ones have numeric
330 A place has been created for fortune files containing HTML tags (the
331 reason I started playing with this mess was because I wanted to be
332 able to format fortunes nicely for the web without having to run an
333 enormously complex script to figure out from formatting how best to
334 display things, a particular problem since the formatting isn't
335 consistent). Tagged fortunes don't exist yet, and I'm seriously
336 considering creating a slightly different fortune binary that would
337 output the necessary headers and trailers (reducing the CGI script
338 to complete triviality) (-f isn't really needed for a webfortune).
340 Todo: I'm thinking of adding a -x to unstr, to rot13 the output. This
341 would have the effect of putting all the necessary tools in one package.
342 It further breaks compatibility with BSD tools (which has *mostly* been
343 maintained, merely enhanced slightly, although the change in how
344 offensive files are distinguished from inoffensive might be regarded as
345 breaking compatibility) by adding yet another parameter to unstr, which
346 didn't have any, before. So I haven't decided, yet.
348 Todo: KOI8 encoded fortunes? They couldn't be rotated without a great
349 deal of trouble, of course.
353 The way that fortune -m prints its output has been slightly changed. It
354 used to print the delimiter first, then, if this were the first fortune
355 from a particular file, it printed the name of the file in parentheses.
356 It now prints the first fortune without an initial delimiter; if the
357 fortune is the first from a particular file, it then prints
358 (filename), newline, delimiter, newline *to stderr*. Redirect stderr to
359 stdout to get something *similar to* (but not the same as) the old
360 behavior. The new behavior, if stderr is redirected to stdout, and
361 both are then redirected to a file, produces fictitious entries, one
362 per file in which a match was found. However, whether stderr is
363 redirected or not, the new format produces files that strfile can
364 parse without choking (the old format, since it placed the filename
365 on the same line as the delimiter character, effectively forced editing
366 of the file in order to make it usable by strfile, unless the option of
367 concatenating two fortunes with an ugly "% (filename)" line separating
368 them was considered acceptable output). Under the new display format,
369 if stderr is redirected into the file, you end up with filenames marking
370 the separation between files (as before), but they are now valid text
371 strings (which should probably, therefore, be deleted).
373 In other words, if you don't care what files the original text came from,
374 and want a new file containing (let us say), quotes from Mark Twain,
376 fortune -am '-- Mark Twain' >twain
377 The files accessed would march down the screen; the fortunes would be
378 stored in parsable format into the file twain. If, however, you planned
379 to edit (perhaps to remove the quotes from the original file, you might
380 then wish to redirect stderr to stdout. Using bash:
381 fortune -am '-- Mark Twain' &>twain
383 fortune -am '-- Mark Twain' >twain 2>&1
385 [The above is now in the man page, more or less]
388 Too many changes to mention, really. Look at the source code for
389 comments on individual files. LINUX.DIF has been removed.
391 It is worth noting that strfile was completely broken as distributed,
392 and fortune had code to make it report a different file list than the
393 one it used to retrieve fortunes. There's some rather strong language
394 on the subject in strfile.c; if it offends you, tough.
396 Bugs were fixed, and some enhancements were added. Unstr, in
397 particular, has had its command line considerably enhanced. Strfile
398 now *really does* sort, instead of merely setting the 'sorted' flag.
399 Ditto for randomizing.
401 Noteworthy: the way to distinguish between offensive and non-offensive
402 files has changed for fortune. A second directory (which may be a
403 subdirectory of the main fortune directory; the program doesn't
404 add files recursively down a directory tree) has been added to
405 pathnames.h. Offensive files should be placed there. There is no
406 longer any need to add the -o suffix to file names, and the problems
407 with finding files (especially offensive ones) seem to have
408 disappeared in the process.
410 Currently, I'm working on breaking the fortune files themselves into
411 smaller, more manageable pieces, checking spelling, punctuation, and
412 grammar, and trying to reduce redundancy. The eventual goal, after
413 the files are cleaned up, is another set of files carrying HTML tags,
414 which would then massively simplify a CGI script that calls fortune.
418 A 'randstr' (I want to call it 'lottery,' but I won't) utility, which
419 amounts to a poor woman's stripped-down fortune, to illustrate some
420 other possible uses of strfile-type random-access strings files.
422 Amy A. Lewis alewis@email.unc.edu
projects / fortune-mod / blob