"Unknown W. Brackets" <unknown@simplemachines.org> wrote in message news:d1ti0e$15am$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> That said, I've also seen a great number of forums with guest posting enabled that don't have those problems.  As an example, take the forum for ConTEXT, an editor which has D highlighting:
>
> http://forum.context.cx/

Thanks, I just took a look at it. It looks pretty good, but it does have one serious drawback over news - no indication is kept as to which messages have been read and which haven't. That's a critical feature for me, as I try to read all the messages, yet I tend to read them in a haphazard manner. That works with news, as the newsreader highlights ones I haven't read yet. I can instantly see which threads have new posts that I haven't read yet. I can mark a posting as unread so that I won't forget I need to deal with it later.

Another featrure of news I haven't mentioned is that it is stored as plaintext files. That means I can archive the lot onto a CD now and then, and be assured that in the future it'll be readable with ordinary text tools. They aren't in any database format. Of course, I don't know what form the various forum software packages store their messages in, perhaps it is plaintext.

What I do miss with news is a way for users to vote on posts, like what slashdot does, to highlight the more important ones.

"J C Calvarese" <jcc7@cox.net> wrote in message news:d1su3e$hl3$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> I didn't realize that Walter hasn't re-generated the archive pages (such as http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/index.html) recently. It looks like it's been over eachthree months for each of them. I guess I was thinking he'd update them more frequently (perhaps monthly).

I have no excuse other than sloth.

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> Georg Wrede wrote:
> 
>> I've got a "Server", 200MHz, 64MB, 1.6GB, found in a trash can. I run RedHat 6.3 on it, without GUI, and without monitor.
> 
> 
> While there is nothing wrong with Linux, running a Red Hat installation
> that old is not really very secure... ("no fear of viruses" ? Really ?)
> 
> Better to run something that is still supported, like Debian GNU/Linux ?

Well, I've updated SSH, and I'm not too scared about Tux. Anyhow, for windows folks, this did not need rebooting either. I'm personally more used to RedHat, so Debian just "feels" unfamiliar, although it's obviously got quite a few things right. Anyhow, the firewall is well enough configured. SSH and HTTP are the only open ports.

>> <Whoa, Georg!> I'm not angry here, I just got carried away. :-)
>>
>> *THE* DIFFERENCE between unix and widows is: a windows machine is a dead piece of single-user iron. (Of lately, pretending otherwise.)
> 
> 
> As the old saying goes:
>   Linux is for people who hate Windows,
>   BSD is for people who love Unix... :-)

My reason for preferring Linux over BSD have nothing to do with any logical things, I just happen to personally know Linus Torvalds, and that's why I'll stick with Linux, come hell or high water. :-)

>> D is not Windows-only, so it should be developed on unix.
> 
> 
> GDC already is... DMD, however, is not. (both use the "D" language)
> 
> I think it is up to each and every developer (and user) to choose
> what operating system they want. And Walter seems to prefer Windows ?
> 
> I do not.

He'd save time and effort in the long run.

>Thanks, I just took a look at it. It looks pretty good, but it does have one serious drawback over news - no indication is kept as to which messages have been read and which haven't. That's a critical feature for me, as I try to read all the messages, yet I tend to read them in a haphazard manner. That works with news, as the newsreader highlights ones I haven't read yet. I can instantly see which threads have new posts that I haven't read yet. I can mark a posting as unread so that I won't forget I need to deal with it later.

My guess is that you haven't registered. Every forum I've used has this feature but you have to be registered user...

>Another featrure of news I haven't mentioned is that it is stored as plaintext files. That means I can archive the lot onto a CD now and then, and be assured that in the future it'll be readable with ordinary text tools. They aren't in any database format. Of course, I don't know what form the various forum software packages store their messages in, perhaps it is plaintext.

I administrate a phpBB forum and it stores it's data in mySQL tables but has the ability to "back-up" forums in zip archive (which you can download and burn to cds) and restore it later from that archive...

>What I do miss with news is a way for users to vote on posts, like what slashdot does, to highlight the more important ones.

Word.

Only for guests, and only with that theme.  Other themes may, if they wish, show visited and new links in different colors (as a feature of your browser, not the forum) even for guests.

It is critical for me as well; indeed, if you were to log in, there are facilities to show:

  - topics you haven't read/updated since your last visit.
  - all topics which you haven't read, or which have been updated.
  - topics you have posted in which have been updated since your posting.

You can also mark topics unread, should you wish to come back later. This is a newer feature I recently put in (a few versions ago.)

My newgroup reading client, Thunderbird, doesn't even have the facility to show me which posts have been updated *that I've posted in*.  This seems so crucial to me, and I use it so fervently on forums, that I don't know why it's missing.  Or maybe I just can't find it.

But, I could actually use RSS to export the forum's topics to Thunderbird, if I really wanted to read them in such a client.  And NNTP integration is possible too.

I back up my forum (www.simplemachines.org) very often; the data can be saved in a single plain text file, which compresses quite well using gzip or bzip2.  Automated backups are made easy by MySQL's hotcopy backup and mysqldump tools.  Without effective backup, forum software and indeed anything database driven would be nowhere.

And, if you know even a little SQL (it's elementary, if you don't, easy to learn if you've got the math down already) you can replace grep for most uses, with a faster and more versatile query :P.  Not that I don't love grep to death.

YaBB stores its data in plain text, and is written in Perl.  Because of using plain text, and manual indexing, and not being able to effectively use MySQL and its caches as shared memory, YaBB can perform a lot worse than properly configured servers running other software.  But, they're improving it :).

Woltlab Burning Board (another, German made software) has post ratings.  Sometimes this fails... it's available for most other softwares as a mod/hack (a change that can be applied in an automated or manual fashion, e.g. like patches.)

It's not a default feature in SMF (the software I write and linked you to) because it causes more need for moderation in many cases, which is not something a lot of people want.  That said, we've been considering it for addition, but likely default off.  And as I said, there's a mod available for it anyway.

-[Unknown]


> Thanks, I just took a look at it. It looks pretty good, but it does have one
> serious drawback over news - no indication is kept as to which messages have
> been read and which haven't. That's a critical feature for me, as I try to
> read all the messages, yet I tend to read them in a haphazard manner. That
> works with news, as the newsreader highlights ones I haven't read yet. I can
> instantly see which threads have new posts that I haven't read yet. I can
> mark a posting as unread so that I won't forget I need to deal with it
> later.
> 
> Another featrure of news I haven't mentioned is that it is stored as
> plaintext files. That means I can archive the lot onto a CD now and then,
> and be assured that in the future it'll be readable with ordinary text
> tools. They aren't in any database format. Of course, I don't know what form
> the various forum software packages store their messages in, perhaps it is
> plaintext.
> 
> What I do miss with news is a way for users to vote on posts, like what
> slashdot does, to highlight the more important ones.

You may wish to look at Ben Goodger (lead Firefox developer)'s blog. He's actually touched this issue.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/007426.html

It's pretty specific, and I agree with what he said.  But, for servers... it's no joke.  I've had enough experience to say that time and time again I've seen Linux servers beat Windows ones up and down, even with slower processors and less ram.

-[Unknown]

Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
> You may wish to look at Ben Goodger (lead Firefox developer)'s blog. He's actually touched this issue.
> 
> http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/007426.html

Yeah. There are pieces of software that rise above the rest. On the ancient Macintosh there was one, called Hyper Card. Later M$ tried to copy the thing, but when adding bells and whistles, they raped the entire /raison/ /d'etre/ of it. And it was too slow to be usable to anything _at_all_.

My personal "old and loved piece of software" is Ecco Pro. Last version is from 1997. Man, I'd have loved to see it still being sold. It was perfect as-is, so development was stopped. Net Manage also changed focus at the time. And for several copyright issues, they couldn't release it as open source. How sad. Without it, I'd have skipped widows entirely.

Another prog is QEdit, which I've used continuously from 1987(!) up till lately. Fitted my needs like a glove. Sadly, the newer versions weren't like the original gem!

> It's pretty specific, and I agree with what he said.  But, for servers... it's no joke.  I've had enough experience to say that time and time again I've seen Linux servers beat Windows ones up and down, even with slower processors and less ram.

That, and being able to _discuss_ with your computer.