View modes

You can browse the forum using one of several view modes:

• Basic - A forum-like view with paged linear threads.
• Threaded - Threaded group overview with single post display, similar to mailing list archives.
• Horizontal-split - JavaScript-powered interface with a split view, similar to a usenet client.
• Vertical-split - A view with a list pane at the top and a message pane at the bottom, resembling a desktop mail client.

Keyboard navigation

Keyboard shortcuts are available for all view modes (in thread and post listing pages, as well as the forum index). If JavaScript is enabled, press ? to view a list of shortcuts.

If you wish, you can disable keyboard shortcuts on the settings page.

Read post history

The posts you've viewed are saved to a compressed cookie, or on the server if you're logged in. Viewing a thread in basic view will mark all displayed posts as "read". Posts can be marked as "unread" using the u keyboard shortcut.

To avoid losing read post history, consider registering an account to avoid cookie limitations / expiration / accidental deletion.

Accounts

You do not need an account to browse or post to this forum. Preferences and read post history are stored in browser cookies for unregistered users.

You can register an account to keep them on the server instead. Registering an account will transfer all variables from cookies to the server database.

Creating an account will also allow you to create subscriptions, and be notified by IRC or email of replies to your posts, or other events.

Email address

When posting, you need to indicate an email address. It doesn't need to be a valid one; this software will not send anything to the specified address. The email address will be made public to other users of the news server / mailing list you are posting to. Therefore, please be aware that malicious robots may be able to collect your address and send spam to it.

The email address is also used to display an avatar (see below).

Markdown formatting

You may optionally use Markdown formatting when authoring posts. The specific variant of Markdown used is GitHub Flavored Markdown.

The following is a quick guide for some available syntax:

writeln("D is great!");

For more information, consult GitHub's documentation or the full specification, though please note that not all GitHub extensions are enabled on this forum.

Markdown rendering may be completely disabled from the settings page.

Avatars

The forum will display avatars associated with users' email addresses. If the email address is registered with Gravatar, the associated avatar is shown. Otherwise, an Identicon generated from a hash of the email address is displayed as a fallback.

To use a custom avatar on this forum, register an account at Gravatar, associate an email address with an image, and use that email address when posting to this forum. Additionally, you can create a Gravatar profile, which will be accessible by clicking on your avatar.

User profiles and signatures

Since messages can come from a variety of sources, this forum does not have customizable user profiles. Instead, you can create a Gravatar profile, as described in the Avatars section above. Click a user's avatar to go to their Gravatar profile page, assuming they have created one.

For similar reasons, this forum does not allow configuring a signature. Signatures are not as useful in messages on the web today, and often devolve to a low signal-to-noise ratio. Instead, you can put relevant information on your Gravatar profile, or on your website (and link to it from your Gravatar profile).

Canonical links

If you use the default (basic) view and would like to get a link to a particular post, please use the "Permalink" item located in the left sidebar (by right-clicking it and selecting "Copy link location", or your browser's equivalent). If you copy the contents of your browser's address bar, the resulting link may be excessively long, and may not work as well for users who have selected a different view mode. A canonical link has the form https://domain/post/message-id@goes-here, and does not contain /thread/ or an URL fragment (# or any text following it).

To get the canonical link to a thread, just use the first post's canonical link. If you use the "threaded" or "horizontal-split" view mode, you can simply copy the URL from your address bar. Each post's title is also a canonical link to the post in question in any view mode.

Drafts

When you click "Save and preview", a draft of your message will be saved on the server. If JavaScript is enabled, this will also occur periodically as you are typing the message.

If you accidentally close the browser tab with the message, you can restore it by opening a posting form (by clicking "Create thread" or replying to a post). A notice will appear before the form if there are any unsent drafts. To discard a draft, click the "Discard draft" button at the bottom of the posting form.

About

This website is powered by DFeed, an NNTP / mailing list web frontend / forum software, news aggregator and IRC bot. DFeed was written mostly by Vladimir Panteleev. The source code is available under the GNU Affero General Public License on GitHub: https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed

This DFeed instance (forum.dlang.org) is a frontend to the DigitalMars NNTP server and mailing lists. Portions of the web interface (including style and graphics) are Copyright © by Digital Mars.

Contributing

This forum software is open-source, and written in the D programming language. Contributions are welcome. You can help improve this software by reporting bugs, giving feedback, and submitting pull requests. Patches for fixes, improvements, documentation, unit tests, refactoring, etc. are all welcome.

To start working on DFeed, clone the GitHub project, and check the instructions in README.md to get started.