• Re: Newsgrouper Update

    From Colin Macleod@21:1/5 to All on Tue Oct 29 17:40:53 2024
    Colin Macleod <user7@newsgrouper.org.uk.invalid> posted:

    I've made some updates to Newsgrouper, my web interface to Usenet.
    It's now at https://newsgrouper.org.uk and the old url will redirect there.

    I've now made the source code available at: https://chiselapp.com/user/cmacleod/repository/newsgrouper/home

    It's still in fairly rough form but may be of interest to someone.

    --
    Colin Macleod ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ cmacleod.me.uk

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  • From Colin Macleod@21:1/5 to All on Thu Oct 24 15:07:49 2024
    I've made some updates to Newsgrouper, my web interface to Usenet.
    It's now at https://newsgrouper.org.uk and the old url will redirect there.

    The display of a thread is redesigned. If Javascript is enabled you can navigate a thread with the keyboard:
    - RightArrow will jump to the next message in the thread.
    - LeftArrow will jump to the previous message in the thread.
    - 'n' will jump to the next New message in the thread.
    - 'v' will View the raw source of the current message.

    There is a facility to block all posts from annoying people, like the traditional "kill file", see "Block Poster" at the bottom of the article display and the general "Preferences".

    At the bottom of the list of threads for a group there is now a
    "Find Articles" button which can search through 20 years worth of posts
    for a specific string (or glob pattern) in the Subject or From field.

    --
    Colin Macleod.

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  • From Denez Van Dyck@21:1/5 to Colin Macleod on Thu Oct 24 16:14:41 2024
    Colin Macleod wrote:

    I've made some updates to Newsgrouper, my web interface to Usenet.
    It's now at https://newsgrouper.org.uk and the old url will redirect there.

    Good news: non-ASCII characters are now perfectly decoded. Thanks for
    that!

    However, I've noticed another problem when a URL is between two angle
    brackets, like this:

    <https://gemini.oxydable.fr>

    The URL doesn't appear in Newsgrouper. I presume this is linked to the
    use of angle brackets in the HTML code. It should be possible to replace
    them with the corresponding HTML entities : &lt; and &gt; ...

    I don't know whether this presentation of URLs is used on
    English-speaking groups, but it is common on the fr.* hierarchy.

    --
    Denez Van Dyck
    Capsule : gemini://gemini.oxydable.fr
    Web Proxy : https://gemini.oxydable.fr
    Mastodon : https://mamot.fr/@dvd

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  • From D@21:1/5 to Colin Macleod on Thu Oct 24 17:54:05 2024
    On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 15:07:49 GMT, Colin Macleod <user7@newsgrouper.org.uk.invalid> wrote:
    I've made some updates to Newsgrouper, my web interface to Usenet.
    It's now at https://newsgrouper.org.uk and the old url will redirect there. >The display of a thread is redesigned. If Javascript is enabled you can >navigate a thread with the keyboard:
    - RightArrow will jump to the next message in the thread.
    - LeftArrow will jump to the previous message in the thread.
    - 'n' will jump to the next New message in the thread.
    - 'v' will View the raw source of the current message.
    There is a facility to block all posts from annoying people, like the >traditional "kill file", see "Block Poster" at the bottom of the article >display and the general "Preferences".
    At the bottom of the list of threads for a group there is now a
    "Find Articles" button which can search through 20 years worth of posts
    for a specific string (or glob pattern) in the Subject or From field.

    very nice!

    (using Tor Browser 14.0)
    https://newsgrouper.org.uk
    ...
    https://newsgrouper.org.uk/news.software.readers
    ...

    e.g. this article . . .

    Newsgrouper Update Colin Macleod 24 Oct 2 1 >https://newsgrouper.org.uk/news.software.readers/36312
    From: Colin Macleod
    Newsgroups: news.software.readers
    Subject: Newsgrouper Update
    Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2024 15:07:49 GMT
    ...

    clicked "view source" and headers appear complete:

    Path: eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!newsgrouper.org.uk!.POSTED!not-for-mail
    From: Colin Macleod <user7@newsgrouper.org.uk.invalid>
    Newsgroups: news.software.readers
    Subject: Newsgrouper Update
    Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2024 15:07:49 GMT
    Message-ID: <1729782469-7@newsgrouper.org.uk>
    Injection-Info: newsgrouper.org.uk; mail-complaints-to="newsgrouper@yahoo.com"; posting-account=user7
    Injection-Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2024 15:07:49 GMT
    User-Agent: Newsgrouper/0.6.1
    Xref: news.eternal-september.org news.software.readers:36312
    [end quoted plain text]

    https://newsgrouper.org.uk/
    Newsgrouper
    A web interface to Usenet discussion groups (no binaries)
    Find groups to read
    Including this Text: Matching this Pattern:
    In the Group Name In the Description
    Find an article by message-id
    Message-Id: (this has the form <random-stuff@some.site>)

    searched for several random message-ids copied from "blueworld" server, starting with the oldest first . . . (twenty-one years ago, 2003/07/01)

    From: Allan Girvan <allangirvan@yahoo.com>
    Newsgroups: news.software.readers
    Subject: Re: Let's Start a XanaNews Thread
    Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 01:20:42 +0100
    Message-ID: <bdqnl9.2ag.1@ID-66775.user.dfncis.de>

    newsgrouper search returned "article not found". . .

    Article with message-id: <bdqnl9.2ag.1@ID-66775.user.dfncis.de>
    Article Not Found.

    tested several more recent articles . . .

    From: Colin Macleod <user7@cmacleod.me.uk.invalid>
    Newsgroups: news.software.readers
    Subject: Newsgrouper - a web interface to Usenet (text only)
    Date: Thu, 15 Feb 24 22:01:55 GMT
    Message-ID: <1708034515-1637776@cmacleod.me.uk>

    again, newsgrouper search shows "article not found". . .

    Article with message-id: <1708034515-1637776@cmacleod.me.uk>
    Article Not Found.

    otherwise, it's a user-friendly web interface and includes 1000s
    more newsgroups than novabbs' "rocksolid light" (477 newsgroups);

    also, it was easy to block a known troll in another newsgroup by
    opening one of their articles and clicking "block poster" at the
    bottom of the window, then refresh article list . . . and viola,
    the preferences shows the entry and it really works ... awesome!

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  • From morena@21:1/5 to All on Thu Oct 24 19:49:23 2024
    On 10/24/24 6:54 PM, D wrote:

    newsgrouper search returned "article not found". . .

    Newsgrouper's source is Eternal September which currently does not have
    older articles due to some technical issues.
    So currently I assume you will not find anything older there.

    --
    morena
    gopher://morena.rip/

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  • From D@21:1/5 to morena on Thu Oct 24 20:14:10 2024
    On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 19:49:23 +0200, morena <morena@morena.rip> wrote:
    On 10/24/24 6:54 PM, D wrote:
    newsgrouper search returned "article not found". . .

    Newsgrouper's source is Eternal September which currently does not have
    older articles due to some technical issues.
    So currently I assume you will not find anything older there.

    (using Tor Browser 14.0) https://newsgrouper.org.uk/news.software.readers/search
    ind articles in news.software.readers
    Including this Text: Matching this Pattern:
    In the Subject In the From (Author) In the References

    i tried "find articles" in this group's search window using default
    settings ("including this text"/"in the subject") and it found this:

    From: Colin Macleod <user7@cmacleod.me.uk.invalid>
    Newsgroups: news.software.readers
    Subject: Newsgrouper - a web interface to Usenet (text only)
    Date: Thu, 15 Feb 24 22:01:55 GMT
    Message-ID: <1708034515-1637776@cmacleod.me.uk>

    tried "find articles" again for a randomly-selected older article
    nearly twenty years old (2005/02/23) and newsgrouper found it too:

    From: Eddie <edimodric@makni.inet.hr>
    Newsgroups: news.software.readers
    Subject: [Dialog] Browsing through groups marks first message read
    Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 19:46:09 +0100
    Message-ID: <otb014ec0r13.dlg@eddie.co.uk>

    newsgrouper seems like dejanews v2.0! (hopefully the troll farm bosses
    don't end up doing to newsgrouper what they so ruthlessly did to deja)

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  • From D@21:1/5 to morena on Fri Oct 25 01:09:22 2024
    On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 19:49:23 +0200, morena <morena@morena.rip> wrote:
    On 10/24/24 6:54 PM, D wrote:
    newsgrouper search returned "article not found". . .

    Newsgrouper's source is Eternal September which currently does not have
    older articles due to some technical issues.
    So currently I assume you will not find anything older there.

    p.s.

    that oldest message-id <bdqnl9.2ag.1@ID-66775.user.dfncis.de> copied
    from the "blueworld" server (dated 2003/07/01, twenty-one years ago)
    was found in https://newsgrouper.org.uk/news.software.readers/search
    by searching for the article subject "let's start a xananews thread":

    [begin quoted plain text]
    Path: nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com!!news.usenet.blueworldhosting.com!spool1.usenet.blueworldhosting.com!injection-bsd1!not-for-mail
    From: Allan Girvan <allangirvan@yahoo.com>
    Newsgroups: news.software.readers
    Subject: Re: Let's Start a XanaNews Thread
    Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 01:20:42 +0100
    Organization: Home
    Lines: 31
    Message-ID: <bdqnl9.2ag.1@ID-66775.user.dfncis.de>
    References: <1057015357.75259.0@doris.uk.clara.net>
    Reply-To: <allan.girvan@btinternet.com>
    NNTP-Posting-Host: host217-41-46-209.in-addr.btopenworld.com (217.41.46.209) >X-Trace: fu-berlin.de 1057019235 33108126 217.41.46.209 (16 [66775]) >X-Orig-Path: girvan.news.server!not-for-mail
    User-Agent: Xnews/06.02.16
    X-Face: '|!UPdE>Ot'L}nt?<v%6-sA)\t%sB-h!iq+qnL+WDXuk,WCL'eS)Y.O'cqRc)7Ka?!HZm1jk+(g~G->6Tf|'s{y%l~,+Yc5|p8A}ibew|_!vc48pPNPPx@7QA~$`$g=|yH*8sh9R]Xj1(CV7oUe>#/,t.(Z4F
    X-Posting-Agent: Hamster/2.0.2.1
    X-KorrNews: Used
    Xref: nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com news.software.readers:2949

    On 01 Jul 2003, Terry wrote:

    Who's using it and what are the good and bad points? I've been
    playing with it this evening and am fairly impressed at first
    sight. I've not investigated its multi server binary functionality
    yet...

    Nor me!

    I'm a committed Xnews user but I'm aware that Luu has pretty much
    given up on Xnews development.

    I took a look at Dialog and was impressed but there was something
    about it I just didn't like (I have no idea what it was - it just
    didn't *feel* right).

    Xananews, on the other hand, looks and feels like a winner. I'm
    sticking with Xnews for the time being but I think that Xananews may
    well become my newsreader of choice. (I'll not commit myself until it
    lets me set up separate folders to allow me to gather various
    subscribed newsgroups under generic headings - one of the things that
    Xnews does really well.)

    Other than that, I have no criticisms - an excellent program.

    Cheers,


    Allan.
    --
    Please use the "Reply To" address for emails

    [end quoted plain text]

    it seems certain that google isn't about to let go of their dejanews
    cash cow any time soon, so this type of web interface "piggybacking"
    on popular open newsservers could become more of a trend, as perhaps
    more newsservers and similar "web2news" sites may share the increase
    in user demand for such convenience in the wake of google's farewell

    smartphone users, and less tech-savvy, are especially hamstrung from
    usenet participation . . . the novabbs "rocksolid light" works great
    but is limited to select newsgroups; whereas these major newsservers
    include tens of thousands of newsgroups, this is sure to get noticed

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  • From Colin Macleod@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 25 09:46:29 2024
    D <noreply@mixmin.net> posted:

    On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 19:49:23 +0200, morena <morena@morena.rip> wrote:
    On 10/24/24 6:54 PM, D wrote:
    newsgrouper search returned "article not found". . .

    Newsgrouper's source is Eternal September which currently does not have >older articles due to some technical issues.
    So currently I assume you will not find anything older there.

    p.s.

    that oldest message-id <bdqnl9.2ag.1@ID-66775.user.dfncis.de> copied
    from the "blueworld" server (dated 2003/07/01, twenty-one years ago)
    was found in https://newsgrouper.org.uk/news.software.readers/search
    by searching for the article subject "let's start a xananews thread":

    Yes, I had switched the "Find Articles" search to use blueworldhosting,
    which has around 20 years of history. I have now switched the message-id search to use this as well, and it now does find the examples you gave.

    Thanks for your encouraging comments!

    --
    Colin Macleod.

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  • From Denez Van Dyck@21:1/5 to Colin Macleod on Fri Oct 25 11:00:38 2024
    Colin Macleod wrote:

    Thanks for the report, I believe I've fixed this now.

    It was rather odd. I was already encoding html entities, but it seems
    that this was undone because I used "srcdoc" to load the article html
    into an iframe. I've made a workaround now.

    Indeed, it works now. That was quick!

    I think it's time for me to subscribe to Newsgrouper...

    --
    Denez Van Dyck
    Capsule : gemini://gemini.oxydable.fr
    Web Proxy : https://gemini.oxydable.fr
    Mastodon : https://mamot.fr/@dvd

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  • From Colin Macleod@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 25 10:16:05 2024
    Denez Van Dyck <denez@vandyck.invalid> posted:

    Colin Macleod wrote:

    I've made some updates to Newsgrouper, my web interface to Usenet.
    It's now at https://newsgrouper.org.uk and the old url will redirect there.

    Good news: non-ASCII characters are now perfectly decoded. Thanks for
    that!

    However, I've noticed another problem when a URL is between two angle brackets, like this:

    <https://gemini.oxydable.fr>

    Thanks for the report, I believe I've fixed this now.

    It was rather odd. I was already encoding html entities, but it seems
    that this was undone because I used "srcdoc" to load the article html
    into an iframe. I've made a workaround now.

    --
    Colin Macleod.

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  • From =?UTF-8?B?U2FtdWVsIFPDtmRlcmJlcmc=?@21:1/5 to user7@newsgrouper.org.uk.invalid on Wed Oct 30 09:28:34 2024
    On 24 Oct 2024 at 16:07:49 CEST, "Colin Macleod" <user7@newsgrouper.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    I've made some updates to Newsgrouper, my web interface to Usenet.
    It's now at https://newsgrouper.org.uk and the old url will redirect there.

    The display of a thread is redesigned. If Javascript is enabled you can navigate a thread with the keyboard:
    - RightArrow will jump to the next message in the thread.
    - LeftArrow will jump to the previous message in the thread.
    - 'n' will jump to the next New message in the thread.
    - 'v' will View the raw source of the current message.

    There is a facility to block all posts from annoying people, like the traditional "kill file", see "Block Poster" at the bottom of the article display and the general "Preferences".

    At the bottom of the list of threads for a group there is now a
    "Find Articles" button which can search through 20 years worth of posts
    for a specific string (or glob pattern) in the Subject or From field.

    Amazing work!

    What if we could have your frontend as an option @ the site of Eternal-September... Google Groups resurrected...

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  • From Colin Macleod@21:1/5 to All on Wed Oct 30 15:44:07 2024
    =?UTF-8?B?U2FtdWVsIFPDtmRlcmJlcmc=?= <samuel@samuelsoderberg.se> posted:

    Amazing work!

    What if we could have your frontend as an option @ the site of Eternal-September... Google Groups resurrected...

    Thanks for the encouragement.

    A few months ago Ray Banana, the E-S admin, was experimenting with
    Rocksolid Light, as used at https://www.novabbs.com with a view to
    providing that as a web front-end to E-S. I don't know what the state
    of that project is now.

    (I would cross-post this to eternal-september.support but crossposting
    is one thing I don't support yet in Newsgrouper :-( ).

    --
    Colin Macleod ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ https://cmacleod.me.uk

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  • From Retro Guy@21:1/5 to Colin Macleod on Wed Oct 30 15:57:43 2024
    On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 15:44:07 +0000, Colin Macleod wrote:

    =?UTF-8?B?U2FtdWVsIFPDtmRlcmJlcmc=?= <samuel@samuelsoderberg.se> posted:

    Amazing work!

    What if we could have your frontend as an option @ the site of
    Eternal-September... Google Groups resurrected...

    Thanks for the encouragement.

    A few months ago Ray Banana, the E-S admin, was experimenting with
    Rocksolid Light, as used at https://www.novabbs.com with a view to
    providing that as a web front-end to E-S. I don't know what the state
    of that project is now.

    I don't know either. I would assume trying to serve thousands of groups
    with Rocksolid Light would be quite difficult, as that is not what it is designed to do. RSLight is really meant as a forum style interface to a "selection" of groups. This is working well for my users, who are mostly
    not really Usenet savvy, but like the forum style. (They don't know it
    contains a full nnrpd backend :)

    Newsgrouper seems designed to handle any number of groups, and is suited
    to people already familiar with Usenet, who will appreciate the
    familiarity with the structure.

    I feel the two packages (rslight and Newsgrouper) and designed for
    different audiences, which is a good thing :)

    --
    Retro Guy

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  • From D@21:1/5 to samuel@samuelsoderberg.se on Wed Oct 30 16:29:46 2024
    On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 09:28:34 -0000 (UTC), Samuel S÷derberg <samuel@samuelsoderberg.se> wrote:
    On 24 Oct 2024 at 16:07:49 CEST, "Colin Macleod" ><user7@newsgrouper.org.uk.invalid> wrote:
    I've made some updates to Newsgrouper, my web interface to Usenet.
    It's now at https://newsgrouper.org.uk and the old url will redirect there. >> The display of a thread is redesigned. If Javascript is enabled you can
    navigate a thread with the keyboard:
    - RightArrow will jump to the next message in the thread.
    - LeftArrow will jump to the previous message in the thread.
    - 'n' will jump to the next New message in the thread.
    - 'v' will View the raw source of the current message.
    There is a facility to block all posts from annoying people, like the
    traditional "kill file", see "Block Poster" at the bottom of the article
    display and the general "Preferences".
    At the bottom of the list of threads for a group there is now a
    "Find Articles" button which can search through 20 years worth of posts
    for a specific string (or glob pattern) in the Subject or From field.

    snip

    Google Groups resurrected...

    no... it's far more like deja news; user friendly, "from" filters,
    complete (untruncated) raw message source displayed in monospaced
    text at the click of a button, and newsgrouper is also far better
    because it is using major open news servers (e-s, blueworld), and
    the sysadmin made this source code available for public scrutiny:

    (using Tor Browser 14.0.1) https://chiselapp.com/user/cmacleod/repository/newsgrouper/home
    Newsgrouper - a web interface to usenet newsgroups
    This is the Tcl code used to run my site https://newsgrouper.org.uk.
    It is not currently in a form where it would be very easy for someone
    else to install, but I'm making it available just in case anyone is >interested. It has only been tested on Debian 12.
    I have moved confidential parameters like login credentials for the
    usenet server into config files, and I supply only dummy sample
    versions here. But there are many other things hard-coded which
    ideally would be configurable.
    Prerequisites
    Tcl 9.0
    Tk (only needed for the user_admin program)
    Tcllib
    Tclhttpd
    TclTls (if https support is wanted)
    Retcl (Tcl interface to Redis)
    Tclsqlite (Tcl interface to sqlite)
    Redis (any of the compatible forks should also work but I have not
    tested this)
    NNTP access to a usenet server
    X-Face support needs the uncompface program (for Debian this is
    part of the compface package)
    Downloads
    You can download the code from The Download Page. >https://chiselapp.com/user/cmacleod/repository/newsgrouper/download >Architecture
    Newsgrouper loads news headers and articles on-demand from one or
    more usenet servers. These are then cached locally for configurable
    times. This allows it to offer the full range of groups available
    on the server without needing huge local resources.
    The web server used here is Tclhttpd, which is itself implemented
    in Tcl. It is customised for this purpose by loading more Tcl code, >principally server/news_code.tcl which generates all the Newsgrouper
    web pages on demand.
    Communication with the usenet server(s) is delegated to separate
    newsgetter processes. Each of these opens one NNTP connection to a
    usenet server. Most servers will permit up to 4 concurrent
    connections per login, so up to 4 newsgetter processes can be run
    per server.
    There is also a newsutility process, currently its only job is to
    generate PNG images from X-Face headers.
    Coordination of these processes and caching of their results is
    done through Redis, using the DisTcl system - see >https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/DisTcl for more info about this.
    User login info, both for registered users and guests, is kept in
    a single sqlite table. A utility program user_admin can be used to
    initialise the database and to add registered users.
    Other user-specific info like their preferences and which groups
    they read is kept in Redis.
    License
    This software uses the ISC LICENSE:
    Copyright (c) 2024 Colin G. Macleod
    ...
    [end quoted plain text]

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