GMANE --> was {Re: Re: List subscription}

[1/11] from: jasonic:nomadics at: 25-Aug-2004 23:52

Hi http://gmane.org/ I posted here before recently about Gmane but got no response... Please somebody let me know why Rebol list should not be easily accessible via GMANE. Its fast and versatile - use web or news client :-) Jason http://gmane.org/ GMANE Mail To News And Back Again Free software is mainly developed on mailing lists. Mailing lists have many advantages over other forms of communication, but they have two weaknesses: It's difficult to follow discussions in a sensible way, and mailing list archives (when they exist) have a tendency to disappear over time. Several mailing list archives exist, but these are all hidden under a web interface. Reading mail that way is not convenient. Reading mail as if it were news is convenient. This is what Gmane offers. Mailing lists are funneled into news groups. This isn't a new idea; several mail-to-news gateways exist. What's new with Gmane is that no messages are ever expired from the server, and the gateway is bidirectional. You can post to some of these mailing lists without being subscribed to them yourself. In addition, Gmane does spam detection, cross-post handling, has a TMDA-fueled encryption/forwarding service, a web interface, respects X-No-Archive, supplies RSS feeds, and has a real-time indexing search engine. Not all mailing lists allow non-subscribers to post, and some are moderated. Gmane requires that users post to Gmane groups using a valid e-mail address, and requires a one-time authorization per group. To read the mailing lists stored in Gmane, point your news reader to news.gmane.org. To get a new mailing list added, use the subscription form. Almost any mailing list can be added. Just include subscription information. Mailing list archives can be imported into Gmane. Discussion about the Gmane hierarchy takes place on the gmane.discuss newsgroup. At present, the Gmane hierarchy is heavily dominated by computer-related mailing lists, which reflects the interests of the initial user base. However, Gmane is not meant to be a service exclusively for IT people. Feel free to suggest non-computer-related mailing lists. To get in touch with the Gmane administrators, send a mail to Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen. Gmane has been in full operation since February 11th 2002, after a one month test period. And the �g� in �Gmane� is silent. There are currently 6,046 mailing lists subscribed to Gmane, with a total of 19,506,328 messages.

[2/11] from: jasonic:nomadics at: 26-Aug-2004 0:00

Lists http://gmane.org/find.php Web interface to complete list http://news.gmane.org/ really fast easy friendly zippy interface no dull screen redraw excellent search decent format Would'nt you love to serach and read Rebol List discussions this way ? Jason

[3/11] from: jasonic:nomadics at: 26-Aug-2004 0:19

Gmane subscription form... http://gmane.org/subscribe.php

[4/11] from: pwawood:mango:my at: 26-Aug-2004 12:28

Jason Personally I prefer the approach taken at Rebol.org which delivers the whole thread at a time to your browser than the message tree approach where you only get one message at a time. Peter On Thursday, Aug 26, 2004, at 12:00 Asia/Kuala_Lumpur, Jason Cunliffe wrote:

[5/11] from: jasonic:nomadics at: 26-Aug-2004 2:16

Peter

> Personally I prefer the approach taken at Rebol.org which delivers the > whole thread at a time to your browser than the message tree approach > where you only get one message at a time.

Rebol.org is huge improvement over what we had before. Personally I prefer both approaches, depending what kind of research/reading/browsing I am doing. Trees like GMane have the distinct advantage that one can more easily scan the flow of discussion. Plus one can use all sorts of neat nntp tools techniques if you want. But I agree there are times when Rebol.org approach is nicer to read and involves less clicking. Gmane is very fast. Adding Rebol to it would simply increase the tool set available to rebolers and hopefully make it easier for newcomers to investigate. More seriously imho AltMe needs to be improved by adding threading search and smarter options for navigation. Jason

[6/11] from: jasonic::nomadics::org at: 26-Aug-2004 2:25

One thing I really like about Gmane interface is that clicking on the <<< previous or >>>next arrows at bottom of the screen clearly highlights in the top pane which posting one is reading. Giving people such visible feedback by uwse of screen wide color bar makes it less tiring to use for long sessions. Would be very cool if Rebol.org copied that inteface idea. Jason

[7/11] from: SunandaDH:aol at: 26-Aug-2004 3:18

Peter:

> Personally I prefer the approach taken at Rebol.org which delivers the > whole thread at a time to your browser than the message tree approach > where you only get one message at a time.

It's good to have multiple approaches as not everyone likes the same way of doing things. With the ML, we're almost spoilt for choices.. In addition to the ones mentioned there are: http://www.rebol.net/list/ REBOL.net's view of recent messages (sadly, not up-to-date) http://www.compkarori.com/rebolml/ Graham's REBOL/View ML application -- you can download all messages, keep your copy up-to-date, and have full-text searching. Write your own REBOL.org has a programmable interface to the ML Archive, details here: http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/documentation.r Each approach has different strengths and weaknesses. The big weakness (currently) of the REBOL.org archive is that it does not have full-text indexing. It's big strengths include: ** Human-produced index of topics, e.g.: http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-update-thread-tags.r This is still very much a first draft, and the team plugging away at it (big thanks due to Christian and Peter for the work so far). This is almost a unique resource for any mailing list. If you want to see it built faster, please contact me and I'll let you know how :-) ** strips bottom quoting and advertising. This significantly (close to 30%) shortens threads, and makes reading threads less of an exercise in skipping over duplication ** doesn't use frames So it is *easily* accessible by humans and search engines (as far as I can see, gmane does use frames, and that creates various problems) Jason:

> One thing I really like about Gmane interface is that clicking on the <<< > previous or >>>next arrows at bottom of the screen clearly highlights in the > top pane which posting one is reading. Giving people such visible feedback > by uwse of screen wide color bar makes it less tiring to use for long > sessions.

I'm always happy to nick good ideas -- thanks for pointing that one out. (that's not a dated promise though :-) ) Sunanda.

[8/11] from: gchiu:compkarori at: 26-Aug-2004 21:56

[SunandaDH--aol--com] wrote.. apparently on 26-Aug-2004/3:18:01

>http://www.compkarori.com/rebolml/ >Graham's REBOL/View ML application -- you can download all messages, keep >your copy up-to-date, and have full-text searching.

Shameless plug follows. Not only this, but you don't have to be subscribed to receive the mailing list. You can bookmark messages, execute scripts embedded within messages if they follow the embedded script standard, reply to messages in a threaded fashion, and compose scripts while testing within the same environment. I should one day get around to changing the reply address ... -- Graham Chiu http://www.compkarori.com/cerebrus http://www.compkarori.com/rebolml

[9/11] from: SunandaDH::aol::com at: 26-Aug-2004 12:10

Jason: Commenting on a couple of your comments....

> no dull screen redraw

That's because it uses frames -- which are a terrible idea for a web interface. One random reference for the problems with frames: http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/frames/goodorbad.html That's part of the reason why it **needs** some Javascript to work. Again, not a great idea as something like 15% of people (and 100% of search engines) don't browse with Javascript enabled. So overall, GMANE's interface is not one I'd **recommend** for general use. Of course, it's fine for the people it works for.

> Giving people such visible feedback > by uwse of screen wide color bar makes it less tiring to > use for long sessions. > Would be very cool if Rebol.org copied that inteface idea.

I don't even see that on my browser....Possibly it's a feature that works only on some browsers, or my browser of choice is tripping up on one of the HTML errors. Either way, it's a good point......There was no way at REBOL.org to see where you are in a thread if you are reading message-by-message. I've fixed that. Sorry, it's not a colored bar. It's a navigation bar, at the bottom of the message, that is consistent with the other nav-bars used on REBOL.org, eg: http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-display-message.r?m=rmlJRHC Sunanda.

[10/11] from: jasonic::nomadics::org at: 26-Aug-2004 12:55

Hi Sunanda

> That's because it uses frames -- which are a terrible idea for a web > interface.

Presonally I don't mind them.. These days smart CSS is taking over , but there's still a considerable learning curve. Not everyone is up to Eric Meyer's skills yet. http://www.meyerweb.com/ http://www.ericmeyeroncss.com/ http://more.ericmeyeroncss.com/ Anyway, Gmane has a nice toggle to turn frames on or off. At the bottom of any newslist page http://news.gmane.org/ But one loses the cool navbar when you do that. It's a choice and a tradeoff epoipel can decide for themselves.

> One random reference for the problems with frames: > http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/frames/goodorbad.html

Thanks I'll read it...

> That's part of the reason why it **needs** some Javascript to work. Again, > not a great idea as something like 15% of people (and 100% of search

engines)

> don't browse with Javascript enabled.

hmm... Again I personally like Javascript. I've always felt the advatnages far exceed the disadvantages. The problem these days is mainly Internet Explorer.Too vulnerable. Google Pop blocker improves life a lot, but I recently switched to Firefox as my default browser. IT's the first Mozilla browser I've liek and I liek it very much. Graet plugins too. Good download architecture etc. Only 2 pages so far have drawn badly on it. Funnky html table prpblems, otherwise it shines.

> So overall, GMANE's interface is not one I'd **recommend** for general

use.

> Of course, it's fine for the people it works for.

Ok fair enough. I still believe Rebol needs better exposure. The hardest thing for years has been piss-poor visibility if you search via google for anything rebol. IT simply flew off the regular Web HTML radar. Which is a big shame. I imagine since rebol.org that that situation has improved some. Inlcding Rebol in Gmane would improve Rebol's visibiloty but do so in a safe way.

> I've fixed that. Sorry, it's not a colored bar. It's a navigation bar, at

the

> bottom of the message, that is consistent with the other nav-bars used on > REBOL.org, eg: > http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-display-message.r?m=rmlJRHC

Terrific.. thank you very much! [constructive criticisms] I'd suggest you also add the nav bar at the top by the header. That would avoid a lot of up-down scrolling when one does not need/want to read every message. I notice as great as rebol.org is, it could also benefit quickly from CSS tune-up. For example you do not seem to use 'visited' link style anywhere. That is a great shame. It's easy to add css to render visited hover active link etc and improves user navigation enormously. Also I wonder why the message headers are in blue underline? Blue underline is such a strong convention since Mosaic [1993] to indicate hyperlink. But really I don's see why the underline is necessary? Blue highlights it well. It's enough. The underline is overkill and suggests it is a link, but it is not. Less is more. Either way you have been building a fantastic resource at rebol.org. Thank you. Jason

[11/11] from: SunandaDH:aol at: 27-Aug-2004 5:46

Hi Jason

> Presonally I don't mind [frames] > These days smart CSS is taking over , but there's still a considerable > learning curve.

That's part of the problem of personal preferences: everybody's got several, and a single website can't meet all of them. Like some people may have preferred the older first/prev/next nav bar for messages at REBOL.org. CSS can't help with that. (what can help is adding page-bar=old to the display-message URL, eg http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-display-message.r?m=rmlXRHC&page-bar=old -- though right now, you'd need to program your own proxy to make that a personal default)

> [constructive criticisms] > I'd suggest you also add the nav bar at the top by the header. > That would avoid a lot of up-down scrolling when one does not need/want to > read every message.

And some people might want it at the top so they don't need to scroll back after reading a message. I can offer two solutions: 1. use the accesskeys (you may need to install a mozilla/firefox option to make them work. "[" -- back one page "]" -- forward one page More details at http://localhost/cgi-bin/boiler.r?display=accessibility.html 2. Add your own CSS to put it anywhere you like (not *actually* possible right now, but read on below)

> I notice as great as rebol.org is, it could also benefit quickly from CSS > tune-up.

Couldn't agree more. Which is one of the reasons we added the personal CSS feature a couple of weeks ago. Try these home-page variants for example (to be fair, these are mainly test data rather than candidates for a redesign): http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/index.r?css=greggirwin http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/index.r?css=moliad http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/index.r?css=sunanda The announcement, in case you missed it, is here: http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-display-message.r?m=rmlTJRC Anyone can add their own CSS to the site. Come up with a good look'n'feel and we'll probably steal your best ideas for the official CSS set. So I'd like to write now that to move the nav-bar wherever *you* want it, is simply a matter of redefining the class for the nav-bar to be a float or some absolute positioning that fits neatly with your monitor and window size. Sadly, I can't because the nav-bar uses a class that is also used in other parts of the menu, so you'd mess things up. But that's exactly the sort of oversight / shortcut / glitch I'd expect to surface as people start to explore the personal CSS feature. I'd be highly responsive to a request to change that. You can make the h2..h4 underlining go away with this: h2, h3, h4 {text-decoration:none;} If you've got the time to play around with the CSS, please do so. You are absolutely right that it needs a tune-up, and the REBOL Community are the people to do it! (Or at least, that'll be quicker than waiting for me to get around to it. And certainly less frustrating than having to ask a REBOL.org team member to make every little change for you). Thanks for all comments, Sunanda