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Forum: Some annoyances...
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Forum: Some annoyances...

(1) By Robert M. Münch (robert) on 2020-04-23 15:57:30 [link] [source]

Hi, well, I'm not a forum fan, so my points might be biased, but anyway:

  • It does not remember if I want to see posts chronological or hierarchical => have to switch for every thread I look at.

  • I want to see, let's say 500 threads per page because that makes skimming much faster. Always having to click "older" is just a waste of clicks. My usability measure is: clicks to result.

  • Is there a feature to get access via a newsreader? I know a lot of forums that mirror to a newsreader. I know old-boys crap, but very efficient. I would love to have news.sqlite.org being able to use all the tools. Even better than the mailing list.

  • what is the search result order? Age? Newest on top? I'm missing to see the date of the post, to get an idea which SQLite version that post could be related to. Maybe even add the SQLite version is a hint...

  • Skimming the mailing list subjects took about 20s per day, if at all. This looks like much more effort. How about some alerts like sending me an email if the following keywords show up in a post.

I think that's it for now...

(2) By anonymous on 2020-04-23 17:43:47 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

  • Is there a feature to get access via a newsreader? I know a lot of forums that mirror to a newsreader. I know old-boys crap, but very efficient. I would love to have news.sqlite.org being able to use all the tools. Even better than the mailing list.

I agree, although I think there is the Fossil forum to discuss the forum software. I mentioned this before, and nothing seems to have come from it.

(3.1) By Stephan Beal (stephan) on 2020-04-23 17:50:51 edited from 3.0 in reply to 2 [source]

I agree, although I think there is the Fossil forum to discuss the forum software.

Indeed, the forum is part of fossil and "should" be discussed there:

https://fossil-scm.org/forum

I mentioned this before, and nothing seems to have come from it.

So far there have been only two(?) users who have lobbied for newsgroup-style access. With rare exceptions, features in Fossil are added because they scratch a volunteer contributor's itch. Without a contributor who's itched by the lack of newsgroup support, it's unlikely to ever happen.

(7) By anonymous on 2020-04-23 22:34:45 in reply to 3.1 [link] [source]

So far there have been only two(?) users who have lobbied for newsgroup-style access. With rare exceptions, features in Fossil are added because they scratch a volunteer contributor's itch. Without a contributor who's itched by the lack of newsgroup support, it's unlikely to ever happen.

Indeed, that seems to be the case; robert is one of them, and I am the other. I am willing to help with the implementation of NNTP in Fossil, although I cannot because I am unable to provide the signed contributor agreement (even though I agree with most of it; the only part I disagree with is the part that they may copyright it (although I may be misunderstanding it; the second line of item 1 says the author can do stuff as though he is the sole owner of the contribution, while the fourth line of item 1 suggests something else, but depending on what is intended, this fourth line could be improved to indicate such, although I don't know what is meant exactly so it can be helpful to clarify please); I insist that my work will be in the public domain, although I am OK with them using it as derivative works and copyrighting that themself and giving me nothing in exchange; however, the reason I cannot sign it is unrelated to whether I agree with it or not). If there is information about which files I should need to use the functions to read artifacts and user permissions, and to be able to write new artifacts (and compute the contents of the Z card), then I could make a separate program which can access the Fossil repository database to use with NNTP, also which would be public domain.

(4) By Warren Young (wyoung) on 2020-04-23 17:59:39 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

I want to see, let's say 500 threads per page because that makes skimming much faster.

The current set of front-page posts spans about three days of activity. If you're checking in less often than that, then email notification might work better for you.

Still, it should be a fairly easy feature to create for someone with sufficient motivation to add. Hint. :)

Is there a feature to get access via a newsreader?

Not yet, but unlike SQLite proper, the Fossil project accepts outside code contributions.

what is the search result order?

Relevance, according to SQLite's FTS4 feature backing the search engine. (No, not FTS5, probably for backwards compatibility reasons.)

I'm missing to see the date of the post,

Again, easy to add for someone with the itch to see the feature included.

How about some alerts like sending me an email...

Click your user's name in the upper right corner of this web site, then click Email Alerts.

...if the following keywords show up in a post.

Ah, now you're asking for features you don't get in NNTP or SMTP, so it's orthogonal to the "not a forum fan" line of argument.

I'm not so sure about this sort of feature getting added. Generally speaking, Fossil doesn't remember a whole lot about each user on the server side, which it would have to do in order to implement per-user keyword-based email alerting.

I'd suggest something like Google Alerts as a ready-made alternative.

(6) By anonymous on 2020-04-23 22:17:25 in reply to 4 [link] [source]

Is there a feature to get access via a newsreader?

Not yet, but unlike SQLite proper, the Fossil project accepts outside code contributions.

I wrote a public domain NNTP server software in C called sqlnetnews, which uses SQLite as its database storage engine. You could use some of its code if you wanted, although probably not as is, both because the schema is different and because sqlnetnews does not implement the AUTHINFO command (if NNTP support is implemented, I am then more likely to register an account just to use it with NNTP, in case you decide to disallow anonymous posting over NNTP). Additionally, when articles are received using NNTP, the headers will need to be saved; it will also need to generate headers (although not necessarily store them in the database) for messages posted using the web interface. (You are free to ask about sqlnetnews, either on my own NNTP server or on news.software.nntp, if you need to ask questions about it.)

Note that the standard MIME type for Markdown seems to be text/markdown and not text/x-markdown, so when an article is accessed using NNTP, it should add the header Content-type: text/markdown if the message uses Markdown formatting (or omit the Content-type header in the case of plain text). (A client that doesn't understand Markdown can just display the same message as plain text, which is still perfectly readable; this is one of the advantages of using Markdown instead of HTML.)

As a bonus, part of the stuff needed to implement this may also result in the message IDs for email messages to work correctly (if it doesn't already do so; I don't know).

...if the following keywords show up in a post.

Ah, now you're asking for features you don't get in NNTP or SMTP, so it's orthogonal to the "not a forum fan" line of argument.

This is not quite correct. While that feature is not part of SMTP or NNTP (nor HTTP), nevertheless it can easily be done. In the case of SMTP, the receiving SMTP server can implement this feature; the sender need not know anything about it. In the case of NNTP, a similar thing is also possible, although if you are receiving from the server instead, still it is possible by use of a local search function on the client. Either way, unlike with HTTP, it is not necessary for the sending server to know anything about that feature.

(5) By Richard Hipp (drh) on 2020-04-23 18:34:02 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

I want to see ... 500 threads per page

Use the n=500 query parameter to the /forummain URL.