Subj : Re: v0.6 ideas?
To   : Tiny
From : Alpha
Date : Mon Nov 23 2020 16:50:10

 Ti>   3) possible web side like Magicka had?  Was usable on phones but I'll
 Ti> admit     I didn't use it often and it would be on the bottom of the
 Ti> list.

I have some what of a holy-grail-esque obsession with using BBSs on my phone. Pre-Covid, it was something I was keen on exploring more. Now, I've had a chance! I think mobile device support should be baked into modern BBSs--small screens are just as valid as larger screens. Just my opinion. 

Having a web view certainly seems to be a solution--but the software author would essentially need to create an entire framework (like Synchronet does). Seems like a *lot* of work, especially when it's practically just another screen size that needs to be supported by the client and server. 
This is a bit of a hack, and maybe an aside, but I wanted to do small proof of concept on this. I'm leaning Go (golang) right now, and it's pretty trivial to spin up a tcp (telnet) server. So...

I used Terminus on iOS, which supports cp437 encoding and renders BBSs consistently--almost as flawlessly as if it was over a connection on my PC. So the theoretical solution *could* be BBS software supporting a smaller screen width which is optimally sized for a phone's dimensions, including a visible keyboard, with text magnification bumped up (that's critical unless you like eye strain).

In my code test, 33 cols x 25 rows fit the iPhone beautifully when using Terminus' built-in zoom setting--e.g. essentially creating a 2x zoomed view. Here's a screenshot of the actual connection:

https://bit.ly/36VUJC8

Could be totally usable, not rendered in a web framework, but directly over telnet or ssh in the device.

Of course, there's more to a BBS than a welcome screen. I think menus would be
easy to handle as art, it's more things like the FSE, wrapping, etc. I could also see, essentially a specific BBS-based term app--like MagiTerm or SyncTerm for iOS/Android.

Sorry for the divergence. As you were!

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