On Thursday, 8 December 2011 at 19:43:04 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I am very excited, this is freakin' awesome!

I'm glad you like it :)

> One question: where/how is the user registration data stored?

In a table in an SQLite database. Passwords are stored as salted hashes right now.

On Thursday, 8 December 2011 at 19:58:11 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2011-12-08 18:49, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> On Thursday, 8 December 2011 at 17:42:09 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>> On 2011-12-08 15:41, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>>>> The "threaded" view mode should look the best on small screens.
>>>
>>> Yes, but try adding the following meta tag:
>>>
>>> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1 />
>>>
>>> Then hopefully the page won't look zoomed out on mobile devices.
>>
>> OK, how does it look now?
>
> Horribly broken, sorry, remove it. I was hoping the above would be a quick fix but I think a new CSS file would be needed. Don't spend time on creating a new CSS file for me, I'm fine using Thunderbird.

OK. I don't have a smartphone, but if I get the chance I'll have a look at some possible simple fixes.

On 12/8/11 4:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> As mentioned previously, I've been working on a web frontend for the
> DigitalMars NNTP server. I collected ideas and inspiration from the
> several threads on this topic in the last few weeks, and now I think
> that the result is ready for beta testing and general use.
>
> The current (temporary) URL is:
>
> http://dfeed.kimsufi.thecybershadow.net/discussion/

This is an absolutely fantastic development. It's exactly the kind of thing that D needs - using D to write something nontrivial and highly useful. I just got in touch with Walter about it, and as of now you have in us strong supporters for replacing the existing Web bridge with this one.

One thing though - you must use hyphenation everywhere :o).

Here are a few large topics that we should discuss a bit:

- Would you consider merging your codebase with d-programming-language.org? That way we'd have a simple deployment target and simpler unified maintenance. The downside would be that your project would have less individuality as an independent NNTP-WWW bridge. (That could be partially addressed with directory structure etc.)

- If not, how do we go about integrating with d-programming-language.org? For example say we change the navigation panel on the left. Then we'd need to coordinate with you to pull the code, regenerate your own page, and so on.

- I'm thinking something with iframes may work for the above issue, but cross-domain iframes are limited. Could we serve your content off d-p-l.org?

My nits to be added to others':

* Registration flow is odd. You register, but then you're not taken back to the forums page.

* Password during registration appears in clear.

* The C and C++ forums should not be on the same page. We should focus only on the D forums. It's possible to link them via a new page.

* This may be a good time to retire a few unused forums such as dtl., debugger, dwt, ide, and merge their contents with digitalmars.D.

* The forum descriptions and possibly layout should emphasize digitalmars.D as the "main" forum, and digitalmars.D.learn as the "main n00b" forum. Generally first-comers will be confused as to where they should be posting when facing a large table that must be read in full, and most of the time they want either digitalmars.D or digitalmars.D.learn.

* The lists dmd-beta etc. should be under a different heading and deemphasized. They are for experts only and not nearly as prominent as the main forums.

* The style file should be loaded from d-p-l.org such that changes in style will be automatically picked up by the forums page.

* In horizontal split mode, the footer is disproportionately large (btw I made it smaller recently).

* Use of bold in split mode for unread posts seems a bit heavy. How about a different background color?

* It's not obvious how people should set up their own gravatar.


Andrei

On 12/8/11 2:15 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 12/8/11 4:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> As mentioned previously, I've been working on a web frontend for the
>> DigitalMars NNTP server. I collected ideas and inspiration from the
>> several threads on this topic in the last few weeks, and now I think
>> that the result is ready for beta testing and general use.
>>
>> The current (temporary) URL is:
>>
>> http://dfeed.kimsufi.thecybershadow.net/discussion/
>
> This is an absolutely fantastic development.

One more thing:

- We should look at ways to integrate some of your code with the standard library. For example, would be great to put some NNTP and CGI support in std.


Andrei

On 2011-12-08 21:14, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Thursday, 8 December 2011 at 19:58:11 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> On 2011-12-08 18:49, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>>> On Thursday, 8 December 2011 at 17:42:09 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>>> On 2011-12-08 15:41, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>>>>> The "threaded" view mode should look the best on small screens.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, but try adding the following meta tag:
>>>>
>>>> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1 />
>>>>
>>>> Then hopefully the page won't look zoomed out on mobile devices.
>>>
>>> OK, how does it look now?
>>
>> Horribly broken, sorry, remove it. I was hoping the above would be a
>> quick fix but I think a new CSS file would be needed. Don't spend time
>> on creating a new CSS file for me, I'm fine using Thunderbird.
>
> OK. I don't have a smartphone, but if I get the chance I'll have a look
> at some possible simple fixes.

You can download a simulator, from the Android SDK or the iOS SDK. The iOS SDK requires a Mac. The simulator in Android SDK is extremely slow.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 2011-12-08 21:15, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 12/8/11 4:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> As mentioned previously, I've been working on a web frontend for the
>> DigitalMars NNTP server. I collected ideas and inspiration from the
>> several threads on this topic in the last few weeks, and now I think
>> that the result is ready for beta testing and general use.
>>
>> The current (temporary) URL is:
>>
>> http://dfeed.kimsufi.thecybershadow.net/discussion/
>
> This is an absolutely fantastic development. It's exactly the kind of
> thing that D needs - using D to write something nontrivial and highly
> useful. I just got in touch with Walter about it, and as of now you have
> in us strong supporters for replacing the existing Web bridge with this
> one.
>
> One thing though - you must use hyphenation everywhere :o).
>
> Here are a few large topics that we should discuss a bit:
>
> - Would you consider merging your codebase with
> d-programming-language.org? That way we'd have a simple deployment
> target and simpler unified maintenance. The downside would be that your
> project would have less individuality as an independent NNTP-WWW bridge.
> (That could be partially addressed with directory structure etc.)
>
> - If not, how do we go about integrating with
> d-programming-language.org? For example say we change the navigation
> panel on the left. Then we'd need to coordinate with you to pull the
> code, regenerate your own page, and so on.

Perhaps as a git submodule in d-programming-language.org? Dfeed would change to only render the actual feed and somehow it gets included in the regular site. I'm not entirely sure how since the whole d-p-l.org site is rendered using ddoc.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:15:37 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:

> - Would you consider merging your codebase with d-programming-language.org? That way we'd have a simple deployment target and simpler unified maintenance. The downside would be that your project would have less individuality as an independent NNTP-WWW bridge. (That could be partially addressed with directory structure etc.)

Hm... I don't understand the objection to having the project live on its own github repository.  It's not part of the documentation, but rather a separate piece of code that lives on the same server.  For example, I wouldn't expect the web newsreader to be downloaded in the zipfile.  Yes the navigation has to be updated, but I would concentrate more on making the navigation/header/footer independent of the forum code (if it isn't already).

-Steve

On Thursday, 8 December 2011 at 20:15:38 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> This is an absolutely fantastic development. It's exactly the kind of thing that D needs - using D to write something nontrivial and highly useful. I just got in touch with Walter about it, and as of now you have in us strong supporters for replacing the existing Web bridge with this one.

I'm excited :)

> One thing though - you must use hyphenation everywhere :o).

Now not so much :(

:)

> Here are a few large topics that we should discuss a bit:
>
> - Would you consider merging your codebase with d-programming-language.org? That way we'd have a simple deployment target and simpler unified maintenance.

I'm not against moving the project to the D-Programming-Language GitHub organization, but I'm not sure what would be achieved by merging the two git repositories. Git's "submodule" feature may be more helpful here.

One thing that needs to be mentioned is that the project's scope is not solely the web interface. "DFeed" actually started out as an IRC bot, which among other sources, included the newsgroup as an event source for IRC notifications. I've refactored the code to use a publish/subscribe pattern, so IRC and the local message database (used by the web interface) are two of the consumers. A third one will be the front-page news widget I was planning to have a go at.

> The downside would be that your project would have less individuality as an independent NNTP-WWW bridge. (That could be partially addressed with directory structure etc.)

This is actually not much of a problem right now, as the codebase wasn't written with much abstraction in mind, so refactoring it into a generic NNTP interface would be a task of its own (and probably better off as a fork of this project).

> - If not, how do we go about integrating with d-programming-language.org? For example say we change the navigation panel on the left. Then we'd need to coordinate with you to pull the code, regenerate your own page, and so on.

This can be automated... Also, I'm not against the idea of providing direct shell access for D VIPs.

> - I'm thinking something with iframes may work for the above issue, but cross-domain iframes are limited. Could we serve your content off d-p-l.org?

Yes. By far the best method would be subdomains (e.g. forum.d-programming-language.org or discussion.d-p-l.org).

The second-best method is to use Apache's mod_proxy or mod_rewrite's [P] flag, to make a certain "directory" send web requests to my server. This would greatly affect latency, though - assuming d-p-l.org is hosted in the US, a request from an European visitor would need to make a roundtrip through the US and back to Europe, and back.

Frames are not much of an option, due to their non-interoperability with browser address bars.

> - We should look at ways to integrate some of your code with the standard library. For example, would be great to put some NNTP and CGI support in std.

I don't use CGI. The NNTP module implements little above what's needed for the task. There may be some code good enough for Phobos in the network library I use (asynchronous line-buffered sockets, HTTP client/server), but there are licensing issues I'd need to solve.

> My nits to be added to others':
>
> * Registration flow is odd. You register, but then you're not taken back to the forums page.

It's a bug. I'll fix.

> * Password during registration appears in clear.

That was a deliberate choice... perhaps not a very good one.

> * The C and C++ forums should not be on the same page. We should focus only on the D forums. It's possible to link them via a new page.

Yes.

I was thinking about creating a digitalmars.com stylesheet, and sending the corresponding stylesheet and list of forums depending on the used URL / subdomain.

> * This may be a good time to retire a few unused forums such as dtl., debugger, dwt, ide, and merge their contents with digitalmars.D.

I'm not sure if merging groups is possible on the NNTP level. Doing it in DFeed would involve lots of hacks.

> * The forum descriptions and possibly layout should emphasize digitalmars.D as the "main" forum, and digitalmars.D.learn as the "main n00b" forum. Generally first-comers will be confused as to where they should be posting when facing a large table that must be read in full, and most of the time they want either digitalmars.D or digitalmars.D.learn.
>
> * The lists dmd-beta etc. should be under a different heading and deemphasized. They are for experts only and not nearly as prominent as the main forums.

The layout is actually almost a verbatim copy of http://digitalmars.com/NewsGroup.html . The only change is a typo fix and addition of the omitted D-runtime list.

> * The style file should be loaded from d-p-l.org such that changes in style will be automatically picked up by the forums page.

I edited the main stylesheet to avoid yet another few !important CSS overrides. I think it's best to handle this in the same way as the HTML template (automatic or semi-automatic patching).

> * In horizontal split mode, the footer is disproportionately large (btw I made it smaller recently).

Will fix.

> * Use of bold in split mode for unread posts seems a bit heavy. How about a different background color?

I believe bolding is a common UI element used by newsreaders and mail clients. I just played with background colors a bit, and couldn't get it to not look weird.

However, how does it look now?

> * It's not obvious how people should set up their own gravatar.

Will fix.

On 12/8/2011 6:12 AM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> Still, I love how fast it is. And it's written in D?! Sweet!
>
> If this were integrated to dpl.org it would kick the balls out of all
> the other proggy sites.

Yes! I also think this forum software will be highly desirable for others to use, and can be a showcase for what D programming can do.

On 12/8/2011 7:05 AM, Robert Clipsham wrote:
>> I'm not very excited about the idea of introducing formatting features
>> that only users of this web interface will see. Frequent use of such
>> features would annoy users of other interfaces, and there's the risk of
>> accidentally activating them.
>
> I've seen quite a few people using it for code snippets anyway, and it's only a
> minor thing - I wouldn't want to go any further and allow for
> bold/italic/smileys/etc. Accidentally activating them would be a problem, I
> think that's a minor risk for this though. Not a major thing, just something
> I've always wanted to see ;)

I agree to not do this.