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|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 109 responses total. |
remmers
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|
response 47 of 109:
| 
Jul 27 18:21 UTC 2008 |
Shortest path to something useable would probably be Backtalk +
Fronttalk. Backtalk works well, and fixing up Fronttalk would be a lot
less work than developing something new.
|
cross
|
|
response 48 of 109:
|
Jul 27 19:32 UTC 2008 |
Well, I think the absolute shortest path would be getting either Marcus
or the Thalers to open up the source for either Picospan or YAPP,
respectively. However, I'm not really sure what either partys' positions on
the matter are. At the minimum, with respect to Picospan, it sounds like it
would require a lawyer to figure out the ownership of the source code. If
Marcus were interested, I wonder if someone like Dave Cahill might be
willing to look into that on a pro-bono basis for Grex.
But, history is usually a strong indicator of the future, and it seems
extremely unlikely that either YAPP or Picospan will be open sourced any
time soon. Given that, we need to move to plan B.
And on that front, I absolutely agree that backtalk + fronttalk is the
path of shortest resistance to getting an open source replacement for
picospan on Grex. The problem now shifts to finding the resources to get
fronttalk cleaned up to the extent that it will make a credible replacement.
Fronttalk is ... not a small program. It's not *big*, but it's not
trivial by any measure. And it's not well understood except by Jan, who's
mostly not around these days. And we don't have enough people testing it.
What to do?
Well, it's open source, so if we can get some more peopple who are
decently familiar with Perl and how Backtalk works together, we can work
through the bugs easily enough. I mean, nothing here is particularly
complex; there are no deep mysteries of computer science. It's just
maintenance on a decently sized program. But where are those people going
to come from?
Another option is to try and persuade Jan to work on it again; I suspect
we'd have to pay him (as I suspect part of the reason he hasn't done it
already is that he's busy doing things that make enough money to help him
support his family). Purely to get some information, I sent him an email to
ask him if he'd be willing to do some work if we paid him. However, he
hasn't gotten back to me (or, if he did, it got flagged as spam by GMail and
I never saw it). I suspect, however, that we haven't really got enough
money to make it worth his time.
So we are back to doing the work ourselves. So who is willing to take
up the challenge of working on fronttalk to turn it into a suitable
replacement for Picospan? Note, you don't have to be staff to do this, you
just have to know some Perl.
And who is willing to help out testing it? We *really* need people
to *use* it and tell us where the problems are. And if we decided to make
this change, it's likely that people might have to change some of their
.cfonce files and maybe some minor usage patterns. Are people going to
accept this? Will they work with us to get everyone converted over to the
new software, even if it's slightly incompatible with Picospan?
|
denise
|
|
response 49 of 109:
|
Jul 28 01:50 UTC 2008 |
I'd be willing to help but I'm not literate in computer technology...
|
cross
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response 50 of 109:
|
Jul 28 02:07 UTC 2008 |
Well, we need people to test out fronttalk; you run it by running "ft" instead
of "bbs".
However, until we can have a group of people to work on it, all we can get
is data.
|
tsty
|
|
response 51 of 109:
|
Jul 29 02:32 UTC 2008 |
from an ssh connection? ummmmmm.....
|
cross
|
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response 52 of 109:
|
Jul 29 02:53 UTC 2008 |
Yup.
|
remmers
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response 53 of 109:
|
Jul 29 16:08 UTC 2008 |
Yes indeedy. Fronttalk is a web client that runs on a terminal (sorta
like lynx, but more specialized).
|
tsty
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response 54 of 109:
|
Jul 29 19:53 UTC 2008 |
i'll try it out ...
|
tsty
|
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response 55 of 109:
|
Jul 30 04:13 UTC 2008 |
runin g ft now ... seems mostly the same .. las doesn't work, but
hte -X command does ( not a quibble, just an observation).
and twit filter works JustFine (tm) as well. you can tell, my typing
has improved ....
|
cross
|
|
response 56 of 109:
|
Jul 30 12:00 UTC 2008 |
(What does the "las" command do?)
|
nharmon
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response 57 of 109:
|
Jul 30 12:50 UTC 2008 |
Whatever .zshrc tells it to?
|
tsty
|
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response 58 of 109:
|
Jul 30 15:23 UTC 2008 |
|
cross
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response 59 of 109:
|
Jul 30 17:01 UTC 2008 |
resp:58 is totally empty.
|
mcnally
|
|
response 60 of 109:
|
Jul 30 21:20 UTC 2008 |
> resp:58 is totally empty.
If you look closely it's the executable for /bin/true
|
cross
|
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response 61 of 109:
|
Jul 30 22:28 UTC 2008 |
Close, but no /bin/sh.... :-)
|
mcnally
|
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response 62 of 109:
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Jul 30 22:39 UTC 2008 |
You can make a "true" executable from the empty file, too, not just
from the empty shell script. e.g.:
> bash$ touch truetest; chmod +x truetest; ./truetest && echo "true" &&\
rm truetest
> true
|
cross
|
|
response 63 of 109:
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Jul 30 22:57 UTC 2008 |
(That wasn't what I meant.)
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tsty
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response 64 of 109:
|
Jul 31 12:07 UTC 2008 |
58 was the start of an explanation of las (as well as -xxx) but
there were too many variables as to when each/either works/doesn;t work
between ft adn bbs but it got WAY messy so i thought i cancelled it
by having an empty reponse (no chars) but it seems that ft and bbs
handle empty differently as well. no biggie, just quirks all aorund.
|
cross
|
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response 65 of 109:
|
Jul 31 19:00 UTC 2008 |
Well, so what is las?
|
hera
|
|
response 66 of 109:
|
Jul 31 19:02 UTC 2008 |
LAS is the acronym for the Las Vegas airport.
|
tsty
|
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response 67 of 109:
|
Aug 1 15:04 UTC 2008 |
in bbs - but not ft - the las command at the rfp prompte
displays the last response. there are quirks with it but in general
that is how it works.
|
cross
|
|
response 68 of 109:
|
Aug 1 15:07 UTC 2008 |
Oh, okay. That actually sounds kind of useful.
|
marcvh
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response 69 of 109:
|
Aug 1 15:33 UTC 2008 |
Note that it's really the "last" command. It just accepts shortened
versions, including "las" or even "l", but if you try to talk about
"the l command" nobody will know wtf you are talking about, and if you
change it to "the l word" things get even worse.
|
tsty
|
|
response 70 of 109:
|
Aug 1 16:04 UTC 2008 |
that L word again ... /sigh ... how right you are.
|
jep
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response 71 of 109:
|
Aug 1 18:15 UTC 2008 |
What's wrong with lpstat?
|
