Newsgroups tag library -- Any takers?

[Kevin Riff <ke...@corel.com>]

A couple of weeks ago there was a discussion on the JavaLobby about how
to improve the discussion forums system used on that site. I suggested
that it would be nice to be able to access the forums via a standard
newsgroup reader, but of course I wouldn't want to give up the web-based
interface to do it. Since then I've been thinking on and off about what
the best way to go about it might be. This is my proposal:

Each forum would be setup as a newsgroup on a standard usenet server.
This allows anyone with a usenet reader to access the forums using their
favorite software. The web interface should be applicable to any site
(not just JavaLobby) and permit the complete customization of the
appearance and layout of each page. The natural choice to accomplish
this goal is to use JSP for the presentation logic and a custom
tag-library to handle the details of the NNTP protocol.

Some of the tags I'm thinking of are:

listGroups -- List the newsgroups that are available on the server
listMessages -- List the messages in a newsgroup
messageBody -- Output the body of a message
??? -- Tools for navigating the messages in a thread
??? -- Someway to post and/or reply to a message

What do people think? I'd welcome thoughts and criticisms even if you
can't contribute by writing code.

Re: Newsgroups tag library -- Any takers?

[Eduardo Pelegri--Llopart <Ed...@eng.sun.com>]

Kevin Riff wrote:
> 
> Sounds like a good idea. I don't know any DHTML and I'm only vaguely familiar
> with XSL. Are you saying that we could send all or part of a thread to the
> client and have it only present one message at a time? That could really
> improve on the responsiveness of navigating between messages!

Yes, you can.  I do not know if there is a way to start displaying while
the rest of the document is downloaded; if not, you would have a typical
tradeoff between the initial latency and later responsiveness.

	- eduard/o

> Eduardo Pelegri--Llopart wrote:
> 
> > I love the basic concept.  I'll try to find time to think about the
> > details.
> >
> > The tags could also check who the client is and customize its delivery
> > further based on that; at least in principle. For example, it can
> > deliver a whole thread (or a portion of it) to the client if there is a
> > reasonable way to do client-side presentation (say using DHTML, or
> > XSL).  [[a simple variation would be to send a WML deck, but I am not
> > sure I want to see people using their WAP cell phones to read discussion
> > forums :-)]]
> >
> > Other typical things to do are searches; the jsptags.com people have a
> > tag library for doing and presenting searches.
> >
> >         - eduard/o
> 
> <snip>

Re: Newsgroups tag library -- Any takers?

[Kevin Riff <ke...@corel.com>]

Sounds like a good idea. I don't know any DHTML and I'm only vaguely familiar
with XSL. Are you saying that we could send all or part of a thread to the
client and have it only present one message at a time? That could really
improve on the responsiveness of navigating between messages!


Eduardo Pelegri--Llopart wrote:

> I love the basic concept.  I'll try to find time to think about the
> details.
>
> The tags could also check who the client is and customize its delivery
> further based on that; at least in principle. For example, it can
> deliver a whole thread (or a portion of it) to the client if there is a
> reasonable way to do client-side presentation (say using DHTML, or
> XSL).  [[a simple variation would be to send a WML deck, but I am not
> sure I want to see people using their WAP cell phones to read discussion
> forums :-)]]
>
> Other typical things to do are searches; the jsptags.com people have a
> tag library for doing and presenting searches.
>
>         - eduard/o

<snip>

Re: Newsgroups tag library -- Any takers?

[Eduardo Pelegri--Llopart <Ed...@eng.sun.com>]

I love the basic concept.  I'll try to find time to think about the
details.

The tags could also check who the client is and customize its delivery
further based on that; at least in principle. For example, it can
deliver a whole thread (or a portion of it) to the client if there is a
reasonable way to do client-side presentation (say using DHTML, or
XSL).  [[a simple variation would be to send a WML deck, but I am not
sure I want to see people using their WAP cell phones to read discussion
forums :-)]]

Other typical things to do are searches; the jsptags.com people have a
tag library for doing and presenting searches.

	- eduard/o

Kevin Riff wrote:
> 
> A couple of weeks ago there was a discussion on the JavaLobby about how
> to improve the discussion forums system used on that site. I suggested
> that it would be nice to be able to access the forums via a standard
> newsgroup reader, but of course I wouldn't want to give up the web-based
> interface to do it. Since then I've been thinking on and off about what
> the best way to go about it might be. This is my proposal:
> 
> Each forum would be setup as a newsgroup on a standard usenet server.
> This allows anyone with a usenet reader to access the forums using their
> favorite software. The web interface should be applicable to any site
> (not just JavaLobby) and permit the complete customization of the
> appearance and layout of each page. The natural choice to accomplish
> this goal is to use JSP for the presentation logic and a custom
> tag-library to handle the details of the NNTP protocol.
> 
> Some of the tags I'm thinking of are:
> 
> listGroups -- List the newsgroups that are available on the server
> listMessages -- List the messages in a newsgroup
> messageBody -- Output the body of a message
> ??? -- Tools for navigating the messages in a thread
> ??? -- Someway to post and/or reply to a message
> 
> What do people think? I'd welcome thoughts and criticisms even if you
> can't contribute by writing code.