A new text based conferncing system.

Jun 10 18:44 UTC 2017

As it has been said a new system is on the cards, it seems timely to talk
about what would be the best
things to include in a new system. Here is a newuser's perspective:

Text based systems like Grex, and others - are in decline, or have been
overlooked for GUI based web systems.
But why is this so? As a new generation discovers the UNIX toolchest/vault
of commands, especially the 
Linux userbase, it seems a text based system is very useful, even to normal
joe public, aswell as IT 
professionals/system admins.

A couple of ideas for any new system, or any text base conferencing system
in general:

So why are text based systems so little used? My first thoughts as a new user,
is they take a long while to
picture in your mind, to get you bearings. So one idea, i think would be
useful - is an easy accessable 'map'
of the text based system. Something you can look at and see on one screen of
a terminal window, or one screen
at a time for meaningful areas of the system; maybe like a table of contents,
or an actual map of some kind.

Another idea along with picturing the map of the system, is a common set of
commands taken from text based 
systems that have been developed - a comparison of the command sets of the
best systems and maybe using the 
best of each? All this with a view to internationalization/easy translation
into other languages.

I had, in my head a quote from the lead lawyer for the Free Software
Foundation in my mind, when he said something along the 
lines of: "when we use commands to drive our computers, we use a language the
computer can understand, it is also
elegant and resource friendly. When we use a GUI to communicate with the
computer, the langauge we use ia akin to
'poiniting and grunting'." 
And so with the language of a conferencing system, i supose?
And so the rationale for using text based systems in the 21stCentury i
imagine?

response 2 of 5:

Jun 11 05:49 UTC 2017

for a web interface see the CIX system, i just joined, after putting it off
for ages. They have the best web forum interface i have ever used, and they
still have a text interface/system you can use to access all the conferences
(the CoSy conferencing system - well used back in the day) well worth a look.
Infact a great place, just look at the "justjoined" conference, i amthe same
username as on mono.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIX
sign up for a free account if you are interested: 
http://www.cixonline.com/forums.asp
btw the more i use bbs, the more i like the system, the commands are logical
and easy to navigate the whole discussion lists, and i am/was a big fan of
the menu based system like mono has before - i like both now.