Subj : Re: Offline Mail Reader
To : All
From : Jon Watson
Date : Sat Oct 09 2004 03:20 pm
Mark,
>oops... that should have only been http... the point is that the WWW (aka web)
>only makes use of the http protocol... anything else is not the web but simply
a
>use of the internet ;)
Ahh..I see and agree. There are too many things out there called Web-something
that have nothing to do with the web. Anyhow, as you now know - the only
'protocol' I make use of in the entire system is email (ya, ya..not a
protocol...just can't think of the right word right now).
JW> The duplication thing took me a few days to figure out) how
JW> to avoid it, that is. I just finished converting the ugly
JW> BBCode quote style to a nice FTN style that won't make
JW> people puke when they read it and I think the last thing on
JW> my list is threading.
>sounds like a lot of work... especially considering having to learn someone
adjust
>to perform differently... yeah, i've done it many times in the past and i
still
>hate it... i'd rather code it clean from the ground up... if for no other
reason
>than to know that the bugs are mine and i'm the one to blame and fix them ;)
Well, it wasn't so bad. It was more an exercise in systems integration than in
coding. I mean, IREX and MBSE are nice and stable so I didn't have to worry
about anything happening between echomail email. I only had to step in to rip
through the mail spools and either insert messages into the forum's database,
or select from the forum's database and append to the mail spools.
Therefore, since the only new code was mine, all of the bugs were mine. Having
said that, I've just discovered what I consider to be a pretty big bug in IREX,
but that's posted in the IREX echo -no sense repeating it here.
JW> FTNs aren't threaded, I know, but most (mine is no exception)
JW> web forum software is.
>hunh? all my stuff works on threads... i use JAM bases and they are threaded
on
Again, the wrong choice of word on my part. Yes, my JAM bases are threaded like
yours - but the messages don't present themselves in what is considered
'threaded' in 2004 - ie they are not strung together in nice little hierarchal
folders like most Usenet readers present news...
The forum software is certainly geared towards hierachical threading and I'd
like to make use of that. Let's face it, one of the reasons FTNs are having
such a hard time in North America is that our user base has increased a
million-fold, but their knowledge of how to operate anything on their computer
doesn't extend beyond a mouse click. In fact I can confidently state that most
computer users probably consider right-clicking to be an advanced operation.
The whole reason I'm bothering with FOTW (Fido On The Web as I call it) is to
attempt to gain some users back. FTN's have great content....it's just the
interface that today's computer user's can't deal with.
So..I'm trying to marry good content with a 'good' interface.....
JW> Problem is that in fixing the ugly BBCode quote problem
JW> mentioned above - the original SMF message ID is gone -
JW> thus the child/parent link used for threading is also
JW> gone.
>can't carry the MSGID/REPLY control lines over via X- header lines and use
them?
>should be able to...
I'm considering that but, and you may know more about this than I, I'm
concerned...well, skeptical actually, of the liklihood of those X headers
making it back to my system after bouncing through every other node out there.
Do you have any thoughts on how likely that is?
Jon
--- Internet Rex 2.29
* Origin: The gateway at The HeatSink BBS (1:134/703)
