JS>   Re: Fossils
 JS>   By: Mvan Le to Ralph M. Smole II on Sun Nov 22 2009 10:43 am

 JS> I'm reading messages with synchronet... seems fine

As of v3.14, there're a couple of things I don't like about Synchronet. 

Mainly its message reading functionality. Thus far this is my critique, 

* When quoting replies lines are prefixed with ">" which
eventually truncates the quoted line, which means each reply truncates more
of the original message text.  

* It lacks some of the user-customisable message searching functions that
Maximus has eg. Browse Msg -> All areas -> List messages (instead of
Synchronet's simple "Read messages" option). Maximus has more
(useful) built-in search functions.

* As of v3.14 it only has 2 options when scanning messages: 1) list message
titles, or 2) display messages -- in the latter case Synchronet will modify
the message pointer, and I might prefer pointers unmodified since I can
refer to those messages after a scan. In Maximus, listing message titles
doesn't modify pointers. I think it is silly that Synchronet modifies
message pointers just because you're listing message titles.

* When listing message titles Synchronet clutters the screen with all the subgroups.

* When listing message titles Syncrhonet also lists -OLD- / read messages
which clutters the screen even more.

* Where's the read original message option in Synchronet ? I only saw some
sorting by thread / author options ... In Maximus you can bring up the
original message in the thread which is useful if you want to know how
and/or when a thread got started.

* Currently in Sycnrhonet, a plugin has to be used for new-message-received
notifications. And these notifications are displayed and then deleted
during the logon process so the user can't re-display those new message
notifications later eg. subsequent logons, which is quite inconvenient. In
Maximus, you can list new messages without having to read them; and message
pointers are not modified. This allows you to retain the status of
new/un-read messages so that you can actually read them at some later (more
convenient) time instead of [only] during the logon process.

* I don't like the board/sub-board (RA-style group/subgroup) message area
categorising method. The Maximus Usenet style divisions are a more
logical/relational/intuitive breakdown of message groups & areas.
(imo). In Maximus, you can group file and message areas like
fdn.bbs.max.[0-9] or any alphanumeric combination. This allows you to
traverse areas like a Unix directory or DNS heirarchy.

Interestingly, Rob Swindell said that he had never received such feature
requests, which bewildered me, and leads me to believe that the majority of
Synchronet users are more caught up in its internet functionality
(Web/FTP/SMTP etc) than messaging and/or message reading convenience.

But anyway, due to a revival of interest from the Synchronet author, unlike
the fledgling Maximus BBS project, Synchronet took off and became popular.
What makes Synchronet worthwhile, apart from its internet capabilities, is
the active and enthusiastic developing community; which is why new features
and bug fixes get rapidly tested and implemented.  

On the other hand, the Maximus author, Scott Dudley, disappared off the
face of the earth (I don't blame him). There's now only a half-arsed
intermittently commited ragtag user group left for Maximus.

Anyway, having said all this, I acknowledge that anything can be made
"highly customisable" if you have source code. Any feature can be
changed and/or added. It's only a matter of dedication and effort. There's
less dedication and effort on Maximus than Sycnhronet therefore Synchronet
is more featureful.

If I contracted dozens of dedicated Chinese/Indian/Russian students AUD$5k
pa to develop Maximus it would easily be better than Synchronet. 

One day I'm going to make it happen. It's only a matter of finance. And I
have shitloads of money.

Maximus will one day be ported to Java/C# or whatever the modern language
& platform is at the time. It will have proper/standardised project and
source code documentation and management, and development and release
cycles.

Everybody will stop using Synchronet entirely and start using Maximus
because it will be the be-all and end-all of BBS software.

I'm a die-hard Maximus fan and I ain't switch'n, ever. 

PS. Death to RemoteAccess and all RA sysops, Pascal, and all those bastards
that wanted registration money to use their software, and that shithouse
binary drop file that RemoteAccess uses.

Long live Maximus and BinkleyTerm and all Maximus-centric and/or derived
and/or compatible ideologies including BinkD/P, C/C++ and Opus et al.

All Hail Maximus.

--- Maximus 3.01