Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

nancy reagan · Joined: 22 Jan 2009 Posts: 470

Of course I value it that some one tries to categorize the extra software,

Nevertheless I miss the daily updates for they are kept out of sight in the index.

Bigpup says "you can browse for that all the categories to see". Yes but that takes a lot of time and I like to have a daily glance at all the new posts as before, sometimes referring to older ones,with a new look etc., who often remind me, or call my attention, even if I was not particularly looking for them.

E.g. "default apps chooser" of Sc0ttman, I came across somewhere else. Would have liked to stumble upon it at first appearance, not through a link somewhere else in the forum.

Even if I was not "searching" for it, did not even know its existence, I higly value this app, l;ike many more, which I miss now that they are kept out of sight.

Then, would I've been "searching" for it, I would have searched in "setup" and not in "desktop". Likewise shinobar's "country wizard" where I stumbled upon in Lupu's topic. Categorizing is a rather subjective thing it is no maths. Lash studio I would have searched for in miltimedia > editing, not in "unsorted" and so on.

Making subcategories would be beneficial and some ware can be categorizes in different categories.

So again I am asking Bigpup again to disclose again the posts in a sequential way, so that we have the best of both world. (First I was wondering "how little new ware there is ..." )

My suggestion is to make one big bulletin block with INDEX of additional software, along with the the posts as it was before.

Anyone who seconds that ?

Pizzasgood · Posted: Fri 06 Aug 2010, 19:09 Post_subject:

So you are proposing to take all the categorized stuff and put it back into a single area, and then have index threads to support the categorization?

I see what you mean about scanning through all of them.

nancy reagan · Joined: 22 Jan 2009 Posts: 470

Pizzasgood · Posted: Sat 07 Aug 2010, 13:50 Post_subject:

It's difficult to have the best of both worlds, considering that what we want is a package repository, and what we have is a forum. Threads can only exist in a single section each. To be able to see them all at once they would have to all be under the same section. But to be categorized via different sections as they are now, they have to be under the section corresponding to the category.

What would be nice is if there was a way to get a list of all the threads in a section and its subsections. Then what you want could be done. But there isn't. At least, not an easy way...

I started working on a project last fall to create an anti-spam bot. It would log into the forum periodically, spider through the different sections, and read the posts, looking for spam that it could automatically report to the spam reports thread. I haven't gotten around to finishing it yet. But when I started writing it, I made the overall architecture modular, with support for allowing other scripts than the spam-identifying one to be run on the posts that are encountered. If I finished it, I would be able to tap into that system to be able to generate a list of all posts in any given section (up to a certain date anyway, as I probably wouldn't want to have the thing crawl through all 5+ years of posts - too much strain on the forum probably, unless done slowly over the course of a month or something). Then I could also take the module that would report the spam and rewrite it to edit a sticky post listing all the software threads.

I don't know when I'll get around to working on that though. I still haven't finished off Retrovol yet, and I want to do that first because it's very nearly done (relatively speaking - the last couple features I want to add might require a good bit of work to implement still).

Longer term, I'd like to develop a distributed repository system that could theoretically work well with the Puppy community. Not sure if we'd have enough people with server space willing to run it for it to work properly though. A peer-to-peer element I recently added to my concept might help lessen the need for as much server redundancy though. But the whole thing would require some changes to how people create packages, primarily the mandatory use of gpg signatures (otherwise the system would be very dangerous). I'm going to create it eventually whether anybody uses it or not, because it would be a fun project. But I might not get around to that for a year or so.

Iguleder · Posted: Sat 07 Aug 2010, 13:58 Post_subject:

I agree with both of you, but I really miss the days when browsing this forum was fun, I checked it twice a day in my news reading cycle.

Puppy needs some packages RSS feed or something. That's one central place for new packages and the forum remains categorized.

bigpup · Posted: Mon 09 Aug 2010, 00:06 Post_subject:

Here is something that may help.

When you first come to the forum log in
In the upper right side of the screen you will see
View posts since last visit
Click on this and it will show all new posts since your last visit

After the first search, as long as you stay logged on, you can search again and it will show anything new since your last search.

Hint:
Keep the first result screen active or you will loose its list of new posts.

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

I feel the same way. And I wonder if there's fewer posts here because it's a bit more difficult to keep up.

Maybe new stuff could be posted uncategorized and then moved after a few days.

muggins · Joined: 20 Jan 2006 Posts: 6666 Location: lisbon

I like jemimah's idea, as I also miss the easy scan for anything new. But not sure how easy it would be to implement?

Lobster · Posted: Sun 12 Sep 2010, 01:10 Post_subject:

nancy reagan · Joined: 22 Jan 2009 Posts: 470

Is it really hard to copy the links of the latest posts, even without requiring any additional space ?

Besides I still do not see why the links should be kept away from direct sight ?

Again, if you don't know such a gem exists you wont be searching for it.

Jasper · Joined: 25 Apr 2010 Posts: 1013 Location: England

Hi,

I hope I understand the problem.

So, suppose all new posts in this section could automatically have included (say, for example) */* then upon any search for those characters wouldn't the posts appear in chronological order starting with the most recent?

After (say, a few weeks) perhaps the */* references could be deleted from the older posts to maintain the search speed.

It is merely a thought since I do not have the faintest idea what may be practicable.

My regards

bigpup · Posted: Sun 12 Sep 2010, 16:46 Post_subject:

Jasper · Joined: 25 Apr 2010 Posts: 1013 Location: England

Hi again,

If one uses "2010" as the Keyword and then restricts the search to this section ............?

My regards

nancy reagan · Joined: 22 Jan 2009 Posts: 470

@Bigpup

Your suggestion does not work for me as I hop on several derivatives most of the time isoes.

Q1: Can you explain what's wrong with copying the links of the latest posts outside "categorized".

Q2: If there's something wrong with that, why did it work "before categorizing".

Flash · Posted: Sun 19 Sep 2010, 00:37 Post_subject:

I'm the world's worst writer, but I'll try to add my two cents worth to this discussion. Laughing

1.) Any rearrangement of the forum will naturally have good and bad points, some of which aren't obvious until the change is made. Dividing the Additional Software forum into categories is a case in point.
2.) I think the phpBB forum software is deliberately designed to force people to keep their posts short. This unfortunately makes it very tedious to maintain anything as large as the Additional Software forum. It was hoped that dividing the Additional Software forum into categories would make the job easier.
3.) Another hoped-for benefit of creating categories was that people would post their contributions in the appropriate category, making the Additional Software forum self-organizing. This has worked to some extent, but things are still posted in the uncategorized section that seemed obvious to me to belong in one category or another, and other things are sometimes posted in what seems to me to be the wrong category. Overall, dividing the Additional Software forum into categories seems to me to have made the job of policing the forum harder. Sad

4.) Sometimes the OP gives no clue what the program is for, either in the title or the text. I don't have time to research such posts to figure out what category the program belongs in. That should be the responsibility of the poster.
5.) I don't want to have to move posts from the uncategorized section to their final resting place after a few days.
6.) Perhaps the set of categories could be tinkered with to make the forum work better. The present ones mostly mirror the categories in Puppy's Menu, which seems to me to be the natural way to go.
7.) The "View posts since last visit" feature seems to work pretty well for me, but it requires some discipline. It only gives you one chance. If you activate it, then it assumes you read all the posts it told you about and resets itself, but not until you log out of the forum. In other words, if you keep refreshing the "new posts" page without logging out of the forum, new posts will be added to it.
8.) The Search feature is pretty useless if you're browsing the Additional Software forum for a program you don't know the name of. There is no standardization of the way authors tout their work. Laughing