AltME groups: search

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!

Thanks a lot! So I might as well post a with to have button for "mark 
all read" :-)

Well, mine says 1.1.29, too (linux, of course) count this as a vote 
to a linux update, too ;-)

Here's another vote for a Linux version

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.

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.

How does AltME launch web browser? I have my browser defaulted to 
FF, but it always starts IE. Not that it would be much of a problem, 
but IE proxy setting is set by our Active Directory rule with each 
log-in, so at home I have to constantly change the proxy setting 
each time I get home, in order to be able to start links directly 
from AltME ....

Paul, you could always write a script that manipulates the server 
files.  R: would there be a way to push the altered data to clients?

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?

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 ...

OK, done, thanks a lot! I never saw clicking radio button brings 
you to new screen, gee, what is that? :-)

- 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…

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.

well, I'll write a blog entry about it

Given the trouble with the Mailing list as well (feedback), what 
about simply moving everything over to Gmail Groups?  All these problems 
have been solved by them already.  It has IMAP access, so you can 
still do ML archives.  And it is all free.  There are a few things 
about Gmail Groups I don't like (but I suspect all ML have the same 
problems), I simply don't like Email in the first place, so I'm biased.

I think a big move to Gmail would have many positive aspects:


-	Feedback problem is gone, since you can have multiple moderators 
that can check.
-	We have a centralized location for requests to AltME

-	We can make it public already, so you may be able to avoid some 
of the tools you have been using to do this.

-	We are working "with" other systems, as opposed to "invented here"

-	There are other services Gmail offers that might enhance the experience.

There is a REBOL Google group, but it doesn't see much use: http://groups.google.com/group/rebol

I've been noticing AltMe freezing when retrieving a message - when 
done, it goes back to normal. Is this a network latency or speed 
problem, or something else?

I"m supposed to have a 10mbs connection

It seems to me that the process of retrieving a message is blocking, 
or otherwise synchronous. On a crappy connection that process may 
have to do some retransmits, or may be slowed down for other reasons. 
The solution is to make the retrieval of a message asynchronous, 
and then just sync during the local update once the message is retrieved.

I think it must be blocking as when I'm typing and a message is being 
downloaded, I have always noticed that keyboard input is slower.

I'm a world master here. Might be good to have another one who is 
around a lot though. Reichart is back, and he usually takes care 
of things pretty quickly when he's around.

Reichart, I guess it does. I just wanted to make a small guide on 
my blog to how to get in here as quickly and as painlessly as possible 
and who is reliable to contact about that. Currently the ML seems 
to be the main way in, while other post on reboltalk.com.

I propose: checklists to appear in the same list as users and groups. 
Then they can be sorted by most recently modified, turn red and be 
noticed.  *Then* the "Links" group could become a checklist, avoiding 
chat.

or


The "Links" group could be automatically scraped and the links put 
into a "Links" checklist.

When you post an alert to a private group, does it go to all members 
of the world or just that group?

Suggestion: ctrl-click on a message equivalent to right-click.  For 
one-button 'mouse' users (ie. Mac)

Last night, for the second time...  When I connected to Altme Reichart's 
name was "none" his color was correct though.  


The first time this happened it was on a different computer and Reichart 
remained "none" for the duration of the install so I had to reinstall. 
 


Altme seems to have corrected itself somehow this time.  Reichart, 
you will be pleased to know that you are no longer "none"

Reichart, I lied.  You're only not "none" in some cases like in this 
group for example, however in the Video Tutorials group all of your 
posts show as being posted by "none"  Someone else in that group 
is also showing as "none"  I'll give you more info on this when I 
get a chance.

This is not a bug...simply, I left this world, and rejoined...

it was a version I downloaded late last year.  Expired now I guess.

Ports: Hi, I want to setup AltME in a way that it connects to a local 
port-forwarding proxy which than tunnels the connections.


What local ports does AltME use? And what are the remote IPs / Ports 
I need to use?

it may have been a DNS problem, because I was connected to the r3 
world the whole time and could send messages just fine. of course 
it's no fun if there is no one to respond. :-)

If the lookup server dies, then no one can reconnect to a world anywhere. 
 This is how Altme controls access.

the one world I have been running was no longer activated.  Same 
problem I've always had with AltME.  The world name is not payed 
for so therefore after inactivity would be released to be reused 
by others.  However, it is accessed daily, but still get's released 
every once in a while.  I can now access it after re-registering 
it.

I got it back up. I have shortcuts that use the command line options 
to start the worlds. That doesn't work. I had to go into the UI and 
choose Start a World, then I could see them again.

To confirm, you are saying that to start a world, you "had to click 
on"  [Start a World]?

I tried to use a SOCKS proxy for dynamic tunneling but AltME doesn't 
seem to have SOCKS support done right or at all.

we talked a little bit about subgroups in the r3-alpha world: a group 
that holds subgroups, for particularly shortlived topics, like an 
event (last nights episode of XYZ TV show) or for short discussions 
of questions. this avoids mashing separate subtopics into one group 
and they wouldn't scroll out of view as quickly.

Maybe make optional expirable groups that way if a post doesn't take 
place for some time in a respective expirable group that group will 
expire and clean itself up.

it would be nice to see a list of files that you are about to download 
in the file sharing module. there's nothing useful about seeing dialogs 
with "There are 5 files to download.".

I try again. Someone mentioned he got AltME run through a proxy. 
I still failed with support from programs like Proxifier etc. But 
please note that I tunnel all the traffic through SSH as well.

Best to send something believed to be a bug to Feedback...since then 
it is queued.

Paul, I believe it is just a limitation of this World.  I have file 
sharing available on a personal world that I maintain.

does AltME store information about window maximization somewhere? 
I have an annoying problem under OSX Leopard, when I switch my macbook 
between the internal 1280x800 screen and my external 1680x1050 screen 
where AltME sometimes decides that the window should be maximized 
at all times. When resizing the window, the content will be resized, 
but the window itself fills out the entire screen except for the 
menu and the dock. It does not fix itself until after a reboot, so 
I don't know if it's a bug in AltME or Leopard.

I don't think there's a hard limit.

It would be a combination of the number of users, number of messages, 
bandwidth, and server resources.

Louis, if you look in the file "users.set" under a AltME world, the 
user number is an integer, so I guess with current implementation, 
max is 2'147'483'647.

Seriously, I wonder if anyone has a world with around a thousand 
users. If so, I would be interested in some comments.

Yes, the other thing is that it may be served from anywhere, so how 
well a world scales depends on the machine running it. If you want 
the best scalability, serve it from a good machine, or have them 
host it.

Can ALTME be used on a close network that doesn't have access to 
the internet?

Was hoping to pitch ALTME for a need that our managers have at work

Although the converse of that, hidden features are sometimes not 
found by novice users.  Having them visible is always best and minimizes 
mousing around & clicks.  I like the idea of more items, but from 
a usability standpoint the feature should be more obvious.

Hmmm...I was thinking of it showing all of them, but the WHOLE bar 
is a single button, that rolls through them....

:)  Just write the passwords on a post it and stick it on your tube. 
 But yes I agree.

Anyway time for a new build of Altme with 2.7.6 encap ... no more 
black dos boxes ...

If you change worlds too quickly, sometimes the password field doesn't 
get a chance to update before the link connection.  So the remembered 
value for the new world gets trampled and you have to resort to brain 
power and password typing.  :)

I got a crash from that recently. What's more annoying to me is that 
the Cancel button often is ignored during connect.

I walked away from this PC about 24 hrs ago after posting a note; 
I returned to find the browser very sluggishl taskmgr showed altme 
consuming 90+ % of CPU; I had no screen saver set.  I killed the 
process.  One of the last things I recall doing in altme was clicking 
on an http  link ( whihc was why I found IE7 running slow ...  I 
use Firefox generally from an icon or the start  menubut leave IE7 
as the default browser

Any chance of getting an ALTME version that support MS proxy authentication. 
 I know that DOC Kimbel has a proxy authentication that works on 
large enterprise environments.  If it can work, I will go to EDS 
and see if they would support purchasing ALTME as a collaboration 
solution.

We currently have a need for such a tool but it would have to support 
msproxy authentication because EDS personnel work from many client 
sites as well.

Is there a way to have AltME not block when it is downloading a message? 
I am getting tired of having AltME lock up on me when I am typing 
- it has interfered with my conversations quite often today.

Does the buffer size make a difference?

It might be a factor that I am connected to the internet through 
Comcast.

My message size is set at 1000.  Seems when I go 10000 or more it 
gets a bit slow

Mine is set at 1000 too. Let me be clear here: I get the slowdown 
whenever AltME retrieves a message, even if I didn't write the message. 
Today, the messages have mostly been from Paul :)

The bandwidth is fine - it's an architectural bug. AltME shouldn't 
block on retrieval at all. Any blocking should happen after the message 
has been retrieved, just long enough to post the message to the GUI, 
no more than a millisecond.

When I closed AltMe a few seconds ago I got this error message: "Server 
reported error in unknown-request because of: Ôtatus"

Im was wondering, does Altme Linux/Debian need more specific testing 
to get out of Beta stage? If you need more Linux testing drop me 
a note.

We need more testing.  Although the recent blog entry may change 
things a little we need lots of grunt test case wrting.   They are 
built around a test engine that loads the cases, so these are not 
standalone scripts.

I am getting an error on new altme installs on Windows XP on PC's 
which have not had a prior install; install, accept updates (some 
13 files are offered for downl0ad - I think after entering Rebol3 
world ... at which point altme dies with a warning that cannot write 
to track directory as it may not exist; restart of altme then proceeds 
fine;

As you can see, I was having trouble as this new install populated 
lists: any time that I hit the enter key the post vanished but the 
list would not refresh by just going to another topic and returning 
to this altme topic.  Hence the 3 stutters in trying to report what 
may be a known issue as I was not sure if my post was in limbo or 
lost in the ethereal bit bucket

Cool, thanks.  Every report is filed, catalogued, grouped in a folder, 
placed in a bank box, collected in a wood crate, and placed along 
with thousands of similar crates….er, or, that was Raiders of the 
Lost Arc….ignore me…

Yeah, a whole three lines of code.

: ) (I know), but it is cool that such a thing can be done with so 
little code because of a) REBOL b) the format AltME files are stored 
in.

So what do I think AltME id doing wrong, or at least not making life 
to admins easy? There is no problem for me to to open ports on FW. 
This is not about opening ports only, but precisely speaking it is 
about setting DST-NAT to your target PC on internal network:


1) AltME records your internal IP adress when setting up your world. 
Don't even try to run it on different PC in your internal network. 
Even if you have all ports OK, this one thing will ruin all your 
efforts. Dunno if it adds to any kind of security, but in my eyes 
it is completly unnecessary obstacle. But maybe it is usefull when 
running altme servers fully on your local network, so that AltME 
"DNS" can direct your local clients to correct internal altme server. 
I can live easily with this one, but ...


2) Today I created new world. No matter how you try, it always registers 
AltME world on port 5400. There is no ability to set it differently.


3) Even if you start altme -s "my-world" -p 5401, it will not help 
you, and it still opens the world on port 5400 (at least that is 
what I saw with netstat -an), which is imo a bug


4) even if you change \servers\my-world\info, still no luck. When 
you go to http://www.altme.com/cgi-bin/lookup.cgiand you type-in 
your world name, you still can see, that AltME.com has registered 
5400 port, but not e.g. 5401


5) even if you run your altme -s "my-world" -p 5401, and even if 
you send your client to 5401 port by changing \worlds\my-world\config.txt, 
you still has no lack. It is apparent, that no matter how your client 
is instructed, it takes info from altme.com for granted, and overrides 
your local settings, which can be proven by 6)


6) Running two worlds - my-world on 5400 and my-world1 on 5401 (names 
obfuscated here), I found out, that Altme client does not care of 
Altme server name at all. That can be proven by typing my-world1 
and using account from my-world, you are succesfully logged in to 
my-world, instead of my-world1, as client obtains port 5400 instead 
of 5401


I have one and only one question - how can I change my world port 
number on altme.com, or in other worlds - how do I REGISTER world 
on different than 5400 port? :-)

Yes, I agree that is needed.  I'd also like to see a way to re-assign 
a world name after it is dropped and no longer 'reserved' or associated 
to my IP, but don't know if this is possible, since it seems to have 
lost my IP... maybe this is an ISP thing when IS recycles IPs since 
I have a Dynamic IP... probably the answer.

Ingo <I'm not talking about these 3 lines for this exact problem, 
but about understanding enough to find the same info for another 
post>

Apologies for delay in replying.
***

The URL for the web archive has this parameter for the post in question:
    post=r3wp157x10054
And the two lines of code are:

   core-chat: reduce load/all %157.set
   text: last core-chat/10055

As you can see, the GROUP-ID is 157

and the POST-ID is 10054 -- but add 1 for the REBOL code as the file 
has a header line.
***
To get the GROUP-ID either RIGHT-CLICK the group name in ALTME.
Or find the group name in the Web archive:

  http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/aga-groups-index.r?world=r3wp
  
Does that demystify it?
As Reichart implies -- it's easy when you know how :-)

What exactly can cause "AltME Error: Registray cannot load dataset 
files: 2" during startup? I'm getting it so many times on various 
machines, I'm starting to think it's a bug in AltME rather than data 
file corruption by something else. Whenever it happens when I'm trying 
to log into a specific world, it's "jinxed" and I can't log into 
it anymore on that machine. It does not help to just delete the whole 
dir, redownload AltME and start from scratch.

it seems also to happen mostly when changing world from one to the 
other. I haven't been able to run multiple AltMEs on one machine 
for a long time.

it's mainly a problem on OSX Leopard, but I see it elsewhere too.

Maybe it's a permissions problem ?

found it. it's a WHAT-DIR issue.

Anyone ever seen a "Too Many Recent Servers" error when attempting 
to start a world? And is the limit 5 or 3 worlds running on a single 
PC?

Altme has always struggled to show me the latest messages in some 
groups...That's the reason why some people have used "." a lot to 
force a group-specific resync.

I've just noticed some red groups that have updated themselves for 
post in March this year and December last year.

I guess that's good that they arrived without further prodding from 
me.

But apologies if you're still awaiting some replies from me: I may 
never have seen yiur post.

Make sure all worlds are open when you create a new one, otherwise 
it won't use a new port number.  It always goes to port 5400 if it's 
not already serving another world.

hi everybody ... i met some problems with altme : problems with a 
dataset file

I think I found the trick to serving multiple worlds, even if they 
weren't set up correctly at first. In the info file in %altme/servers/<your-world>/, 
change 5400 to, e.g., 5401. When you start the world again, it seems 
to use that port. I haven't tried it with a shortcut start yet.

I believe the file is config.txt in Windows.  There is a server-port 
option.

Let me start over... host-port is what Gregg is talking about.  There 
is also a host-addr setting that might be the source of my worlds 
becoming unavailable all of a sudden even though they are used on 
 a daily basis.  I'll have to check that out next time my world locks 
me out.

Thanks. I waited a couple of days an now it is fine (4 worlds running). 
Since I didn't do anything on my side I'm wondering if the Altme 
server has something to do with it. Who knows? I'm just glad it works 
now : )

Double-clicking on a link doesn't open a webapge in your browser 
either....and you can't even copy the URL to paste it in the browser.

I suspect that quite a few of the AltME Linux users run the Windows 
version using WINE

Some observations for Reichart on making ALTME more viral.

1.  Host all worlds for free but unsecured.
2.  Tier packages
3.  Enable one click access from external sites to ALTME worlds
4.  Ads Tier


1)  Regarding #1 - I think if you host all ALTME worlds for free 
that people will sign up quickly.  What would drive someone to fork 
over the cash is going to be traffic.  I can bet that once someone 
starts getting traffic to their world and generating content they 
are going to want to keep it.  ALTME owns the content of the worlds 
until someone secures it with payment for the hosting account.  (Major 
incentive that rewards growth).


2) Make product tiers that  target hosting accounts towards gaining 
income and visibility for their hosted safeworlds.


3) Think of going to a website and it says something like JOIN the 
DISCUSSION and then says click here and has a small ALTME logo that 
launches you into ALTME and then takes you directly to the particular 
safeworld.  and if someone doesn't it have it - it takes you to ALTME 
download link.  Almost all other messaging mediums have this capability.


4) This is an excellent idea to compliment number 2.  One tier that 
can be offers for additional costs would allow ADVERTISEMENTS within 
the safeworld framework.  For example, consider many online forums 
generate revunue from Google Adsense by placement of ads in their 
content.  ALTME could offer this type of capability as well.  This 
is really an area where I think that REBOL can get great exposure. 
 If advertisements are required to be put forward in REBOL code this 
means that Google would have to have REBOL programmers develop delivery 
content to interface with ALTME.  I have no doubt in my mind that 
they would do it.  ALTME can boast that it has www.rebol.com as a 
marketing partner and REBOL.com according to marketleap.com is a 
"contender" class website showing that ALTME can get the word out 
if it really wants to.

I don't want to see a sea of red

You may need to tweak Search (and these options are buried deep enough 
that I can't remember) to include non-indexed data.

And I like this one; from wikipedia User_Access_Control
---

However, David Cross, a product unit manager at Microsoft, stated 
during the RSA Conference 2008 that UAC was in fact designed to "annoy 
users", and force independent software vendors to make their programs 
more secure so that UAC prompts would not be triggered.
---

Smart company;  annoy a billion people to get 1000 to play nice with 
Microsoft.  I say we get out the torches and chase down Dr. Frankenstein. 
 :)

I moved my AltME from program files to it's own directory so I can 
now browse the downloads.  Now I get a security requester each time 
I start up Altme ... I guess because it has not been signed.

Not sure if this has been suggested before but a Search [By Group|By 
Person|All] would be very helpful in Altme especially when combining 
threads/posts from disparate groups/users - this would also bring 
us more in line with web based forums for usability :)

I think i am so used to looking for a textbox next to a search button 
that i totally overlooked it.  Perhaps that is something to consider 
- new users to altme who have come from a web background will be 
expecting a textbox where they can type something in and then press 
search.  Having it 'hidden' behind a button may cause confusion for 
some of us ;)

top right seem to all be group/message related so they form a logical 
grouping.  As for the top left buttons they seem generic functionality 
based - whether they are easier than a menu functionality i'm not 
sure - one has to hover over them to determine their immediate usage

probably better to have all the icons in a row at the top