This item is for system announcements (new computer equipment on Grex, 
system upgrades, Grex meetings, etc.).  Personal announcements should go 
back in item 2; Grex system *problems* belong in the next item (#4). 

27 responses total.

quit

no! you quit!

Backtalk has been upgraded from version 1.0.1 to version 1.1.2.

This is a development release and slightly experimental.  Please report
to me any problems you notice.

Most obvious new feature is the Abalone interface.  This is an
experimental alternative to the standard Pistachio interface.  If you
goto http://www.cyberspace.org/cgi-bin/backtalk and select 'Abalone'
instead of Pistachio you'll get it.

Abalone's main feature is that it is a lot better looking than
Pistachio.  If you want to show people Grex and want them to be
impressed, abalone may be a good choice.  It has fewer features,
slightly clumsier controls, and is a bit slower than pistachio, so I'd
be surprised if many people decide they prefer it on a regular basis.

In Pistachio there are a few changes:
  - The 'item' list now defaults to showing only new items instead of
    all items.  You can change this from the preferences page if you
    don't like it.
  - The search function allows you to restrict the search to specific
    items, instead of always searching the whole conference.

The rest is all (major) internal changes, features irrelevant to Grex,
and bug fixes.

Yeah, Abalone looks nice but I think I'll stick with Pistachio....

The new default item list containing only new items is great.  Thanks!

The next enhancement I'd like to see is something like the picospan 

b newre

command so you see items you've looked at before but not brand new ones.

thats really good? ok whatever i like it too..

I'd like to be able to browse newresponse items too.

There were big bugs in the abalone "list all conferences" screen and in
the peek URLs.  These have been fixed.

This response has been erased.

I've just "split" agora20 through agora29 off from /bbs to free up space
(/bbs was nearly full).  Please note that any changes (responses, freezing,
censoring, etc.) made in one of the "split off" agora cf's may be FOREVER
LOST when /bbs is re-united in a larger space in the future!!!  (Agora29
is Spring 1999, so this isn't too much an issue....except for items linked
into those conferences, which my kludge should give a decent chance of 
preserving.) 

Can you explain this a bit more?  There is at least one item linked 
from one of those Agoras into Music cf which is still active (music #154).
There might be more.

  Can't you just move the files (or directories) to another filesystem
  and put symlinks in their place in /bbs?  And if you've done so, why
  should Picospan care which platter the bits actually reside on?

Agora20 through Agora29 were copied to /a and symlinks put in /bbs,
pointing to the new copies.  Then i moved the originals in /bbs to
/bbs/agora2?.old and started gzip -9'ing the item files.  If this
process is reversed by rm'ing the copies in /a and gunzip'ping the
.old agoras, then all should be well with linked items, PROVIDED
that they're only accessed though the non-agora conferences.  I have
serious doubts about trying to keep both PicoSpan and Backtank happy
with symlinked item files.  Yes, this is an alpha-test kludge.

If picospan and backtalk are happy with the symlinked copies, why would you
throw them away to retrieve the compressed copies?  Wouldn't it make more
since to put the symlinked copies back into /bbs than to put the compressed
copies back into /bbs?  The compressed copies are useful only if picospan
and backtalk trash the symlinked copies, right?

If nothing else, linked items (linked between conferences) are implemented
as hard links, not symlinks, in Picospan.  Among other things, this allows
Picospan to tell you that the item is linked when you read it.  Since hard
links can't span filesystems, Picospan definitely does care where the items
are stored.

I have installed a new version of C-kermit (command "kermit"). Our 
version was seriously old. This one seems to work much better. Only 
dialup users can use kermit, so if you are not a dialup user, this 
doesn't matter to you.

Kermit has excellent vt100 and ansi emulation, and together with the 
newest version of lynx (2.8.2 is the latest we have on Grex), which you 
access by typing newlynx instead of lynx, it should be possible to view 
most foriegn language websites. At least we think cyrillic and Hebrew 
seem to be usable. Double byte character sets based on unicode have not 
been tested.

  re #14:  Picospan determines that an item is a "linked item" by checking
  the link count?  

Right.

Mostly right.  The sum file also tells if any given item is linked.  However
as soon as Backtalk and/or Picospan notices that the link count is 1, it will
update the sum file to "correct" it.  I'd typically expect this to happen
pretty darn fast.  So the effect of Walter's move will be to split those
items - from now on they are no longer linked, and new responses posted in
the music conference will no longer appear in the old agora conferences.
Which is probably fine.

Symlinks would probably partially work.  I should look into how Backtalk will
react to that someday.  I think right now it would fail to notice that are
linked, but they would be, in that messages posted to one item will appear
in the other.  Quite horrible things could happen if the linked-to item is
deleted before the linked-from item.

PicoSpan won't deal "right" with symlinked items.  Since it "knows" they
aren't linked, it won't bother to stat the file each time to see if
there are new responses, which means it's very likely to miss any new
activity there.

Actually, i took advantage of gzip default to skipping files with link
counts >1, and did *not* gzip the item files for linked items in the
/bbs/agora2?.old directories.  My impression from janc and mdw's words
is that this will convince both PicoSpan and Backtalk that the items
are still linked...but ONLY when viewed from the non-agora2? cf. side
of things. 

I am in receipt-sending mode.  I wrote to everyone who donated $75 or more
to Grex last year and asked if they would like a paper receipt for tax
purposes.  If anyone else who donated would also like a receipt, send me a
note.

To read other character sets with Kermit, you have to have the same character
set loaded on your computer, and chosen with lynx option 'display character
set', and VT100 does not work, it has to be VT320 or ANSI.  Pine works with
vt100 or VT320 but not ANSI.  2.8.2 displays unicode as number codes like
р but 2.8.3 displays actual characters and can be read in Cyrillic. 
Kermit comes with Cyrillic font cp866 and also a recoding program to let you
read KOI8 or LATINC (iso-8859-5) and lynx can translate all the common
Cyrillic fonts into one of the latter, but the LATINC translator is not
working in 2.8.2 (it works in 2.8.3).  

heheheh

sup ppl

Not too much.  We're all just sitting around tapping our fingers.

help
/?
?
to exit

Hi Balbir - welcome to Grex!

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

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