OK, here's an item for bug reports.

46 responses total.

[1] When creating a .cf file, backtalk doesn't strip addresses off the name
from the passwd file.

[2] Backtalk seems to put the linked flag in the wrong entry of the sumfile.

[3] If you try to list users, backtalk times out before it finishes listing
    13000 users.  Surprise, surprise.

[4] Attempting to look up user bios gives a bomb...which is now wonder,
    since on Grex those are going to have to be taken from .plan files instead
    of the bio file.  Need to do some redesign here.

Hmm. yes. Even non-telnetting types should keep their bio 
info in a .plan file, so it can be seen by conventional 
users. Hmm.

[5] the vanilla/conflist is not giving me the form to maintain it.
I belive that this is because it checks first to see if .cflist is 
writable, and finds that it is *not*. We need something like partutil to
 make the .cflist writable so we can maintain it over the web.

I can fix it as root, but not as srw, as I cannot grant cfadmg group 
status to my own .cflist file. This is the way unix works.

Hmmm...I think I fixed it so it will be turned readable if you try
reading it, but I think the "readable" function may be reporting its
state before it gets reassigned to group cfadmg.  Or something.  Need to
study this.  In any case, I thought I already had done something about
making partutil work on .cflists.

I don't know if it counts as a bug, really, but all "help backtalk" returns
is three boxes and a percent sign.

Here are you entering "help backtalk"?

I believe I've fixed the name-setting bug.  People who join conferences
via backtalk should no longer have their addresses appended to their
name.  If you joined before I fixed the bug, the bug fix is too late
to help you.  You are stuck with the junk in your name until you
use the "change your name in this conference" command in pistachio
to fix it.
I may have fixed the .cflist bug that Steve mentioned above.
I'm posting from lynx, which is so weird that I can't really tell
if it is working or not.  My ISP has flaked out again.  :-(

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Yeah, the Pistachio buttons are on izzy, and izzy is in cloud-cuckoo land.
It's nice to have the pictures someplace other than Grex, because things
run faster that way, but it'd be neat if we had a way to fall back to
another site if izzy is down.

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A little bit of flakiness occurred in the text entry field in 
vanilla, but I can't seem to replicate it.  I was entering text, and 
scrolled up to look at previous responses while my cursor was in the 
text entry field.  When I scrolled back down, there were two cursors 
in the field--one solid, and one flashing.  I clicked in the field, 
and it seemed to get things back to normal--there was only one 
cursor, happily blinking away--but the backspace key, rather than 
deleting the previous letter, would remove that leter and replace it 
with a letter from the word before.  

I'm using netscape 2.0 with vanilla from a Mac IIsi, if any of this is 
relevant.

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Re #14: Whatever caused that, it wasn't Backtalk and there is nothing
Backtalk can do about it.  It's a browser problem.

Re #15: Izzy was up yesterday, but they've set up the file system to be
shared between two computers via NFS, and they are having big problems. 
Accessing some files seems to take forever.  So it wouldn't astonish me
if it was really, really slow about sending the button images yesterday.
It seems to be better today.  (cross fingers).  But I don't think there
are any images on the welcome page.  I don't know why that would be
hanging.

I've installed a new version of Backtalk that should fix the problem
with updating sum files incorrectly when you link items.

Yup, looks like the linking bug is fixed all right.

OK, user bios work a bit better now, though I think they still need a
bit of work.  If you click on the login id's of any other user, it does
the moral equivalent of a "finger" on him, displaying that user's .plan
file.  If you do so on your own login, you get a chance to edit your
.plan file.

You also get fields to edit your full name, change your password, and
nuke your account.  None of these will work, nor are any of them likely
to start working in the near future.  Instead, we will probably modify
the scripts to stop offering the options.

The bios do still leave the office and phone fields in the user's full
name.  This still needs to be fixed up.

Re 14. Jan is right (in 16) that is a Netscape 2.0 bug, valerie. It 
seems to be mac-only as far as I can tell. I run into it from time to 
time. It's annoying, but not deadly.

The list of users commands in both vanilla and pistachio should more
or less work now.  They are still slow, but they do seem functional.
They allow you to list all users (showing just a few per screen) or
search the user database for a any users with a particular string in
their names Probably there should be an option to search for an exact
match with a particular login name.  That, at least, would be fast.

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Don't apologize.  We do need bug reports.  The timeout is mainly there for
insurance against infinite loops while debugging.  It's clear that on Grex
it has to be lengthened quite a lot.

I agree we should give image sizes.

On #23, when it didn't give options to continue reading new responses, were
you in vanilla or pistachio?

I put sizes on the grex logo.  Most of the buttons on the pistachio read
page (both the ones in the control panel like "NEXT ITEM" and the ones
in the text window like "UNSEEN") already had sizes, but it had been
left out on a few (though not on ones Valerie would have seen...just
fairwitness controls).  There are probably some sizeless buttons here
and there on other pages, but I'll have to look for them.

I've increased the timeout on Grex.

There isn't a really good way to read just selected responses of an item
in either of the interfaces right now.  (Though it wouldn't be hard to
put into an interface).  The best you can do now is in Pistachio:

 - On the "list of items" page, Check the item, Check "read new
   responses", and hit the "Read" button.  This will read the new
   responses in the item, which, since you say it was all marked seen
   read it, there aren't any of.

 - You'll get the read page, with just the response box, and a little
   "view responses" button at the top.  Type the response range you
   want to see into the box, and hit the button.

Obviously this won't work with a new item.  The "read new" will show
the whole thing.  There needs to be an option for that on the Read
button on the items page.

I wonder if Valerie isn't using Vanilla.  I wasn't able to reproduce the
problem of losing the "NEXT ITEM" button under pistachio.  And Vanilla
is more inclined to collect up all the output in a buffer and then send
it in a single blast when it is done composing the item that Pistachio
is.  Pistachio tends to send chunks of text along as they are completed.

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You still got a timeout reading "The Flood"?   Wow.  Timeout is set at
eight minutes.  I've read it several times and even the previous 3
minute timeout never got me.

I'm not so worried about the timeouts, per se.  I would plan to turn
them off in a production system.  We put those in on HVCN because if one
of our scripts went into an infinite loop, it was difficult or
impossible to kill it.  I am rather amazed that you were willing to wait
8 minutes.

The Pistachio "UNSEEN" button marks that response, and all subsequent
responses unseen, and skips on to the next item, so if you do another
"read new" you can pick up where you left off.

Alt tags on the buttons is a good idea.  I tend to think of those as
support for non-graphical browsers, which would be hopelessly lost in
Pistachio anyway.  But I guess there are other uses.

I put the "HELP" button into Pistachio, but never thought of anything
for it to do.  Someday I'll have to do something about that.

Wow.  You can fit a lot in a name.  I wonder what Picospan thinks about
that?

On my browser, the Post button is kind of highlit.  I suppose I could
do something nicer with it.

Looks like mile-long names are A-OK with Picospan.

NEW BUG:  I tried to use the thing to edit my conference hot list
but when i tried to "change" the file, it said it could not write to the
.cfonce file.

now isn't it supposed to edit .cflist?

Yup.  I think I've fixed that bug, but not quite 100%.  It now edits your
.cflist, but leaves it permitted wrong so Picospan can't read it anymore.
I've implemented a fix to the second bug, but haven't installed it on Grex
yet, so for the moment, I'd advise not editting your .cflist with backtalk.
If you tried doing so before the first bug fix, I suspect you have an empty
file named ".cfdir/..cfdir" if you had a .cfdir, or one name ".cfdir" if you
didn't.  (I know, I was really off my head when I wrote that bit of code.)
You should remove it, especially in the latter case.  If you've tried it since
the first fix I did, I recommend doing "chmod o+r .cflist" or, if you have
a .cfdir, "chmod o+r .cfdir/.cflist".  Sorry.

There also seems to be a bug with Backtalk remembering some forgotten items.
I haven't chased this down yet.

Yipes - I haven't been here in way too long.
Valerie, there are problems in Vanilla which can cause it to lose the 
option to continue reading. Your resp:23 experience is a known defect. 
Thanks for reporting it, though, I keep forgetting about it.

I was responding to daniel, sorry.

I agree that embedding the pixel sizes would be a good idea.

I am still having trouble with Backtalk paying no attention to my cflist and
participation files. It seems odd that it would choose me to discriminate 
against.  Alas it is almost 3AM and I can't figure it out right now.
I'm using picospan, because every item is all new to me when viewed in
Backtalk.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss