New DigitalMars D newsgroups/forum

[Denis Koroskin]

On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:19:42 +0300, Jarrett Billingsley  
<jarrett.billingsley at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 2:42 AM, Denis Koroskin <2korden at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>> On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:37:07 +0300, BCS <ao at pathlink.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Reply to Denis,
>>>
>>>> I have been working on new newsgroups archive last few days. This is
>>>> an newsgroup posts archive structured in a way so that it feels more
>>>> like a forum (that's what you demanded, right?).
>>>
>>> COOL
>>>
>>> I hit this page:  http://dnews.naxx.ru/topic.php?id=117556   and it
>>> started trying to download and save files. Is that a bug?  (FF2)
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Hm... Yes, it's bug.
>>
>> I tested it with Opera 10 and Internet Explorer and it works fine for  
>> them.
>> I have changed file extension to htm, this should fix the problem.
>
> Awesome, the text displays in-line now.  (The content also spans the
> whole width of the screen, thanks.)
>
> However the text doesn't wrap to the size of the content box, and has
> scrollbars on it..?  For example:
>
> http://dnews.naxx.ru/topic.php?id=110721
>
> It makes it terribly difficult to read.
>

I am aware of this issue and has a fix for it. Message will be  
automatically adjusted to fit into screen so no scrollbar anymore.

> I see you're using an iframe to hold the contents of the posts.  Any  
> reason?

There are two of them and both are minor:

1) Posts have different encodings (some are utf8, others are latin1,  
windows1251, windows1254, koi8-r etc). Perhaps I could use iconv (or  
similar tool) to convert them all into utf8...
2) Storing messages separately reduces database size and page loading time.

They also have some disadvantages:
1) Page may jerk a little during frames loading and adjustment
2) I bet messages won't be indexed by Google properly :(

Initially I wanted to host messages on several different server to further  
reduce workaload and improve speed alittle, but now I am not sure if it is  
reasonable. Unfortunately, adjusting frames from cross domain doesn't  
work. And putting them into the same domain doesn't differ from putting  
them into a database.

So I'll most probably switch to a database solution. Today, perhaps.

BTW, there are other newsgroup on DigitalMars.com (rangelib, electronics,  
empire, c++ etc), does anyone use them? Should I import them, too?