On 2/11/01 12:44 AM, "Russ Allbery" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Take a look at <http://floh.gartenhaus.net/newsportal/> for starters;
> that's the most recent PHP-based news reader implementation that I've seen
Cool! thanks!
> Sure, on a regular news server,
> nearly all of that information is extracted from the headers (except for
> bytes and lines), but there's no need for it to be that way. There's
> already code in INN for automatically generated keywords, and I've been
> thinking about generalizing that to allow Perl or Python hooks to generate
> arbitrary additional information to drop into overview.
That's a neat hack, especially for non-propogating or minimally propogating
servers. Cute. (my main problem with usenet (as opposed to NNTP) is that we
send every byte of every message to every server in case any person on any
machine wants to see any byte. Rather bass-ackwards, but it seemed a good
idea at the time.. Grin)
> Agreed. The discussion model is really quite poor, and only marginally
> better than the nearly worthless "talk-back" sections that a lot of
> mainstream news agencies with web presences have started adding to their
> stories.
Phht. "we need portals, whatver they are!" "we have a portal, we're still
not profitable. Sticky sites!" "still not profitable! we must have
community! build us a community! we don't care that we're a site promoting
clay sewer pipes, we must have one!")
> This ties into my general impression of most web discussion boards as
> strongly discouraging responses of any real length, largely due to serious
> interface problems when you try to use a web form to write anything
> containing substantial content. (I've yet to see a web browser that
> actually has an adequate built-in editor.)
I don't know. That's to some degree a valid observation, but I don't know if
it's an inherent limitation, or if boards just haven't figured out how to do
it yet -- it's a technology that's just now maturing into proper tools for
this stuff. Time will tell. I think it's a solvable situation, though.
--
Chuq Von Rospach, Internet Gnome <http://www.chuqui.com>
[<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> = <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> = <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]
Yes, yes, I've finally finished my home page. Lucky you.
"When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell."
