Asp Forum - To all people writing BBS on Rails: let's join forces

Alexey Verkhovsky

10/14/2004 12:34:00 PM

I've noticed lately that there are at least four different projects
starting to build Bulletin Board System (a forum) on Rails.

Why couldn't we build one BBS, four times bigger and better instead? So
that we can look anyone in the eye and tell them that we have something
much better than (for argument's sake) phpBB!

I would like to invite anyone itching to build a BBS to participate in
my project (http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/...).
I would also like to join any project that is closer to production grade
(Ruby Forum is already "demonstrable", and 10-20 evenings away from
"barely useable for real life purposes").

One condition - it has to be a Rails app.

Best regards,
Alexey Verkhovsky

21 Answers

Jonas Hartmann

10/14/2004 12:41:00 PM

Kaspar Schiess

10/14/2004 12:48:00 PM

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Jonas Hartmann wrote:
| what happens if the best wiki engine on earth is written in ruby? what
| happens if the best free bulletin board on earth is written in ruby?
| what happens if the best cms on earth is written in ruby? (all os, gpl
| or at least bsd style)

So much sensibility on one spot, it might just implode and create a kind
of black hole.

Anyway, to add something here: there is rarely A single best thing. Not
that I want to stop you from trying...

kaspar

semantics & semiotics
code manufacture

www.tua.ch/ruby
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Jonas Hartmann

10/14/2004 12:54:00 PM

Kaspar Schiess wrote:
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>
> Jonas Hartmann wrote:
> | what happens if the best wiki engine on earth is written in ruby? what
> | happens if the best free bulletin board on earth is written in ruby?
> | what happens if the best cms on earth is written in ruby? (all os, gpl
> | or at least bsd style)
>
> So much sensibility on one spot, it might just implode and create a kind
> of black hole.
:-)

> Anyway, to add something here: there is rarely A single best thing. Not
> that I want to stop you from trying...
I thought about adding a part about "what is best" - but left it out,
cause i thought noone would care! :-p

I accept that this is in the eye of everyone, is a subjective thing.

Working on GPL'ed projects my opinion is that "best" means most subjects
who use it, like it and got very little need for changes and requests.

Another possibility would be to just go the sientific way and set the
"best" to something like finding the best ways to design software for a
specific task.

regards
Jonas

Kaspar Schiess

10/14/2004 1:09:00 PM

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Jonas Hartmann wrote:
| (...)

I see you have taken me seriously, which is probably more than I
deserved. I agree with your thoughts about 'the best'.

I would love to see a really good BBS written in Ruby.

kaspar

semantics & semiotics
code manufacture

www.tua.ch/ruby
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Andreas Schwarz

10/14/2004 1:11:00 PM

Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> I've noticed lately that there are at least four different projects
> starting to build Bulletin Board System (a forum) on Rails.
>
> Why couldn't we build one BBS, four times bigger and better instead? So
> that we can look anyone in the eye and tell them that we have something
> much better than (for argument's sake) phpBB!
>
> I would like to invite anyone itching to build a BBS to participate in
> my project (http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/...).
> I would also like to join any project that is closer to production grade
> (Ruby Forum is already "demonstrable", and 10-20 evenings away from
> "barely useable for real life purposes").

Hello,

I'm one of the people who are building a forum with Rails.

What I have at the moment is:

At the model level:
* Tree structure with nested set (mainly for the NNTP References header)
* Creating new topics, replying to posts
* Voting for posts
* Topic subscriptions (to receive notifications of new posts)
* User registration/login
* prepared for NNTP server integration (Message-IDs, NNTP-IDs,
References header)
* Unit tests for most of the functions
* A working NNTP server with reading, posting and user authentication
(written for an experimental forum I had built a few months ago, not yet
adapted to the new data structure)

Controller/View:
* Forum list
* Topic list
* Topic view (flat)
* Posting replies
* Registration/Login
* Colored quoting levels
* Anonymous posting

The post text is wrapped to ~72 character lines when it is posted and by
default displayed in a <pre>, so that it is possible to include indented
source code and ASCII-schematics. "> " is used for quotings, like in
mails/usenet. Because the line wrapping is done with format=flowed, it
is easy to remove the line wrapping for users who want a view like
normal HTML pages; the quoting level is preserved and represented by
colored lines at the left border (like in Mozilla).

What I (and most of the users) do NOT want is:
* BB-Code or HTML
* User icons
* Smilies
* Everything else phpBB has ;)

What is still missing:
* Controller & Views for most of the stuff mentioned above
* Functional tests
* File Attachments
* NNTP server integration
* a lot more, don't get fooled by the long feature lists above

When I am writing "the users" I am referring to the users of my forum on
http://www.mikrocontroller.....

The license will probably be GPL or BSD or something like that.

Andreas

--
http://www.mikrocont... - Das Mikrocontroller-Forum

gabriele renzi

10/14/2004 1:19:00 PM

Andreas Schwarz ha scritto:

> What I (and most of the users) do NOT want is:
> * BB-Code or HTML
> * User icons
> * Smilies
> * Everything else phpBB has ;)

I agree on avoiding bbcode, user icons and smlies.. but a simple markup
system is imho useful. Maybe textile :)

Andreas Schwarz

10/14/2004 1:49:00 PM

gabriele renzi wrote:
> Andreas Schwarz ha scritto:
>
>
>> What I (and most of the users) do NOT want is:
>> * BB-Code or HTML
>> * User icons
>> * Smilies
>> * Everything else phpBB has ;)
>
>
> I agree on avoiding bbcode, user icons and smlies.. but a simple markup
> system is imho useful. Maybe textile :)

This might be is difficult to combine with usenet style quoting, and I
actually never had a feature request for this. I am already creating
links from URLs and doing some basic formatting for _this_, /this/ and
*this*, that seems to be sufficient.

Another reason for why I don't need and want a full markup system is
that I don't want the users to abuse the forum as a content management
system (like it is often done with phpBB), because a Wiki is much better
suited for this task.

--
http://www.mikrocont... - Das Mikrocontroller-Forum

David Ross

10/14/2004 2:03:00 PM

Curt Hibbs

10/14/2004 2:19:00 PM

Andreas Schwarz wrote:
>
> gabriele renzi wrote:
> > Andreas Schwarz ha scritto:
> >
> >
> >> What I (and most of the users) do NOT want is:
> >> * BB-Code or HTML
> >> * User icons
> >> * Smilies
> >> * Everything else phpBB has ;)
> >
> >
> > I agree on avoiding bbcode, user icons and smlies.. but a simple markup
> > system is imho useful. Maybe textile :)
>
> This might be is difficult to combine with usenet style quoting, and I
> actually never had a feature request for this. I am already creating
> links from URLs and doing some basic formatting for _this_, /this/ and
> *this*, that seems to be sufficient.
>
> Another reason for why I don't need and want a full markup system is
> that I don't want the users to abuse the forum as a content management
> system (like it is often done with phpBB), because a Wiki is much better
> suited for this task.

You should consider bluecloth, since it is a formatter for standard
clear-text markup conventions like _this_, /this/ and *this*.

Curt

Florian Gross

10/14/2004 2:20:00 PM

Andreas Schwarz wrote:

> gabriele renzi wrote:
>> Andreas Schwarz ha scritto:
>>> What I (and most of the users) do NOT want is:
>>> * BB-Code or HTML
>> I agree on avoiding bbcode, user icons and smlies.. but a simple
>> markup system is imho useful. Maybe textile :)
> This might be is difficult to combine with usenet style quoting, and I
> actually never had a feature request for this. I am already creating
> links from URLs and doing some basic formatting for _this_, /this/ and
> *this*, that seems to be sufficient.

What about using Markdown via BlueCloth? It looks a lot like what is
used on newsgroups anyway:

http://bluecloth.ruby...

Regards,
Florian Gross

comp.lang.ruby

To all people writing BBS on Rails: let's join forces

Alexey Verkhovsky

Jonas Hartmann

Kaspar Schiess

Jonas Hartmann

Kaspar Schiess

Andreas Schwarz

gabriele renzi

Andreas Schwarz

David Ross

Curt Hibbs

Florian Gross

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