The Yapp conference (this conference)

This conference is intended to be for discussion about Yapp itself, and is linked between a number of systems around the country. It's open to anyone running Yapp who wants it.

Which systems is it linked to besides Matisse's and the Spring?

Do "finger yapp@umich.edu" and you'll get the list. There's about 9 of them.

OK - E-Mail Members: cfadm@thecity.sfsu.edu cflink@arbornet.org cflink@armidale.ann-arbor.mi.us cflink@chinet.chinet.com cflink@drizzle.com cflink@nether.net cflink@netmeg.ann-arbor.mi.us cflink@www.spring.com thalerd@dip.eecs.umich.edu yappconf@matisse.net

What are these different groups doing? I know about drizzle.com and matisse.net but some of the other ones are new to me. chinet? sfsu? nether? What are these?

Other systems. SFSU = San Francisco State University, Chinet is in Chicago, Nether.net is in Ypsilanti Michigan.

I'm totally new to this. Is this real time or asynchronous? If the latter, what's the delay in response time?

It's both. Your postings go up right away but most folks use this as a delayed time conferencing system. Feel free to roam around the new conferences (sports, apps, music, etc.) at http://www.spring.com on the web or via telnet.

Terry, how dumb should I feel that my questions are going to all those other locations on the mailing list. Pray tell for I do not like real or imagined snickering. Amy

Dont' worry about it. Any question is fair game, and if my answer is off target or I seem to miss the point, keep on asking.

Terry, you asked me to ask my question over here - but in which item

I just submitted the following question, but it disappeared into cyberspace. I shall try once again - Terry, you asked me to ask my question over here - but in which item?

Now I am really confused! I re-posted my question, and now the one that did not appear the first time has appeared - but not the second try! (I can hear the snickering already!)

Since this conference is linked to a mailing list, it takes a moment or so before it appears in the conference.

Hi, I posted this in the Austen conference, and Terry asked me to repost it here: OK - how do I change my log-in 'pseudonym' (nothing actually pseud about it) to read 'Anna' instead of 'Anna Price' ? I went into the change preferences section and I thought I had changed it, but when I came back here it had reverted to the first version. How do I make the change stick? yours informally, Anna to complicate matters I see that my pseudonym for Yapp is indeed 'Anna', whereas in Austen I remain 'Anna Price'. So I suppose the question should be how do I make the change show up in my old conference? in confusion, A

how do I make the change show up in my old conference? other than resign and rejoin that is. Or if I've got to resign and rejoin the Austen, is there a rapid way to mark all the topics as 'read' or do I have to work through them all again ? Anna

Anna, changing your name within a conference is another thing which is supported from the text-based interface, but the web interface needs to be configured to give you a way to do this. The release next month will have this feature included. In the meantime, the workaround is, as you've discovered, to resign and rejoin. And to answer your question about marking everything read, the answer is much the same: supported from the text-based interface, but the web interface hasn't been configured to give you a button to do this yet. This will also be released next month. (You Austen conference people are getting good at finding these things :)

In the meantime, the workaround is, as you've discovered, to resign and rejoin. Dave, thanks for reply. To complicate matters I just tried to remove Austen from my hot-list (I assume that's what you mean by resign?) and I got a 'url not found' for the delete command (I didn't think to copy the name of the url but presumably you know what it would be). This also happened when I resigned from books, but when I returned to the conference list books was no longer on my hotlist. However, despite 2 attempts austen in it's original incarnation is still on my hotlist, original pseudonym. This is of no great moment, but is mildly puzzling. any ideas as to what I should try next?

(You Austen conference people are getting good at finding these things :) _______________________ And you like this about us, right?

Anna, removing from the hotlist is not resigning. When you are at the main page of a conference, before you go into any topics, there is a button at the top of the page that says "Resign" - this is the one that you need, and as far as I know that is the only place that it is visible.

thanks Joan

I haven't asked this at the austen conf, but anticipate I'll be advised to ask dave at yapp--so here goes: When I try to call up topic #11 (the English Patient) in the Austen conf an "application error" message comes up, partly obscuring the first response. It reads: NETSCAPE caused a general Protection Fault in module USER.EXE at 000B:0009B. Any suggestions about what to do? The only choice in the message is "close" which terminates my entire internet session.

Sounds like a Netscape error vs. a yapp error but I could be wrong.

] "NETSCAPE caused a general Protection Fault " OOOh - the dreaded GPF? AS a Mac user, I have only heard DOS/Windoze folks complain about these, which I had understood to be OS errors rather than Netscape's OR yapp's.

BTW, if this is a gatewayed conference, does that mean that html is stripped out as the postings exit through the gateway, or is it assumed that all those receiving this conference are using html-aware software?

Cross posted from Austen Terry / David ; with respect to the sign-up screen, I expected that the name I specified as my nickname (anna) would be used as my pseudonym and my full name would appear in parentheses, if at all. Maybe if you changed the sign-on screens to check which name a new user wants to use as their default nick-name for the conferences you coud avoid most of the hassle with pseudonyms. The other thing about sign-up and defaults concerns the email address. Austen is a very friendly group and I don't mind having my email address as a tag there, but in some conferences I wouldn't want that to happen. I am happy for spring to have my email address if you want it for admin/security reasons, but have you considered giving people the option of not displaying it in conferences? This might be more important if junk email takes off in a big way.

These are good suggestions and I appreciate your concerns about email security. These are some good ideas for Dave to consider for his next release of Yapp.

I keep thinking about possible solutions to our need to see which message a new message is in response to. The link back feature sounds interesting, though I still cannot quite picture how it would work. Another work-around that works early in the day for a big group is the since -1 option, but there is no button for it here. Later in the day on a popular topic the since -1 one returns too many messages that I have already seen. What about something like this? A button that returns new messages plus the two previous messages. In this way, if a user is tempted to respond with a crptic line or two to the immediately previous message, the reader of the new messages can quickly see what the conversation is about. You could call it New +2. Amy P.S. (all silliness) My fondness for time travel stories has led me to wonder whether, if one specifies "since +1" in Yapp, one can read tomorrow's posts ; ]

See, you discovered another undocumented feature! I like that suggestion you made tomorrow.

Hullo from tommorow (0847 Sat) - I'm pleased to report a warm sunny day. ? A button that returns new messages plus the two previous messages. Or how about a button New + n that allows you to select how may old messages are included; it could be useful in the more complicated conferences

] New + n __________ Better and better

] Anna: Or how about a button New + n that allows you to select how may old messages are included; it could be useful in the more complicated conferences I was about to suggest this - late in the day a +2 would not be far enough back for people to know what "I think so, too" referred to. But I do also like the option to see all of the current day's postings - on a second login on a particular day it is still possible to see a posting that referrs back to the beginning of the day (or even farther, which is where the user-configurable option becomes very useful). Joan

Cross posted from Austen speaking of server errors; every time (x2) I try to forget a topic I get a server error message. When I went back to the topic I found that it had in fact been forgotten, despite the server's anxieties. The message I got went something like "the server could not process your request, please contact webmaster@spring.com and report the fault, the time and anything you may have done to cause the problem" since the server in fact had processed my request I didn't worry about it... I forget the times, I did nothing but click (once) on the 'forget' button (honest). This happened once while connected from home (netscape 2.01, win95, 14.4 k modem, isp ozemail.com.au) and once while connected at work (netscape 2.01, win 3.11, ethernet connection)

It did it again - this time I copied the error message; The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@spring.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. ~ 15 minutes ago I think ~ 1935 server time my actions were as described above

I've been having trouble getting to Yapp on the Spring. Here, as Terry requested, are the results of a traceroute done to www.spring.com: Find route to: www.spring.com. (208.199.212.10), Max 30 hops, 40 byte packets 1 max13.houston.tx.ms.uu.net. (207.76.6.19): 237 ms 214 ms 234 ms 2 ar1.houston.tx.ms.uu.net. (207.76.6.3): 249 ms 231 ms 165 ms 3 fddi0-0.cr1.hou1.alter.net. (137.39.37.2): 155 ms fddi0-0.cr2.hou1.alter.net. (137.39.37.3): 179 ms fddi0-0.cr1.hou1.alter.net. (137.39.37.2): 167 ms 4 112.hssi4-0.cr2.dfw1.alter.net. (137.39.59.6): 227 ms 112.hssi4-0.cr1.dfw1.alter.net. (137.39.30.241): 205 ms 112.hssi4-0.cr2.dfw1.alter.net. (137.39.59.6): 216 ms 5 fddi0-0.gw1.dfw1.alter.net. (137.39.37.34): 326 ms 327 ms 231 ms 6 prismnet-gw.alter.net. (137.39.138.30): 265 ms 242 ms 240 ms 7 wormhole.prismnet.com. (205.166.246.21): 238 ms 339 ms 217 ms 8 www.spring.com. (208.199.212.10): 169 ms 358 ms 221 ms �Trace completed� It seems to be working better now.

Minor oddities revisited. I attempted to link to a graphic in a post for the firs time (using the format [IMGSRC="http://www.bluemarble.net/~amyloo/data/groucho.gif"] where ] represent pointy brackets) and as I got an image icon instead of the pic I hit reload (I was in all since 7 days). Then that posted my message again ...I also lost all the images, including the 'wallpaper' and most of the buttons.

Anna, you need a space between img & src

thanks Amy

Is it possible to add a "conferences" button at the bottom, along with the "Main" button at the bottom of the page? It would make it a little quicker to navigate around after going through the hotlist. Thanks.

Is it possible to add a "conferences" button at the bottom, along with the "Main" button at the bottom of the page? It would make it a little quicker to navigate around after going through the hotlist. Thanks.

Now, why did that (double entry) happen? Only hit the submit button once.

A thought arising from this evening's ball (Austen topic 104). When one post's a new message to a topic it would be nice if the last message read and all the new messages before one's own were displayed, rather than just the message before one's own. Usually the message before one's own is the last message read, but if you get a group all posting at once there can be several messages in between. Then one has to remember the last message read and repost. I realise yapp isn't designed as 'chat' software, but having more than one person posting to a topic at once is bound to happen again, 16/12/97, if not before. (cross posted from Austen)

Several members of the Austen conference seem to be experiencing the "everything old is new again" syndrome. That is, what we have read suddenly becomes unread and when we choose new, the entire list pops up. I have just been through the list of topics and notice that some require two or three visits to convince them that they have been read. As we are a prolific group, this can be quite time consuming. Can something be done? Is it something we're doing?

As an addendum to 15:43 above, when this happens it is just as if one had resigned and then rejoined the conference. One's "pseudonym" name reverts to the one currently registered. (I signed onto Austen using the name I had formerly used on our old BB to avoid confusion with others having the same name, and then changed the way it was registered on Spring to my normal name. Now I hve to re-type my "pseudonm" manually every time, or else resign and re-set what I have already re-re-re read to new and have to read it again! What is really *badly* needed is a button that will move all pointers to the end and mark everything as seen when one wants or needs to "catch up" - as they say in the newsgroups. We are approaching 200 topics in Austen, some of which have close to 200 responses to them, and re-reading all of this manually just to get the pointer to the end is completely impractical! This has already happened to me twice this month; the first time I *did* re-read everything - only to have it happen again last night! :- Joan

If you have a shell account, you can type 'fixseen'. I can empathize Joan, because this happens to me sometimes in the 'apps' conference. I'll be glad to set up anyone having this problem with a shell account.

Anna writes: > When one post's a new message to a topic it would be nice if the last > message read and all the new messages before one's own were displayed, > rather than just the message before one's own. When you run Yapp from Unix, Yapp does work that way (and always has). I'll make sure the web interface does the same for the next release. -Dave

Dave and Terry, We have not dug deep enough into Yapp to know how much customization by conference is possible. I am aware the background gif can be changed from conference to conference by changing the default wallpaper parameter. But if we wanted to have our own buttons and link colors, is that also possible now -- or could it be with the new release? Amy

"I'll be glad to set up anyone having this problem with a shell account." Thanks, Terry, but this is not really a viable solution. Most web browser users do not want to have to learn how to use Telnet and deal with the Unix interface, and many of our people are actually complete beginners and totally dependent on the point-and-click interface; some have said that our conference is the very first posting that they have ever made anywhere. When the software misbehaves it is excessively confusing to these novices, and discourages them from participating. When the host software esses up, they often think that something they have done is responsible, and give up. Joan

Amy asked: > if we wanted to have our own buttons and link colors, is that also possible Yes, but it's not quite as easy as global configuration. You can put commands in the conference rc file by going to the bottom of the conference host page and selecting "rc: conference configuration commands", or from inside Yapp in Unix with "change rc". The tricky part is that you have to know what you want to define. Most of these are described in the admin guide. To specify an alternate gifs directory for instance, you would add: define gifs /new/full/path/name

You're absolutely right, we have to have a great web interface if we're going to compete with the likes of the WELL ( http://www.well.com ), Electric Minds ( http://www.minds.com ) and the other great web based conferencing systems that are setting a standard. But the WELl has proven that there will always be a place for telnet for the real power users. It's real important to clarify these issues to so Dave can make the next release even more powerful and more in a league with these kinds of players.

Terry and Dave, One of the appealing features of our old home was the ability to respond to a response iteratively. It made it easy to maintain and respond to a threaded discussion. I believe that there is general longing for this feature within the Austen conference. An enhancement of this sort would be met with great rejoicing. Myretta

I feel this would be a good feature if it could be turned on or off depending on the conference. For Dave, it might signify a major change in direction though. Is this pretty much the consensus of the participants in the austen conference?

To what are you referring, Terry? And to what am I referring? Without links between referents, nobody knows unless the author of a post goes to the trouble of including the response number and/or quoting what they are responding to. Myretta is now away from her computer till January, so I will attempt to field this question. For us Austenites, we came here from a site using software that both linked comments to their referents, AND quoted the referent in the response text entry window - including html coding. Both of these features would be wonderful to have - we all learned a bit of html painlessly in this manner - but the ability to link responses to the posts to which they refer is critical. At this point, we are trying to maintain our original spontenaiety in spite of, not assisted by, the software. And there are many ays on which I just plain don't make the effort to respond because it is more of an effort - I just lurk instead. You are right, though - for Dave it would mean a significant change in direction to permit this option, and it will be up to him as to whether he wants to do it. But if he doesn't, then I would definitely be interested in taking a look at other software options that might better meet our group's needs.

One solution would be to place the number of the post in a bracket like this [23] which when clicked would juxtapose that response with your response. Would this be useful if Dave implemented something like this?

How would "it" know which number to use? And what process would cause it to be placed there? Knowing absolutely nothing about these things, what would make sense to me would be to have a button or link or some such within each posting that could be clicked on when someone wanted to comment on that particular posting - and then such a linked response would have to add something linkable to the posting that was response to, so that people could choose to jump straight to any responses that were made befor going on with the topic chronologically. Does this make sense?

(The previous post reminds me to wonder whether the breaking of paragraphs arbitrarily (and losing of one character in the process) was one of the things that Dave already fixed.)

Anna writes: > To complicate matters I just tried to remove Austen from my hot-list > (I assume that's what you mean by resign?) and I got a > 'url not found' for the delete command (I didn't think to copy the > name of the url but presumably you know what it would be). This also > happened when I resigned from books, but when I returned to the > conference list books was no longer on my hotlist. Your system is probably missing a script from the distribution. You should have a file called /usr/bbs/www/cgi-bin/restricted/cflistdelete if your system is missing it, let us know so that we can get it to you. Kaylene

$ cd /usr/bbs/www/cgi-bin/restricted $ ls browse chfn help read tags censor createlist index readhidden test cfadd debug kill remember test-cgi cfconfig e list resign thaw cfcreate e2 main respond uncensor cfdelete edit participants retire unretire cfonce enter passwd retitle userinfo chacl find post-query scribble change forget preserve sysconfig changelist freeze query sysop No cflistdelete!

The script to delete an item from your hotlist (cflistdelete) is availble at ftp://armidale.ann-arbor.mi.us/pub/yapp/cflistdelete this script needs to be in your ~bbs/www/cgi-bin/restricted directory with the appropriate owner and permissions. Kaylene

Done!