New Internet Forum for Unix Support

Begin <barmar-DBE3F1.00234513042006@comcast.dca.giganews.com>
On 2006-04-13, Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:[color=blue]
> Since there are now a handful of standard forum implementations, which
> most of these use, could they really be considered to be "reinventing"
> anything? It has become a standard paradigm, it's not new any more.[/color]

Yes, it is reinvented usenet, badly. ``Standard'' (and notoriously
leaky) implementations don't change that a bit.

[color=blue][color=green]
>> - Use of my favorite editor[/color]
>
> That's more a limitation of web browsers than the forums. GUI
> newsreaders also don't let you use your favorite editor, so Usenet is
> not much different unless you happen to use a newsreader that allows you
> to specify a particular editor. And the only reason there are
> newsreaders that offer this option is because Usenet predates widespread
> GUI availability, and the traditional text-based newsreaders haven't
> died out.[/color]

Not quite. You're right in the sense that browsers might develop
pluggable or configurable edit fields, but that is not the whole of
the problem. One other consideration on this level is that there are a
multitude of usenet readers, including GUI ones, but browsers are still
few and far between. It doesn't help that browser applications have done
far too much and even now that mozilla's been split up, firefox still
is doing far too much. In part because too many unrelated things have
been webified for buzzword compliance if no other reason.

Teh intarweb is the killer app of the great unwashed, and it sure is
good at killing things, including itself. It is here to stay because
it has enough momentum that people will keep it alive at all costs,
including reinventing things out of ignorance to existing solutions.

[color=blue][color=green]
>> - No possibility to just pipe an article through whatever I like[/color]
>
> Again, that's a browser vs newsreader problem, not a forum versus Usenet
> issue. Although I admit that complex web pages, like web forums, may be
> inherently harder to extract the message text from automatically in
> order to pipe it. But if there are any standard XML tags for forum
> messages, they could be used by browsers to do this.[/color]

It isn't just the extracting, but also that the 'web inherently carries
with it presentation information that just isn't present in USENET.
That is, the separation between presentation and content is blurred if
not lost. A consequence is that you can't just separate out ``browser
vs. newsreader'' because newsreaders do things to the raw data that if
you get it from a forum server is already packed in unrelated crap that
browsers don't know how to separate out of sheer lack of metadata, if
not lack of implementation logic.

You're right that you could use XML to add the necessairy metadata
again. The benefit would be that the user can then toss away the crap
surrounding the messages and have a client do the entire presentation
thing. That all still counts as reinventing, and a serious loss of
efficiency to the actual communication to boot.

Then again, reinventing square wheels is the hallmark of the largest
consumer s/w company on the planet so surprised at the practice I'm not.


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.

In article <qe91h3-pl5.ln1@news.heiming.de>,
Michael Heiming <michael+USENET@www.heiming.de> wrote:
[color=blue]
> In comp.unix.admin Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>:[color=green]
> > In article <tdb0h3-bin.ln1@news.heiming.de>,
> > Michael Heiming <michael+USENET@www.heiming.de> wrote:[color=darkred]
> >> - Missing spell checking[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
> > Most forums offer this, I think.[/color]
>
> Didn't saw a single that did until today.
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> - No or pretty lame kill filling capability[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
> > True.[/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> - No possibility to just pipe an article through whatever I like[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
> > Again, that's a browser vs newsreader problem, not a forum versus Usenet
> > issue. Although I admit that complex web pages, like web forums, may be
> > inherently harder to extract the message text from automatically in
> > order to pipe it. But if there are any standard XML tags for forum
> > messages, they could be used by browsers to do this.[/color]
>
> Perhaps, still dunno a single GUI browser allowing this, which
> was my point.[/color]

Kind of hypocritical to complain about the lack of spell checking in
forums, and then not use it in Usenet. AFAIK, there's no such word as
"dunno".

If I wanted to pipe a forum article, I would just cut and paste it into
the other application. Even back in the days when I used trn I didn't
make much use of its piping ability -- maybe once every month or two.

You might just as well complain about the entire web, since it's hard to
pipe any web page.

--
Barry Margolin, [email]barmar@alum.mit.edu[/email]
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

In comp.unix.admin Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>:[color=blue]
> In article <qe91h3-pl5.ln1@news.heiming.de>,
> Michael Heiming <michael+USENET@www.heiming.de> wrote:[/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>> In comp.unix.admin Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>:[color=darkred]
>> > In article <tdb0h3-bin.ln1@news.heiming.de>,
>> > Michael Heiming <michael+USENET@www.heiming.de> wrote:
>> >> - Missing spell checking[/color]
>>[color=darkred]
>> > Most forums offer this, I think.[/color]
>>
>> Didn't saw a single that did until today.
>>[color=darkred]
>> >> - No or pretty lame kill filling capability[/color]
>>[color=darkred]
>> > True.[/color]
>>[color=darkred]
>> >> - No possibility to just pipe an article through whatever I like[/color]
>>[color=darkred]
>> > Again, that's a browser vs newsreader problem, not a forum versus Usenet
>> > issue. Although I admit that complex web pages, like web forums, may be
>> > inherently harder to extract the message text from automatically in
>> > order to pipe it. But if there are any standard XML tags for forum
>> > messages, they could be used by browsers to do this.[/color]
>>
>> Perhaps, still dunno a single GUI browser allowing this, which
>> was my point.[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> Kind of hypocritical to complain about the lack of spell checking in
> forums, and then not use it in Usenet. AFAIK, there's no such word as
> "dunno".[/color]

Looks like I have configured the spell checker to accept the word
"dunno", seems to me a common abbreviation of "do not know". ;-)
[color=blue]
> If I wanted to pipe a forum article, I would just cut and paste it into
> the other application. Even back in the days when I used trn I didn't
> make much use of its piping ability -- maybe once every month or two.[/color]
[color=blue]
> You might just as well complain about the entire web, since it's hard to
> pipe any web page.[/color]

Really?
lynx -dump [url]http://www.heiming.de/[/url] | grep Michael

Seems to work for fine for me...

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo [email]zvpunry@urvzvat.qr[/email] | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 258: That's easy to fix, but I can't be bothered.

In article <sfn3h3-gb8.ln1@news.heiming.de>,
Michael Heiming <michael+USENET@www.heiming.de> wrote:
[color=blue]
> In comp.unix.admin Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>:[color=green]
> > You might just as well complain about the entire web, since it's hard to
> > pipe any web page.[/color]
>
> Really?
> lynx -dump [url]http://www.heiming.de/[/url] | grep Michael
>
> Seems to work for fine for me...[/color]

OK, I guess I meant *most* web pages. Most of the web makes heavy use
of frames and fancy layout, so getting at the specific URL that contains
the stuff you want to pipe will be difficult.

I'm sure you'll agree that your home page is quite atypical, so it's not
much more than an academic refutation of my claim. The web would be
great if you could pipe the output of a Google search, for instance, but
good luck with that (you're probably better off piping the raw source to
a tool that understands XML).

--
Barry Margolin, [email]barmar@alum.mit.edu[/email]
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

In comp.unix.admin Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>:[color=blue]
> In article <sfn3h3-gb8.ln1@news.heiming.de>,
> Michael Heiming <michael+USENET@www.heiming.de> wrote:[/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>> In comp.unix.admin Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>:[color=darkred]
>> > You might just as well complain about the entire web, since it's hard to
>> > pipe any web page.[/color]
>>
>> Really?
>> lynx -dump [url]http://www.heiming.de/[/url] | grep Michael
>>
>> Seems to work for fine for me...[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> OK, I guess I meant *most* web pages. Most of the web makes heavy use
> of frames and fancy layout, so getting at the specific URL that contains
> the stuff you want to pipe will be difficult.[/color]
[color=blue]
> I'm sure you'll agree that your home page is quite atypical, so it's not
> much more than an academic refutation of my claim. The web would be
> great if you could pipe the output of a Google search, for instance, but
> good luck with that (you're probably better off piping the raw source to
> a tool that understands XML).[/color]

Unsure what you are talking about? According to you something
like the following wouldn't be possible:

wget -U MSIE6 -O - \
[url]http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=\&num=100\&scoring=r\&hl=en\&as_epq=\&as_oq=\&as_eq=\&as_ugroup=\&as_usubject=\&as_uauthors=barmar%40alum.mit.edu\&lr=\&as_drrb=q\&as_qdr=\&as_mind=1\&as_minm=1\&as_miny=2005\&as_maxd=14\&as_maxm=4\&as_maxy=2006\&safe=off[/url] \
| sed -n -e "s/\(.*\)\(href=\"\/group\/\)\(.*\)\(\/browse.*\)/\3/p" -e "/*Results/s/<[^>]*b>//gp" |\
sort | uniq -c | sed "1s/ ^\(.*\)\(Results.*\)/\2/" | sort -nr

Sorry for over length line, URL is sad enough really 258 characters!

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo [email]zvpunry@urvzvat.qr[/email] | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 349: Stray Alpha Particles from memory packaging
caused Hard Memory Error on Server.

Dave (from the UK) wrote:[color=blue]
> But what does it offer than a newsgroup does not?[/color]

Maybe lack of flames?

--
Kind regards,
Mogens V.