AltME groups: search

A lot going on.  Coop is not dead, but we are going to build it differently, 
and it has a lot of overlap with the REBOL Central idea.  So, it 
probably will be both those things somehow, but not until R3 is ready 
(with R/S built in)

this seems to be a bug.

Its a nice way to let people build plugins...

there are a few issues though, but this might be related to rebol 
itself, such as no carriage return on pasted strings

We have one guy running OS X in our World. So far so good. This morning 
we saw a message that he wasn't a member but I restarted the World 
and all is well. My thought is that this was caused by my computer 
going to sleep sometime during the night. I get other issues with 
other programs so that's probably it.

PhilB. Links aren't working in OSX version yet and some issues with 
the caret positioning while typing (its offset too far to the right 
for some chars, makes you think you typed  a space when you didn't, 
but elsewise it seems pretty solid.

also something about the window going to the top every time a message 
comes in, even if the setting has been deactivated in preferences

Yes... And I think that has something to do with a connection interruption 
on my side... clapping Ethernet ;-) the sync was finished but did 
not show it all.. I had to enter "something" in a group and then 
I synced and showed me the messages...

thør has a message on the REBOL Googlegroup:

<<Could you please set up an account for me? I've been trying to 
get in
for months now, but the guest/guest credentials seem to have been
disabled.>>

Seems a better method for promoting this world and enabling people 
to join is overdue.

maybe it would be nice to add the download dialog/decision before 
it starts downloading. I know it is fast on most connections, but 
slightly confusing on my GPRS - it seems like app is being blocked 
"checking for updates", while actually it is already downloading 
an update ... just a suggestion ...

Is there a way to create a shorcut to start a world?

I know the -w WORLDNAME to log on a world, but can't find how to 
start a world this way in the doc.

Ok, updates are coming frequently now. It's 1.1.28 under OSX now. 
I couldn't send messages just before, probably because a new version 
was released. After closing and restarting AltME, I can send again. 
:-)

interesting that updates aren't checked until you log onto a world... 
so updates are world specific?

i hope so, anyway, it's not such a big problem as it's still very 
rare bug. Altme is great. I'm sometimes using other web forums and 
can compare it with Altme - which has much more better approach (as 
I don't need to load huge HTML all the time to just check if someone 
answered my question:)

FYI: When the disk runs full under MacOSX, AltME displays an error: 
"AltME Error: Registry: cannot load dataset files: 2" Perhaps something 
a bit more informative could be done?

Altme tells me a new binary's 042 is avaiable (linux).. Wehn i download 
it im unable to execute it afterwards..any hint ?

Does the file have execute flag set?
To get a long list and see flags: ls -l
To set execute flags: chmod +x <file>

(above should be written in a unix shell like bash, of course)

its simply not a linux binary...

at least not a correct one..

Do you have such a file in your system?

No its not a library problem... Linux is not complaining about a 
library problem... the ELF header is not correct..

Hopefully someone from SafeWorlds will step by and give you a hint.

Can someone tell me how I have to setup to AltME (on Windows) so 
that it directly connects to a specific world?

So I need a way to start AltME three times everytime with a different 
world.

I know it's a known bug, but it happened first time for me: strange 
datatype during recycle.
While clicking a red group during syncing.
AltME 1.1.28 Windows XP

Just an idea, do you think that it can help to send you zips of the 
AltME dir after a crash?

Is there a way to unsubscribe from groups inside a World ??

Here's a bug, at least in the Linux version of the new AltME. I tried 
to upload some photos from a camera application, with names like 
DSC0123.JPG. Instead, AltME created extra files DSC0123.jpg with 
zero length and uploaded those

Is it a bug? It works under window...but not under linux...clicking 
on "Explore directory" (debian version 1.1.29)  Altme reports me 
->  /bin/bash: line 0: fg: no job control

By the way.... On the www.rebol.com and www.rebol.net websites it 
is mentioned that all the FUN happens at Altme! Well I believe that 
;-) BUT new users are unable to login!.... try that for a change.. 
Try seeking how to login on REBOL3 ...perhpas handy to mention that 
a Guest account is like ie "Guest" "guest".. I could not find it...

And again...Altme Hung !!.. Its a Sync problem for sure ..

And again !!!..But i think i found the problem ;-) just a sec...

There are 2 problems as it looks...

(1) A Refresh problem of the Altme interface..Under linux with multiple 
desktops it looks like Altme is not refreshing the interface while 
switching desktops (Im using Xfce currently)


(2) A sync problem.. I was just typing inhere while everything stopped 
working...


Would be nice to have some debugging output in de console on whats 
going on...???

Now it happens every 3 minutes.. can even type a normal message..

Not typing a message for xx minutes does hang Altme too

The problem is the old linux version keeps nagging about updating..(that 
dont work).. ;-)
Ill try and remove everything... back in a sec or two..

Well... there anr't any old linux version available from altme anymore... 
only debial r31.1 beta.. Mmm ill just try a fresh install with that 
then..

Intresting but irritating... Altme started from a Linux shell is 
able to be backgrounded.... ater starting Altme from the shell $./altme 
 you can background the altme process (3x processes) by pressing 
in the shell Ctrl-Z..Well that is commonly known.. But typing "jobs" 
doesnt show up anything.. also a "fg" doesnt work.. So actualy the 
Altme processes are currently roaming... Not quiet handy i would 
say..

then again.. it perhaps is... Closing the shell did not close Altme.. 
thats a good thing !

This is a pain!! doing a process on the Altme binary.. it does return 
i.e PID 4090.. but Altme is not on PID 4090 but on 4091 4092 4093.. 
So the main process is killed by altme or respawned.. Thats irritation 
, this means the above behaviour is unusable and thus a bug..

Reichart, I know this is on the "list" but do you think we'll ever 
see the Altme "minimize to the system tray/little window notifying 
one of a message." for windoze? My MS compadres insist that they 
need it. Bill Gates must put some kind of addictive substance in 
icon tray. But I guess once you get used to being notified that way 
it's a hard habit to break.

Mac Mail also does this (a red circle with a white number showing 
the number of new messages) ... a *very* handy feature.

A very handy (and not difficult, I guess) improvment on Altme would 
be to have an Icon near the search Icon to toggle sound alert on 
new message on or off.

Usually, you don't use it, but some times, you want to know if you 
have answers immediately and then, sound is nice.

The parameter is already in the config, so it's just to add a button 
at the top of the window to toggle it's value.

On the 1.1.28 version I occasionally get a "Server reported error 
in char because of: User does not exist." This comes after a period 
of inactivity and upon entering a new message. Once restarted or 
updated it is fine.

At a colleague of mine, AltME destroyed itself when the disk was 
temporarily full

Altme 1.1.28 WinXP -> pressed a group after startup and got this 
-> Invalid data type during recycle
** Press enter to quit...

Previously in this group, Reichart has stated something like - it's 
a bug in Rebol not in Altme.

I just saw a new (at least to me) bug in AltME.   After switching 
windows AltME didn't redraw the message area.  It was a solid gray 
(the color of the message seperation line) when I clicked on a message 
the message was redrawn and clicking in the poser column cause the 
entire message area to be redrawn.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before. Feature request: make backspace 
in a file sharing window go to the parent directory

Is there a way to change the timeout of AltME? I think the reason 
I can't resync properly is that in the groups that contain a lot 
of posts, I get disconnected at around 50+%.

Mmm.. Some of these groups are web-public, so they are obtainable 
through the web here
http://www.rebol.net/altweb/rebol3/


otherwise with a bit of analysis maybe we could try to transplant 
some chat files over to your computer.

Just one question; what version of AltME do you have written at the 
top of your window ?

As a new REBOLer, I want to "gather" every bit of information I can 
get, especially from the posts, but the groups which I believe would 
be very helpful to me have more than 1000 posts. Through the web 
site, I can't read the earlier posts, and I get disconnected from 
the world everytime AltME resyncs these groups. I have noticed that 
groups with less than 500 posts do get resynced w/o being disconnected; 
although I had to "force" the resync (that's why I had to post the 
dot in several groups, as posting in the dot group doesn't sync me 
to all of the groups).

I think about a year ago we did a successful transplant. I just gave 
someone some chat files, they put it into the correct directory and 
it worked.

Does this mean the only way to sync correctly is to have a copy of 
the .set files locally?

well, one thing you should try is reinstalling.  Letting AltME sync 
only for a few minutes (before it finishes).  close AltME, then go 
again, letting it complete.
We are not sure, but we see that help a lot sometimes.

Or some type of account that we can switch back and forth to, maybe 
a read only account.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.....


Ok, will you try doing a full install, lets see if this simple thing 
is the problem.

Since you are running it in place, I assume you have a copy on your 
desktop.

Yeah, so probably better just to move the altme files that you have 
somewhere safe, then run altme.exe again and do a full install.

(copy altme.exe to a fresh new folder first.)

So you did a full install ?

Hmm, I think this might mean the altme server keeps a record of which 
groups you have synced and which not. So it probably thinks you have 
the same installation (coming from the same machine).

I just Quit and restarted. No new syncs. I noticed that the groups 
do get synced once a new post is made. That's why all I was posting 
were dots a few days ago. Will try and copy the downloaded group 
files to the new AltME location...

Reichart, I get disconnected while syncing in the groups where there 
are a lot of posts (Core & View, to name a couple). Is there a workaround 
for this? A setting to change, perhaps?

I am a little tired of AltME having no history, aside from that you 
have accumulated yourself. Even your local history gets pushed off 
by newer messages. This is supposed to be a community, not Las Vegas.

Reichart, heavy net load to your server coming up! ;-) (When all 
user set history to a googolplex.

Well that's better then. What if I sign up to AltME and log onto 
a group that I never have seen before, does it download the historical 
messages? What if I haven't signed in for a year and there are 100,000+ 
messages in the group since then, does AltME download them?

if you don't believe me, try resyncing this world from scratch - 
it'll take a very long time :)

Here is a trick in syncing. There is a chat folder that has all the 
chat messages for each group are kept. Inside that folder is a file 
called chat55. If you delete a line entry from that file, the group 
that corresponds with that line will be resycnc like it was never 
been there before.

Edgar -- I cam think of two drawbacks to that suggested forced resyn 
method:

1. the files themselves contain the request: " DO NOT MODIFY!" in 
their header, so perhaps Altme can forsee bad consequences if we 
do

2. the resync problem appears to mainly affect those on dial up connections. 
Possibly, that means the issue is related to Altme timing out a slow 
request. So there is the likelihood that resyncing a large group 
completely will simply fail midway.

I did try a variant of your suggestion: I renamed one of the *.set 
files to *.txt (the request does not say "DO NOT DELETE OR RENAME!")
It didn't work.
I ended up with an empry group.

I supposed I shoudl have dotted it to see if it'd've resynced.....But 
that was the problem we're trying to solve :-)

It's pretty hard to solve a problem when you lack the source.

How about a manual re-sync button?

Under MacOSX, it's a little difficult to have AltME window fill the 
whole screen, but I found a solution. By "the whole screen", I actually 
don't mean full-screen, because MacOSX has the screen-bar at top, 
and below that is the window bar with the 3 buttons. In the altme/prefs/ 
directory is a file named "window". In there is found 3 parameters 
offset, size and maxed. To make the AltME window be as large as possible 
on a 1024x768 resolution, I set these 3 parameters to:
offset: 0x44
size: 1024x724
maxed: false

But you are probably right that it downloads the whole group so it 
may still fail before getting all messages in the group. I have broadband 
so it was not a perfect test.

Sometimes, when working in a world, ones status remains at "logon". 
This problem seems to occur on Linux but not on Windows

That is, when I'm working on Linux. People on Windows do see a wrong 
status for me

Actually, I've seen my status remain at "logon" a few times already, 
so it doesn't only occur in Linux. I'm running WinXP.

We are trying a bunch of Modem attacks again on the Dot  issue.

Reichart: How about a simple filter on the "." , so they don't display 
if not posted by the current user?

not a solution to the problem, but save everyone else the side effects.

ok... it looks like file sharing has not been enabled here for fear 
of it becoming too big (i.e. imagine a new user syncing, there are 
already various MB to download, if you had file sharing it could 
really become too big)

Can you not save files to the file share without forcing a sync?

big

 files are not synced by default. however, think about a thousand 
 small files (i.e. rebol scripts)

Reichart, are you considering a one type synch of that file or an 
option to allow auto-resynch's if the file changes?

I got this when simply sending a message:

That looks to me like your OS was locking a dir or file and so we 
could not get to it.

Some unpractical behavior in adding a file. For starters, the file 
selector (in Linux) opens one directory above the directory you're 
in

The file selector is horrid, but in particular, I typed the name 
of a new file, which happened to have spaces in it, but instead got 
a number of files, for each part of the name. This is very unexpected

There does seem to be a problem with syncing when you install Altme.


Today I had was enjoying one of my too regular Windows installations 
on my desktop. I installed altme beta. It synced only 8 chats. A 
dot to myself forced a sync of all personal converstations.  A dot 
to Dot forced a sync of Dot.


So I removed the beta and installed AltME 1.0.1. It synced 10 chats. 
 A dot to myself forced a sync of all personal converstations.  A 
dot to Dot forced a sync of DevCon2005 because I posted in the wrong 
place.

I can't remember this happening before Rebol3 was upgraded but I 
could have a bad memory.

Anton: Actually the only change I made was, that I moved my computer 
by a meter or so. I've checked RAM with memtest and both GFX and 
soundcard looks OK.

also cleaning the contacts helps (a rubber eraser is good for this)

A small hand-held vaccuum cleaner can help get rid of dust, which 
might be slightly conductive.. :) I don't actually have one myself, 
I just use  a full-size vaccuum cleaner carefully :)

here's an idea: how about some kind of softlinks to specific places 
internally to AltME? Say I want to link to another group, a specific 
check list or a calendar day, a bug report in a bug tracker or a 
file in the filesharing tool.

I suggested a path notation to each message (or at least to a date) 
some time ago.

I have never experienced the syncing problem. I am wondering if it 
might not help for all of us to fill out a detailed questionaire 
about our hardware, operating system, ISP, and anything else that 
could possibly be causing this problem.  Perhaps by examining these 
filled out questionaires a common cause can be located and then fixed.

brianH, I experienced some dropouts a couple of days ago, which also 
affected rebol.net, but that is gone now.

On AltME 1.1.28, Windows 2000, I just uploaded a new PDF. Immediately 
thereafter, the local file was shown as out of date