Text 11404, 130 rader
Skriven 2008-03-21 13:08:44 av Jeff Bowman (1:229/500)
  Kommentar till text 11400 av Maurice Kinal (1:261/38)
Ärende: Re: GUI vs console
==========================
MK> Suppose you did have to pay and the actual output was to a text screen.
MK> All the output coming from your direction would have to be filtered
MK> before transfer to those clients.  Wouldn't you find it most annoying if
MK> you were the one responsible for those people?  The need to do that
MK> effectively increases resources required to successfully assure you users
MK> obtain exactly what they require.  Thus the idea of storing and
MK> tranferring text messages in a format condusive to all would be most
MK> appropriate and then have the server and/or client worry about the
MK> display.  As you say you don't seem to mind increasing your usage to get
MK> what you want so it makes more sense that you pay for all the unneeded
MK> extras from a network's point of view.
 
I see the point you're making there, I believe, but the fact remains that most
Fidonet web interfaces are just there for convenience, not as the sole way to
use Fidonet.  Most of them would also have a telnet interface, maybe with QWK
packet download for normal users to handle their mail offline, and/or normal
PKT downloads for other actual nodes.  Nobody would be having to process the
html back into text or anything wasteful like that. 
 
 
MK>JB> Any modern computer wouldn't even bat an eye at decompressing a
MK>JB> web page.
 
MK> So what?  No need to if the original doesn't gain anything from
MK> compression.  Keeping the original(s) raw is always the best policy
MK> anyhow.  Always has been and likely always will be.  Fancy stuff can be
MK> added on the fly to suit those who value bloat and glitz over actual
MK> content and quality of that content.
 
The original file is still kept on the server without compression though. It's
the HTTP daemon or the CGI script or whatever is outputting the content's
responsibility to compress it on the fly to transfer to a client. When I was
working on a site which started producing some heftier HTML in places, I had to
implement gzip on the output myself in Perl.  I'm not sure how much more burden
that placed on the server, but it apparently wasn't noticable.  And it
definitely made the pages come in quicker.  This was back when I had dial-up,
mind you.
 
As far as adding fancy stuff on the fly in browsers, I use what's called UserJS
(User Javascript) built into Opera, which lets me modify documents as they come
in, once the engine begins to process them. It lets me do all sorts of things
to a page that the author never intended or implemented. I've used it to turn
simple imageboards, that are practically just text and thumbnails (clickable to
open the full version), into having inline image and thread expansion, a popup
quick-reply window, some extra navigation abilities, etc.  I use it to add a
download link to the original FLV file on Youtube.  You can also use it to fix
sites which don't work right in the browser, which I believe was the original
intent. Firefox has a similar capability, but through a plugin called
Greasemonkey.  It's just all pretty neat once you find a use for it.
 
 
MK> > Purely in terms of bandwidth, sure.
 
MK> As well as resourses.  Text messaging is best left as text.  A simple cgi
MK> script will take care of the few who don't care about anything other than
MK> their overbloated and useless web browser.  Byte for byte nothing beats a
MK> text editor.  Not in the past, nor present and highly unlikely ever. Only
MK> people who have nothing to say would chose a browser over an editor.
 
Like it or not though, web forums are what's popular now, just like BBSes were
back in the day except on a much larger scale.  I run a web forum myself and
it's very easy to maintain and administrate compared to many other messaging
methods. You can easily see which sections have new messages, be alerted when
somebody has responded to a topic you're interested in, post polls, attach
files, etc. The message editor built into them for creating/modifying messages
isn't just a simple text box anymore, either. This is what the current
generation uses, because bandwidth for the majority of people just isn't a
concern anymore. Not to mention, the modern user tends to be less tech-savy. 
You can't expect all of them to be. It doesn't make me think any less of them. 
They just came into technology at a different time than me, when everything was
easier.
 
I'm also somewhat disappointed to hear your opinion of people who do use
browsers to communicate.  I would hate to think that you considered anything
I've had to say as being worthless just because I may or may not have typed it
from a linux console.  I mean, I've heard of people writing entire books in
Japan via their cellphones.  While I can't vouch for the quality of the book, I
still would give them plenty of credit for writing it regardless of what
method.
 
 
I don't hold your opinions against you though.  You remind me a lot of me about
a decade ago.  I had no internet access myself, and hated that the internet was
replacing my favorite hobby for everyone.  BBSes were obviously dying in my
area, with the internet to blame.  I hated the idea of talking to complete
strangers who didn't live near me and never imagined myself doing so.  Fidonet
was technically talking to strangers too, but the internet made it much easier
to pretend you were someone else.  It was just different.  I didn't want
anything to do with it, and shared that opinion openly when someone brought the
subject up.  When I look back on it, I was probably a bit jealous too since I
couldn't move on to what everyone else was using.  
It's also important to note that I was using an 8088 with CGA graphics in a
time when Pentiums were what was hot.
 
But eventually I did find uses for the internet, when I found a free dial-up
Lynx-based service.  The lack of BBSes had made it harder to find new stuff. So
I used the internet to get files. I found I could get far more there than
before, in fact.  I still didn't like the idea of talking to people I didn't
know, but eventually I warmed up to that idea too, to a small degree.  Mostly
since there was hardly anyone left to talk to on the one or two local BBSes.
 
As I started to find web pages that didn't make a lot of sense from all the
imagery on them that I wasn't seeing, I ended up writing convoluted scripts in
my terminal program and utilities in Pascal to work with it to parse HTML from
a site, fetch individual images, rewrite the HTML to point to them locally,
then display it in a DOS-based browser (Arachne).  I was pretty much migrating
to the modern WWW whether I liked it or even realized it.  But by this point I
had a 386 with VGA, luckily, so I was actually able to see it in more than 4
colors at least.
 
A couple years later I managed to get real dial-up internet instead of the Lynx
service, and found myself using IRC and normal browsers in Windows.  I had a
high-end 486 or 5x86 (not a true Pentium) around this point (in the Pentium II
era), so at least I could use most software that others were using.  And that
was pretty much that.  My original dislike was mostly gone by the time I was
actually able to use the internet "normally" like everyone else had been for
years.  I still missed BBSes of course, and still do today, but the internet
provides a lot of other things that BBSes couldn't.
 
Anyway, that's a bit of a rambling story.  I'm not going to pretend to know
anything about you, cause I don't, and maybe you just truly hate GUIs and the
web.  But if your case is anything like mine, maybe eventually, either through
necessity or pure chance or both, you'll end up using all the stuff you hate
now, and you'll think it's not so bad after all.  You'd probably always use a
console for things too though, just like I do to this day, but use it to
compliment the GUI functionality instead of fighting against it.  
That's just my thought on it at least!

--- D'Bridge 2.99
 * Origin: FyBBS (1:229/500)