[HN Gopher] Show HN: Retronews - TUI for HN and Lobsters emulati...
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Show HN: Retronews - TUI for HN and Lobsters emulating classical
Usenet readers
Author : luke8086
Score : 87 points
Date : 2024-09-04 13:58 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| Snoddas wrote:
| I see it's read only
|
| Is it possible to launch a browser for writing replys/comments?
| luke8086 wrote:
| Sure, that's how I use it.
|
| In every message you can see its URL in the Content-Location
| header.
|
| You can press 'o' to select it and open in a browser, and you
| can select the browser with the BROWSER env var.
|
| Although many terminals have built-in support for simply
| clicking on URLs, and that's what I usually do.
| camgunz wrote:
| Wow I love the look of this; gonna try it out.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Not really _retro_ news, since it assumes everyone is using a
| large window and full-color terminal.
|
| I was hoping to use it with one of my retro machines, and got
| use_default_colors() returned ERR
|
| It should have --monochrome, and --ascii options.
|
| The Unix ethos used to be "run anywhere on anything," but even
| basic programs like top assume a window of a certain size.
|
| Similarly, Lynx markets itself as being for retro environments,
| but a number of its flags that would be useful in retro
| environments are ignored/broken.
|
| Surprisingly (to me), htop is very well-behaved, and works even
| in tiny windows, or on tiny monochrome screens.
|
| There's more to retro than just being text.
| luke8086 wrote:
| To be precise, it only assumed 80x25 terminals with 16 colors,
| which I think fits into _some_ definitions of retro, but I see
| your point :)
|
| I've just added support for ascii & monochrome modes, and
| reduced the required screen size to 80x12, which I think is a
| reasonable minimum for readability.
|
| Would you mind sharing what kind of hardware did you try it on?
| reaperducer wrote:
| You're almost there. But 80x12 is still a bit big for truly
| retro hardware.
|
| Remember that 80 column screens were not the majority of
| computers in what we now consider the retro age. 40, 36, and
| even 32 columns screens were common.
|
| Also, terminals would often have status bars, reducing the
| amount of vertical real estate. 12 sounds small, but with
| status indicators active, you're looking at 10 or even 8
| usable lines.
| luke8086 wrote:
| Eh, to do it properly, 40 cols and less would require
| adjusting the whole layout and I just want to keep the code
| simple. I'm also not sure if the code would be fast enough
| to run on so old machines, I mean it's Python and not
| optimized at all. But feel free to fork and tinker if
| you're interested, at this point it's not really far off.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| What commonly used UNIX terminals had less than 80 columns?
| VT100 had 80 columns, IBM PCs had 80 columns. I remember
| some 8 bit computers having text modes where you could
| choose to display less columns in return for getting more
| colors, but those computers never ran UNIX and getting on
| usenet was surely a pipe dream.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I agree, any terminal I ever used to access a shared unix
| host had 80 columns. Typically a VT100 or ADM-3a or
| something like that.
|
| TRS-80, TI-99, Commodore, Apple etc. home computers had
| 32, 40, maybe 64 columns and you could get terminal
| emulator programs for them but most people would use them
| for CompuServ or America Online, or maybe BBS logins. I
| think I tried using my TI-99 terminal emulator with a
| unix host and it wasn't very successful. The host had no
| idea what my terminal was and operated in a very limited
| "dumb tty" mode.
| choilive wrote:
| Either I am very young or you are very old, because
| ANYTHING with a fixed 80 column screen is definitely retro.
| This is a weird thing to gatekeep.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Tried it, was fun.
|
| How about automated updates every minute or so?
|
| Usually I keep these windows open in the background and look at
| what pops up.
| neilv wrote:
| In later peak Usenet, there was also threading, and scoring.
|
| Scoring rules would let individuals define rules for how thread
| subtrees and siblings are ordered, highlighted, and hidden. For
| example, comments by a particular user you like bump up the
| ordering priority for that comment, and also maybe some boost to
| the tree above it. And some keyword you think tends to happen in
| threads you don't like adds a negative score to that subtree, and
| maybe it hits a threshold causing it to be hidden (though the
| positive score from that user you like participating might save
| it, with you thinking that maybe they'd step into a flamewar and
| say something smart). And, separate from rules you defined, you
| could also manually hit a key to raise or lower a post or subtree
| (which could be used as an alternative to the earlier feature to
| say hide a subtree no matter whether more comments are made on
| it, like you might do for a flamewar).
| akuchling wrote:
| I noticed the README comment about NNTP's limitations. I wonder
| if a new NNTP-over-HTTP protocol could find enough traction among
| the text-using crowd, or if ActivityPub could be used to provide
| a similar feature set efficiently.
| jll29 wrote:
| Why not an NNTP gateway? NNTP doesn't support browsing
| threads by title (let alone paginated) and requesting their
| messages on demand. Clients need to fetch metadata of all
| available messages in all available threads in advance. Given the
| volume of messages on HN, synchronizing them to the gateway is
| not practical. Even when attempted, some clients struggle with
| the sheer number of messages in a single group.
|
| That was also my first question, why not do it "properly", and
| while the reasons given are understandable brick walls, it seems
| to me that the real solution would be a re-vamping of the over-
| aged NNTP protocol, or even an outright new protocol.
|
| I always liked USENET news for its "pull" approach, and for the
| same reason hated email newsletters. The threaded discussions via
| Emacs GNUS were a delight, and modern Web-based forum solutions
| are distractive and never respect my font/color settings; plus,
| they also diff in UX.
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