Mark,

>oops... that should have only been http... the point is that the WWW (aka web) 
>only makes use of the http protocol... anything else is not the web but simply a 
>use of the internet ;)

Ahh..I see and agree. There are too many things out there called
Web-something that have nothing to do with the web. Anyhow, as you now know
- the only 'protocol' I make use of in the entire system is email (ya,
ya..not a protocol...just can't think of the right word right now).

 JW> The duplication thing took me a few days to figure out) how
 JW> to avoid it, that is. I just finished converting the ugly
 JW> BBCode quote style to a nice FTN style that won't make
 JW> people puke when they read it and I think the last thing on
 JW> my list is threading.

>sounds like a lot of work... especially considering having to learn someone 
>else's coding methods and logic flow  and then having to rip it apart to adjust 
>to perform differently... yeah, i've done it many times in the past and i still 
>hate it... i'd rather code it clean from the ground up... if for no other reason 
>than to know that the bugs are mine and i'm the one to blame and fix them ;)

Well, it wasn't so bad. It was more an exercise in systems integration than
in coding. I mean, IREX and MBSE are nice and stable so I didn't have to
worry about anything happening between echomail  email. I only had to step
in to rip through the mail spools and either insert messages into the
forum's database, or select from the forum's database and append to the
mail spools.

Therefore, since the only new code was mine, all of the bugs were mine.
Having said that, I've just discovered what I consider to be a pretty big
bug in IREX, but that's posted in the IREX echo -no sense repeating it
here.

 JW> FTNs aren't threaded, I know, but most (mine is no exception)
 JW> web forum software is.

>hunh? all my stuff works on threads... i use JAM bases and they are threaded on 
>the MSGID/REPLY lines... definitely not on the subject line   my stuff 

Again, the wrong choice of word on my part. Yes, my JAM bases are threaded
like yours - but the messages don't present themselves in what is
considered 'threaded' in 2004 - ie they are not strung together in nice
little hierarchal folders like most Usenet readers present news...

The forum software is certainly geared towards hierachical threading and
I'd like to make use of that. Let's face it, one of the reasons FTNs are
having such a hard time in North America is that our user base has
increased a million-fold, but their knowledge of how to operate anything on
their computer doesn't extend beyond a mouse click. In fact I can
confidently state that most computer users probably consider right-clicking
to be an advanced operation. The whole reason I'm bothering with FOTW (Fido
On The Web as I call it) is to attempt to gain some users back. FTN's have
great content....it's just the interface that today's computer user's can't
deal with.

So..I'm trying to marry good content with a 'good' interface.....

 JW> Problem is that in fixing the ugly BBCode quote problem
 JW> mentioned above - the original SMF message ID is gone -
 JW> thus the child/parent link used for threading is also
 JW> gone.

>can't carry the MSGID/REPLY control lines over via X- header lines and use them? 
>should be able to...

I'm considering that but, and you may know more about this than I, I'm
concerned...well, skeptical actually, of the liklihood of those X headers
making it back to my system after bouncing through every other node out
there. Do you have any thoughts on how likely that is?

Jon


--- Internet Rex 2.29