AltME groups: search

Please send that to AlteME feedback.  In fact since our system for 
tracking bugs is really good from the site, that is the best place 
to post bugs.  If you have a question though, you are always welcome 
to ask me directly, I will try to answer what can be answered.

All of a sudden?

Search is not limited

But you get a message saying something like "can't show you that 
result cos of your message limit"
So you have to increase your message limit to see the results.

anyone know if I can only serve 1 world from a PC?  Or is there some 
way to startup a second world?

I usually just start a 2nd instance of Altme.

eFish, you can start multiple worlds automatically by placing a shortcut 
in your startup folder for each instance you want to automatically 
start, using a command like the following...
C:\Program Files\AltMe\altme.exe
 -s "<Worldname>" -p <portnumber>

I was clicking at a lot of groups just a few seconds ago after installing 
altme on a new computer .... :-) ..... but I'm getting faster everytime 
and if one is fast one can see pretty nicely that the event-queue 
is working, because even though altme is not fast enough in keeping 
up with setting groups to "read", it doesn't miss any groups already 
clicked on. :-)

New little game? A list, rows randomly turn red, click fast enough?:)

Are you kidding....what you guys all don't realize is that AltME-Rebol3 
"is" a a top selling game in Korea.  They try and guess what everyone 
is going to complain about next.  Someone won big money on the whole 
Troll email issue, and every time I rant I know this one guy loses 
his rent money (one would think he would learn by  now).

Henrik wrote - "maybe I am just unlucky, but I managed to draw 4-5 
people into AltME, but they all left again. I can't exactly explain 
why. I suppose they were expecting a 100% feature complete ready-for-enterprise 
groupware system for free. the questions usually are "why don't we 
just use IRC or ICQ?".


They just didn't see the advantage. another factor could be that 
there already are many ordinary chat solutions available and they 
are tired of having to adopt yet another one."

Most "people" don't have a sense of community.  On other hand, I 
invited one person that now has brown a world to about 20 people, 
they have been "living" inside AltME for about 1.5 years now.  They 
can't even imagine using anything else, since they do play with everything 
else.  It is simply a preference.

Thanks Reichart.

Turns out that you have to register the world name with safewords 
by providing a World Password.  This is something new in the last 
year.  I was using a registered and paid worldname before but very 
soon after paying the world quit working and I created  new worlds 
by appending numbers to the end of the worldname.  This worked for 
a year but now that my yearly membership has expired - the worldname 
with a number quit working as well.

Henrik;

  I use it for just three or four people to keep track of a to-do lists. 
   Has worked for us for a couple years, albeit with some problems 
  in keeping the world going.  The To-Do lists are very helpful.

I have had a problem since hosting AltME worlds (and being cheap 
and not reserving the name).  However, the worlds are used every 
day, but they still drop.  I found the problem was more frequent 
when I had more worlds being hosted.  At one point I had three worlds 
up and it seemed all of my worlds would become un-registered at the 
same time as one of them having not been used for the 10 day period 
that will un-register them.

I would love to set folks up here with Altme (and QTask for that 
matter), but it will take a while to sell them on it.

I have a customer who is afraid to install AltME because they are 
afraid it is spyware.  Anyone have a good list made of promises or 
in the website is there some way to ally this fear?

I always tell people to do a net search to see if a program is spyware.

I think that is far more reassuring than what a company says about 
itself.

perhaps an option to neutralise a colour combination by the reader?

Or, a hover mode that reveals the hidden text?

maybe with a bigger border

scott, are you using a TFT display? the colors you use really strain 
my monitor.

well, research says that black text on white bg is less dangerous 
for the eyes than white text on black bg (especially in a dark room)

love to see a reference.  white is for paper to be.

that's probably true.  altme stands out like a sore thumb on my screen. 
 All the other apps pretty much abide byt my defaults.

There's a formula for chosing a readable forground/background color 
pair here:
http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/WebPageColors.html
That's one way to reduce some of the apparent subjectiivity

scott: the reason is that with a black bg your eye will let more 
light in, because on average it's darker, and the white pixels will 
"burn" the retina. with more illumination the eye adjusts so that 
you don't get too much light in.

i'm just saying that light bg is usually the default for a reason, 
not because we're all crazy ;)

It's a general issue about usability.

Web browers are much more flexible -- they have to be: they have 
more users.

Soem accessibility options (like chosing fonts and sizes) need to 
be built into View rather than each application.....Then making fluid 
GUI applications will be easy.

Is there a "hot-key" to turn on/off the multiple-line (CR-mode) in 
Altme? I know it's just a mouse-click away but...

ah, but you're looking for a hotkey... sorry, not that I am aware 
of.

Thoughts, yes. I'm not sure, if you read all history into mem!? If 
you set cap to 100, it may be a good idea to only load 100 posts 
into mem for each group. Searching should then be smart and search 
on disk, only loading those posts in, that's needed.

Yes, it would be much better if a search could be done without the 
user having to change any settings. Otherwise most users will probably 
not do any searching at all.

I would also want a browse mode where i could broese all history 
--- and that 100 is pretty small 500 or 1000 should work. (and if 
they dont there is something else learned about the bug) but I am 
sure I have never run with less than 1000 lines of buffer and only 
rarely had the recycle bug  and then most likely because of searching 
prompted me to increase my buffer and I would only decrease it if 
things got too sluggish

I have a lot of RAM, and I tend to leave the history at 500. Please 
allow the cap to be specified, and then have the whole of history 
available for search.

How about loading stuff with a load/next loop? its a block of blocks, 
so that would work. and the loaded portions would be smaller.

I think its related to timing. A big operation takes to long. Using 
vmem takes even longer.

on the detective the GC used to crash a lot when invoked while inside 
an awake function. i worked around it by deferring actions. i guess 
this is the same bug or very similar, and it should be fixed in view 
1.3, so a new build of altme should fix it.

Ok, so a large amount of data processing, the creation of a large 
block perhaps, or lots of small ones, could cause the GC to kick 
in to free some older data.

It may also have something to do with the after-effects of a full 
virus scan.

New version works for me, seems to do a better job with URLs. Cool!

Nope, same problem with URLs. Example from Tech News: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/11/16/introducing-sparql-querying-semantic-web-tutorial.html

At least it isn't crashing or anything like that. Not that it was 
before for me, but a lack of regressions is nice.

Just noticed the drop-down used for the World selector doesn't close 
unless you choose a world.  And if you are already in that world, 
it reconnects.  This could be handled better.

As a suggestion I mean - it doesn't now.

I sent a feedback on the World selection drop-down usability.

Hmm, after sending a second feedback, AltMe shut down on me after 
pressing "Return to World"

My second feedback/request was asking to only have to type in user 
credentials once per AltMe session.  I don't auto-populate my userid 
and password as this computer is a multi-user computer that doesn't 
take advantage of the built-in OS multi-user features (setup as single 
user).  So, switching between Worlds requires me to login each time 
I visit worlds I was already logged into.

I like to show newest messages first. But when I sort by users to 
find a particular user or group easier, and then click on status, 
the default has been changed to most active users first. I have to 
manually change it back to newest messages first. Is there any way 
to change the default?

sigh... I'm getting pretty tired of losing the connection all the 
time. I've lost a lot of posts, because AltME does not forewarn when 
a connection is about to go down.

I think that a small change should be done: Don't clear the text 
area you are writing in until the post actually appears. Right now 
the field is deleted immediately.

I tend to automatically do a ctrl+a ctrl+c ctrl+s to send an Altme 
message (under windows)

At least then the message is on the clipboard if Altme decides to 
thow it away.

But that's hardly a 21st century solution for an x-intenet product.

Yes -- Altme could do with a  retreive last posting icon....Graham's 
Synapse does that.

and a small "Sending..." message.

actually synapse chat maintains a list of all you type .. but only 
the last message is accessible

Perhaps you can run a tracert to rebol.net when it happens.

Hi!


I've just downloaded AltME 1.2.3 and installed it., and after rebooting, 
I noticed that the "installer" added AltME to the Startup folder, 
and I don't remember clicking on any option that says something like 
"Automatically run upon booting up." IMHO the user should be given 
a choice whether to add AltME to the startup folder or not.

PS


In case I did select the option (by accident, more likely , as I 
was sleepy at the time I installed it), I'd be thnakful if you could 
point it out; and of course, my apologies. :D

Tried synching to the RebGUI discussion twice, but got disconnected 
at more or less the same percentage. Is it possible to have AltME 
download the "chat files" on a per "number of messages"  basis, instead 
of downloading the entire chat file in one session? That way people 
having synching problems like myself could at least download the 
messages from the discussion group a little at a time until the entire 
"chat file" is downloaded, rather than be frustrated when we get 
disconnected at 99% and retry synching again. It will also lessen 
the annoyance of other people seeing several dots made by the same 
poster.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers!

I just created a couple of worlds but when I try to start either 
one of them I get "Altme Error: Cannot open Altme Server. Is this 
server already running?"  The answer is no. The world seems to exists 
as it can be checked via the website and is reachable. Any ideas? 
I have another world (a different one) running on this comp.

My first recycle error with 1.1.28 beta ... on hitting a group I've 
already read.  400 setting.  Changed it back to 100.

Have I got a really old beta ?

there is a little release-blog on altmes site.

and there was a point where the upgrade had to be done manually, 
which is probably why you are still running it.

Reichart,
 

1. Are there plans to provide an RSS feed (or multiple feeds) trigger 
by AltMe world activity? 

I would like to be alerted to my RSS reader when updates are made. 

It is not so necessary for Rebol3 but I am proposing an Altme use 
where activity might start out less frequent. 


2. Is the AltME export capability that Rebol3 has for the public 
groups a general use feature of a SafeWorld?

In trying to move some worlds to a new computer, everything is gone. 
I copied over all the files (I still of course have the old drive 
image). Is there some other trick? It just seems to ignore the copied 
files. Thanks in advance.

for the problem: See Chat group. :-) for the solution, maybe one 
could click on a quote button next to the timestamp on the item you 
wish to respond to. A single line could automatically be pasted with: 

Reichart said: "Give an example please."
enter text here

to me it doesn't sound like it would be particularly difficult to 
do, add an action to a timestamp and copy the first line of an entry 
and paste it in the textarea, but maybe I'm wrong. :-)

Henrik, as an intermediate solution (far from perfect), you *could* 
make a short rebol program which copies text from the clipboard, 
truncating it if too long, then writes the truncated text back to 
the clipboard.  You make this program easy to access from your start-menu 
or launcher. Then, in altme, you right-click the message you want 
to quote, run your truncator program, then right-click in the text 
entry area.

it could. I think that's a good idea, even though it may not be entirely 
obvious.

The second.  Not just are we not dropping AltME, we are growing it. 
 But there is a bigger picture.

Freaky day today. On my work's World my account became "disconnected" 
and when I tried to revisit the world it would not recognize me. 
I checked out the user file and Master was back on. Fortunately I 
had a backup so I replaced Master with my account. Kinda scary.

The funny thing is……………….


I run several AltME worlds on several computers(Mac, PC).  All my 
computers in a given day move from wired to wireless.  Not just that, 
but I go from a wired home to a wireless home (if I have to save 
big files I plug the wire in).  I then gt in my truck where I jump 
to Sprint Cell PCMCI card (about 70K bytes per second).  Which I 
use to talk to people on Skype.  In my office I pick up the local 
wireless, and bring up a second copy of AltME on a second laptop.


With all that, not once in all these years have I lost even a single 
message in AltME, not been able to log in, etc.  Obviously there 
have been a couple of Server outages, but I'm not even near the servers, 
and I have never even had trouble from Maui.


It is odd.  The sad reality is that a strong percentage of problems 
are simply the local computer.  Even if it is "only" AltME (or replace 
with any other application) you are having trouble with.

An X-file episode.... But Reichart a) doesn't smoke b) isn't an alien. 
Although the latter may be an attempt of another alien to protect 
our species ;-)

This is a similar problem with Web browsers and Adobe Reader with 
PDFs as well. It seems there's no way to smoothly scroll, consistently.

Hmm.  I mentioned this before, and I was told using the scrollwheel 
allows you to scroll one line at a time.

but you if change your preferences to a low number .. you won't have 
these problems.

Seems that scrolling steps are set to a percentage of total messages 
height.  Usually to implement scrolling, I small-step by line height 
and large-step by view-port height minus line height (so there's 
a little overlap when doing large steps).  Then tie the scroll-wheel 
to the same functions (the scrollwheel is convenient, but a pain 
when it's the only way to do something).

I hate PDF scroll method, which is diff than everyone elses.  As 
to AltME, our scolling is taken from the system.  On my system it 
is clean smooth and one line at a time.  I think this may be a system 
issue, and not AltME, but I'm open to proof.

for example not being able to guarantee that the scroller moves exactly 
one page at a time, when clicking in an empty area.

Perhaps, but that is not proof.  It may also be a function of the 
resolution.  We need a conclusive example.

ok, well I use a 1280x960 resolution. When I want to move one page 
up in the View group, it moves up one page and one line, meaning 
I miss a line of text. This effect gets worse, the bigger the group 
is.

however it moves a page up correctly in this group

I have a 500 message limit

If I click on the up and down arrows it moves one line as well.


So I went into Controls, Mouse, Scroll, and changed it from Slow 
to fast, and can reproduce what you guys are saying.....................so 
again I state, this is not an AltME (or Rebol) problem per se, but 
appears to be a Windows settings issue you can change.

This is not to say there is not a bug in VID or something.  It may 
be that Rebol needs to calibrate something differently

I rarely use the arrow buttons. I click in the empty area in the 
scroller to move the scroller up and down one page at a time.

When I do that (which I have never done before for the record), I 
see Ingo's post at the top "The other thing is".  When I click in 
the empty space I see "part of " Ingo's other post (right above the 
first) "I've only had")


This is not a test you can reproduce now, but...................I 
can see that the scroll area is missing a page and .5 ines.  This 
would seem to be the nature of Robert's statement.


Is this what you all are doing?  Pressing in the empty space of the 
scroll area?

I can see the intermediary messages by dragging the scrollbar (has 
to be precise).  I don't have a scrollwheel to hand right now.

Switching to 300 messages improves the situation, but the up arrow 
skips over half a page, not one line.

reichart, I think that's what we are doing, and I actually first 
observed the problem with one of my users and then another and another...


The scroller knob looks like it's moving a full page, but it's really 
not. I think this is because the page size is derived directly from 
the pixel size of the knob, which will cause rounding errors, the 
smaller the knob gets.

Hmmmm.  so I set my message max to 100.  So I always have a big thumb 
(the scroll bar is called a thumb for the record).  So the question 
still stands, how to solve the problem.

That assumes there is a "source"  This could be that the wrong value 
is being sent to the scroller.  Hard to tell.  What we need to do 
is have a scroll example that works with all conditions.  Then we 
will use the same values for ours.

Ok, I have always set my mouse to the fastes movement possible on 
the system. I don't use a scroll-wheel, I just click the arrows to 
either go line-by-line or posting-by-posting (which I would prefer). 
But, as Chris stated, clicking ones, pages more than one page up/down, 
so I'm missing postings. Workaround: Dragging the slider, which is 
a mess with this mouse speed and the number of messages (IIRC 1500) 
I display.

I just received a response back from support in regards to changing 
the password of a World (not a user). 

AltME world passwords can not be changed in this release.  If it 
could be changed, the user would have to do that.
 

IMHO that should be changed as there may be times where this is necessary.

i did. but, it's always a good idea to have a backup.

Same, if something went wrong it was a minor hiccup.

is anyone else having their XP altme client "freeze up" after receiving 
a single message?

this started happening to me on one machine yesterday  (after MS 
updates)  
a world server on the same machine continues to work.

No, Altme working OK. But I do have some odd behavior with an rebol 
encap'd .exe running from the shared files in Altme. When I exit 
the program with the windows "X" close button the app's window closes 
but the app stays around as a task.

Recently (several weeks ago) we had masive crashes here after a MS 
update on diff computers.

james: "When I exit the program...the app's window closes but the 
app stays around as a task"

hmm..does this your encapped program only when running from altme 
or als when you run it 'normally'?

If the second is true maybe you are using in your program something 
like:
view/new layout [...some layout here...]
forever [
	do [...some loop code...]
	wait <some time> 
]


If so the you need to properly handle the event when you closing 
the View window because othervise the window is only closed but the 
FOREVER (or any other) loop is still running. The solution is for 
example put before the "view/new" line:


insert-event-func func [face event][if event/type = 'close [quit] 
return event]


(ofcourse if your app is using multiple windows you need to add some 
more logic to decide which window should QUIT the app and which not 
when using the 'X' close button)

It really really really needs a way to clear all the reds in one 
hit