Re: TBBS
By: Rob Swindell to Eric Oulashin on Thu May 12 2016 17:22:32

remember if most BBS packages worked like that; however, Synchronet's
reader interface seemed odd to me. I tend to like to see a list of
messages and choose
which ones I want to read based on the subject (although I do know
that message threads tend to drift off the subject after a while). I
ended up making my own message lister/reader mod for Synchronet where
I could bring up a list of messages and choose the ones I want to
read, rather than being (pretty much) forced to read through every
single one.

Synchronet's built-in message reading interface was heavily influenced by WWIV. So if you're used to WWIV or one of its spin-offs (RG, Tag), it would seem familiar to you (e.g. use 'T' to list the next 10 messages, 'L' to list them all).

Of course, I've seen and used other BBS software which always wanted the user to "pick" a message to begin reading and I never liked that design, probably just because it's just not what I was used to.

So it's great that you were able to design something more to your liking and integrate that with Synchronet for your users and other sysops who prefer a different take on traditional BBS message reading. The fact that you were able to do that (and of course, I had to make enable some external "hooks" and probably fix some bugs along the way to make it more "seemless") is a testiment both to your programming abilities and the extensiblity of Synchronet.

I do think Synchronet is a great piece of software, for its extensibility and flexibility. I just re-read my comment about the reader interface, and I want to be clear that I was not intending to sound negative about Synchronet. Synchronet's extensibility via scripting in JS is one of my favorite things about it and is one of the main reasons why I'm running Synchronet. And I appreciate you continued work on Synchronet. Thank you very much for adding the ability to allow an external reader script to be integrated more into Synchronet.

Eric
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Re: Synchronet (was: TBBS)
By: Eric Oulashin to Rob Swindell on Thu May 12 2016 19:08:24

Of course, I've seen and used other BBS software which always wanted
the user to "pick" a message to begin reading and I never liked that
design, probably just because it's just not what I was used to.

So it's great that you were able to design something more to your
liking and integrate that with Synchronet for your users and other
sysops who prefer a different take on traditional BBS message
reading. The fact that you were able to do that (and of course, I
had to make enable some external "hooks" and probably fix some bugs
along the way to make it more "seemless") is a testiment both to
your programming abilities and the extensiblity of Synchronet.

My reader actually works similarly to Synchronet's internal reader as far as opening with a message and allowing forward & back navigation, etc. - But it does allow displaying the message list and jumping around to different messages. Also it provides the ability to scroll up & down in a message (only for ANSI users; it does fall back to a traditional interface for non-ANSI users). My reader is based on an earlier script I wrote which always started up with the message list rather than starting in a message.

Eric
--- SBBSecho 2.32-Win32
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (1:340/7)

Re: Synchronet (was: TBBS)
By: Eric Oulashin to Rob Swindell on Thu May 12 2016 07:08 pm

Synchronet. Synchronet's extensibility via scripting in JS is one of my favorite things about it and is one of the main reasons why I'm running Synchronet. And I appreciate you continued work on Synchronet. Thank you very much for adding the ability to allow an external reader script to be integrated more into Synchronet.

You're welcome. And thanks for the cool mods!

digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #18:
The first Synchronet BBS (Vertrauen) went live in July of 1991 (replacing WWIV).
Norco, CA WX: 77.2°F, 46.0% humidity, 11 mph SE wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs