# \[ANN\] Ruby Forum

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [November 14, 2005, 12:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958 "2005-11-14T00:02:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 17\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 2:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/41 "2005-11-16T02:09:02Z")

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On Nov 15, 2005, at 6:03 PM, Kero wrote:

> a webbased forum is a public proxy for an already complicated  
> newsgroup-mailinglist combo. The fact that it is possible to make  
> this does  
> not make it a good idea by itself.

For all practical purposes, what has been created here is just  
another MUA and the author has decided to share it.

I’m very surprised at the negative response on this. I think it’s  
great.

James Edward G. II

---

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**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 12:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/42 "2005-11-16T00:08:36Z")

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Andrew T. wrote:

> > How is it easier to read 500 emails in forum form?

> Well, I can easily see what threads have had updates since I’ve read  
> them, and I can easily ignore entire threads. Also, I spend a lot more  
> time in a browser then a mail client

Likewise. Thank you mutt(1).

> > Or better yet, reply to the pertinent message and remove any text  
> > that isn’t relevant to your reply, instead of replying to some  
> > random message in the thread.

> And when you don’t have a particular reply to reply to? (I usually do  
> the above when I’m replying to something specific, like right now).

And why was my message the one you replied to? (I’m not looking for an  
argument, honest.)

> > In a perfect world, all MUAs would produce In-Reply-To and References  
> > headers.

> Yeah, but we self evidently do not, which is why I proposed something to  
> augment those.

Both you and I have MUAs that add those headers (well ruby-forum does  
it, even though it’s strictly not an MUA).

> > The line-length is probably set at 72 or some such, as most people  
> > send emails with 72-characters-per-line-long lines

> I’m in a browser, I don’t need my lines wrapped at 72 characters, I’d  
> prefer to have them wrapped depending on the size of my browser window.

Yes, but how would you determine what lines to join?

Furthermore, the human brain, together with the human eye, prefers to  
process lines that contain about 72 (note the about) characters.

```
    nikolai
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 2:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/43 "2005-11-16T02:24:07Z")

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On 11/15/05, James Edward G. II [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> For all practical purposes, what has been created here is just  
> another MUA and the author has decided to share it.

Exactly. Google G. already does what this does, but it’s in their  
hands and not the hands of a hopefully suggestion friendly maintainer.  
I don’t see what’s wrong with having the same mechanism as google  
groups but with more openness to community input.

> I’m very surprised at the negative response on this. I think it’s  
> great.

So do I. I love vim and the GPL, but I try really hard not to say no  
one should ever use Emacs or the MIT license. (I like one more than  
the other of the two mentioned)

People should not personal choices get in the way of others personal  
choices. To me, the more the merrier, and the ghost of Tim Toady  
would be proud of our community with it’s many diverse ways of getting  
involved 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 3:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/44 "2005-11-16T03:27:17Z")

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Andrew T. wrote:

> > Likewise. Thank you mutt(1).

> Yeah, I saw this one coming 🙂 I’m just stating my personal  
> preference, I prefer a forum to a mailinglist any day.

> > And why was my message the one you replied to? (I’m not looking for  
> > an argument, honest.)

> Last one in the thread at the time, what else should I have done?

This is precisely why a list-view of a thread is such a bad paradigm.  
You “should have” responded to the initial message, as your response was  
directed at that message (or the thread as a whole as it were), not my  
response to it in particular.

> > Furthermore, the human brain, together with the human eye, prefers  
> > to process lines that contain about 72 (note the about) characters.

> If you say so, I find the wrapping on most emails kind of annoying, it  
> also makes things a lot longer vertically then they would be if they  
> wrapped in a more efficent fashion.

Give me verticality over horizontality any day! 😉

```
    nikolai
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 3:48am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/45 "2005-11-16T03:48:22Z")

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> The reason behind all this is that I fear needless  
> fragmentation. The Ruby community grows, it will have to  
> fragment to some extent, we can’t populate a mailing list  
> with ten times more people. Rails split off the main lists,  
> main IRC, even gets its own conference. Fine, it seems a  
> clear cut distinction (but given all other useful web  
> frameworks in Ruby, I doubt it deserves to be this clear cut).

I organize Vancouver Ruby Association ([vanruby.com](http://vanruby.com)), and found that  
during  
our meetings 70% of the attendance interest was on Rails. We recently  
did a  
presentation on SOAP4R, a great technology, but what everyone was  
interested  
in was how it applied to Rails. As the talk went on, we discussed Rails  
ActionWebService and such.

When interest is this high, and people are focused on the  
implementation,  
rather than the foundation, it would seem natural to encourage  
conferences  
such as Canada on Rails, which are specifically geared for such  
interest.

Once you have gone to an event such a CoR, and have a superficial  
understanding of the implementation, then you dive deeper into the  
language,  
and go for RubyConf, and more core technologies.

I have been learning Rails for several months now, and at first I was  
simply  
learning the MVC principles and architecture, but once I want to dive  
deeper  
into the functionality and build a serious application, I found I needed  
very drastically to get familiar with the language it was built on,  
Ruby. If  
I didn’t have the entrance point of Rails, I likely would not be  
organizing  
the Rails conference, which will in turn promote Ruby by default 🙂

Warmest regards,  
Nathaniel

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 3:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/46 "2005-11-16T03:30:18Z")

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James Edward G. II wrote:

> I’m very surprised at the negative response on this. I think it’s  
> great.

My responses haven’t been negative, I hope. I’ve tried to keep a level  
head here and simply ask why (on Earth) anyone would want a forum view.  
To me, forums are about the worst way to present information. But all I  
wanted to know was the reasons for people liking it. I don’t care if  
people use it or not, as long as it doesn’t have an adverse effect on  
this list as a whole.

```
    nikolai
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 6:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/47 "2005-11-16T06:49:06Z")

</div>

Not sure if this is related to the Rails mailing list:  
[http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails?lnk=li](http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails?lnk=li)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 6:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/48 "2005-11-16T18:48:37Z")

</div>

blargity wrote (in part):

> I love Ruby, and even more, love getting paid to write in it. 🙂

Can I work there?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 7:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/49 "2005-11-16T19:15:31Z")

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andreas wrote:

> I have set up a forum that mirrors the ruby-talk and rails mailing lists:
> 
> [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/)
> 
> If you notice problems or have any suggestions, please send me a mail.

I very much like the “if you log in, threads with messages you haven’t  
read are in bold” feature. And the “sort threads by most recent  
activity feature”.

But it would be _much_ more useful if it used the info more, so that  
when I go into a thread where I’ve not read (say) the last 3 out of 40  
messages, instead of having to jump to the bottom and move up to see the  
newest stuff, the page produced had

Display already-read messages  
----------------------------- (that’s supposed to be a URL)

followed by the messages I haven’t yet read. That would mean that I’d  
be fine if I had only read 23 of the 40 messages as well…

(Can we get to threads older than the ones shown? Activity seems to be  
falling off the bottom quickly, unless I read from the bottom up…)

The option for a hierarchical display of sender / time / header, with  
bold marking unread posts, showing only text for unread posts, and an  
AJAX mechanism to get the text of any/all desired already-read posts –  
that would be truly excellent.

There were some discussions about people having a way to vote for  
threads. That, and a way to nominate answers for some kind of FAQ,  
would be other great additions. Are you planning either of those?

Thanks for the effort.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 4:54am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/50 "2005-11-16T04:54:33Z")

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On Tuesday 15 November 2005 20:46, Nathaniel S. H. Brown wrote:

> I have been learning Rails for several months now, and at first I was  
> simply learning the MVC principles and architecture, but once I want to  
> dive deeper into the functionality and build a serious application, I found  
> I needed very drastically to get familiar with the language it was built  
> on, Ruby. If I didn’t have the entrance point of Rails, I likely would not  
> be organizing the Rails conference, which will in turn promote Ruby by  
> default 🙂

This is great. Some of us come from the other side, as I had no idea  
what  
Ruby was or why I should care. The project I’m writing will have a web  
piece, so my boss (who is very smart) was looking at RoR. We decided on  
Ruby  
for the application, regardless of web framework, as it’s not simply a  
web  
app, and here I am. So it was rails that got me into Ruby, but I still  
haven’t used it. Ever. 🙂

I love Ruby, and even more, love getting paid to write in it. 🙂  
(thanks matz, you already have a spot in the glory box.)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 7:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/51 "2005-11-16T19:23:47Z")

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j-merrill wrote:

> I very much like the “if you log in, threads with messages you haven’t  
> read are in bold” feature. And the “sort threads by most recent  
> activity feature”.
> 
> But it would be _much_ more useful if it used the info more, so that  
> when I go into a thread where I’ve not read (say) the last 3 out of 40  
> messages, instead of having to jump to the bottom and move up to see the  
> newest stuff

The forum creates an anchor called “new” on the first new post, so if  
you open the topic your browser should jump to the first post you  
haven’t read yet. Doesn’t this work for you?

> The option for a hierarchical display of sender / time / header, with  
> bold marking unread posts, showing only text for unread posts, and an  
> AJAX mechanism to get the text of any/all desired already-read posts –  
> that would be truly excellent.

That should not be too hard to implement. Though other things are more  
important first.

> There were some discussions about people having a way to vote for  
> threads. That, and a way to nominate answers for some kind of FAQ,  
> would be other great additions. Are you planning either of those?

Voting is planned (actually it’s already implemented in the model, only  
the view/controller stuff is missing).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 7:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/52 "2005-11-16T19:35:13Z")

</div>

andreas wrote:

> j-merrill wrote:
> 
> > I very much like the “if you log in, threads with messages you haven’t  
> > read are in bold” feature. And the “sort threads by most recent  
> > activity feature”.
> > 
> > But it would be _much_ more useful if it used the info more, so that  
> > when I go into a thread where I’ve not read (say) the last 3 out of 40  
> > messages, instead of having to jump to the bottom and move up to see the  
> > newest stuff
> 
> The forum creates an anchor called “new” on the first new post, so if  
> you open the topic your browser should jump to the first post you  
> haven’t read yet. Doesn’t this work for you?

Hmmm, it might well – this is the only thread that’s had new posts (by  
someone other than me) since I read it, and it seems I got directly to  
the message I’m replying to when it (again) was shown as bold.

We’ll see when you answer this.

What’s the story about getting to older threads?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 7:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/53 "2005-11-16T19:40:17Z")

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j-merrill wrote:

> What’s the story about getting to older threads?

[http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/4?page=2](http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/4?page=2)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 8:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/54 "2005-11-16T20:05:56Z")

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andreas wrote:

> j-merrill wrote:
> 
> > What’s the story about getting to older threads?
> 
> [http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/4?page=2](http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/4?page=2)

Thanks. Why not have a link to that (and the prev and next) and the  
bottom and/or top of each page?

BTW, the anchor is working fine. Thanks for this effort.

Note that I am still getting the mails, because I can use “X1 Desktop  
Search” on them. Have you considered using David B.'s “Ferret” to  
provide a search mechanism for the forum?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 8:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/55 "2005-11-16T20:15:55Z")

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j-merrill wrote:

> andreas wrote:
> 
> > j-merrill wrote:
> > 
> > > What’s the story about getting to older threads?
> > 
> > [http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/4?page=2](http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/4?page=2)
> 
> Thanks. Why not have a link to that (and the prev and next) and the  
> bottom and/or top of each page?

There is a link.

> BTW, the anchor is working fine. Thanks for this effort.
> 
> Note that I am still getting the mails, because I can use “X1 Desktop  
> Search” on them. Have you considered using David B.'s “Ferret” to  
> provide a search mechanism for the forum?

There already is a search mechanism, currently using simple SQL LIKE  
matching. Other available search backends are MySql boolean search and  
Odeum.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2005, 6:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/56 "2005-11-23T18:09:07Z")

</div>

andreas wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have set up a forum that mirrors the ruby-talk and rails mailing  
> lists:
> 
> [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/)
> 
> If you notice problems or have any suggestions, please send me a mail.
> 
> Andreas

This is JUST FANTASTIC !

Apart from some small suggestions (concerning email/spam)  
Please KISS and don’t touch it ! 🙂

Congrats,  
Andre

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2005, 8:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-forum/47958/57 "2005-11-16T20:12:49Z")

</div>

On 11/16/05, J. Merrill [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> andreas wrote:
> 
> > j-merrill wrote:
> > 
> > > What’s the story about getting to older threads?
> > 
> > [http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/4?page=2](http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/4?page=2)
> 
> Thanks. Why not have a link to that (and the prev and next) and the  
> bottom and/or top of each page?

There is: at the top-right of the list there is a “\<\< Page X \>\>” where  
the \<\< and \>\> are links to the previous and next pages (absent when  
not applicable). Adding a similar construct to the bottom of the list  
may be worth looking in to.

Jacob F.

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