• New Index Reader

    From Avon@21:1/101 to g00r00 on Sun Feb 17 13:59:08 2019
    Just a suggestion for consideration.

    When a user looks at the screen like this

    [snip]

    ░ Message Base Listings All Groups ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │ N Area Description Total New Yours Last Post ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │
    │ ─ fsxNet ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    │ NEW BBS Support/Dev 5,763 1 0 16 Feb 2019
    │ Automated roBOT Posts 24,643 0 0 16 Feb 2019
    │ Cryptographics 629 0 0 10 Jan 2019
    │ General Chat 53,868 0 0 17 Feb 2019
    │ InterBBS Data 3,576 0 0 17 Feb 2019
    │ Magicka BBS Support/Dev 440 0 0 16 Feb 2019
    │ Mystic BBS Support/Dev 12,948 0 0 17 Feb 2019

    [snip]

    Do you think it might be possible to allow the sysop to define some brief descriptive text that explains something about the message group? An
    extension of this idea would to be allow the same kind of thing for individual message bases if some descriptive text were provided.

    Options to do something along these lines could be to add an extra field in
    the message group editor to allow a short description to be added

    Then in the msg_index.ini create

    [Options]
    ; Show short group descriptions if available as part of default view

    group_descriptions = true

    ; Define extended information to be displayed when short description is
    ; selected. Save these as .txt files in the TEXT directory

    group_desc_1 = fsxnet.txt
    group_desc_2 = fidonet.txt

    Perhaps a toggle key like this in the UI

    CTRL-I Toggle between showing/hiding message group descriptions

    Then if the user pressed enter on the displayed short description text Mystic would clear the screen an display the extended text description supplied by
    the sysop e.g. fsxnet.txt

    It's all just a thought but I figured it could add value to the readers experience and offer some more info about what they were look it.

    Best, Paul

    --- E:avon@bbs.nz ------ W:bbs.nz ---
    --- K:keybase.io/avon --------------

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/02/15 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From g00r00@21:1/108 to Avon on Sat Feb 16 20:17:40 2019
    Perhaps a toggle key like this in the UI

    CTRL-I Toggle between showing/hiding message group descriptions

    Then if the user pressed enter on the displayed short description text Mystic would clear the screen an display the extended text description supplied by the sysop e.g. fsxnet.txt

    I love this idea. But I have a spin on it.

    The thing I am struggling with is where to put that information on the screen. If I were to put it down where the "Tagged: 0" etc is, there would be one or two lines taken away from the actual scrolling window and the description would have to be less than around 150 characters.

    What if we instead had the option to associate a display file (or Python or MPL script) to each group. Then the user could press a key and if that file or script exists it will be displayed or executed. This would allow so much more flexibility, because you could even build a script to allow people to view group information and download the FSX infopack right from the description, or telnet to the hub BBS or whatever ideas you can come up with.

    Or if you're not the scripting type you can make a nice ANSI file with tons of information. Maybe even replace the file with an entire menu and allow them to download the infopack or do whatever without scripting. But more to come on that idea hopefully ;)

    We can't use CTRL+I because that is what tags message bases (CTRL-I is the TAB key) but maybe CTRL+D is free. I really love this idea.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/02/15 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to g00r00 on Mon Feb 18 00:46:40 2019
    On 16 Feb 2019 at 03:17p, g00r00 pondered and said...

    I love this idea. But I have a spin on it.

    Thanks :)

    The thing I am struggling with is where to put that information on the screen. If I were to put it down where the "Tagged: 0" etc is, there
    would be one or two lines taken away from the actual scrolling window
    and the description would have to be less than around 150 characters.

    I agree, I just thought if the group name itself could be selected that
    it could bring up the full screen of info. That's one option. Another option I also thought of was to just toggle a limited description view on/off to
    display 1-2 lines of text below the group name in the main message body
    area. The user could select this, press enter and bring up the full screen of info.

    You're correct that 2 lines of message bases would be used up if the toggle brief descriptions were on. I wouldn't suggest the Tagged: Showing: lines should be messed with if this option was explored.

    What if we instead had the option to associate a display file (or Python or MPL script) to each group. Then the user could press a key and if
    that file or script exists it will be displayed or executed. This would allow so much more flexibility, because you could even build a script to allow people to view group information and download the FSX infopack
    right from the description, or telnet to the hub BBS or whatever ideas
    you can come up with.

    Yep mostly the same ideas as I have suggested, I'm just trying to figure out what is the upfront visual cue that alerts users to this information?

    Or if you're not the scripting type you can make a nice ANSI file with tons of information. Maybe even replace the file with an entire menu
    and allow them to download the infopack or do whatever without
    scripting. But more to come on that idea hopefully ;)

    Sounds flash :)

    We can't use CTRL+I because that is what tags message bases (CTRL-I is
    the TAB key) but maybe CTRL+D is free. I really love this idea.

    OK coolio, well take from it what you will and see where the digital chips fall, I just thought I'd drop it into the mix as a suggestion. Thanks for having a look at it sometime and for the positive feedback. :)

    Best, Paul

    --- E:avon@bbs.nz ------ W:bbs.nz ---
    --- K:keybase.io/avon --------------

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/02/15 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)