From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/59537 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Jonas Steverud Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Read certain forums with Gnus (Canopus) Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 23:51:03 +0100 Organization: The Deciples of Albericht Nibelungen Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1105138328 10680 80.91.229.6 (7 Jan 2005 22:52:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 22:52:08 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ding-owner+M8077@lists.math.uh.edu Fri Jan 07 23:52:02 2005 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13] ident=mail) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1Cn2xd-0003ba-00 for ; Fri, 07 Jan 2005 23:52:01 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu ident=lists) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1Cn2wl-0007l8-00; Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:51:07 -0600 Original-Received: from util2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.23]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1Cn2wh-0007l3-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:51:03 -0600 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by util2.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1Cn2wb-0000ur-GI for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:50:57 -0600 Original-Received: from mxfep01.bredband.com ([195.54.107.70]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1Cn2wa-0003Yu-00 for ; Fri, 07 Jan 2005 23:50:56 +0100 Original-Received: from c-c45372d5.036-4-67626721.cust.bredbandsbolaget.se.bredband.net ([213.114.83.234] [213.114.83.234]) by mxfep01.bredband.com with ESMTP id <20050107225045.LNR27327.mxfep01.bredband.com@c-c45372d5.036-4-67626721.cust.bredbandsbolaget.se.bredband.net> for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2005 23:50:45 +0100 Original-To: ding@gnus.org Mail-Copies-To: never In-Reply-To: (Harry Putnam's message of "Fri, 07 Jan 2005 14:26:49 -0600") User-Agent: Gnus/5.110002 (No Gnus v0.2) Emacs/21.3.50 (darwin) Precedence: bulk Original-Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:59537 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:59537 Harry Putnam writes: > The setup in these forums and others I've browsed, is so clunky since > it is web based, that it makes doing serious reading very time > consuming. Something like saving snippets of info isn't even > practicle since it is so cumbersome to do. In my not very humble opinion are the web based forums a step ten to fifteen year back in time. The functionality of them are so limited that the sheer frustration of even following the most interesting thread is so overwhelming that I have to have a lie down and curse the developers ancestors down to and beyond the Stone Age. No threading (a "thread" is the same as a "all articles with the same subject sorted in chronological order"). Either all articles are marked as read when you log off or you have to "read" a "thread" to mark it read - there is no "mark this as read" which makes it very hard to follow interesting discussions. And so on. I don't think USENET was this bad even in the beginning. > Even if it involved using something like wget to grab it all first, it > might be worth doing if gnus could be brought to bear somehow. I think it is possible using W3 and the nnweb interface - I have not looked into neither but the forums are web based and not very obfuscated. The problem is that the design of the forum differ from place to place so if there are three forums forum.x.com, www.y.com/forums and foobar.z.com/chat, there is a risk we need to make nnforumsX, nnforumsY, and nnforumsZ. Even of all use UBBTHreads or phpthread (or whatever the other larger project is called). The lack of proper threads makes it hard as well - we probably need to make some cleaver trick to give each article an article number. But I heart fully agree, a backend for Gnus for this would be a gift from the gods. I don't know how much I could help since I got to many hobbies and projects myself already - but all papers are in due order, so it would be possible for me to lend a hand. On possibility would be to work with the forum system developers to actually have a "Gnus plugin" - i.e. have a plain version of the threads as well, maybe even a XML file. That way other programs might be developed to interface the forum systems. E.g. if forum.x.com/ is a forum system with a number of "subgroups" a, b, c and d (forum.x.com/a, forum.x.com/b, ...) then one can access this bare bone human-in-readable file by replacing forum.x.com/a/index.html with forum.x.com/a/threadindex.xml and then forum.x.com/a/threads.xml or forum.x.com/a/someinterestingthread.xml . Those XML files will be something similar to what is pulled from NNTP but formatted in XML. (I think it will be easier to persuade the maintainers to format it in XML then to format in - say - "NNTP", if you catch my drift.) Just a thought from the top of my head. I think it is time to end this mail before it gets out of hand. :-) -- ( http://hem.bredband.net/steverud/ ! Wei Wu Wei ) ( Meaning of U2 Lyrics, Roleplaying ! To Do Without Do )