To all people writing BBS on Rails: let's join forces

[Alexey Verkhovsky]

I've noticed lately that there are at least four different projects
starting to build Bulletin Board System (a forum) on Rails.

Why couldn't we build one BBS, four times bigger and better instead? So
that we can look anyone in the eye and tell them that we have something
much better than (for argument's sake) phpBB!

I would like to invite anyone itching to build a BBS to participate in
my project (http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-forum).
I would also like to join any project that is closer to production grade
(Ruby Forum is already "demonstrable", and 10-20 evenings away from
"barely useable for real life purposes").

One condition - it has to be a Rails app.

Best regards,
Alexey Verkhovsky

 

[Jonas Hartmann]

I've noticed lately that there are at least four different projects
starting to build Bulletin Board System (a forum) on Rails.

Why couldn't we build one BBS, four times bigger and better instead? So
that we can look anyone in the eye and tell them that we have something
much better than (for argument's sake) phpBB!

I would like to invite anyone itching to build a BBS to participate in
my project (http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-forum).
I would also like to join any project that is closer to production grade
(Ruby Forum is already "demonstrable", and 10-20 evenings away from
"barely useable for real life purposes").

One condition - it has to be a Rails app.

Best regards,
Alexey Verkhovsky

i am a ruby novice/noobie,

i think its a great idea, these free web applications that everyone
needs (forums/boards, guestbooks, simple polls, blogs, cmss) is what may
spread ruby further into the minds of the desinformed ;-)

what happens if the best wiki engine on earth is written in ruby? what
happens if the best free bulletin board on earth is written in ruby?
what happens if the best cms on earth is written in ruby? (all os, gpl
or at least bsd style)

i think this might push ruby a lot.
so joined forces is a great idea!

 

[Kaspar Schiess]

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Jonas Hartmann wrote:
| what happens if the best wiki engine on earth is written in ruby? what
| happens if the best free bulletin board on earth is written in ruby?
| what happens if the best cms on earth is written in ruby? (all os, gpl
| or at least bsd style)

So much sensibility on one spot, it might just implode and create a kind
of black hole.

Anyway, to add something here: there is rarely A single best thing. Not
that I want to stop you from trying...

kaspar

semantics & semiotics
code manufacture

www.tua.ch/ruby
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[Jonas Hartmann]

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Jonas Hartmann wrote:
| what happens if the best wiki engine on earth is written in ruby? what
| happens if the best free bulletin board on earth is written in ruby?
| what happens if the best cms on earth is written in ruby? (all os, gpl
| or at least bsd style)

So much sensibility on one spot, it might just implode and create a kind
of black hole.

Anyway, to add something here: there is rarely A single best thing. Not
that I want to stop you from trying...

I thought about adding a part about "what is best" - but left it out,
cause i thought noone would care!

I accept that this is in the eye of everyone, is a subjective thing.

Working on GPL'ed projects my opinion is that "best" means most subjects
who use it, like it and got very little need for changes and requests.

Another possibility would be to just go the sientific way and set the
"best" to something like finding the best ways to design software for a
specific task.

regards
Jonas

 

[Kaspar Schiess]

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Jonas Hartmann wrote:
| (...)

I see you have taken me seriously, which is probably more than I
deserved. I agree with your thoughts about 'the best'.

I would love to see a really good BBS written in Ruby.

kaspar

semantics & semiotics
code manufacture

www.tua.ch/ruby
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[Andreas Schwarz]

I've noticed lately that there are at least four different projects
starting to build Bulletin Board System (a forum) on Rails.

Why couldn't we build one BBS, four times bigger and better instead? So
that we can look anyone in the eye and tell them that we have something
much better than (for argument's sake) phpBB!

I would like to invite anyone itching to build a BBS to participate in
my project (http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-forum).
I would also like to join any project that is closer to production grade
(Ruby Forum is already "demonstrable", and 10-20 evenings away from
"barely useable for real life purposes").

Hello,

I'm one of the people who are building a forum with Rails.

What I have at the moment is:

At the model level:
* Tree structure with nested set (mainly for the NNTP References header)
* Creating new topics, replying to posts
* Voting for posts
* Topic subscriptions (to receive notifications of new posts)
* User registration/login
* prepared for NNTP server integration (Message-IDs, NNTP-IDs,
References header)
* Unit tests for most of the functions
* A working NNTP server with reading, posting and user authentication
(written for an experimental forum I had built a few months ago, not yet
adapted to the new data structure)

Controller/View:
* Forum list
* Topic list
* Topic view (flat)
* Posting replies
* Registration/Login
* Colored quoting levels
* Anonymous posting

The post text is wrapped to ~72 character lines when it is posted and by
default displayed in a <pre>, so that it is possible to include indented
source code and ASCII-schematics. "> " is used for quotings, like in
mails/usenet. Because the line wrapping is done with format=flowed, it
is easy to remove the line wrapping for users who want a view like
normal HTML pages; the quoting level is preserved and represented by
colored lines at the left border (like in Mozilla).

What I (and most of the users) do NOT want is:
* BB-Code or HTML
* User icons
* Smilies
* Everything else phpBB has

What is still missing:
* Controller & Views for most of the stuff mentioned above
* Functional tests
* File Attachments
* NNTP server integration
* a lot more, don't get fooled by the long feature lists above

When I am writing "the users" I am referring to the users of my forum on
http://www.mikrocontroller.net/forum/.

The license will probably be GPL or BSD or something like that.

Andreas

 

[gabriele renzi]

Andreas Schwarz ha scritto:

What I (and most of the users) do NOT want is:
* BB-Code or HTML
* User icons
* Smilies
* Everything else phpBB has

I agree on avoiding bbcode, user icons and smlies.. but a simple markup
system is imho useful. Maybe textile

 

[Andreas Schwarz]

Andreas Schwarz ha scritto:




I agree on avoiding bbcode, user icons and smlies.. but a simple markup
system is imho useful. Maybe textile

This might be is difficult to combine with usenet style quoting, and I
actually never had a feature request for this. I am already creating
links from URLs and doing some basic formatting for _this_, /this/ and
*this*, that seems to be sufficient.

Another reason for why I don't need and want a full markup system is
that I don't want the users to abuse the forum as a content management
system (like it is often done with phpBB), because a Wiki is much better
suited for this task.

 

[David Ross]

I've noticed lately that there are at least four different projects
starting to build Bulletin Board System (a forum) on Rails.

Why couldn't we build one BBS, four times bigger and better instead? So
that we can look anyone in the eye and tell them that we have something
much better than (for argument's sake) phpBB!

I would like to invite anyone itching to build a BBS to participate in
my project (http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-forum).
I would also like to join any project that is closer to production grade
(Ruby Forum is already "demonstrable", and 10-20 evenings away from
"barely useable for real life purposes").

One condition - it has to be a Rails app.

Best regards,
Alexey Verkhovsky

No thanks, I'm writing one in a framework without rails. The main
developer is reluctant to help package it for RPA.


David Ross

 

[Curt Hibbs]

This might be is difficult to combine with usenet style quoting, and I
actually never had a feature request for this. I am already creating
links from URLs and doing some basic formatting for _this_, /this/ and
*this*, that seems to be sufficient.

Another reason for why I don't need and want a full markup system is
that I don't want the users to abuse the forum as a content management
system (like it is often done with phpBB), because a Wiki is much better
suited for this task.

You should consider bluecloth, since it is a formatter for standard
clear-text markup conventions like _this_, /this/ and *this*.

Curt

 

[Florian Gross]

This might be is difficult to combine with usenet style quoting, and I
actually never had a feature request for this. I am already creating
links from URLs and doing some basic formatting for _this_, /this/ and
*this*, that seems to be sufficient.

What about using Markdown via BlueCloth? It looks a lot like what is
used on newsgroups anyway:

http://bluecloth.rubyforge.org/

Regards,
Florian Gross

 

[David Heinemeier Hansson]

No thanks, I'm writing one in a framework without rails. The main

developer is reluctant to help package it for RPA.

This is completely false. I've instructed Mauricio on how I've done the
packaging for GEMs, clarified the division between library and stubs,
AND welcomed any patches to Rails that would make it easier to package
for RPA (under the condition that it didn't disrupt the two other
packages I'm maintaining for it myself).

Please stop spreading ill will and false statements like this.
--
David Heinemeier Hansson,
http://www.rubyonrails.org/ -- Web-application framework for Ruby
http://www.instiki.org/ -- A No-Step-Three Wiki in Ruby
http://macromates.com/ -- TextMate: Code and markup editor for OS
X
http://www.basecamphq.com/ -- Web-based Project Management
http://www.loudthinking.com/ -- Broadcasting Brain
http://www.nextangle.com/ -- Development & Consulting Services

 

[leon breedt]

No thanks, I'm writing one in a framework without rails. The main
developer is reluctant to help package it for RPA.

Everyone chooses what works for them, and, this thread was originally
for people who have already decided on Rails, and, one might assume,
prefer it to the alternatives.

So, what purpose does your post serve? It doesn't offer an alternative
or contribute anything to the discussion.

Leon

 

[Eivind Eklund]

This is completely false. I've instructed Mauricio on how I've done the
packaging for GEMs, clarified the division between library and stubs,
AND welcomed any patches to Rails that would make it easier to package
for RPA (under the condition that it didn't disrupt the two other
packages I'm maintaining for it myself).

Please stop spreading ill will and false statements like this.

Please accept my apologies on behalf of the RPA team (which David Ross
is NOT a part of.)

The RPA team has repeatedly privately asked David to stop posting
things like this.

I am now repeating that request in public: David, PLEASE do not post
anything like this. We want to have friendly relationships with and
work with everybody in the Ruby community. When you post negatively
about them WRT RPA, it gets in the way.

Eivind.

 

[Dick Davies]

Everyone chooses what works for them, and, this thread was originally
for people who have already decided on Rails, and, one might assume,
prefer it to the alternatives.

So, what purpose does your post serve? It doesn't offer an alternative
or contribute anything to the discussion.

Look, guys, David is a troll, ok?
It's really as simple as that.

The fact that he keeps a civil tongue in his head for
a month or so at a time does nothing to change that.

 

[gabriele renzi]

Andreas Schwarz ha scritto:

This might be is difficult to combine with usenet style quoting, and I
actually never had a feature request for this. I am already creating
links from URLs and doing some basic formatting for _this_, /this/ and
*this*, that seems to be sufficient.

well, than it sounds very reasonable. I wish to see the sw asap

 

[Justin Rudd]

This might be is difficult to combine with usenet

style quoting, and I actually never had a feature
request for this. I am already creating
links from URLs and doing some basic formatting
for _this_, /this/ and *this*, that seems to be
sufficient.

What about Markdown
(http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/)? It
has a Ruby implementation called BlueCloth. I like
Markdown because of the core reason the author gives -
it looks mostly like Plain Text e-mail.

--
Justin Rudd
http://seagecko.org/thoughts/




__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
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[Aredridel]

This is completely false. I've instructed Mauricio on how I've done the
packaging for GEMs, clarified the division between library and stubs,
AND welcomed any patches to Rails that would make it easier to package
for RPA (under the condition that it didn't disrupt the two other
packages I'm maintaining for it myself).

It's on our todo lists -- It's just a particularly hard thing to
package "the right way" (complying with various distribution policies,
as well as RPA's policies)

Rails isn't exactly a library is part of the problem, and there's some
dependency on Gems even in the tarball version in the last release I
looked at. It's not that David (Addressing in the third person here,
pardon) is unwilling to make Rails packageable, it's that it's
somewhat unique in that it's neither app nor library per se. It's a
process, and at the moment, David's busy pushing for 1.0.

Mauricio keeps poking at Rails on occasion, but it's a moving target
because of the rapid development, and there's a lot on everyone's
plate. RPAs will come, but only when they're sure to work right out of
the package and work forever once installed.

It's not easy, but there's really no ill will here: just differing
opinions on what's most important, and what order things have to be
done in.

G'day, all.

Aredridel
PLD RPM Packager

 

[David Ross]

My words this morning were short and rash. They were not to be
interpreted in a offending position. I want rails to be a RPA package. I
have spent much time trying to get it to work with RPA. I failed to do
so, it just upsets me how much time I was trying and actually messed it
up further. I've nothing against the developer DHH. He did answer a few
of my questions, but it would have been helpful for him to tag with
comments where complicatoins would occur if anyone would wish to change
file locations.

--Dross

 

[gabriele renzi]

Justin Rudd ha scritto:

What about Markdown
(http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/)? It
has a Ruby implementation called BlueCloth. I like
Markdown because of the core reason the author gives -
it looks mostly like Plain Text e-mail.

at this point, if the author agrees, I think that it could be better to
provide some basic architecture to plug our own formatter