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janc
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HTML in Backtalk Postings
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Mar 5 15:01 UTC 1999 |
The next version of Backtalk has a new feature that allows users the
options of using HTML in their items and responses.
In an HTML posting you can insert "tags" into the text you type in that
effect the appearance and formatting of items. So if you type
This is a <STRONG>great</STRONG> idea!
then when people read the response through Backtalk they will not see
the "<STRONG>" tags, but they will see the word "great" printed in a
bold font. There are lots of other tags in HTML, some of which will
not work in Backtalk responses (non-functional ones include <BLINK>,
<HR>, <TITLE>, <FRAME>, <INPUT> and such like). The tags that are
allowed let you do various things with fonts, changing colors, sizes and
styles, some formatting stuff, such as automatic generation of numbered
lists and centered text, inclusion of images into responses, tables, and
the creation of clickable links.
Since Picospan users probably don't want to see all sorts of tags like
<FONT SIZE=+3 COLOR=RED>Hello!</FONT> stuff when reading the
conferences, the new Backtalk automatically generates plain text
versions of all HTML postings, and stores them where Picospan will find
them. Obviously Picospan users won't see images or font changes, but
the text, at least, will be legible. Currently the plain-text
conversion isn't amazingly well done. There is room for improvement
here (but it's a fairly complex thing to do well).
I have installed a test version of this new Backtalk as "bt.new" here
on Grex. It has been "broken" so that it only works in the "backtalk"
and "backtalk2" conferences. The following link will run the new
Backtalk in the backtalk conference:
http://www.grex.org/cgi-bin/pw/bt.new/pistachio/confhome?conf=backtalk
Note that if you want to access any other conference after running this,
you'll need to edit the "bt.new" in the URL to be "bt" instead.
The open question is whether we want to enable HTML postings on Grex.
A couple notes:
- There is a switch that will allow fairwitnesses to turn HTML posting
off in their conference.
- Entering HTML postings is actually fairly finicky work, if you want
to do it well. I suspect that they will never become a large
fraction of all postings.
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| 92 responses total. |
aruba
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response 1 of 92:
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Mar 5 15:19 UTC 1999 |
If someone enters a response through Backtalk which *doesn't* contain HTML
tags, do you still store it in two different places, Jan? If so, does that
mean that we're essentially doubling the space needed to store conferences?
If those fears are unfounded, I think we should at least try it and see what
happens. Congrats on doing all that work.
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janc
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response 2 of 92:
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Mar 5 17:18 UTC 1999 |
There is a pull-down box above the response box from which you can
select the style of response you are makeing, the options being "plain
text", "lazy HTML" or "pure HTML". If you select either of the latter,
then two copies of your response are saved, whether there are tags in it
or not. If you select "plain text" only one copy is saved.
This does waste some disk space. If we could modify PicoSpan, we could
put the HTML to text conversion into it, and only save one copy, but we
can't (and don't really want to). However, bbs disk space is really a
tiny fraction of the disk we use, so I think we can afford this.
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devnull
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response 3 of 92:
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Mar 5 19:55 UTC 1999 |
You could change the pager that picospan uses to display things.
A lot of the HTML people might use can probably be rendered on a vt100
(bold can, as can underline).
Of course, we could just ditch picospan, and have the bbs command start
up lynx. I am not in favor of this, however.
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janc
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response 4 of 92:
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Mar 5 20:32 UTC 1999 |
No. Lynx sucks in too many ways. For one thing, in the last version I
saw, <TEXTAREA> was implemented very clumsily (no autowrap or scroll),
so that it is kind of a pain to enter responses through lynx. And there
are basic ways in which a command-line interface is nicer than a point
and click interface (especially a point-and-click interface emulated
with character graphics).
I thought about building HTML->text translation into the pager. It has
some advantages over what I am doing here, but it requires having
everyone configure the right pager.
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janc
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response 5 of 92:
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Mar 5 20:54 UTC 1999 |
As long as we are discussing Backtalk changes, here's a couple other
things that are likely to change in the future.
- When you join a new conference with Picospan, the first and last
items are "new" while all other items are "unseen". The "new" items
show up as soon immediately, but the "unseen" items only show up
after there has been a new response to them. This is supposed to
prevent you from being hit with hundreds of items on your first
visit.
Currently Backtalk doesn't do this. When you join a conference,
all items are "new". The next version of Backtalk will do the same
thing as Picospan by default, but it will let the fairwitness change
the rules. They'll be able to set specific lists of items to be
new to newusers, or they'll be able to say that all items that have
had activity in the last N days should be new to newusers. This
will only effect people who first join the conference with Backtalk,
not people who first join it with Picospan. After a conference has
been joined, both programs will do the same things.
This will probably be ready within a week or so.
- The next big thing in Backtalk is E-mail notification. I'm not at
all sure we want to enable this on Grex. What you'll be able to
do is flag particular items in conferences as being of special
interest to you. Then you will get E-mail automatically sent to you
notifying you of any new responses in those items. It might be just
a note saying there are new responses, with a URL you can go to to
read them, or it might be the text of the new responses, with a URL
you can go to to respond to the item. You will not be able to
respond to items via E-mail.
I still need to figure out how a lot of that is to be configured.
It is mainly a feature designed to be useful in low-traffic
conferences, which systems like HVCN have a lot of. In such places
people tend to stop coming by to look for new responses because there
are too often none, so slow conferences tend to die. E-mail
notification would let slow conferences maintain activity better,
since any new response will pull people back in, even if they haven't
been around for a while.
There are obvious problems with this on Grex. We don't want large
numbers of users to subscribe to every item on every conference on
the system, because we'd be generating too much E-mail. Some kind
of limits have to be placed on things.
This feature is still just something I'm thinking about. It's
definately going need some discussion of what form we want to
support this in on Grex. My inclination is to enable it to a
significant degree. We've never wanted to be world's greatest
free shell system or world's greatest free E-mail system, but I think
we would like to be world's greatest conferencing system, and I think
this is a feature that would help toward that goal, even if it is
burdensome to support.
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i
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response 6 of 92:
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Mar 5 22:32 UTC 1999 |
Note that /bbs has been up past 97% full several times recently. (I
think it's down to 87% now.) What's the time-frame for the new backtalk
going live vs. more drive space going live?
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krj
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response 7 of 92:
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Mar 6 06:29 UTC 1999 |
Jan, here's a spinoff of #5. I'd like to be able to keep a "personal
hot list" of conferrence items that I really, really care about --
I could hit Grex knowing that I just had ten minutes to read.
Maybe I would describe this as an "express-checkout" participation file,
and then my normal participation file for when I had lots of time to
spend.
And ideally, stuff I read in "express-checkout" mode would be marked
as read in the regular participation file.
This is just a fantasy, but it would interest *me* a lot more than
e-mail notification. Since I hit grex 5 or more times each day,
I wouldn't need e-mail.
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steve
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response 8 of 92:
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Mar 7 03:29 UTC 1999 |
The fluctuations in /bbs are me, not the conferences.
<confessionmode ON> I have spread my corpulance into /bbs since
/a and /c were so full. I have since (mostly) reformed and have
released that space (burp). <confessinmode OFF>
On a more serious note--and why I used /bbs--the conference usage
has got to be the most efficient usage of disk that Grex has. 1M of
disk goes a *long* way. The previous version of Agora is only 4.2M,
for example. Having responses doubled in size doesn't bother me much.
But would everything double? I'm confused on that one.
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devnull
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response 9 of 92:
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Mar 7 04:04 UTC 1999 |
It seems like there should be a disk which exists specificly for staff
home directories, perhaps...
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steve
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response 10 of 92:
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Mar 7 06:56 UTC 1999 |
Well, yes. I think there will be at some point not so far off.
Whenever I feel human again I intend on working with our 'new' 2G
disks again.
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janc
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response 11 of 92:
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Mar 7 13:57 UTC 1999 |
Responses would be doubled only if they were posted via Backtalk as HTML
responses. I believe that would be the minority of responses.
Ken: I've added your suggestion to my Backtalk TODO list (which is huge
so don't hold your breath).
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krj
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response 12 of 92:
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Mar 7 19:12 UTC 1999 |
It's not urgent, just a fantasy. Unless it tickles other peoples'
imaginations, I would say, don't bother.
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