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digitalmars.D - newsgroup web viewer

reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
I've complained about the godawful web viewers for the newsgroup
before, and wrote a little program to do a better job.

But, I got distracted and didn't quite finish it. I didn't like
how it looked primarily.

Today, I dropped it into the skeleton of d-programming-language.org
and now I pretty much like how it looks:


http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByDate

My goal is to present the newsgroup in a more web forum like way, so
it's more comfortable to more users.


Is there a lot of interest in this kind of thing among the community?
Nov 15 2011
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 6:51 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 I've complained about the godawful web viewers for the newsgroup
 before, and wrote a little program to do a better job.

 But, I got distracted and didn't quite finish it. I didn't like
 how it looked primarily.

 Today, I dropped it into the skeleton of d-programming-language.org
 and now I pretty much like how it looks:


 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByDate

 My goal is to present the newsgroup in a more web forum like way, so
 it's more comfortable to more users.


 Is there a lot of interest in this kind of thing among the community?


There's also the one I wrote:

http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Digital_Mars_Website_148924.html

But neither yours nor mine allow posting.
Nov 15 2011
parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 There's also the one I wrote: 


That's not bad. It's the one under HTTP on the listing that I
hate.

http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/indexing.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D

It usually doesn't even load anymore.


 But neither yours nor mine allow posting. 


Mine does! It's how I've done most my posting the last month.

Due to a bug I moved posting to a different page:

http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-message-page?messageId=%3Cj9v97s$1k6q$1 digitalmars.com%3E&newsgroup=digitalmars.D


but it does work.
Nov 15 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Trass3r <un known.com> writes:
 I've complained about the godawful web viewers for the newsgroup
 before, and wrote a little program to do a better job.


Yeah that pnews one is real crappy,  
http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php is nicer and works fine  
for me the few times I need a web viewer.



 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByDate

 My goal is to present the newsgroup in a more web forum like way, so
 it's more comfortable to more users.


A threaded view is a must have :)
Nov 15 2011
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Trass3r Wrote:

 http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php is nicer and works fine  
 for me the few times I need a web viewer.


Oh, I keep forgetting this one exists!

Can we get this linked from the main newsgroups page at least?


 A threaded view is a must have :)


Change the ordering to ByParent in the url, though I haven't adjusted the
stylesheet
to include proper spacing for that.

It puzzles me how people actually like that view though! I hate threaded
views with a passion.
Nov 15 2011
parent reply bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 07:18 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 Trass3r Wrote:

 http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php is nicer and works fine
 for me the few times I need a web viewer.


 Oh, I keep forgetting this one exists!

 Can we get this linked from the main newsgroups page at least?


 A threaded view is a must have :)


 Change the ordering to ByParent in the url, though I haven't adjusted the
stylesheet
 to include proper spacing for that.


Either that's not working, it's not what I want or the stylesheet thing 
is getting in the way.


 It puzzles me how people actually like that view though! I hate threaded
 views with a passion.


Do you actually enjoy having to guess what something is in reply to? Or 
how about the fun you can have trying to locate replies to a given post? 
Or what about when one branch of a thread goes off on a interesting 
tangent and another dives down a rabbit hole you couldn't care less about?

Unless you plan on reading *everything* (and when things get 
interesting, that is just flat impossible, even if you don't have a 
job), the most important information is virtually invisible in anything 
but a threaded view.
Nov 15 2011
next sibling parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
bcs Wrote:

 Either that's not working, it's not what I want or the stylesheet thing 
 is getting in the way.


Stylesheet... did a quick adjustment, try now:

http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByParent


 Do you actually enjoy having to guess what something is in reply to?


There's no guesswork at all. People quote what they are replying to when it
matters, like you and I are doing now.


 Or 
 how about the fun you can have trying to locate replies to a given post? 


On the other hand, finding new posts is virtually impossible with a tree
view, because it's mixed in at random.


 Or what about when one branch of a thread goes off on a interesting 
 tangent and another dives down a rabbit hole you couldn't care less about?


This might be an idea to put into the UI. All the parent information is
there, so it could zap a subthread out of view instantly, regardless of view
mode.
Nov 15 2011
next sibling parent reply bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 09:03 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 bcs Wrote:

 Either that's not working, it's not what I want or the stylesheet thing
 is getting in the way.


 Stylesheet... did a quick adjustment, try now:

 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByParent


Cut the tab size by about 60% and that's usable. OTOH it will still end 
up with a column size of -10 pt about the time threads get interesting.


 Do you actually enjoy having to guess what something is in reply to?


 There's no guesswork at all. People quote what they are replying to when it
 matters, like you and I are doing now.


And if anyone keeps more than about 3 layers of quoting you need to be 
Tolstoy to be more than half the content. And it still doesn't solve the 
problem because it's still not the original full message.


 Or
 how about the fun you can have trying to locate replies to a given post?


 On the other hand, finding new posts is virtually impossible with a tree
 view, because it's mixed in at random.


Nope, finding them is trivial. I hit the N key or look for the bold 
titles. Admittedly, a bit harder to do in a web interface than a "real" 
client.


 Or what about when one branch of a thread goes off on a interesting
 tangent and another dives down a rabbit hole you couldn't care less about?


 This might be an idea to put into the UI. All the parent information is
 there, so it could zap a subthread out of view instantly, regardless of view
mode.
Nov 15 2011
next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"bcs" <bcs example.com> wrote in message 
news:j9vhqd$2cc6$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 11/15/2011 09:03 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 bcs Wrote:


 Or
 how about the fun you can have trying to locate replies to a given post?


 On the other hand, finding new posts is virtually impossible with a tree
 view, because it's mixed in at random.


 Nope, finding them is trivial. I hit the N key or look for the bold 
 titles. Admittedly, a bit harder to do in a web interface than a "real" 
 client.


a:link vs a:visited
Nov 16 2011
parent reply Adam Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Nick Sabalausky Wrote:

 a:link vs a:visited


That was my original plan, but I like having multiple
posts on one page too, and you can't link them up
that way.

Or can you? Maybe with script, I can watch the scroll position
and change the anchor as each post scrolls into view.

The anchor could be used as a link target.


But if you view posts individually:
http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-message-page?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cop.v4yfbjy4tuzx1w%40cybershadow.mshome.net%3E&original

You have that same reply to list, parent link, etc. people want,
and the browser history keeps track of where you've been.
Nov 16 2011
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/16/2011 7:27 AM, Adam Ruppe wrote:

 You have that same reply to list, parent link, etc. people want,
 and the browser history keeps track of where you've been.


A reddit-like view would be acceptable as long as it had a button to mark a 
posting as 'read'. Read ones would be in a different color, or maybe faded.

Even better would an ability to collapse/expand it so you could see the unread 
ones easily.
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling parent reply Adam Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
bcs Wrote:

 Cut the tab size by about 60% and that's usable.


OK


 OTOH it will still end 
 up with a column size of -10 pt about the time threads get interesting.


Another fundamentally broken aspect of tree views.


 And if anyone keeps more than about 3 layers of quoting you need to be 
 Tolstoy to be more than half the content.


Well, the way I see it, if you're quoting more than two lines at a
time, you're probably over-quoting.

Remember, in both linear and tree views, getting back to the
parent post is very easy, and if someone is reading the reply, it
is likely that he read the parent already anyway.


 I hit the N key or look for the bold titles. 


How is that N key implemented?

boldEach(find!"a.timestamp > b"(sort!"a.timestamp < b.timestamp")
   (messages));

or something like that.
Nov 16 2011
next sibling parent reply Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips+d gmail.com> writes:
On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:04:15 -0500, Adam Ruppe wrote:


 Remember, in both linear and tree views, getting back to the parent post
 is very easy,


How is that easy in a linear, err chronological, view? The parent isn't 
the one directly above.
Nov 16 2011
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Jesse Phillips Wrote:

 How is that easy in a linear, err chronological, view? The parent isn't 
 the one directly above.


Hit a View Parent link.

http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-message?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9v9k7%241lji%241%40digitalmars.com%3E

digitalmars.D
Thread: newsgroup web viewer by Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com>
In reply to: Re: newsgroup web viewer by Walter Bright
<newshound2 digitalmars.com>
Nov 16 2011
parent reply bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/16/2011 07:23 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 Jesse Phillips Wrote:

 How is that easy in a linear, err chronological, view? The parent isn't
 the one directly above.


 Hit a View Parent link.

 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-message?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9v9k7%241lji%241%40digitalmars.com%3E

 digitalmars.D
 Thread: newsgroup web viewer by Adam D. Ruppe<destructionator gmail.com>
 In reply to: Re: newsgroup web viewer by Walter
Bright<newshound2 digitalmars.com>


Add that to the multi post view with it pointing to an anchor on the 
same page and you might have a point. Added bonus: instant caching.
Nov 16 2011
parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
bcs wrote:

 Add that to the multi post view with it pointing to an anchor on the
 same page and you might have a point. Added bonus: instant caching.


meh, I don't want to clutter the multiple post page with all kinds of
links.

If you want the details, you can click through to the post.
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling parent bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/16/2011 08:04 AM, Adam Ruppe wrote:

 bcs Wrote:

 Cut the tab size by about 60% and that's usable.


 OK


 OTOH it will still end
 up with a column size of -10 pt about the time threads get interesting.


 Another fundamentally broken aspect of tree views.


Not inherently. That is a fundamentally broken aspect of placing the 
messages bodies in-line with a tree views.


 And if anyone keeps more than about 3 layers of quoting you need to be
 Tolstoy to be more than half the content.


 Well, the way I see it, if you're quoting more than two lines at a
 time, you're probably over-quoting.


Exactly.


 Remember, in both linear and tree views, getting back to the
 parent post is very easy,


How? I don't see any back links?


 and if someone is reading the reply, it
 is likely that he read the parent already anyway.


Only true for me about 40-50% of the time: "So-n-so responded to this 
sub tree so there might be something interesting in it, so I will start 
reading there."


 I hit the N key or look for the bold titles.


 How is that N key implemented?

 boldEach(find!"a.timestamp>  b"(sort!"a.timestamp<  b.timestamp")
     (messages));

 or something like that.


I don't really know, but I assume thunder-bird stores a bit somewhere 
for each post indicating what I've opened. Anything based on time stamp 
would be useless as I very rarely read thread in time order.
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 9:03 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 On the other hand, finding new posts is virtually impossible with a tree
 view, because it's mixed in at random.


It's trivial with a news reader, because unread messages are in boldface.
Nov 15 2011
parent reply Adam Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Walter Bright Wrote:

 It's trivial with a news reader, because unread messages are in boldface.


Which is possible because the messages are sorted linearly in the
computer!

When you do a newnews command in NNTP, you tell it a time, not
a thread. Then it grabs everything since that time, and you know
they are new.


Hmmm.... that's an idea though. If it plopped down a "last checked"
time cookie or url param, it could bold the new things on the web too.
Nov 16 2011
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/16/2011 7:39 AM, Adam Ruppe wrote:

 Walter Bright Wrote:

 It's trivial with a news reader, because unread messages are in boldface.


 Which is possible because the messages are sorted linearly in the
 computer!

 When you do a newnews command in NNTP, you tell it a time, not
 a thread. Then it grabs everything since that time, and you know
 they are new.


 Hmmm.... that's an idea though. If it plopped down a "last checked"
 time cookie or url param, it could bold the new things on the web too.


That's not quite it. I do not read the newsgroup articles in a chronological 
order, so "unread" articles are most definitely not just the new articles since 
the last time I looked at the thread.
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
Adam D. Ruppe Wrote:


 On the other hand, finding new posts is virtually impossible with a tree
 view, because it's mixed in at random.


well, most people here seem to use nntp clients, so their requests (like
threaded view) can be safely ignored :) they have it in their clients.
Nov 16 2011
next sibling parent Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
I suggest to focus on correctness rather than features.
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling parent reply Adam Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Kagamin Wrote:

 well, most people here seem to use nntp clients, so their requests (like
threaded view) can be safely ignored :) they have it in their clients.


Indeed. Hell, I probably won't use it very often, since I have
my precious mutt mail client!

But, regardless, I wrote that already and just need to tweak
it now, so not a big hassle.
Nov 16 2011
parent reply Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
Adam Ruppe Wrote:


 Kagamin Wrote:

 well, most people here seem to use nntp clients, so their requests (like
threaded view) can be safely ignored :) they have it in their clients.


 
 Indeed. Hell, I probably won't use it very often, since I have
 my precious mutt mail client!
 
 But, regardless, I wrote that already and just need to tweak
 it now, so not a big hassle.


Well, lol, if you need a joblist, this is my view:

1. corrupted messages
2. non-working links
3. sync with nntp server
4. order threads by last post time (like forums) (done?)
// here we will have reading
5. (didn't test posting yet, goes here)
6. paging
7. accounts and server-side cookies
Nov 16 2011
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
I did some bug fixing tonight and changed some features.

http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/thread-index?newsgroup=digitalmars.D

* The links are all working now. You can view individual posts.

* It uses cookies to remember your preferences. Name, email, preferred view
mode, etc.

* Added collapsed views of the full thread.

The code seems slow today.

But:

http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cmailman.959.1321474737.24802.digitalmars-d%40puremagic.com%3E&ordering=ByParent

and there's an expand link to pull it all up, or you can click the
individual posts.


Read vs unread is done with browser history if you click individual
posts.


I'm going to try using this to do all my posts for a while.
Nov 16 2011
parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:ja2756$1j32$1 digitalmars.com...

I did some bug fixing tonight and changed some features.

 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/thread-index?newsgroup=digitalmars.D

 * The links are all working now. You can view individual posts.

 * It uses cookies to remember your preferences. Name, email, preferred 
 view
 mode, etc.

 * Added collapsed views of the full thread.

 The code seems slow today.

 But:

 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cmailman.959.1321474737.24802.digitalmars-d%40puremagic.com%3E&ordering=ByParent

 and there's an expand link to pull it all up, or you can click the
 individual posts.


 Read vs unread is done with browser history if you click individual
 posts.


 I'm going to try using this to do all my posts for a while.


Hmm, not bad. Personally, I would rename "expand"/"collapse" to "expand 
all"/"collapse all", and replace the "Reply by..." links with a partial 
tree-header view a la mail-archive. But other than that bikeshed paint, 
that's not bad at all.

I did notice though that on some of the threads (such as this "newsgroup web 
viewer" thread), that view results in a 500 error.

And just a minor stylistic thing, this page:

http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/thread-index?newsgroup=digitalmars.D

could probably use some horizontal lines (maybe a light grey background on 
every other row?) and a "vertical-align: top;" on each of the cells (If I 
remember my CSS correctly...)

It's definitely starting to look pretty good.
Nov 17 2011
prev sibling parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:j9vg6h$28tl$1 digitalmars.com...

 bcs Wrote:

 Either that's not working, it's not what I want or the stylesheet thing
 is getting in the way.


 Stylesheet... did a quick adjustment, try now:

 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByParent


That's better, but it's still difficult to use. I think mail-archive.com has 
the ideal design for a tree view:

http://www.mail-archive.com/digitalmars-d-learn puremagic.com/

Granted, they desperately need to fix the problem where all replies are 
shown with only one level of indenting (it works fine when you're viewing a 
message, though), and they lack the ability to post. But other than that, I 
think it would be good to mimic their design as much as possible.

Another great example is lists.puremagic.com:

http://lists.puremagic.com/pipermail/dmd-beta/2011-October/thread.html

All that needs is some nicer styling (or *some* styling!), an actual 
partial-tree-view when viewing a message (like mail-archive.com, instead of 
just "Previous"/"Next") and, again, the ability to post.

Whenever I'm not using my real email/NG client, I use one of those two - 
mail-archive.com and lists.puremagic.com. The only major thing either of 
them actually needs is the ability to post. With that added in, I'd be 
perfectly happy with them.
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling parent reply Somedude <lovelydear mailmetrash.com> writes:
Le 16/11/2011 05:47, bcs a écrit :

 On 11/15/2011 07:18 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 Trass3r Wrote:

 http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php is nicer and works
 fine
 for me the few times I need a web viewer.


 Oh, I keep forgetting this one exists!

 Can we get this linked from the main newsgroups page at least?


 A threaded view is a must have :)


 Change the ordering to ByParent in the url, though I haven't adjusted
 the stylesheet
 to include proper spacing for that.


 
 Either that's not working, it's not what I want or the stylesheet thing
 is getting in the way.
 

 It puzzles me how people actually like that view though! I hate threaded
 views with a passion.


 
 Do you actually enjoy having to guess what something is in reply to? Or
 how about the fun you can have trying to locate replies to a given post?
 Or what about when one branch of a thread goes off on a interesting
 tangent and another dives down a rabbit hole you couldn't care less about?
 
 Unless you plan on reading *everything* (and when things get
 interesting, that is just flat impossible, even if you don't have a
 job), the most important information is virtually invisible in anything
 but a threaded view.


Some forums, like http://forum.hardware.fr, allow you to go back to the
post you are responding to by clicking on the poster's name, and it also
displays the number of responses to your own post. And you get all the
responses in a new tab if you click on that number. Very practical.
Nov 16 2011
next sibling parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Somedude Wrote:

 Some forums, like http://forum.hardware.fr, allow you to go back to the
 post you are responding to by clicking on the poster's name, and it also
 displays the number of responses to your own post.


I like that idea.

Something I've been going for here is to keep the listing uncluttered.
I don't like how on things like phpbb, there's all kinds of useless stuff
on every screen.

It's especially painful to browse it in something like lynx.

So, for this, I want to have just one link per post on the main listing -
the author's name - that goes to details.

Then, on the individual posts, you have additional links to reply,
navigate, etc.


Since the reply form is on the individual post, it maintains all the
thread headers for the traditional newsgroup viewers, without the
user having to realize it.
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling parent reply Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
Somedude wrote:

 Le 16/11/2011 05:47, bcs a


http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-message?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cja1bp9%242ps%241%40digitalmars.com%3E

http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-message?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cja1chd%246bj%241%40digitalmars.com%3E

Probably a unicode issue: the message is cut at the first non-ASCII
character.
Nov 17 2011
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Kagamin Wrote:

 Probably a unicode issue: the message is cut at the first non-ASCII
 character.


The charset on that message is ISO-8859-1. Blargh.

Phobos really needs some charset functions.
Nov 17 2011
next sibling parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Adam D. Ruppe Wrote:

 Phobos really needs some charset functions.


What I'd really like is for this to work:

auto utf8string = to!string(string_in_some_other_charset, "iso-8859-1");

and it just works. It'd be good to have utf8 to the other charsets too, but
that's not a high priority to me.

The way I see it, charsets are kinda like the radix when doing to!int(string)
and should work the same way.
Nov 17 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> writes:
Deimos could use an ICU wrapper.=20

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 17, 2011, at 6:08 PM, "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wro=
te:


 Kagamin Wrote:

 Probably a unicode issue: the message is cut at the first non-ASCII
 character.


=20
 The charset on that message is ISO-8859-1. Blargh.
=20
 Phobos really needs some charset functions.
Nov 18 2011
prev sibling parent reply Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
Adam D. Ruppe Wrote:


 Kagamin Wrote:

 Probably a unicode issue: the message is cut at the first non-ASCII
 character.


 
 The charset on that message is ISO-8859-1. Blargh.


http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-message?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3C20110205144155.00004f85%40unknown%3E
what about this?
Nov 19 2011
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Kagamin Wrote:

 what about this?


ISO-8859-2

I have gnu iconv wrapped already. I could drop that in. Or avoid the gpl
by doing the incredibly boring but otherwise easy task of writing up the
translation tables myself and solve this.

Thought =20 should really be a space I think. There's probably two
or three bugs there, but that quoted-printable encoding code did work
with utf8 so I'd guess it's related.
Nov 19 2011
parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
I decided to whip up a quick module of my own from scratch this morning.

https://github.com/adamdruppe/misc-stuff-including-D-programming-language-web-stuff/blob/master/characterencodings.d

 Example:
import arsd.characterencodings;

    auto data = cast(immutable(ubyte)[])
           std.file.read("my-windows-file.txt");
    string utf8String = convertToUtf8(data, "windows-1252");
    // utf8String can now be used


It doesn't do everything but it's a decent start.
Nov 19 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 11/15/11 6:51 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 I've complained about the godawful web viewers for the newsgroup
 before, and wrote a little program to do a better job.

 But, I got distracted and didn't quite finish it. I didn't like
 how it looked primarily.

 Today, I dropped it into the skeleton of d-programming-language.org
 and now I pretty much like how it looks:


 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByDate

 My goal is to present the newsgroup in a more web forum like way, so
 it's more comfortable to more users.


 Is there a lot of interest in this kind of thing among the community?


Absolutely. It would be great to have a nice, realtime-updates, stylish 
(well, style-izable using css) rendering of the latest posts in 
digitalmars.D.announce. If you could package that in an easy-to-embed 
component, I'll work it into the homepage.


Andrei
Nov 15 2011
parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:

 If you could package that in an easy-to-embed 
 component, I'll work it into the homepage.


I have that written for that old site concept
http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/

What's easy to embed though? An iframe might be easy to drop in,
but then you won't have easy css styling.

Javascript would still need a server side component, so might as well
just put a dynamic site up there anyway and cut out the script.
Nov 15 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 06:51 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 I've complained about the godawful web viewers for the newsgroup
 before, and wrote a little program to do a better job.

 But, I got distracted and didn't quite finish it. I didn't like
 how it looked primarily.

 Today, I dropped it into the skeleton of d-programming-language.org
 and now I pretty much like how it looks:


 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByDate

 My goal is to present the newsgroup in a more web forum like way, so
 it's more comfortable to more users.


 Is there a lot of interest in this kind of thing among the community?


Very bluntly, the most noticeable difference (aside from pure style 
issues) is that you have included the think I **HATE** the most about 
Web Forums:

You have completely obscured the structure of the news groups. News 
group (and e-mail) threads have a strong hierarchy to them that contains 
a significant about of information that I use when viewing things. As 
one example, when skimming threads, I often only look at sub trees that 
involve particular authors. With your layout, this sort of information 
is utterly lost.

It would be hard to overstate the strength of my option on this subject. 
Given the option, I would use a crappy, slow, feature poor thick client 
that does a half asses job of presenting hierarchy over virtual any 
client, no matter how well done, that doesn't.
Nov 15 2011
next sibling parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
bcs Wrote:

 You have completely obscured the structure of the news groups.


You can change the view to see it in email ordering, or descending parent
ordering.

Which I mentioned in a subthread, but you probably didn't see it
because that strong hierarchy separates the content into branches
of a tree where things get lost, fractured, and difficult to follow,
instead of a sane, linear view where the conversations flow naturally.
Nov 15 2011
parent reply bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 08:45 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 bcs Wrote:

 You have completely obscured the structure of the news groups.


 You can change the view to see it in email ordering, or descending parent
 ordering.


I don't want ordering, I want a tree.


 Which I mentioned in a subthread, but you probably didn't see it


Correct


 because that strong hierarchy separates the content into branches


Yup


 of a tree where things get lost, fractured, and difficult to follow,
 instead of a sane, linear view where the conversations flow naturally.


You must have miss-spoke. I assume your intended to say organised and 
grouped instead of an insane interleaved view where the conversation's 
natural structure is mashed flat and destroyed.

/j

(The truth is I just hadn't finished reading the thread. Even if I had, 
I would have said more or less the same thing just in replay to a 
different post. Oh wait, that would have looked the same to you.)


Hmmm. I'm going to have to remember when replying to you to trim the 
quoted sections as much as possible so that the maximum amount of the 
content is encoded in the ancestry of my posts.
Nov 15 2011
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
bcs Wrote:

 You must have miss-spoke. I assume your intended to say organised and 
 grouped instead of an insane interleaved view where the conversation's 
 natural structure is mashed flat and destroyed.


I've *never* had a conversation in real life where time branched out.

The closest you can come in real life is if a group splinters, and instead of
a public forum, you have a bunch of private conversations that just happen
to take place in the same room.


 Oh wait, that would have looked the same to you.)


Yeah. I use the email gateway for reading, and skim posts in real time
as they arrive in my inbox (which can be sorted in a variety of ways, but
I usually keep it on strict linear, oldest first.)

It's pretty rare that I look at the in-reply-to header at all. It serves almost
no purpose.
Nov 15 2011
next sibling parent bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 09:12 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 bcs Wrote:

 You must have miss-spoke. I assume your intended to say organised and
 grouped instead of an insane interleaved view where the conversation's
 natural structure is mashed flat and destroyed.


 I've *never* had a conversation in real life where time branched out.


That's one of the advantage of NNTP over talking.


 The closest you can come in real life is if a group splinters, and instead of
 a public forum, you have a bunch of private conversations that just happen
 to take place in the same room.


Yup and with news groups you can read them in whatever order you want, 
consider them independently and even response (clearly and explicitly) 
to a specific comment at any time after it was made.


 Oh wait, that would have looked the same to you.)


 Yeah. I use the email gateway for reading, and skim posts in real time
 as they arrive in my inbox (which can be sorted in a variety of ways, but
 I usually keep it on strict linear, oldest first.)

 It's pretty rare that I look at the in-reply-to header at all. It serves almost
 no purpose.


It's pretty rare that I look at the time header at all. It serves almost 
no purpose.

Most claims you can make to support a tree view being useless I can 
tweak slightly to make support  a tree view being the better solution.

I say we paint the bike shed grey.
Nov 15 2011
prev sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Wednesday, November 16, 2011 00:12:33 Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 bcs Wrote:

 You must have miss-spoke. I assume your intended to say organised and
 grouped instead of an insane interleaved view where the conversation's
 natural structure is mashed flat and destroyed.


 
 I've *never* had a conversation in real life where time branched out.
 
 The closest you can come in real life is if a group splinters, and instead
 of a public forum, you have a bunch of private conversations that just
 happen to take place in the same room.


Knowing the parent post of a particular post can be critical to understanding 
that post - especially when the parent post isn't quoted in  the reply. 
Particularly with longer threads, I don't know how you could ever hope to 
follow them without having a properly threaded tree structure to the posts. 
That's one of the reasons that I always read posts in my local mail client 
rather than in my e-mail's web client. Even gmail - which has threading of a 
sort - is completely inadequate to dealing with complex threads.

I don't really care all that much about what you do with your reader, since 
I'm not likely ever to use it, but I don' understand how anyone could 
reasonably track any of the longer threads without a properly hierarchical 
view of them.

- Jonathan M Davis
Nov 15 2011
parent reply Adam Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Jonathan M Davis Wrote:

 Knowing the parent post of a particular post can be critical to understanding 
 that post - especially when the parent post isn't quoted in  the reply. 


Yeah, that's one of the few times I hit the o-t keys in my mail
reader to sort by thread.

Keep in mind that this information is always available! I just don't
like using it by default.


 Particularly with longer threads, I don't know how you could ever hope to 
 follow them without having a properly threaded tree structure to the posts. 


I've never had trouble following linear threads, even with hundreds
of posts.

But looking at a tree thread is almost impossible once it gets to
more than about ten posts without computer assistance, and even
then, it's so fractured that people repeat themselves a lot.



 Even gmail - which has threading of a 
 sort - is completely inadequate to dealing with complex threads.


Gmail sucks on so many levels. Their interface is almost unusable.
Nov 16 2011
parent bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/16/2011 07:53 AM, Adam Ruppe wrote:


 But looking at a tree thread is almost impossible once it gets to
 more than about ten posts without computer assistance, and even
 then, it's so fractured that people repeat themselves a lot.


I find I have that tendency no matter what the format. If, in a thread, 
there are more than about 20 post I haven't read, I tend to just not 
read anything that isn't in response to something I posted. Linear, 
hierarchical. Doesn't matter much. At least with hierarchical I 
sometimes read the siblings of my posts.

I think it's a defensive time management tactic. I've seen threads here 
that literally grew content faster than I cold read it (assuming I 
wanted to think about it at all).
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 08:38 PM, bcs wrote:

 On 11/15/2011 06:51 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 I've complained about the godawful web viewers for the newsgroup
 before, and wrote a little program to do a better job.

 But, I got distracted and didn't quite finish it. I didn't like
 how it looked primarily.

 Today, I dropped it into the skeleton of d-programming-language.org
 and now I pretty much like how it looks:


 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByDate


 My goal is to present the newsgroup in a more web forum like way, so
 it's more comfortable to more users.


 Is there a lot of interest in this kind of thing among the community?


 Very bluntly, the most noticeable difference (aside from pure style
 issues) is that you have included the think I **HATE** the most about
 Web Forums:

 You have completely obscured the structure of the news groups. News
 group (and e-mail) threads have a strong hierarchy to them that contains
 a significant about of information that I use when viewing things. As
 one example, when skimming threads, I often only look at sub trees that
 involve particular authors. With your layout, this sort of information
 is utterly lost.

 It would be hard to overstate the strength of my option on this subject.
 Given the option, I would use a crappy, slow, feature poor thick client
 that does a half asses job of presenting hierarchy over virtual any
 client, no matter how well done, that doesn't.


Aside from that, looks nice.
Nov 15 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 11/15/11 8:38 PM, bcs wrote:

 On 11/15/2011 06:51 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 I've complained about the godawful web viewers for the newsgroup
 before, and wrote a little program to do a better job.

 But, I got distracted and didn't quite finish it. I didn't like
 how it looked primarily.

 Today, I dropped it into the skeleton of d-programming-language.org
 and now I pretty much like how it looks:


 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByDate


 My goal is to present the newsgroup in a more web forum like way, so
 it's more comfortable to more users.


 Is there a lot of interest in this kind of thing among the community?


 Very bluntly, the most noticeable difference (aside from pure style
 issues) is that you have included the think I **HATE** the most about
 Web Forums:

 You have completely obscured the structure of the news groups.


No need to worry about that. Only digitalmars.D.announce posts will be 
there, and there's little structure to them. Essentially we want to 
publish just announcements.

Andrei
Nov 15 2011
parent reply bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 09:54 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 11/15/11 8:38 PM, bcs wrote:

 On 11/15/2011 06:51 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 I've complained about the godawful web viewers for the newsgroup
 before, and wrote a little program to do a better job.

 But, I got distracted and didn't quite finish it. I didn't like
 how it looked primarily.

 Today, I dropped it into the skeleton of d-programming-language.org
 and now I pretty much like how it looks:


 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByDate



 My goal is to present the newsgroup in a more web forum like way, so
 it's more comfortable to more users.


 Is there a lot of interest in this kind of thing among the community?


 Very bluntly, the most noticeable difference (aside from pure style
 issues) is that you have included the think I **HATE** the most about
 Web Forums:

 You have completely obscured the structure of the news groups.


 No need to worry about that. Only digitalmars.D.announce posts will be
 there, and there's little structure to them. Essentially we want to
 publish just announcements.


I don't need to worry about it until NNTP access is shut off. The only 
time I use a web interface is when I don't have access to my own system.
Nov 15 2011
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 11/15/11 10:19 PM, bcs wrote:

 On 11/15/2011 09:54 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 11/15/11 8:38 PM, bcs wrote:

 On 11/15/2011 06:51 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 I've complained about the godawful web viewers for the newsgroup
 before, and wrote a little program to do a better job.

 But, I got distracted and didn't quite finish it. I didn't like
 how it looked primarily.

 Today, I dropped it into the skeleton of d-programming-language.org
 and now I pretty much like how it looks:


 http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/get-thread?newsgroup=digitalmars.D&messageId=%3Cj9ps5n%2430nq%241%40digitalmars.com%3E&ordering=ByDate




 My goal is to present the newsgroup in a more web forum like way, so
 it's more comfortable to more users.


 Is there a lot of interest in this kind of thing among the community?


 Very bluntly, the most noticeable difference (aside from pure style
 issues) is that you have included the think I **HATE** the most about
 Web Forums:

 You have completely obscured the structure of the news groups.


 No need to worry about that. Only digitalmars.D.announce posts will be
 there, and there's little structure to them. Essentially we want to
 publish just announcements.


 I don't need to worry about it until NNTP access is shut off. The only
 time I use a web interface is when I don't have access to my own system.


To clarify - all we need on the homepage is a read-only rendering of the 
most recent posts on digitalmars.D.announce. In fact perhaps we should 
only render the latest top-level messages, not the answers.


Andrei
Nov 15 2011
parent reply Peter Alexander <peter.alexander.au gmail.com> writes:
On 16/11/11 6:40 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 To clarify - all we need on the homepage is a read-only rendering of the
 most recent posts on digitalmars.D.announce. In fact perhaps we should
 only render the latest top-level messages, not the answers.


 Andrei


Would this encourage vandalism? If people know they can get a post on 
the front page of the D website just by posting to D.announce then I 
think we could see some trouble.

Perhaps it would be better to use a separate news group that only admins 
can post to so that there's more control over what gets posted as news?
Nov 15 2011
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 11/15/11 11:25 PM, Peter Alexander wrote:

 On 16/11/11 6:40 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 To clarify - all we need on the homepage is a read-only rendering of the
 most recent posts on digitalmars.D.announce. In fact perhaps we should
 only render the latest top-level messages, not the answers.


 Andrei


 Would this encourage vandalism? If people know they can get a post on
 the front page of the D website just by posting to D.announce then I
 think we could see some trouble.

 Perhaps it would be better to use a separate news group that only admins
 can post to so that there's more control over what gets posted as news?


That's why I like using twitter, as in the current draft.

Andrei
Nov 15 2011
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 11:37 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 That's why I like using twitter, as in the current draft.


I fear we may find ourselves reinventing twitter by a great roundabout method.
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling parent Adam Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Peter Alexander Wrote:

 Would this encourage vandalism? If people know they can get a post on 
 the front page of the D website just by posting to D.announce then I 
 think we could see some trouble.


Meh, I say we cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now,
the D newsgroups have a pretty good record; most the people
who post here are honest and well enough on topic.

Until that changes, I wouldn't worry about it.
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/15/2011 8:38 PM, bcs wrote:

 You have completely obscured the structure of the news groups. News group (and
 e-mail) threads have a strong hierarchy to them that contains a significant
 about of information that I use when viewing things. As one example, when
 skimming threads, I often only look at sub trees that involve particular
 authors. With your layout, this sort of information is utterly lost.


I agree with you, which is why the D site has never used typical forum
software. 
I've not seen one that preserved the tree like structure of conversations. They 
mash them all flat and spread them out over endless pages.

If that sin isn't enough, the other problem is there is no way to mark a post
as 
"read". On a large thread, that branches and changes daily, it is pretty much 
impossible to keep up with it without knowing which is new and which isn't.

That's the main thing that sux about Reddit. Try reading a topic for a while, 
then come back a few hours later and wonder what's new. It's essentially 
impossible without reading the whole thing over again. Terribly inefficient.

I hate to say it, but NNTP got it right decades ago. Sure, it looks primitive 
today, but for efficient and regular news reading, it has not been surpassed. 
Not even close.

What I also like about D's newsgroup forums is that the spammers overlook NNTP 
forums these days :-) I'm happy for that. We get the occasional JimB trolls,
and 
russian porn spam, but overall it's pretty minimal.

The main reason I did the archives pages was so that google would index them.
Nov 15 2011
next sibling parent reply Bernard Helyer <b.helyer gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:48:55 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:


 russian porn spam


WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED?







I mean, terrible stuff. :o
Nov 15 2011
parent "Bernard Helyer" <b.helyer gmail.com> writes:
On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:04:39 +1300, Bernard Helyer <b.helyer gmail.com>  
wrote:


 On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:48:55 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:


 russian porn spam


 WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED?







 I mean, terrible stuff. :o


Forgive me, but I'm just trying out Opera's NG reader.
Nov 17 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Mafi <mafi example.org> writes:
Am 16.11.2011 07:48, schrieb Walter Bright:

 I agree with you, which is why the D site has never used typical forum
 software. I've not seen one that preserved the tree like structure of
 conversations. They mash them all flat and spread them out over endless
 pages.


What about mwforum (http://www.mwforum.org/)? It uses a tree-structure 
and jumps for you to the newest post. It works great and is fast even 
though it uses Perl CGI.

Mafi
Nov 16 2011
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/16/2011 5:17 AM, Mafi wrote:

 Am 16.11.2011 07:48, schrieb Walter Bright:

 I agree with you, which is why the D site has never used typical forum
 software. I've not seen one that preserved the tree like structure of
 conversations. They mash them all flat and spread them out over endless
 pages.


 What about mwforum (http://www.mwforum.org/)? It uses a tree-structure and
jumps
 for you to the newest post. It works great and is fast even though it uses Perl
 CGI.


Not bad, but no way to mark a posting as 'read', so no way to tell what you 
haven't read yet.

I really do not understand why people keep writing replacements for newsreaders 
that miss fundamentally useful aspects of it.
Nov 16 2011
next sibling parent reply bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/16/2011 10:14 AM, Walter Bright wrote:

 I really do not understand why people keep writing replacements for
 newsreaders that miss fundamentally useful aspects of it.


Because they have never used a proper new reader?
Nov 16 2011
parent reply Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
bcs Wrote:


 On 11/16/2011 10:14 AM, Walter Bright wrote:

 I really do not understand why people keep writing replacements for
 newsreaders that miss fundamentally useful aspects of it.


 
 Because they have never used a proper new reader?


What do you do if you don't have access to your proper newsreader, but have
access to internet?
Nov 16 2011
parent reply bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/16/2011 08:46 PM, Kagamin wrote:

 bcs Wrote:


 On 11/16/2011 10:14 AM, Walter Bright wrote:

 I really do not understand why people keep writing replacements for
 newsreaders that miss fundamentally useful aspects of it.


 Because they have never used a proper new reader?


 What do you do if you don't have access to your proper newsreader, but have
access to internet?


Well you should be able to find feature list and screen shots from the 
available options. Anyone who is going to make an effort to write a NNTP 
client should really try out the existing one first.

For that matter, most anyone who has the resources to write a new client 
will have the resources to run an old one.
Nov 16 2011
parent reply Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
bcs Wrote:


 Well you should be able to find feature list and screen shots from the 
 available options. Anyone who is going to make an effort to write a NNTP 
 client should really try out the existing one first.
 
 For that matter, most anyone who has the resources to write a new client 
 will have the resources to run an old one.


legacy newsreaders are so suboptimal, that nobody considers to run them
Nov 17 2011
parent bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/17/2011 05:04 AM, Kagamin wrote:

 bcs Wrote:


 Well you should be able to find feature list and screen shots from the
 available options. Anyone who is going to make an effort to write a NNTP
 client should really try out the existing one first.

 For that matter, most anyone who has the resources to write a new client
 will have the resources to run an old one.


 legacy newsreaders are so suboptimal, that nobody considers to run them


While I haven't found any that are Jump up and down squealing good, some 
of the ones that are available are quite good. The origonal statement 
was that some of the *new* clients are total crud because they fail to 
even attempt to use some of the features that make NNTP such an enduring 
thing; e.g. clients that try and make a news group into a php forum.
Nov 17 2011
prev sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:ja0uk6$26tb$1 digitalmars.com...

 I really do not understand why people keep writing replacements for 
 newsreaders that miss fundamentally useful aspects of it.


Probably because it's more than 6 months "old", and isn't "web 2.0" or 
AJAX-y, and doesn't come with the word "cloud" plastered all over it.

But seriously, I think the three things that really hurt NNTP are:

1. There's no user account system.

2. There's no standardized URL system (Seriously?!? Why the fuck not?).


what you have/haven't read on another computer. Basically NNTP could use an 
equivalent to IMAP (but with the option of behaving more like POP3 when the 
user desires).

4. With the exception of Opera, no major web browser comes automatically 
bundled with a *real* (ie, non-web-based) NNTP client. (And it needs to be 
fundamentally designed to be multi-user-friendly.)


these days. If NNTP were bigger, that would become a bigger problem. And I'm 
sure it's at least a perceived problem right now anyway.




friend's PC.


are almost always too dumb to know or care that the internet is more than a 
web browser.


popping up.

With all four points addressed, there would never be any good reason for 
anyone to ever use anything but NNTP.
Nov 17 2011
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/17/2011 8:23 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 With all four points addressed, there would never be any good reason for
 anyone to ever use anything but NNTP.


Your four points are all correct. My beef is that web forum software fixes all 
those, and yet utterly fails to reproduce what NNTP does *right*:

1. compact, threaded view
2. can instantly see what has been read and what has not been read
Nov 17 2011
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Walter Bright Wrote:

 1. compact, threaded view


You have to acknowledge that a lot of people don't see this as
newsgroups getting it right.

I'm completely opposed to it. (recursive*) Threaded views aren't just
suboptimal.
They are a *bad* thing. It was progress to ditch that misfeature, and it pains
me that so many people want it anyway.

* Simple threads can be good. Some organization helps. Too much is bad.
Nov 17 2011
next sibling parent reply bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/17/2011 09:02 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 Walter Bright Wrote:

 1. compact, threaded view


 You have to acknowledge that a lot of people don't see this as
 newsgroups getting it right.


And you have to acknowledge that a significant of people do see this as 
getting it right. And because Walter is in that group, the official 
community device will support tree type threads.


 I'm completely opposed to it. (recursive*) Threaded views aren't just
suboptimal.
 They are a *bad* thing. It was progress to ditch that misfeature, and it pains
 me that so many people want it anyway.

 * Simple threads can be good. Some organization helps. Too much is bad.


If they are suboptimal and bad, how do you then explain that the most 
prolific form of electronic communication has a model that is almost 
identical to NNTP?

http://xkcd.com/802/

When you get right down to it, from the client perspective, NNTP is just 
a world readable e-mail address.
Nov 17 2011
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
bcs Wrote:

 And you have to acknowledge that a significant of people do see this as 
 getting it right.


That's why I've had a [Tree] link in the program since almost the beginning.



 If they are suboptimal and bad, how do you then explain that the most 
 prolific form of electronic communication has a model that is almost 
 identical to NNTP?


Very few people use email sub-threads. Most emails are individual
things that come into your box linearly. I rarely see sub threads used even
in mailing lists.

Other email threads are one level deep threads. This is the only
view a lot of popular clients even bother supporting.

(this does bring up something - my emails are marked as read individually.
They are unread based on time, but read based on being open with an
individual flag in the message. So I was wrong about that before.)
Nov 18 2011
parent reply bcs <bcs example.com> writes:
On 11/18/2011 06:06 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 bcs Wrote:

 And you have to acknowledge that a significant of people do see this as
 getting it right.


 That's why I've had a [Tree] link in the program since almost the beginning.



 If they are suboptimal and bad, how do you then explain that the most
 prolific form of electronic communication has a model that is almost
 identical to NNTP?


 Very few people use email sub-threads. Most emails are individual
 things that come into your box linearly. I rarely see sub threads used even
 in mailing lists.

 Other email threads are one level deep threads. This is the only
 view a lot of popular clients even bother supporting.


Weather or not a particular e-mail client chooses to present e-mails as 
a tree like structure, the medium its self has a tree like structure.


 (this does bring up something - my emails are marked as read individually.
 They are unread based on time, but read based on being open with an
 individual flag in the message. So I was wrong about that before.)
Nov 18 2011
parent Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Friday, November 18, 2011 20:10:26 bcs wrote:

 On 11/18/2011 06:06 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 bcs Wrote:

 And you have to acknowledge that a significant of people do see this
 as
 getting it right.


 
 That's why I've had a [Tree] link in the program since almost the
 beginning.> 

 If they are suboptimal and bad, how do you then explain that the most
 prolific form of electronic communication has a model that is almost
 identical to NNTP?


 
 Very few people use email sub-threads. Most emails are individual
 things that come into your box linearly. I rarely see sub threads used
 even in mailing lists.
 
 Other email threads are one level deep threads. This is the only
 view a lot of popular clients even bother supporting.


 
 Weather or not a particular e-mail client chooses to present e-mails as
 a tree like structure, the medium its self has a tree like structure.


One of the main reasons that I use a local e-mail client to read the newsgroup 
/ mailing list is so that I can have a property tree structure, since online 
portals for e-mail all seem to suck at threading. But regardless of whether a 
particular client chooses to show the threading, the tree structure is most 
definitely there.

- Jonathan M Davis
Nov 18 2011
prev sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/17/2011 9:02 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 Walter Bright Wrote:

 1. compact, threaded view


 You have to acknowledge that a lot of people don't see this as
 newsgroups getting it right.

 I'm completely opposed to it. (recursive*) Threaded views aren't just
suboptimal.
 They are a *bad* thing. It was progress to ditch that misfeature, and it pains
 me that so many people want it anyway.



I am often involved simultaneously in dozens of threaded conversations. How you 
can possibly deal with that using a flat, chronological sort on all the
messages 
is beyond my comprehension.

Even Digg gave up on that and went to a threaded view.

I also use a threaded view of my email messages.
Nov 18 2011
prev sibling parent "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:23:19 +0200, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:


 2. There's no standardized URL system (Seriously?!? Why the fuck not?).


I don't know how much of a standard it is, but I've seen the following  
schemes in use:

1) Linking to a newsgroup: news://www.example.com/comp.lang.d
2) Linking to a specific post: news://www.example.com/messageid example.com
    (disambiguated by presence of  )

It's disappointing that major news clients (e.g. Thunderbird) don't  
implement them.

-- 
Best regards,
  Vladimir                            mailto:vladimir thecybershadow.net
Nov 20 2011
prev sibling parent Adam Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Walter Bright Wrote:

 If that sin isn't enough, the other problem is there is no way to mark a post
as 
 "read".


Every linear view web forum software I've ever seen handles this
automatically.

I don't really love the implementation of most of them, but they
usually do a good enough job anyway.


 That's the main thing that sux about Reddit. Try reading a topic for a while, 
 then come back a few hours later and wonder what's new.


Aye. Reddit is one reason why I don't like tree views!
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips+d gmail.com> writes:
On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 02:51:25 +0000, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:


 Is there a lot of interest in this kind of thing among the community?


My interest in a web reader is a way see which messages I have read, a 
tree view, and a way to respond.

However, if there was a list of current headlines, a viewing like your 
example, and the ability to respond, I think that would make a good 
addition to the website and the "current headlines" could replace the 
twitter feed (probably using the announce group).
Nov 15 2011
parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Jesse Phillips Wrote:

 My interest in a web reader is a way see which messages I have read, a 
 tree view, and a way to respond.


Yeah, showing it as read is a good idea. I was thinking to use the
browser history for that, but that requires loading each post individually -
which is ok, but I prefer seeing it all on one page.


 However, if there was a list of current headlines, a viewing like your 
 example, and the ability to respond, I think that would make a good 
 addition to the website and the "current headlines" could replace the 
 twitter feed (probably using the announce group).


I've also done thread index page:
http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/nntp/thread-index?newsgroup=digitalmars.D

or mini index:
http://arsdnet.net/d-web-site/


It looks like there's enough interest here, so I'll see about finishing this
off in this
coming week.
Nov 15 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:51:25 +0200, Adam D. Ruppe  
<destructionator gmail.com> wrote:


 I've complained about the godawful web viewers for the newsgroup
 before, and wrote a little program to do a better job.


Hmm... Now what do I do with the half-written thing I started writing two  
days ago (for news and newsgroups)?

-- 
Best regards,
  Vladimir                            mailto:vladimir thecybershadow.net
Nov 16 2011
parent reply Adam Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Vladimir Panteleev Wrote:

 Hmm... Now what do I do with the half-written thing I started writing two  
 days ago (for news and newsgroups)?


We could always combine the best parts of both of them!
Nov 16 2011
next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 11/16/2011 7:33 AM, Adam Ruppe wrote:

 Vladimir Panteleev Wrote:

 Hmm... Now what do I do with the half-written thing I started writing two
 days ago (for news and newsgroups)?


 We could always combine the best parts of both of them!


I've thought many times about nothing more than a CGI based news reader that 
works just like an NNTP news reader, in fact, have it use the NNTP database.

Yeah, I know we have that miserable php one.
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:33:56 +0200, Adam Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com>  
wrote:


 Vladimir Panteleev Wrote:

 Hmm... Now what do I do with the half-written thing I started writing  
 two
 days ago (for news and newsgroups)?


 We could always combine the best parts of both of them!


What do you mean by that?

-- 
Best regards,
  Vladimir                            mailto:vladimir thecybershadow.net
Nov 16 2011
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Vladimir Panteleev Wrote:

 What do you mean by that?


If you want to use any of my code, feel free, and if I like your program better,
I'm willing to abandon mine.
Nov 16 2011
parent "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 04:37:49 +0200, Adam D. Ruppe  
<destructionator gmail.com> wrote:


 If you want to use any of my code, feel free,


Thanks. The same goes for my code. (We should probably decide on a  
license, though; how about AGPL 3?)

I hope to have something presentable by tomorrow or Tuesday.
The code is here: https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed

-- 
Best regards,
  Vladimir                            mailto:vladimir thecybershadow.net
Nov 20 2011
prev sibling parent "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:33:56 +0200, Adam Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com>  
wrote:


 Vladimir Panteleev Wrote:

 Hmm... Now what do I do with the half-written thing I started writing  
 two
 days ago (for news and newsgroups)?


 We could always combine the best parts of both of them!


I have planned for something different in many aspects, including style,  
user interface design, functionality and internal design decisions. I  
think I'll continue working on my project. I only hope I'll complete it  
before it is made irrelevant.

-- 
Best regards,
  Vladimir                            mailto:vladimir thecybershadow.net
Nov 16 2011
prev sibling parent reply Somedude <lovelydear mailmetrash.com> writes:
Le 16/11/2011 03:51, Adam D. Ruppe a écrit :

 Is there a lot of interest in this kind of thing among the community?



I've waited for this for such a long time... Thx :)

PS: bug when one clicks on a thread title, though
Nov 16 2011
parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
Somedude Wrote:

 PS: bug when one clicks on a thread title, though


Yeah, I know. When I wrote this originally, it was last year and my
web.d module was pretty different than it is now.

I got it to compile again to make changes, but haven't completely
converted it to the new code.

You can still get to individual posts if you manually change it from
get-message to get-message-page in the url.

(old web.d did that automatically. New web.d doesn't since it proved
to be buggy in more complex sites. I haven't gotten around to fixing
it since I started using a different method anyway.)


I'm probably going to fix this by Friday.
Nov 16 2011
parent Somedude <lovelydear mailmetrash.com> writes:
Le 16/11/2011 23:25, Adam D. Ruppe a écrit :

 Somedude Wrote:

 PS: bug when one clicks on a thread title, though


 
 Yeah, I know. When I wrote this originally, it was last year and my
 web.d module was pretty different than it is now.


...

 I'm probably going to fix this by Friday.


Cool. :)

Dude
Nov 16 2011