AltME groups: search

Reichart, et. al., I haven't reported this but for the past 8 months 
or so we have been using Altme at work as sharing tool at work. This, 
after many years of struggle.  Sadly, the MS forces have decided 
that it's too good to be true so it mustn't and we are installing 
an exchange server. Actually that will be a good thing for me personally 
as the responsibility for the email servers gets transferred to the 
sys admin guy running the exchange server. 

It is interesting to note that while it has taken a team of people 
to get this thing running (not that it's running as I speak of course) 
to share a single file, Altme was what, a few minutes to set up and 
use? Most of that time is spent on deciding on passwords : ).

And we, have for the most part completely stopped using Exchange 
server.  It only stays running so we can confirm we are compatible 
with it from Qtask.

ie. it is in the interests of the IT department to make sure only 
they can understand and run things

And the IT refused to load Altme on his PC. He said he didn't want 
to slow down his computer. Hey, it's hard to win against that kind 
of mindset. Not even the truth sways that.

50% of IT guys are disillusioned with their lives and jobs

James, I had the opportunity recently, while I was in a busy period 
(before this one) to make money on a job setting up an AltME-like 
website and was given about a week to do it. I decided to hand them 
AltME instead. I never got any money for solving the problem in 5 
minutes rather than a week and I never heard back from them, so I 
don't know how it went. I suspect people are not interested in something 
that is not already in use by millions of people. One can ponder 
whether that was a stupid move or not. :-)

90%+ of people are disillusioned with their lives and their jobs.

and I know IT professional, who wanted to be a doctor. Took 3 years 
of medicine college study, but did not make it ...

And I know of some doctors who can't decide what they want to be 
.. so they do both!

and I know of doctors who really shouldn't be doctors, but that's 
another story.

I've seen this error twice now, on machines where AltMe is connecting 
to this world. Once on a machine where the world has been for a long 
time, and it caused it to resync everything; the second time, just 
now, on a virgin machine:

Is it just me?

For the past week or so I've been all but locked out of Altme between 
(it varies) 18:00 and 21:00 UT.

Messages sent may get lost with the status message hanging on "Internet 
busy"

If I close and reconnect, I may stay at status "logon" for an hour 
or more with the resync percentage stuck at some random value.
No other connections are affected; and rebooting doesn't help.
Maybe it's Altme's way of telling me to get an early night :-)

I've noticed worlds disconnecting momentarily more lately it seems, 
but I don't know what would cause that. I haven't seen the same problem 
you have though, and I haven't tracked it carefully enough to know 
if I'm just imagining things.

Search utility for Altme: works across worlds and even if you are 
offline:

http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/documentation.r?script=skimp-my-altme.r
***
Use the package downloader to install:
  do http://www.rebol.org/library/public/repack.r

James, I use windows so I would put the shortcut in my startup folder, 
with the appropriate parameters to auto-start.  I know I put my solution 
in earlier, I'll try and find the date for you to save you from looking.

I believe it's assumed since it's running on the 'server' and being 
accessed by the script, that the password is not required.  I think 
it's only when starting a world from the client that you are asked 
for the password.

Hey, it works! Thanks. I got to thinking that maybe I should try 
to just try to start it from the CMD and presto! Thanks!

from the Safeworlds site there is a way to identify what port the 
world connected to... AltME Tools > Check Your World... then type 
your world name  ie,  Rebol3, and it will tell you what port you 
connected through.  Typically the first world connected will get 
5400 and then each one after will increment the port number.

Is there a way to sync the groups?  Several of the groups here show 
up as having no messages.  I thought they were empty until I added 
a message to one and then it downloaded the past messages.  Is there 
a way to force it to grab the messages for the other groups?

There is a "dot" group. What you do is go there and type something, 
traditionally a ".", and that works for some people.

Also worth trying: type a message to yourself.

What used to work is logging on as guest and then relogging on as 
yourself. This world has no guest account so that won't work here; 
but it may work in other worlds.

New AltME user question and test - how long before a post should 
appear?  And for that matter perhaps I need to find the FAQ section...

There are private and public groups.  But I've never delved into 
the rules.  There is

a WorldMaster that can add and remove privs.  I'll leave the real 
answer to someone
who has "mastered" a world.  I haven't.

They can certainly use the template as a starting point, but need 
to add their own copyright and other information ... plus add icons 
that are a bit more polished for the Mac (a bit of shadow on the 
existing icon and one drawn at 128x128 should do the trick). I should 
also point out that "my" app bundle merely builds on the work that 
Gabriele and others have done ... I just put it together in a usable 
format and published first, ;)

<< Any rules about who can post into what groups?>>

If you can see a group in the groups list, then you can post into 
it. If your posts are not appearing then either:

* it has been lost -- if you have a flakey connection, Altme will 
try to upload the message from your machine and if it discovers it 
needs to reconnect, it will do so automatically and then THROW YOUR 
MESSAGE AWAY. All you see is the "reconnecting" message. You are 
not told your message has been discarded.

* it has been recieved, but is not rebroadcast to everyone. Some 
people see it withing seconds, some do not unless they later post 
inot the same group This is the resync problem refered to above.

Can you help, please?

I'm trying to establish if we all have the same Altme Group number 
for the same Altme Groups.


If we do, then an app I want to build using merged data from several 
Altme users will be very easy.

If we don't, then I must salute Altme's excellent security measure 
in making the group number local to each user. But I have to do so 
while walking back to the drawingboard to redesign the application.

So, please: could a few people right-click !Atme in the Groups list 
and tell me what #nnn they see to the right of the Group Name?
Thanks!
I see #151

Thanks all, again.

Simple has advantages.....And that is a big advantage for me right 
now.


But, with my Security hat on:  the gaps in the Group-id numbers I 
see in the users.set file enable me to infer the existence of ex- 
or private groups. If I'd copied users.set daily, the skips in numbers 
would leak some additional information. Maybe not enough to launch 
some sort of attack, but more info than need be leaked.

Keep it simple, sure.
Bur also keep it safe and secure.

Leaking the total number of groups (ever) in a world would not be 
considered secure enough in some markets.
It's the traditional design tradeoffs.

It updates based on the list from the client.  You can install on 
multiple computers using the same account and it will download all 
the messages to ensure your clients are up to date.

for me it works. either i have better eyes (doubt that) or i installed 
something. could be

http://www.getautomatix.com/wiki/index.php?title=Software_and_Tweaks#Miscellaneous
#  Extra Fonts (Additional fonts and msttcorefonts)

AltME is nice! :-) It's maybe not perfect, but it's one of the applications, 
I really use a lot. And that I enjoy using. Say thanks to the team, 
Reichart! If I could, I would take them out for a beer.

And I would take them out for beer even if they would not do AltME 
in particular :-)

Re: Serving multiple worlds. If I have a shortcut to start a second 
world, e.g.: 

	path/altme.exe -s "worldname" -p 5401


On the same machine where a world is running on port 5400, the second 
world starts fine, but the Check World tool reports that it's on 
Port 5400, and attempts to connect go to the other world (which *is* 
on port 5400).

Has anyone else seen this?

Sending a quick note with the CLI would be nice and I'd use it.  
Maybe not everyday, but I can see the potential.  (Now I'm kidding...) 
Unless I had to boot into Windows to send the quick note.

In my experience that meant that you now have to simply drop that 
word and create another world that will respond to the proper port. 
 meaning have your original world running when you register the new 
world.

not to mention the groups I was trying to keep in touch with had 
no interest in this type of tool.... now they all use facebook and 
Messenger.  Go figure.

I'm assuming this bug has already been reported but if not it seems 
when you have altme open and spend the windows taskbar so that it 
takes the maximum space that it crashes altme.  Not that many people 
would do that but still seems to be a bug.

I would have Altme open and if I "expand" the task bar to its maximum 
extent it would crash altme.

Nothing - sometimes it does it and sometimes it doesn't it seems.

paul R is asking for your screen resolution ... pixels and whatnot

I run at the same size and just dragged Altme out to cover the whole 
screen and expanded the task bar with no problem.But then maybe i 
did not understand the problem

Reichart: I also see the bug. But I noticed that occurs only when 
I put  the task bar in the right side of the desktop, and then expand 
it to the left

Alberto, I just did that and it crashed Altme on me.

I believe he is talking about the Windows task bar at the bottom 
right of the screen on Windows XP Pro   I could not get it to crash 
or any other odd behaviour and am also on XP Pro

crashes here too. just dragged the task bar size (remember to unlock 
the taskbar!) to maximum size so it takes up half the screen and 
presto, AltME   crashes.

I only have AltME (and all my windows) maxed.  Win2K skin, hmmmm...

no crash here (XP) with much fiddeling with windows and taskbars 
..

jljkGeomol it's not a color problem, even the cursor does not move. 
I've got empty area but now I'm going to press CTRL+S and it will 
be send (and I hope without errors as I can't see what I type :)

If I type something but do not send it, and switch to different channel, 
the text in area is shown

So I've restarted my machne and it works again. Very very strange.

I just thought of a feature that a future version of Altme may want 
to look into, sub-texts.  I have an urge to make stupid off-topic 
comments sometimes, but also have a respect for keeping forums on 
track for the greater good and use of important time.  Perhaps some 
furture version could have a trigger or formatiing option for 'invisible' 
sub-text, only seen if requested.  Then we could make off-topic friendly 
comments without too much worry about disturbing serious discussion 
threads, while keeping said comments 'in the thread'.  Just thinking 
out loud.

Brian, To add to your thoughts... It would be nice to be able to 
highlight some portion of the message text and make that white-on-white, 
as a means to achive your goal.  Anyone could then view it, if they 
wanted to.  Right now, the white-on-white is for the entire text 
in the message instead of highlighted sub-text.

There has been hints and rumours of Rich Text capabilities for R3. 
 That would open up all kinds of possibilities for in message formatting 
in future Altme releases, umm assuming of course Altme is anything 
like it is today when/if an R3 port occurs.

O, that's better than nothing. Since I installed the mscorefonts 
package on ubuntu, default fonts have changed and are less than  
desirable.

How do I copy and paste in the linux version of Altme? Seems there 
is no righ-click in that version, and Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V don't work 
neither

From my experience on Ubuntu, there is not way to cut and paste or 
to click on an http link and launch the page in a browser.

I use XP and Mandriva and just use wine to run the XP Altme and it 
works just like on XP

Thanks Peter, Frank and Alan. I'm switching to the wine version as 
well, it is fully featured, the linux version is not. I'm beffudled, 
I expected Altme to be corss-platform as Rebol is.

Furthermore, copy and paste works flawlessly on Rebol/view on linux. 
It's Altme that cannot copy and paste.

As for features missing on linux, pertaining to Altme: copy and paste, 
past link to clipboard, launch url in browser. All these things don't 
work on my ubuntu setup with the Altme beta for linux.

Re-installed on a fresh box and only see messages in 5 groups.... 
what was the trick to make Altme sync?

sometimes logging off and back on a few times helps

That's all the tricks I know :-(

Other than to log on as a Guest then back on as yourself......But 
this world has no guest account.

The same trick may work if you have two personal accounts (say Maarten 
and Maarten2). Not sure if the Admins will issue a 2nd account even 
if you have a business case.
To see groups that may need resyncing:

http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/aga-groups-index.r?world=r3wp

for Info: To use Altme behind a proxy is use 2 linked apps: "Proxifier" 
to force Altme to use a proxy and "HTTP Tunnel" to bypass the local 
restrictions of the company's proxy.

A summary of a message I tried to post to the Mailing List, but the 
ML is a little wonky just now:

ALTME ARCHIVE SEARCH

You may remember that some months ago we added the archives of some 
Altme worlds to REBOL.org...
http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/aga-index.r
...and said that a search feature was coming soon.

It did not come soon enough but it is there now:
http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/aga-search.r

Enjoy using it, and please tell me the bugs you find.

If you search for my name in this group and use the word Port as 
the search term then you will come across a couple of conversations 
on this same topic.

If you have the wrong port number you need to create a new world 
and move the old world data into it.  The world server always maintains 
the port that you originally started the world from, so now they 
are out of synch.

(as previously reported) I regularly (most days) cannot connect to 
RT-hosted Altme worlds between around 18:00 and 24:00 utc.
The logon hangs with an "internet busy" message.

I've  no idea why. I have no such problem with IOS servers hosted 
by RT.

Evenings would generally be my most productive time for REBOL-related 
community things .... so it's a pity :-(

* Server clock check is now optional. You can enable or disable it 
from your Settings panel. This features checks that your server (world) 
clock matches your local clock (adjusted for time zone).

    * Fixes major bug in offline usage when you want to read your messages 
    while not connected to the net.

    * Fixes minor bug in icon pane when you right clicked on the help 
    part of the application icon panel, an error would occur.

    * Minor changes to AltME update notice. First, AltME will close when 
    you read the update news in your browser. Also, if you do nothing, 
    the update notice will close after 30 seconds. Both of these changes 
    are done to keep AltME from timeout problems.

    * Updates bug tracker applet (selected worlds). Removes unused fields 
    and buttons. Simplifies parts of the layout. Improves some of the 
    report modes.

Is anyone else seeing problems with the scrolling of results when 
using the built-in Altme search?

For example, if I search this group alone for words that return 11 
to 20 hits, I see the first ten and the window is not scrollable 
-- making the last few impossible to see.
***

As examples, the following two words will each produce betwen 11 
and 20 hits when searching this group (remove the asterisk -- it's 
there to prevent this post from changing the results):
  stran*ge
  h*ost

Does anyone know, how to run altme world on local network and be 
accessible from the local network too? When you read following section, 
it is not clear - http://www.altme.com/guide/advanced.html#sect0.10.

I mean - altme connects to wns (world-name-server) on altme.com, 
on port 5500. The server returns what - public IP address from our 
gateway? OK, then I have station on local network, and I want to 
connect to my world. But such info (public IP) is complelty worthless, 
unless you use one special trick (destination nat on your router). 
The only trick which comes to my mind is, that during the world registration 
phase, Altme.com is sent my local address too. Initially I was able 
to connect to world few days ago, but not nowadays, when my dhcp 
server gave my pc running altme server different IP ...

Are you kidding? That, and a better "notifier."

I deleted the entire REBOL3 folder, restarted Altme, and let it resync.

New version of Altme installing itself....

Several bug fixes -- including the search/scrolling one that Henrik 
and I reported just a couple of weeks ago.

That's the second bug-fix release in a month -- looks like Safeworlds 
are giving some attention to Altme again -- thanks guys!

And one supporting vote to our linux friends!

Has anyone noticed problem with altme like tjhis:
When I run altme I can scroll messages window with mouse wheel.

When I lose connection and reconect after that  mouse wheel is not 
working any more....???

just wondering how you guys are getting Altme to work with Kubuntu/wine 
? I have Kubuntu 7.1 installed and when I try to run Altme off my 
Windows install, the Altme screen is just dots in place of text ? 
I was able to run Altme with no problems with mandriva/wine

you need to install the core windows fonts. run adept, and search 
for the msttfcorefonts package

I see 10 code snippets, so possibly you have fallen victim to one 
of the several Altme resync problems.
As far as I know, the only way to recover is:
1. exit Altme

2. delete the worlds/rebol3 folder (make sure you remember your password 
first) (actually, safer to rename the folder to, say, OLD-rebol3)
3. restart Altme and connect to REBOL3.

Expect it to take a while as it reyncs the whole world -- 25 meg 
or so of stuff.

Yes, we are working on another update.  It is the end of the year, 
and developement is about to slow down again, but the bug is ranked 
high...

Will there be any capability to go back and edit an already submitted 
post in the future.  I would love to use ALTME for some Bible discussion 
but it would have to allow me to go back and edit past postings and 
have some better formatting features for the layout of the posts 
such a font size, font type, color, spacing, etc..  Any likelihood 
of that coming soon.

the only way to do that is to export it as HTML and edit the HTML 
file

Check what you have associated with your HTM and HTML file types...

it is FF. I am no Vista. With my former notebook, I had one problem, 
where FF was chosen, but Vista still kept IE and it could not be 
deselected (and I am local admin). With my recent notebook, I simply 
have FF registered ....

This really should not be a problem in the first place...this really 
seems like some IE thing.  Pekr, what happens if you save an HTM 
or HTML file, and double click on it?

Make sure you have AltME closed when you change it or close it then 
open it after changing it. I used "Set program access and computer 
defaults" and selected custom then picked Firefox as my default browser.

Reichart - I am kind of experience user, don't worry. When I click 
on .html or .htm (or any other form), FF gets started. Vista usese 
a bit different form of registration imo. It e.g. states, that my 
FF has 9 from 10 possible registrations, so I added even another 
one. However, I might know, what AltME is using. I checked on what 
is still registered with IE, and it is - .mht, .mhtml, .url. So my 
suspicion is, that what AltME or OS does, is that it uses .url. When 
I rename .html file to .url, it gets IE icon. I will have to wait 
for my folks to return, because I don't know, why the .url option 
is greyed in IE section - maybe some Active Directory policy rule, 
dunno ...

Will make some coffee and restart notebook, maybe it helps ...

now I reregistered even .mht and .mhtml with FF .... still no luck

FF *is* my default browser, and it works in whole OS ... except the 
altme ...

I guess we must be seeing different things. I see three choices, 
first one is to choose the default programs, second is is detailed 
to specific extension and protocol, then the third one that has one 
of the choice is custom. I choose the custom and select the default 
browser as FF. In this option, you can even disable IE. I change 
the setting in the third option.

I have also edited file extensions for .url, .mhtml, .mhtm, and registered 
those with FF too ... still no luck from AltME :-) What function 
does AltME use? Just REBOL's 'browse?

I clicked Custom, then FireFox - there are three options in there 
- Use recent browser, IE, FF .... even if FF is "default browser" 
for my OS, I had to specifically click it here, and now AltME opens 
FF finally! Strange thing is, that when I now return back to the 
same menu, once again Use recent browser is selected, but FF is now 
used ....

I hate Vista too! There are two camps of users - those who can see 
advantages (I can see them too, in security mainly), and those who 
can see it as waste of 1.5 billion of USD. I am part of the latter 
camp - absolutly useless effort imo ....

- I am kind of experience user, don't worry.


I don't worry.  However, what I do is treat all people and problems 
the same way, which is not to make any assumptions.  Sadly this method 
often conflicts with ego.

Edgar, gee, can't you read?


Interesting to read someone else trying to help you, you snapping 
back, and then realizing that it was in fact you who was not reading…

As I said, I try to not make any assumptions.


Perhaps some energy spent on appreciated those trying to help you 
would go a long way…

Edgaer pointed me two times to the same link. Reading thru all the 
 text twice, it does not answer any question. The link rather stupidly 
suggests to users, that you have to be admin etc etc. and more or 
less describes, how to change default program. Did that, xy times. 
Did that for each one possible file suffix. Once again - file system 
worked all fine, it is just AltME, having problems.

And that is where I am easily able to correct myself ... we have 
xy users with Vista already here, noone having the same problem ....

I can write down the case and provide it as a FAQ entry ... but if 
it does not affect any other user, it might be worthless ...

There is no simple, obvious, method of joining this world....

....If you discover it via the REBOL.net archive, there is no info 
at all about joining
http://www.rebol.net/altweb/rebol3/


....If you find it via the REBOL.org archive, there is a note in 
the Help page about requesting membership via the Mailing List.....So 
first, you got to join the ML and it has to be working that day :-(

Let's come up with something better guys!


My opening suggestion.....membership can be requested by sending 
an email to a specific gmail account that the Admins here monitor.