CadSoft forums now available on element14

Matt Collinge wrote on Wed, 23 June 2010 13:46

Christy Zurcher - element14 Manager

Will you guys please stop doing this!?

Are logins really in such short supply at Farnell that each of you can't

have one, or are you too lazy to log in properly and "Matt Collinge" is

some sort of catch all acount?

This may work for you folks, but it's rather annoying for the rest of the

world.

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

Hi Olin,

I'm not sure to what you are referring. I don't see any of my posts as coming through from Matt. When I look at the newsgroups using Outlook Express I see everything as "Christy Zurcher wrote:"...etc.

We are not using a shared login - our gateway should be passing through our names using our IDs from element14, just as it does in reverse, passing through your details to element14 when you post to the forums.

Is there a particular post where you are seeing this so I can investigate?

As mentioned, I use Outlook Express to view the newsgroups and  messages posted out from element14 appear to have a proper line-length when I view them there.

We want to make sure this works well for you guys who use the forums, so anything I can do to make the experience better/investigate/fix on our end I will surely try to do.

Thanks,

Christy

Christy Zurcher schrieb:

I'm not sure to what you are referring. I don't see any of my posts

as coming through from Matt. When I look at the newsgroups using

Outlook Express I see everything as "Christy Zurcher wrote:"...etc.

Don't worry - Olin is posting through yet another newsgroup-to-web

interface which has a few flaws. One of those is the (wrong)

interpretation of mail adresses and assigning them to more or less

correct "user names" - and then displaying only these names without the

mail address, ignoring the provided user name of the sender.

There's nothing you can do about this from your side. This needs to be

fixed at the other side. Your posts are perfectly fine (besides the line

length... ).

Is there a particular post where you are seeing this so I can

investigate?

<http://www.eaglecentral.ca/forums/index.php?t=msg&th=38123&start=0&S=5ccfa201173f2824731980c511a9ef15>

That's how it appears there - but remember, that's a fault of their

interface software, not yours.

As mentioned, I use Outlook Express to view the newsgroups and

messages posted out from element14 appear to have a proper

line-length when I view them there.

Maybe your OE automatically wraps the lines when viewing, or your window

width is rather small so the lines appear shorter than they are. In

fact, all your paragraphs are posted as a single line.

We want to make sure this works well for you guys who use the forums,

so anything I can do to make the experience better/investigate/fix on

our end I will surely try to do.

Thanks for all of your support, especially concerning the continuity of

the newsgroups. (But, however, don't confuse them with "forums"... )

Tilmann

On 7/13/10 7:36 AM, Klaus Schmidinger wrote:

Anyway, as long as I have a say here, the CadSoft support groups' database

will be the NNTP server on news.cadsoft.de. Web forums may interface to these

groups and do their best to display the postings correctly and send their

postings to the news server in a proper way. However, there is only one

place that is the ultimate reference, and that's news.cadsoft.de.

>

Klaus Schmidinger

Thank you...thank you...thank you.

This business with Element-14 etc. has made some people nervous about

the direction of Eagle but more and more it seems there is nothing to

worry about.

Am 13.07.2010 18:34, schrieb Olin Lathrop:

Oliver Betz wrote on Tue, 13 July 2010 11:09

>> since it seems to be sooo difficult for todays users to get a NNTP

>> client running,

>

It's probably not difficult, but many just don't want to. I did Usenet and

NNTP in the 1980s. Things have moved on since then, and I really don't

want to go back. In any case, you can't tell people what they want to use.

You can either accomodate them or not. If I remember right, the forums at

Eagle Central have over 5000 members. That's a lot of people that voted

with their feet. Whether they did it for silly reasons or whether you

agree with them is immaterial.

Eagle Central seems to list anybody who has ever posted in news.cadsoft.de

as a member of its forum. So you may consider subtracting at least my name

from the member list. Maybe even Tilmann's and some more.

Quote:

>> what about a web interface to news.cadsoft.de?

>

As I said before, that doesn't address the issues. You're still dumbing

things down to the level of NNTP, and things are still stored in lowest

common denominator form with information irreversibly lost. That would

serve nobody's goal.

It would serve mine, if done correctly. Maybe even Tilmann's and some more.

Oliver Betz wrote on Tue, 13 July 2010 11:09

since it seems to be sooo difficult for todays users to get a NNTP

client running,

It's probably not difficult, but many just don't want to.  I did Usenet and

NNTP in the 1980s.  Things have moved on since then, and I really don't

want to go back.  In any case, you can't tell people what they want to use.

You can either accomodate them or not.  If I remember right, the forums at

Eagle Central have over 5000 members.  That's a lot of people that voted

with their feet.  Whether they did it for silly reasons or whether you

agree with them is immaterial.  The fact is that the demand is there.

Quote:

what about a web interface to news.cadsoft.de?

As I said before, that doesn't address the issues.  You're still dumbing

things down to the level of NNTP, and things are still stored in lowest

common denominator form with information irreversibly lost.  That would

serve nobody's goal.

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

Klaus Schmidinger wrote:

>Anyway, as long as I have a say here, the CadSoft support groups' database

>will be the NNTP server on news.cadsoft.de. Web forums may interface to these

>groups and do their best to display the postings correctly and send their

>postings to the news server in a proper way. However, there is only one

>place that is the ultimate reference, and that's news.cadsoft.de.

since it seems to be sooo difficult for todays users to get a NNTP

client running, what about a web interface to news.cadsoft.de?

Oliver

On 07/10/10 15:47, Olin Lathrop wrote:

...

The reason that the underlying mechanism has to be a forum, is that it can

store the most information.

It's probably a bad idea to stir up this thread again, but I just can't

leave this sentence uncommented.

If something is to be reasonably displayed on various systems (forums vs. news

groups), IMHO it makes the most sense to use the least common denominator.

And that is clearly NNTP.

Anyway, as long as I have a say here, the CadSoft support groups' database

will be the NNTP server on news.cadsoft.de. Web forums may interface to these

groups and do their best to display the postings correctly and send their

postings to the news server in a proper way. However, there is only one

place that is the ultimate reference, and that's news.cadsoft.de.

Klaus Schmidinger

--

_______________________________________________________________

Klaus Schmidinger                       Phone: +49-8635-6989-10

CadSoft Computer GmbH                   Fax:   +49-8635-6989-40

Pleidolfweg 15                          Email:   kls@cadsoft.de

D-84568 Pleiskirchen, Germany           URL:     www.cadsoft.de

_______________________________________________________________

Tilmann Reh wrote on Sat, 10 July 2010 16:08

and keep telling us that this was the only right way.

You need to start actually reading what I wrote.  If you look carefully,

what I suggest would make things better for everyone.  I also don't go

around telling people they should be using the forums, as you do with the

newsgroups.

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

Olin Lathrop schrieb:

>> However, please note that those gateways have their bugs, and many of

>> the forum users might not be aware of them and the problems they cause.

 

Note that most of the "problems" are between the forums and the NNTP world.

Things are actually not that bad strictly within the forums.

OTOH, things are really fine - strictly within the newsgroups.

(Note that "really fine" is better than "not that bad"... )

You are heavily biased to using web based forums (which is absolutely OK

as your personal preference), and keep telling us that this was the only

right way.

But obviously, there are people (not only me) who have different

preferences - and maybe the same amount of bias towards NNTP.

[In this context, I have the impression that you are using the word "we"

a little bit too frequently, when expressing your personal opinion.]

CadSoft (and/or Farnell) will have to decide about which platform(s) to

use and/or support in future.

I think we have provided enough arguments/statements for them...

Tilmann

Tilmann Reh wrote on Fri, 09 July 2010 03:00

However, please note that those gateways have their bugs, and many of

the forum users might not be aware of them and the problems they cause.

Note that most of the "problems" are between the forums and the NNTP world.

Things are actually not that bad strictly within the forums.

Quote:

Also, newcomers to the forums might not be aware of the direct access

to

the newsgroups by NNTP. So I will of course continue to note that.

This the annoying broken record part.  We don't need to constantly hear

that, especially when you make it sound like NNTP is the only "right" way

to access the forums.  It's your preference, which is fine.  We really

don't want to hear about it all the time.

Quote:

It simply is a fact that a) the newsgroups are much older,

True, but irrelevant.

Quote:

b) they

are the official access point directly at CadSoft,

Not necessarily.  The forums at Eagle Central are "official" too.

Quote:

c) the web forums

are only just gateways to them.

True, and this is what is causing most of the problems, including the ones

you don't like.  I think we understand where things are now, which is

rather a mess.  The debate is how they should be, which of course makes how

they currently are largely irrelevant.

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

Oliver Betz wrote on Fri, 09 July 2010 02:30

Your assumption that "forums should be the main interface

It was not a assumption, but a suggestion.

Quote:

italics, bold flowed text" ... "causes more conversion troubles"

is IMNSHO simply wrong. Although /Italics/, bold and underlined

could be mapped in most cases, flowed text definitely creates many

problems, e.g. with "ASCII art" but there are more scenarios.

It's no worse than now.  You could map italics, bold, and underlined to

plain text as you showed, but the reverse is probably not a good idea

because there are lots of other uses for slashes, stars, and underscores.

When something comes in via the NNTP or SMTP (I'll collectively call them

"email") gateway, you probably have to assume fixed format in most cases.

If a long line comes in preceded and followed by blank lines, then it's

probably safe enough to assume it is a whole paragraph and treat it as

flowed text.  While I think email shouldn't be sent that way, we all know

there are people that do it regularly.

Converting quoted text to email is easy, just add one leading ">" for each

level of quotation.  Going the other way would probably work well enough

most of the time, meaning you interpret leading ">" as levels of quotation.

This can get messed up with some mail clients and especially if someone

has their client set to create long single lines from whole paragraphs.

In other words, the features that can be expressed reasonably well with

email can mostly be converted well enough.  This means email users get what

can be expressed via email, which is certainly no worse than now.

The reason that the underlying mechanism has to be a forum, is that it can

store the most information.  There are many things that just don't map to

email, or you can do it once but then lose the meta-information.  Knowing

what is preformatted and what is flowed text is a good example.  The forum

software knows this explicitly, so can always display it nicely on demand

adjusting to the current window size and settings.  When going to email,

you probably convert flowed text to lines wrapped at 72 to 80 columns.

Once that's done, the information that it was flowed text is lost.  You no

longer know whether formatting must be preserved and it viewed with a fixed

pitch font or not.

Nice features that forums can support that email can't or is awkward or

where information is lost in conversion include:

Explicit knowledge of what is flowed text and what is preformatted text to

be shown in fixed-pitch font (like a code listing for example).

Ability to add images in-line with the text so that descriptions flow

around the images.

In-line formatting, like bold, italics, underline, superscripts,

subscripts, colors, fonts, etc.

Higher level constructs, like this bullet list.  The items could have been

automatically numbered, but I chose bullets.

Links with explicit clickable text instead of the link path.  For example,

you can casually make a word in a sentence a clickable link without

interrupting the flow of the sentence.

left/right/center alignment.

Attachments actually work out even nicer than with pure NNTP.  All

attachments would be stored on the server once.  They can be expanded

in-line, or links addeded in line, or links added at the end.  When going

to email, there is now no need to send a copy of the attachment with every

message since the file lives in a fixed known place on the server.  Only

links to this file need to be sent.  Or files up to a certain size could be

sent as attachments, with links sent above that.  Currently there is a hard

upper limit on attachments, so this is actually expanding the features for

email users.

Quote:

Web access to the groups is the barrier-free solution for all, since

it uses the least common denominator and obviously creates less

hassle.

But the least common denominator is exactly the issue.  I think the forum

software should do the best job it can to convert posts to email, but it

definitely shouldn't be dumbed down to the level of only what email can

support.

However, since most fancy features can be converted to plain text once, it

all works nicely when the forum is the native mechanism with email

gateways.  The real restriction is that email users can't send some of the

fancy things, but that's no worse than it would be with native NNTP

either.

Quote:

We all can see the disappointing results from the last two attempts to

create a gateway between "forum" and NNTP.

This is in part because the implementations are "less than ideal".  The

Eagle Central forums aren't too bad.  I've got some nits with them and I've

used better, but they are workable.  The element 14 forums are a mess, or

at least my view of them looks that way.  Christy has described features

that I just don't see.  I posted a screen shot so they could see what it

looks like to me, but so far there has been no response.

I think in the end looking at the bigger picture, the forums should be

implemented on Element 14 with NNTP and SMTP gateways as I described.  This

is not to ding James and the nice work he's done at Eagle Central to make

these forums available, but just that eventually everything should be in

one place, and it makes sense for that to be Eagle's owner's place.

Quote:

but it's clear why

element14 wants to integrate the Eagle groups. Sadly their forum

software is "not the most advanced" (an euphemism, of course) I have

seen till now and IMO not a suitable starting point.

I keep thinking Element 14 is a cool idea, and wishful thinking makes me

try it occasionally, then I get discouraged and dissappointed.  It would be

nice if they make it work right, but I have mostly lost hope at this point.

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

Am 08.07.2010 20:23, schrieb Olin Lathrop:

Joern Paschedag wrote on Thu, 08 July 2010 13:28

>> Quote:

>> > We all know you prefer NNTP feeds, which is your business. We don't

>> > really need to hear about it constantly, and we especially can do

>> > without your belitteling anyone who doesn't do things your chosen way.

>>

>>

>> Who is WE??? Olin Lathrop you are not speaking in MY name!

>

OK, so apparently you do want to hear Tilmann constantly tell us how NNTP

is much better and belittle those who disagree. However, I think that is

not a good thing for the forums.

>

No Olin, I just want you to keep your mouth SHUT.

Quote:

>> And YOU are not telling ME what I have to use and by far not that

>> everything else is bullsh..

>

I think you're getting confused about who said what to whom. I was the one

advocating letting everyone use their favorite tool, and even suggested a

underlying mechanism that would make the experience better for all,

including NNTP users.

You can think what you want. The only mind that is getting confused is

yours. You must allways  be right and have the last word. Poor soul.

--

Gruß / regards

Joern

Am 08.07.2010 20:23, schrieb Olin Lathrop:

Joern Paschedag wrote on Thu, 08 July 2010 13:28

>> Quote:

>> > We all know you prefer NNTP feeds, which is your business. We don't

>> > really need to hear about it constantly, and we especially can do

>> > without your belitteling anyone who doesn't do things your chosen way.

>>

>>

>> Who is WE??? Olin Lathrop you are not speaking in MY name!

>

OK, so apparently you do want to hear Tilmann constantly tell us how NNTP

is much better and belittle those who disagree. However, I think that is

not a good thing for the forums.

>

No Olin, I just want you to keep your mouth SHUT.

Quote:

>> And YOU are not telling ME what I have to use and by far not that

>> everything else is bullsh..

>

I think you're getting confused about who said what to whom. I was the one

advocating letting everyone use their favorite tool, and even suggested a

underlying mechanism that would make the experience better for all,

including NNTP users.

You can think what you want. The only mind that is getting confused is

yours. You must allways  be right and have the last word. Poor soul.

--

Gruß / regards

Joern