TDPL a bad idea?

[Yigal Chripun]

On 03/02/2010 09:19, Lutger wrote:
> On 02/03/2010 02:42 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>>>> I've thought about building such a system for these forums many times.
>>>> Registration would not be required to post, but registering would
>>>> enable
>>>> features like voting on posts, establishing a profile, preferences,
>>>> etc.
>>>
>>> That sounds awesome. Another useful feature would be storing session
>>> info in the profile such that if I read a post at work the post will
>>> be marked as such when I use a different computer/news-reader like my
>>> home PC.
>>
>> Yup. What I hate about reddit/slashdot/ycombinator is there's no way to
>> mark ones I've read as read. On a long thread, it's really hard to see
>> if there's anything new.
>>
>>
>>> wouldn't it be easier to just use web forums (there are many existing
>>> system with all the bells and whistles) and write a news-gateway for
>>> it than to implement all the features for the current news-server?
>>> it'll also fix the currently broken web interface for the NG.
>>
>> They all suck. Sorry.
>>
>> Most use far too much vertical space, spreading the thread out over
>> multiple pages, or don't indent a threaded view. And *none* of them have
>> the ability to mark what you've read.
>
> I know that at least vBulletin and phpBB can do mark-as-read, it's just
> that not everybody uses it. Most of the more 'advanced' forum software
> like this however, is stacked with community features and geared towards
> markup heavy posting. They would require extensive hacking to adapt to a
> more efficient system.
>
> vBulletin also has a (sucky) threaded view btw.
>
>

that's the beauty of the proposal, you don't have to use the web forum 
interface. you'll continue using your favorite news-reader which will 
use the forum back-end to store the messages. all those dis-advantages 
both you and Walter mention are in the web forum's UI, not their back-end.

also, I found http://pessoal.org/papercut/ which implements a NTTP 
server gateway to phpBB and other back-ends. it's written in python and 
would be easy to enhance.

also, I want to emphasize, you can also post with that gateway and it is 
not only for reading.