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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 156 responses total. |
steve
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response 106 of 156:
| 
Feb 24 17:12 UTC 1999 |
Wow. Thats cool.
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remmers
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response 107 of 156:
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Feb 24 18:30 UTC 1999 |
Grex seems to be running along pretty zippily on 256M. Thanks to
arthurp and steve for their efforts!
Thanks also to keesan and jdeigert for the photocopier.
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keesan
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response 108 of 156:
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Feb 24 19:47 UTC 1999 |
See the coop item on tax deductability of dues, this copier will allow grex
to keep better tax records as a nonprofit.
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steve
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response 109 of 156:
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Feb 24 21:40 UTC 1999 |
The interesting part about that memoey is that we really are using it.
Watching the 'vmstat' program is fun; you can see when lots of sendmails
fire off, with the pool of available memory going down. We're doing a lot
less swapping right now, which is a good thing. I'm still on the lookout
for more ram, and once we have the alternate Sun-4/670 populated with 64M
ram, I'd like to get more memory here. ...I shall continue to beg for
ram. ;-)
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janc
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response 110 of 156:
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Feb 26 18:21 UTC 1999 |
A test version of Backtalk 0.9.6 is now available on Grex. To try it go to
http://www.cyberspace.org/cgi-bin/pw/bt.new/pistachio/confhome?conf=backt
alk
IMPORTANT NOTE:
This has been deliberately broken so that you can only join the
"backtalk" and "backtalk2" conferences. It will claim all other
conferences do not exist if you try to join them. It does some
different things with item files, and we want to make sure it isn't
going to drive Picospan crazy before we allow it into any of the
regular conferences.
If you want to go back to reading the other conferences, change the
"bt.new" in the URL back to "bt".
WHAT'S NEW:
- HTML responses. You now have the option of using HTML tags in
your response and item text. This means pictures, tables, links,
font changes, and so forth can be done in responses.
Sanity checking is done on the HTML to make sure you don't use
any tags that would mess up the page, and to close any tags
you left open.
Backtalk automatically generates a (much less pretty) plaintext
version of all HTML responses so that Picospan users don't have
to look at HTML tags.
- Preview button. Lets you see what your response would look like if
posted, both to other Backtalk users and to Picospan users. Very
useful for composing HTML responses.
- Forget works better. Fixed some bugs here.
- A few more button color options.
- Updates to help files.
- More aggressive item indexing. Item indexing makes Backtalk faster,
but it used to be so timid about it that it wasn't being done in
most conferences.
- Several minor bug fixes.
And various other features not relevant to Grex: support for password
protected conferences, lastlog maintainance, better user list functions
(turned off here because we have too many users), and better Yapp
compatibility.
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other
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response 111 of 156:
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Feb 26 18:59 UTC 1999 |
wow. sounds like te html parsing required a lot of work and will make
conferencing a whole new range of fun stuff! thanks, jan!!
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other
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response 112 of 156:
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Feb 26 19:29 UTC 1999 |
just tried it, but communicator 4.05 crashed twice at the same spot (scrolling
through responses). running a powerbook 190cs (68lc040) with os 8.0.
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hhsrat
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response 113 of 156:
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Feb 27 03:38 UTC 1999 |
YAPP compatibility is a good thing? I used YAPP on M-Nut for a few
days, and it drove me crazy. (this was back in Nov.) Backtalk seemed
like a much more sophisticated interface.
Maybe things have changed
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senna
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response 114 of 156:
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Feb 27 10:16 UTC 1999 |
Not that fast. You might want to keep tabs on what people do with html,
becuase it's possible for that to be misused.
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jep
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response 115 of 156:
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Feb 27 21:55 UTC 1999 |
The current YAPP interface for the WWW is buggy to the point where I
can't stand using it. I've used Backtalk about every day for a year
and a half, and I'm very pleased with it. I hope M-Net will adopt
Backtalk if it's compatible with the YAPP text system.
|
dang
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response 116 of 156:
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Feb 28 03:43 UTC 1999 |
YAPP compatability refers to Backtalk working with YAPP the way it does
with Picospan. Backtalk itself doesn't seem any different, either way.
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steve
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response 117 of 156:
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Feb 28 04:05 UTC 1999 |
Grex has been running for 96 hours now with the new ram and
repaired memory card, so I think that can be called a success.
If either the card or individual SIMMs were to have failed we'd
have experienced it. Thanks to Charles for some nimble repair
work on that card!
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russ
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response 118 of 156:
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Feb 28 04:26 UTC 1999 |
Uh-oh. I'm not sure I like what this represents, Jan. The strength
of Grex (and M-Net, once) was what the users brought to it. When the
conferences become more of an impromptu web page where most of the
content is links, Grex will become a poor cousin of SlashDot. The
inaccessibility of the graphical content to many computers is another
negative to this change. Up to now, anybody with a dumb terminal and
a modem could be a full participant. When large parts of the conferences'
content is only accessible using much more advanced (and expensive)
hardware, what becomes of that part of the user base?
I fear this will be like the file read feature in party: most often
used to dazzle rather than illuminate.
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mcnally
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response 119 of 156:
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Feb 28 05:58 UTC 1999 |
Put me down in the Luddite column, too.. I think the addition of
HTML extensions is unlikely to add much (beyond annoyance) to responses.
I hope there's a way to turn it off and still enjoy the other benefits
of the new Backtalk version..
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steve
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response 120 of 156:
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Feb 28 06:48 UTC 1999 |
Russ, Mike: the technology is changing, and *fast*. All three of
us are old-timers; what we know and have used is not what the masses
use. The web is the net. Not a component of it, but the backbone as
seen by an ever increasing number of people. Probably we should move
this discussion to another item, however.
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janc
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response 121 of 156:
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Feb 28 19:02 UTC 1999 |
I'd have no huge objection to turning it off (there isn't a way right
now, but it isn't hard to add - eventually I plan to make it a setting
that fairwitnesses can fiddle with on a per-conference basis).
Frankly, I don't believe it will be a problem. Simple HTML gets
translated to plaintext just fine. Doing things like images and tables
well is enough extra work that few people will bother, and you won't
mind missing responses where people do them badly.
And I do agree with STeve - Grex has to keep exploring current
technology. We don't have to try everything that comes along, but we
have to be adverturous in trying things.
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keesan
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response 122 of 156:
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Feb 28 23:03 UTC 1999 |
I would appreciate if people would not put anything in their responses that
cannot be easily accessed by dial-in users. If there is a link, make sure
that we can read the URL if we want to go look at it with lynx.
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janc
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response 123 of 156:
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Mar 1 00:31 UTC 1999 |
One thing I want to see is something that does that automatically. If I
enter an HTML response like:
Visit my <A HREF=http://www.wwnet.net/~janc>home page</A>.
It should generate a plain text response for Picospan that looks
something like:
Visit my [http://www.wwnet.net/~janc] home page.
Of course, even now any picospan user can see the HTML version of any
response by doing, for example:
!extract -h agora 3 123
This will print response 123 of item 3 of the agora conference,
prefering the HTML version, if there is one (there isn't). Without
the -h flag it gets the plain-text version.
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steve
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response 124 of 156:
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Mar 1 01:25 UTC 1999 |
I think what Backtalk is doing is perfectly reasonable. It takes
the html stuff and makes plaintext out of it, which is the proper
thing to do.
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omni
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response 125 of 156:
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Mar 1 06:54 UTC 1999 |
And above all, disable the blink command. Not everyone is as stable
minded as me. ;)
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jshafer
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response 126 of 156:
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Mar 1 15:43 UTC 1999 |
What he said. No blinking!
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aruba
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response 127 of 156:
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Mar 1 16:27 UTC 1999 |
I'd like to announce that Grex had a great month, financially, in February.
See the treasurer's report for details (item:coop,80).
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dang
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response 128 of 156:
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Mar 2 22:18 UTC 1999 |
I agree. No blinking.
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gregb
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response 129 of 156:
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Mar 3 04:27 UTC 1999 |
I've been to other conf systems, like Electric Mind, that allow HTML
tags, and things seem to work out fine, for the most part.
One thing that could help, is to set up a conf. for those who want to
try out HTML. This will give people a place to get use to it before
taking it into the regular confs. Granted, not everybody will be so
accomidating, but I think the majority would.
Oh, and I agree with the others: <blink>NO BLINKING!</blink> (Yes, I
know it won't work.)
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janc
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response 130 of 156:
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Mar 3 20:43 UTC 1999 |
When the new Backtalk goes live, it will have a feature in it that
allows fairwitnesses to disable HTML posting in their conference if they
so please. There are definately some conferences where HTML posting
would be very nice - web, auction, enigma and test come to mind.
The BLINK tag has been on our banned list since day zero.
However, animated GIFs are still possible.
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