AltME groups: search

I think the all-or-nothing issue is based on the UI, not the data 
store. It works like IOS Messenger, creating all faces in the pane 
when a group loads.

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

3-4 seconds of a grayed out message box ...

If you run your own AltME world that you start with a script or other 
method, the AltME name server has been improved to keep your worldname 
reserved as long as users login to your world a minimum of once every 
ten days.

What we need is a way to search the group names instead of being 
forced to scroll thru them ...

Tried to use AltME on Win7 today. Wow, don't try to share files. 
What a horrible OS experience Win7 is, along the lines of "where 
are my files?"

I've got to imagine this is a problem for R2 as well, no?  Anyone 
have a fix for the installer?

Put the files somewhere other than in the program files directory; 
stop acting like a Win9x progeram.

Yes, I've looked a that a bit... it's a strange one.

A couple days ago, in one of our main worlds we use here, the checklists 
did not sync.

So, I think the algorithm for sync verification must change. Right 
now it's notification based, but I think it needs to reverify on 
a regular basis.  This wasn't a problem when TCP/IP was reliable.

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.

Would be cool if ALTME groups had a notification feature where it 
could send something to an email box on each update to that group.

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 :)

Please don't do that last one. Most of the groups that aren't web-public, 
especially the hyperactive ones, are that way for a reason: privacy.

Unless it's *your* group, a group dedicated to one of your own projects. 
Then go for it :)

No problem Brian. there's a double-switch needed to make things [web 
public] at REBOL.org....
Step 1 is for  someone here to mark  a group [web public] 

Step 2 is for someone (usually me) at REBOl.org to flag that group 
as on the publication list

So mistakes, or over enthusiastic [web public]ings can be corrected.

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.

not a big confidence builder to the inexperienced

I wish this would get cleaned up, it always gives me a bit of a fright 
until I realize what's going on.

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

I'd have to download all messages for this - is there a way to get 
full history for all groups at once? How long does it take?

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.

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.

Got a strange update...

it must be a special double post update

can we have a privacy group created please

What's a privacy group>

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?

Once upon a time, browsers sending referrers was considered a breach 
of privacy.

Today there is this great plugin for firefox that try to anonymize 
your searches on google

http://www.googlesharing.net/. I thing it's useful, I wanted to 
share.
Are altMe private chats secure from say, Reichart?
 ;-)
Should we give out our privacy?

People's different meaning about privacy, would also be interesting.

These are some examples that I see would have fit in a privacy group.

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.

:-( as I am using altME on a netbook at the moment

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.

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?

I would suspect that we would gain a performance increase if this 
was done.

I think it would really only make a performance increase for initial 
downloads of new users.

Also, many of those groups contain valuable information. It's almost 
always a bad thing to delete a group, losing the history.

It's almost always a bad thing to delete a group?  Are you serious? 
 What is so bad about it?

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

I am working on Linux.is there a way to increase the font size

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

Stop torrenting for a while .. see if that helps

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

For anyone using Vista or Sys7, there is a new AltME to test that 
installs better:

  www.altme.com/download/altme26c.exe


We want to release it in about 12 hours, so if you have any problems, 
please let me know.

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.

No, it popped up an AktME box saying iy could not install for one 
of two reasons:
-- altme already running (it was not)
-- needs admin-level permission
I restarted it with admin-level permission


It looks like the data files have been installed in a different location 
to where they were before. This may be a good thing in the longer-term. 
But a little confusing just now.

Sorry -- got to go now.....Back in 12 hours.

AltME is a tiny program that doesn't handle any file extensions. 
It should be installing under C:\Users\Brian\AppData\Local (for the 
Brian user, i.e.). You can get that value from the "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell 
Folders" key, in the "Local AppData" value.

Personally, I run AltME as a portable app, but if I ran it as a local 
app that is where I would put it. Chrome installs in the same location 
too.

However, for a "reinstall" vs a "fresh install" it will try to use 
your older installed location. That's why the above happened.

you could copy the files to the new installation path. on people 
with slow or buggy connections, this will make a huge impact.

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 a more realistic expectation is to have right-click-to-copy-text 
working more than once.

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.

Perhaps it would be interesting if AltME could run a script on every 
new message.

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

Indeed, a few "little" tweaks would make AltME much better for these 
refined needs.  Perhaps one day.  But, we can make do with what we 
have too...

Adrian, two suggestions.  Make sure to use the WorldMasters Dividers, 
then also make sure to show Newest Messages first (as suggested by 
Henrik).  Both can be selected by clicking the wrench icon in the 
top right of the user list.  If you make a habit of minimizing all 
dividers, you will always see the dividers that have last received 
an update.

When a divider turns red, you open it.  Then the latest updated groups 
will display at the top of the opened divider.  You can't miss an 
update this way.

Can we setup a "Cross-Check" group to cross-check for stuff that 
others might have done before starting on ones own?

That sounds like a good idea to me.

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. :-)

True, just saying, if you ask a question, it will get answered.

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.

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. :-)

Hello everybody, anytime I start AltMe I receive the message that 
there is a file to download. If I click yes, I obtain (you aren't 
allowed). If I click no, next time I start AltMe I obtain again the 
message.
Is there a way  to stop this pop-up?

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.

Whoa! what a bizarre user experience!  :)

I click "edit-tools", then I press "open" button, it opens a dialog 
"save /d/anton/dev/rebol/link/developer/et/doc/readme.txt" [Yes] 
[No]...   eh !??!

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 ?

can you open a real file with the requester?

it contains a workaround on linux. maybe windows does not like it.

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

Mmm.  HIDE doesn't work on latest Rebol/View betas, but it minimizes 
a window face on View 1.2.1.3.1

published a fix. can you try it again?

Open still tries to save, obviously, but when I cancel now it does 
not minimize (I see a quick flash of the window though)

its tricky to stop the timers. hide works but flashes. hide on window 
does not flash on linux, so i thought i had a good way.

yes, use the left. the right scrolls a fixed amount.

Ah yes, a relative scroller. Middle-mouse button would be good for 
this one day...

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 :)

Petr says he owes me a beer cause I told him the solution to that 
.. but now I can't recall what it was!  :(

Is this a bug or by design?


A faces pane, if of type block!, may contain not only face objects, 
but allows for words too (and maybe other types, but I didn't check 
this). At least it works and View doesn't complain.  

I sometimes use this for easy access of faces in crowdy pane; e.g. 
for faces A, B, C and F I can set do F/PANE: REDUCE ['a A 'b B 'c 
C].


But now I noticed in some popup-faces' code that SYSTEM/VIEW/WAKE-EVENT 
fails in such cases because of the line IF GET IN ITEM 'ACTION [BREAK/RETURN 
FALSE], which I had to patch to IF ALL [OBJECT? ITEM IN ITEM 'ACTION] 
[BREAK/RETURN FALSE] to make it work through such panes.


Well, I'm really uncertain whether it is a good idea to build panes 
that way and if I have to think of WAKE-EVENT as being buggy, or 
if by design pane blocks really should consist of nothing but faces 
and the bug is me ignoring that.

So, what do you think?

I should have mentioned that I do that to - in the above example 
- refer to the face B by F/PANE/B without having to extend F with 
an explicit 

'reference' to B as in F: MAKE FACE COMPOSE [A: (A) B: (B) C: (C) 
PANE: (REDUCE [A B C])].

that is, if your pane is [b], and b references a face, view will 
look it up and use it as if the face object was there instead of 
the word. because of this, your faces will be in the pane TWICE as 
per the example above.

IIRC Cyphre used this approach (using words or lit-words) in SWIS. 
It does make lookups quite simple, but then again it is not too hard 
to maintain a separate index block if needed. Keepning the workload 
down for the rendering of faces is probably a good reason to avoid 
the 'word approach.

Strictly I would call wake-event buggy. But then popup-faces are 
usually not that complex. So its a 80/20, the complex faces are easier 
with words, the simple popups a bit  restricted.

Gabriele, thanks for the "being in the pane TWICE" explanation: you 
pointed me to a mysterious "face in more than one pane" error message 
I wasn't able to track down to it's origin. Should've read "face 
more than once in pane", though ;-)  Then again, it seems to work 
fine if the word-lookup doesn't evaluate to a face (even non-face 
objects seem to be allowed).


Did you had some special mezzanines in mind which may stumble over 
this? WAKE-EVENT currently is the first and only one I know of for 
now. Of course the number of idioms like FOREACH FACE PANE [FACE/...] 
is legion, so this really may turn out to be problematic.

Fine, thank you, I'll have a look at that.