• RIPscrip (article on Tedium)

    From Oli@21:3/102 to All on Thu Aug 13 13:11:35 2020
    Web the RIPper

    Most people remember bulletin board systems as having chunky text-based graphics. One developer tried fixing that, but RIPscrip ran head-first into the web.

    Bulletin boards, love them or hate them, quickly became relics of their time for a few reasons. One of the most visible, for obvious reasons, was the graphics. Say what you will about the gracefulness of a text interface with colorful ANSI graphics, but for many consumers, it could simply not compete with the literal photos and graphical user interfaces of the World Wide Web. Bulletin board operators, some of whom had built out sizable businesses around their onetime hobbies, were aware of this problem, though, and were trying to help build a second life for their systems that modernized them for the next generation. And that meant getting graphical. Problem was, the digital climate was moving too fast even for nice graphics. Today’s Tedium talks about efforts to give BBSes graphics and why RIPscrip, as the most popular effort was called, might have been secretly ahead of its time. — Ernie @ Tedium

    [...]

    Full article: https://tedium.co/2020/07/21/bbs-graphics-history-ripscrip-naplps/

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    * Origin: (21:3/102)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Oli on Thu Aug 13 22:07:15 2020
    simply not compete with the literal photos and graphical user interfaces of the World Wide Web. Bulletin board operators, some of whom had built
    ...
    getting graphical. Problem was, the digital climate was moving too fast even for nice graphics.

    TIL that the web (the WWW portion, not the internet) came about, in some
    form, before RIPscrip.

    ...though I'm still not certain on that. But RIPscrip was released in 1992,
    and evidently the web project started by 1991. I thought WWW stuff was
    released in 1994, and I _think_ that's still the beginning of the commercial web.

    Regardless, interesting article. Thanks for sharing.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to Adept on Fri Aug 14 18:01:00 2020
    On 08-13-20 18:07, Adept wrote to Oli <=-

    ...though I'm still not certain on that. But RIPscrip was released in 1992, and evidently the web project started by 1991. I thought WWW

    Something like that.

    stuff was released in 1994, and I _think_ that's still the beginning of the commercial web.

    I first encountered a web site in late 1994-early 1995 and thought it was a neat idea, even in the Lynx text based browser. Commercial use didn't start until 1996, when the US backbone was opened to commercial operation, then the web exploded.


    ... A University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
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  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Vk3jed on Fri Aug 14 23:53:02 2020
    was a neat idea, even in the Lynx text based browser. Commercial use didn't start until 1996, when the US backbone was opened to commercial operation, then the web exploded.

    What exactly are you defining as "Commercial use"? Amazon.com was registered
    in November 1994.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to Adept on Mon Aug 17 00:07:00 2020
    On 08-14-20 19:53, Adept wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    was a neat idea, even in the Lynx text based browser. Commercial use didn't start until 1996, when the US backbone was opened to commercial operation, then the web exploded.

    What exactly are you defining as "Commercial use"? Amazon.com was registered in November 1994.

    I'm just going on the history, and companies could register domains before 1996 - .com has been around a very long time. But I'm sure the backbone was privatised in 1996, which is when the .com boom started.


    ... TENDERLOIN: The tender part of the loin, what did you expect?
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