Added Smilies are now stored as a hash in Settings.pm instead of 4 separate arrays.

While not in the SVN, I now have Admin/Admin.pm and Admin/Backup.pm running under the 'strict' pragma on my testbed server. (Currently this involves moving away from using 'fopen' and 'fclose' as those violate the rule against using 'bareword filehandles'. I am still researching as to whether or not the file locking mechanisms in fopen and fclose are even necessary with more modern versions of Perl and modern server software.)

Admin.pm may end up getting split into parts - it contains a lot of pieces that are infrequently accessed. Moving those out should make the AdminCenter load faster.

Off-Topic replies have been moved to this Topic.

Menu.def now holds a proper hash. This will make it easier to document Mod changes and add Mods. (While it may be marginally faster to save things like image definition lists as simple delimited lists in a file, we're balancing ease of modifying and documenting with potential speed.)

spamrules.txt data moved to Settings.pm
Members/memberlist.txt and Members/memberinfo.txt now Variables/Memberlist.pm and Variables/Memberinfo.pm.
Guest messages are stored separately from Broadcast mesages.

Language/???/tabtext.txt data saves as a hash instead of being converted into one. This means the file stays in existence instead of being deleted when empty because we need that file with an anchor in it for Mods that need need links in the tab menu. (The Add Tabs utility will need some tweaking to bring it in line with the other member level choices in the Admin Center.)

No more direct Modding of Settings.pm to add to the AdvancedTabs array. Changes in Settings.pm must all go through Admin/NewSettings.pm. (Sorry, guys - but adding to the AdvancedTabs in Settings.pm causes Mod collisions and also makes it impossible to remove those Mods without editing the Mod AND hand editing Settings.pm.)

Still working on the mechanics for these new Mod supports.

But it's now so different from the 2.6 series that it will require the Converter Utilities to move from 2.6 or earlier to 2.7. (Many changes are in anticipation of eventual moving to mySQL for the data storage.)

Among the changes - Members/memberlist.txt and Members/memberinfo.txt are stored as full hashes.  (Not converted based on what text markers are found in the file and absolutely no tabs as data delimiters.) If we make the Members folder one whose name can't be changed, then Members/memberlist.txt and Members/memberinfo.txt can renamed to .pm and can we can can use bare word includes OR those files could be renamed and moved to Variables.

gmodsettings.txt renamed Gmodset.pm so we can use bare word includes.
iplookupurl.txt, oldestmes.txt, reserve.txt, reservecfg.txt, and email_domain_filter.txt moved to Settings.pm.
Currently contemplating doing the same with spamrules.txt

Basically, if it's only saved from the AdminCenter and is 'small', it should probably go into Settings.pm because it's a YaBB setting variable.

There's going to be a lot of cleaning up of print functions - ideally no file should be left open for longer than absolutely necessary in order to print to it. 

The lastonline variable in vars has been moved out to its own file to protect the vars file. Now the vars file will only be opened to write to from Profiles.

Other changes - More multi-language support in Helps and with maintenance messages.