AltME groups: search

for me I've been stinged so often, and the delays are so short that 
i like the new system.. it could be a bit less dark.. it seems a 
bit "drastic" to me... seems to make it more dramatic than it really 
is.

Also: OS X PPC and Linux libc6 AltME updated

And YueM has a lot of valid points http://synapse-ehr.com/forums/showthread.php?11-ALTME-is-buggy

I can't check on Rebol3 when I'm travelling or at the cottage. Impossible. 
But I don't use Altme for mission critical stuff - just to keep in 
touch with family. Still looking for something private and not as 
buggy as altme.

it would be nice to add in http://www.rebol.net/altweb/rebol3/!REBOL3GUI 
and !REBOL3 Network Scheme !!!!!!!!!

group create/remove permissions were resinded after the "epic" (and 
involuntary ;-)  removal of multiple groups only a few users now 
have those rights.

Tried to go back to version 1.2.17 of altme, keeps updating to the 
current version. And under windows 7, when I delete the program from 
the program directory and copy the older version altme, it doesn't 
even ask me if I want to update now or next time, it just starts 
with the latest version! It's frustrating. I want the old version 
back - without the grey frozen box.

It's a lighter grey box in 1.2.22, and it goes away earlier in the 
process. The freezes were from before the grey was added.

we noticed that 1.2.17 was loosing some posts - but we like to hit 
enter to separate messages and keep on writing the next one without 
waiting for the post to show. We miss that badly

Ah, I compose posts and use ^s. Different interaction model. I lost 
messages with the old version a lot. Even in 1.2.21 some messages 
didn't go through, but at least they aren't lost any more - I can 
resend.

I still have problems, mostly due to frequently-frozen-client and 
internet dropouts. At least messages aren't lost now.

denis, yes!  :)

I would prefer that the message be saved somewhere ... and available 
in a button to restore than this effect,  That's how I did it in 
the Synapse chat client.

Infact I think I kept a  history so that if you posted to the wrong 
group, you could recall your message and repost.

once again altme reports a trojan on Vista: Category: Trojan


Description: This program is dangerous and executes commands from 
an attacker.

Recommendation: Remove this software immediately.


Microsoft Security Essentials detected programs that may compromise 
your privacy or damage your computer. You can still access the files 
that these programs use without removing them (not recommended). 
To access these files, select the 'Allow' action and click 'Apply 
actions'. If this option is not available, log on as administrator 
or ask the local administrator for help.

Items: 
file:C:\Altme\worlds\rebol3\chat\380.set->(SCRIPT0001)

Get more information about this item online.

and what group is set 380?

380 is Chat (not web public)

As with all AltME *.set files, it is just a fiile of REBOL blocks, 
each block containing text entries that define one post


It is possible that it has lots of REBOL code thta people have posted. 
Pehaps source code in other languages too; and maybe some REBOL molded 
binary #{....}


Hard to see how that could damage your computer....Unless it has 
become infected in some other way. Have you tried deleting the world 
and restarting it? That would get you the canonical 380.set (assumimg 
you are a member of that group)

I've run a virus scan against that file, and the software I am using 
does not detect any threats.

Just wondering the one of the moderators would like to go thru and 
revise the default markers and groups

While I was typing a message, after just turning on my PC and not 
working on anything else.  I had been in AltME for no longer than 
5 minutes and only read a single group.

Would it be possible to use something like SQLite on the client side? 
I think AM is not fast enough to use. And I don't want to set a message 
limit, I just want to click a group/chat and have it there. Being 
able to make fast queries.

There is a point with any data set where you have to decide "how" 
to present the data fast.

Usually levels of caches, and prediction can make this seem real 
time, andonly when you go to edit something do things slow down in 
the background.

Almost every system out there that is fast in fact shows some subset 
(like 100 lines) at a time. the pulls in the next.
AltME was an all or nothing thing.

SQL is likely to be overkill for AltME data -- especially as some 
posts are very short (LOL) so the meta data and keys are several 
times the length of the primary content.

We picked a different data structure to all-or-nothing in the REBOL.org 
archive (more of a balanced tree), but then we had a different set 
of priorities and operating conditions:
  http://www.rebol.org/aga-display-posts.r?post=r3wp151x4488

I wonder if it would be better to cache messages only as you read 
them ... and pull only unread messages when you want to read them 
.. so we wouldn't have this issue of new users syncing 50 mb of messages

And that might fix the resync bug too!

Perhaps the space for the unsynced messages could be allocated and 
the messages themselves could be initially synced in the background, 
with on-demand messages (the ones visible to the user) being given 
priority.

And such edits would be new messages (though backdated) even if we 
allowed that.

And it's *they* and not *we* unless you're now working on Altme!

Heck, I can barely keep up with the R3 and R2 mezzanines :(

And, I don't care if using SQLite adds 50% overhead as long is it's 
instant when I click. Time is valuable, not space.

Does Altme have any way of excluding specified groups so I don't 
see them at all?  There are many groups  that Ilike to watch and 
a few that I want to make invisible (but just until the end of time)?

Only mechanism is to set a group as private, and then opt out of 
it.
(a couple of dozen are already private).


If the groups you want to watch are [web-public] then you could bookmark 
them in a browser instead:
   http://www.rebol.org/aga-groups-index.r?world=r3wp

This is pretty bizarre ... I was connected here for the last few 
hours.... but no messages were showing up.  So, I restarted and all 
the messages appeared.  Only happens in this build as far as I can 
recall.

So I thought I will put an end to "your world has expired" nonsense 
(which is technologically done in totally dumb way - your worlds 
are running, and yet they expire, and it totally contradicts what 
is communicated on the web - your world expires, if not used for 
more than 10 days) ....


... but unfortunatelly, following registration link does not work 
- http://www.altme.com/cgi-bin/orders/cart.r?cmd=buy&prod=100-1&

Good luck with the email ...


Please contact the server administrator, [root-:-localhost] and inform 
them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have 
done that may have caused the error.

Disconnected now and got this message


Server reported error in unknown-request because of: fstatus

where 
the f is italic

And the activity line says "Chat: <groupname>" and sticks there instead 
of saying "On-line". Refreshing requires logging out and back in.

Running two other worlds right now and no problems there.

yes, I see the same thing. I recall there was a sudden drop a couple 
of years ago in general speed and it has been like that since.

Is there a way to automate notifications for private groups?  I will 
not be visiting as much but want to get updates to certain groups 
and thought about making some form of tool to do this.  Was curious 
if someone has already created one.

New participation index for the REBOL3 AltME world:
  http://www.rebol.org/aga-display-stats.r?world=r3wp&year=2010


The older prolific posters table simply counts total posts made....But 
that's a little simplistic as some people post each sentence as a 
separate post (understandable given some of AltME's connection issues) 
while others post entire multi-line essays in one post.


The new participation index attempts to adjust for that by weightng 
various things: total non-blank lines posted; total words posted; 
etc.


It is still a fairly meaningless, though remarkably consistent measure 
of the participation in the [web public] forums of this world.


Thanks to everyone who participates and keeps this place so alive 
and friendly....And especially Graham, who is the top poster no matter 
which way it is counted :)

And lots of different ones ....repetitions are weighted downwards 
too :)

(or lobby for some groups you are hyperactive in to become [web public]....that'll 
have an immediate boost to your already high ratings :/

Hi. I read the FAQ and the Altme docs. How's one to find the last 
posted messages since last login?

Just a note, I had to reinstall Altme again because of computer failure. 
 And like the previous times I got the following note from my antivirus: 
  Category: Trojan


Description: This program is dangerous and executes commands from 
an attacker.

Recommendation: Remove this software immediately.


Microsoft Security Essentials detected programs that may compromise 
your privacy or damage your computer. You can still access the files 
that these programs use without removing them (not recommended). 
To access these files, select the 'Allow' action and click 'Apply 
actions'. If this option is not available, log on as administrator 
or ask the local administrator for help.

Items: 
containerfile:C:\Program Files\altme\worlds\rebol3\chat\380.set

file:C:\Program Files\altme\worlds\rebol3\chat\380.set->(SCRIPT0001)

Get more information about this item online.

It is annoying, isn't it.
Documented here:
    http://www.altme.com/notes/blade-runner.html
and here:

    http://www.rebol.org/aga-display-posts.r?offset=0&post=r3wp151x3911

Yes....But there is no index built to search by poster name; nor 
any easy and fast way of filtering existing results by poster name.
It could be done; but it is not doable today.

You can try via Google -- but that depends on its index being up-to-date, 
and you may get many false positives for common poster names,
eg: try this search in google....
   adrians inurl:aga site:www.rebol.org

seems to work reasonably well though you can't sort by date and filtering 
by group means having to know the group number

Glad it's close enough for your current purpose.

If you need better searches for a specific research project, consider 
writing a few lines of REBOL and scanning your own local copy of 
/altme/worlds/rebol3/

The users.set file is simply a text file from which you can map group 
numbers and poster-ids/poster names
/chat/*.set is a series of text files, one per chat group.
It is pretty easy to do.

Or take a look at modifying this:
   http://www.rebol.org/view-script.r?script=skimp-my-altme.r

If you are seeing this world, then you already have all those messages.

And more -- you have all the groups, while REBOL.org only shows those 
with the [web-public] flag in their titles.

Check your /altme/worlds/rebol3/chat/ folder  -- it'll be in the 
30-40 meg range.

AltME will only display the latest N posts from any group. So, if 
an AltME search finds a result older than that, it says it cannot 
display it.

You do have the post -- you have all of the posts. It's just that 
AltME is being coy.


You can change that N setting -- click the spanner icon and change 
your Message Limits.

But setting it too high can seriously slow down normal AltME operations.

and increase RAM sky-high  :-)

I'm developing an app for searching AltME. You can apply multiple 
filters to select an intersection of: world, group, user, message-text, 
date and message-id.

At this point, it's actually usable, but I still need to improve 
the user interface so you can see and enter the filters properly. 
Currently, I'm still entering the filters in a source file.

I'm a lazzy guy, so I didn't take the time to put this on Rebol.org, 
but I have a script to read and display/export the local altme files.
http://membres.multimania.fr/didec/rebol/altme-chat-reader.r

Installation : the simple use is to put the script in your altme 
install folder and run it.


You can browse any group in any altme worlds configured on your system. 

You can scroll the entire list of messages in a group (scrool wheel 
enable). Messages are displayed like in altme (formating).
You can export the group in an Html file with formating kept.

Missing : doesn't diplay private chats (user chats).

Bugs : right click menu close the program after use (anoying isn't 
it ?)


There is no search function. But if you have time, you can mix this 
script with the skimp-altme-file script on rebol.org.

amacleod, I think you saved the file after loading it with a webbrowser 
or something.
Do this instead:

 load-thru/update url: http://membres.multimania.fr/didec/rebol/altme-chat-reader.r
	path-thru url
and open that file in your editor.

For example, Qtask has the ability to lock messages with 448 bit 
"local" encrypt.  Meaning, we never even get anything that can be 
opened.  The password to the message is encrypted locally as well. 
 And, if you have many passwords, they are put in a master box of 
keys that are also encrypted locally.

Is this the type of thing you are talking about?

one thing I have noticed with altME is that I cannot use the up and 
down  keyboard arrow controls to browse the posts.   This would be 
really handy.  A simple left click on the frame to get the frame 
active  or maybe a hotkey to switch to the next frame.  Actually 
I should read up on using altMe via keyboard before I go on, maybe 
what I am after is already implemented.

yes so i see, i've just plugged in the bluetooth mouse.   It's still 
not as satisfying as having a highlight bar and using up/down keys 
with smooth scrolling and ideally acceleration.


When using the slider and even the scroll wheel it's very easy to 
loose position.  i've found tthe mouse wheel isn't very responsive 
for me and neither scrolls fast or smoothly.  it's just not  very 
responsive IMHO.  Netbook overloaded perhaps although opera is still 
scrolling very nicely.

Currently my scrolling method (on mac) is to click down on the scrollbar, 
move the mouse outside the window, then release.  Moving the mouse 
up and down gives relatively good scrolling control.  Works on both 
the chat window and user list.

Today, it is horrible to communicate in AltMe, I had to close the 
program and restart it a couple of times already to be able to get 
my message through

Why isn't there an archive project here that cleans up older groups? 
 If a group has been non-active for over a year and is private group 
then it gets deleted.  Public groups that have no activity for over 
a year get archived?

Because I'm sure noobs come here and see a bunch of junk.

I don't know how much we woudl gain Paul, and I do consider when 
and what to clean up from time to time. Your point is noted.

Click the icon with the little A and big A, directly above the text 
entry area.

its up and down... was annoying earlier... seems better right now.

and sometimes, instantaneous.

A signal to leave AltME alone for now, and do something more productive 
:)

We need a more specific tool to monitor rebol services and servers

I clicked on the button to show me the details and then it didn't 
offer to update again

Search and extract AltME messages:
http://anton.wildit.net.au/rebol/util/AltME/AltME-helper-funcs.r

Just tried it on Vista:

-- needed Admin level to install in current folder installation folder

-- PCTool's Threatfire reported it as "high risk" -- because it was 
copying files to multiple locations

-- did a resync, downloaded a lot of older messages, and turned many 
groups red....Not in itself a bad thing as that could properly sync 
some groups with missing messages; but a little surprising as most 
of the red groups had no new messages.

And did it pop up a UAC prompt? It it was installing to any of the 
program files directories, it should have asked for admin by a UAC 
prompt.

And if it did, it should have put its data files somewhere under 
the user data directories, not in program files.

That will work on any version of Windows starting with 2000, and 
possibly earlier.

(I don't use Vista or Sys7, and plan never to do so.)

If you are fixing the Windows Virtual Store problem (which is a Windows 
problem that AltME is a victim of) then a little bit of inconvenience 
to fix it is acceptable -- at least to me.

Interestingly, it looks to me like this world got resynced, but the 
other worlds I look at regularly (eg REBOL-gate) did not....So perhaps 
the resync was an artefact of the upgrade; and it did not affect 
worlds opened after the upgrade was complete.

Carl, you should also try running AltME in XP or 2000 as a regular 
user (not "Power User" or admin), without making any changes to the 
permissions of the AltME directory. Oh, and your %appdata% to local 
trick won't work on XP or 2000 because the naming convention for 
the directories is different. The registry method works for all Windows 
2000+ though.

Another oddity.....I just entered this world after rekeying my username 
and password (rather than taking the usual on-screen saved values).

That seems to have triggered a resync of the checklists. No idea 
if it updated any, just that it checked them all for updates.

Is there a way to be notified of a private chat message on AltME 
in a more intrusive way than just turning the user name red? I usually 
have the All Users section collapsed because I want the groups to 
be front and foremost so I don't notice new private messages unless 
I expand the users section. I just noticed now that I had some messages 
from Graham and Ladislav from July. Sorry guys, didn't mean to ignore 
you - just didn't notice.

For me, the All Users title bar turns red and I have it at the top, 
so that's how I notice when I have private messages, even if the 
list is collapsed.

well, it is sufficient for me the way you described it. When I sync, 
when I see "All users" in red, I go there first, to see private messages 
... hmm, maybe I am still waiting, when one day, I will see the private 
message from Carl, informing me, that Google, Microsoft, IBM just 
agreed to use REBOL as their primary dev. tool, and that Google bought 
Amiga for him, and that new Amiga is about to be launched, with REBOL 
based OS :-D

can one of you send me a test ping? - maybe I'm just blind and didn't 
notice the header turning red

You could, technically, write a few lines of REBOL that looks for 
changes in the Chat files (there is one for each group), and pop 
up a requester on your screen.

The input would be user, timestamp and message. Then you can do what 
you want with that information.

AltMe is missing a read-only role for some groups. This would make 
it possible to make "private" groups and let others monitor it.

Thanks Brock - I did have them sorted that way, but I guess I just 
didn't notice the collapsed user section even though it was red - 
since I hardly ever get direct messages, I need more than the color 
change to get me to notice. Maybe some flashing and beeping :-)

Couldn't most of what we do here fall under Chat? I see it as a cross 
between a Wanted group and Amazon's Mechanical Turk. :-)

The typing area shows what is being posted ... and goes gray

But I think it should be considered a bug that you can still edit 
it... and those edits are *not* sent

I looked up an old post (2007) talking about how to start Altme Worlds 
on windows start-up. Brock had the answer but I could never get it 
to work. Three years later, I decided to try again. Here are some 
lessons I learned along the way:

Precautions:

You may want to back up the altme folder just in case something goes 
awry. You will also need to know where the files are located.

You may also want to create another temporary worldmaster user and 
note the password. If you're like me, it has been a long time since 
I had to type in the user password.


1. Before you turn off your worlds, go to http://www.altme.com/check.html
and check your world(s). Note the port number and write it down.

2. Create a shortcut icon on your desktop to altme if you don't already 
have one. Do this by right clicking on altme and select "Send to/Desktop."

2. Right mouse click your "Start" menu (I only did this in XP so 
adjust for any changes you might have in your OS) and choose "Explore." 
An "explorer" window will open.

3. Go to the "Start Menu" folder in the the explorer folder tree 
in the left column. In the right column open up "programs" then open 
up "Startup."

4. Drag the altme shortcut icon from the desktop to the startup folder.

5. If you have more than one world, right-click on the just added 
altme shortcut icon and rename it to something like altme-worldname.

6. Show the properties of the just added altme icon by right-clicking 
and choosing properties.

7. There, in the "Target" field, you will add on to what should already 
be there. It should have something like: "C:\Program Files\altme\altme.exe", 
telling the OS where to find altme and the name of the actual program. 
As you may know, the quotes are there because the "Program Files" 
folder has a space in it. Leave it as is and add:

-s "yourworldname" - p the-port-number. E.g., "C:\Program Files\altme\altme.exe" 
-s "myworld" -p 5402. Do not close the properties window but continue 
to the next step.

8. Below the "Target" field you will see the "Start in" field. There, 
enter where altme and its server files exist. The top level folder 
is enough. E.g., "C:\Program Files\altme\" 

9. Apply the changes to the properties and try it out by making sure 
the world is not running and then clicking on the altme icon in the 
Startup folder. This saves you from having to reboot if a mistake 
was made. You should see the familiar altme server window pop up.

10. You need to also check by logging into the world through the 
client. If you can and the data is all there. Great. The only thing 
left is to reboot and make sure it loads by itself.

11. Repeat for all the worlds you have. You'll end up with n altme 
icons each with a different name. 

Things that went wrong:
Before the server could be launched properly via the icon

1. Getting the wrong syntax in the properties/Target. - I thought 
everything had to be enclosed in a single quote string but it doesn't.
After the server was launched

1. Couldn't connect to the altme world - Seem to be related to the 
port #'s I was using. I went back and launched the worlds the manual 
way and checked the ports on the altme website.

2. Could connect but no users. - This had to do with "Start in" info 
or lack thereof. Altme was looking for the data in the Startup folder 
as opposed to my regular altme folder. Your actual data should be 
fine and of course you made a backup, right?

3. Some data (posts) got mixed up - Who knows on that one. I made 
so many attempts, I may have confused something.

4. My user profile was gone or had a different name. - Again, my 
guess is that this was due to the "Start in" info. Worst case, try 
the default "Master" "pass" user. I ended up using another known 
user (hence, my advice to create a temp worldmaster user), then I 
renamed the user I knew was me to me. Weird but it happened in a 
couple of my worlds but only to my profile.

5. I made a copy of the actual altme.exe and named it altme2.exe 
thinking that perhaps this was the problem. The target was then changed 
to reflect it. Don't do this, it  is not necessary and may freak 
you out.


Now I have 4 worlds up and automatically running when I need to reboot 
the server. Yea.

Congrats James and thanks for the extra info.

James, Cool.  I threw this into Qtask's REBOL-SIG project, and made 
it into a Wiki (you can edit it there if you like, as can others).

Here is a syndicated link for everyone.

https://www.qtask.com/qwiki.cgi?mode=previewSynd&uuid=XM56AUYGPJ6XSE5N8BUYLQX3W2QT


(Fixed your dupplicate numbers also.  What ever you used put two 
2, and two 1s.  I usually number "steps" and use bullets for lists 
that can change order).

Thanks Reichart and Brock. I'm a happy camper now and can reboot 
my server any time without that  oh man, now I have to start all 
those worlds again. :-)

Thanks for suggestions. Have to look into that. Currently i have 
anti-colors, mostly because i box the words, not just colorize them. 
looks like suqeaks etoys :) to see it, run edit-tools in my developer-folder, 
open a script, choose color-rebol.r in the plugin-list and close 
your eyes quickly :)) more a demo how to markup text.

I press [No], then it opens a file requester, so I press "Cancel" 
and that minimizes the edit-tools app. Is this an april fools joke 
that no-one discovered in time ?

thats the first-time opened file, if you use the multi-file-version. 
missing files are created. then it thinks that missing file on disk 
is diferent to that empty edited file and -hu, more problems?

can you look for
  wait: :my-wait
and delete that?

on linux it does nothing, except stopping timers and flash a moment.

interesting point is, you give it a text-face, a start and end, and 
a template for markup and do:
  markup-face ta make markup-face! [color: local/2] start end
and then you have markup :)

Does anybody know if it's possible to catch third mouse-button's 
up and down events? I know of the scroll-line and scroll-page thing, 
but ...

www.rebol.net is working (showing the new server) OK.
link to rambo is OK  (and rambo lists newest bug OK.)
link to http://mail.rebol.net/::: 503 Connect failed

Your request for http://mail.rebol.net/could not be fulfilled, because 
the connection to mail.rebol.net (209.167.34.210) could not be established.