ack@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy J. Williams) (05/17/88)
*** A little long, advice NEEDED! ***
I am writing a rather large BBS package for use on our Appletalk Network
here at Dartmouth College and I would like a little advice. The program
will be a Macintosh front end to a VPL1 Server running on a mainframe here.
The Server will contain
All the netnews groups we receive (circa 200-300 last count)
All the newsgroups which will be read locally
and maybe a Finger User option and a conference system.
The big problem has been designing a user interface which presents, say, 300
newsgroups to the user in a very simple form that even a complete neophyte
can understand and know what to do (Intuitive programming) Note that I
intend to follow the Mac Interface guidelines very closely.
Some of the ideas have been basically: Present something akin to SFGetFile
which allows a heirarchical selecting of the news. (Treating comp and sys
and mac as successive layers in a heirarchical tree). I object to this as
it is rather dry and can be imposing to a new user. Other ideas has been a
fairly involved selection scheme which, once you have decided which groups
you want and dont want, allows you to save macros which you click on to get
the groups you want.
The questions I have been asking are: What would be the easiest to use?
What would be the most intuitive? What would present the most information
in the simplest way? etc. Remember, we are talking about 300 + groups.
Any advive, snatches of code, or anything is welcomed and very encouraged!
-Andy J. Williams
Andy J. Williams '90 |Ack Systems: ack@eleazar.dartmouth.edu| _ /|
Software Development +--------------------------------------+ \`o_O' ACK!
Kiewit Computation Center|Hello. My $NAME is ~inigo_montoya. | ( ) /
Dartmouth College |You killed my process. Prepare to vi.| Ukorn@eris (Peter "Arrgh" Korn) (05/17/88)
In <8465@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>, ack@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy J. Williams) said: >I am writing a rather large BBS package for use on our Appletalk Network >here at Dartmouth College and I would like a little advice. The program >will be a Macintosh front end to a VPL1 Server running on a mainframe here. >The Server will contain > > All the netnews groups we receive (circa 200-300 last count) > All the newsgroups which will be read locally > and maybe a Finger User option and a conference system. > >The big problem has been designing a user interface which presents, say, 300 >newsgroups to the user in a very simple form that even a complete neophyte >can understand and know what to do (Intuitive programming) Hmmm... I've been thinking that when (and if) I get uucp up and running on my mac, I'll want a user interface to choose what netnews groups to read. While reading your posting, I got an idea: In a menu somewhere (be it a pop up from a configure dialog that allowed you to set things like kill files, etc., or from a pull down that's located on the menu bar) you have the entire list of groups available. The user will have to be able to scan the list at some point, and breaking it up in this fashion seems reasonable. Items that were marked for reading would have a checkmark on them; items unsubscribed would have another mark by them, etc. This full list would then feed into a second menu, which was basically your .newsrc (the analogy holds for those who use rn to read netnews). Unread news would have a mark on the menu, etc. The user could pick and choose which groups to read by selecting them from the menu. Alternately more advanced users could type the names of the newsgroups in a box somewhere. A default would be to simply cycle through the groups on the 'read list' from top to bottom (as currently in rn). As NewGroup messages come in, the program would have to update the master menu list. Somewhere in the custom WDEF would be a bunch of controls to do various things. One would indicate that the user wants to read the next posting with the title of the current posting. Another would kill all postings with that title, etc. One would have to pick and choose as to which controls would be in the window. Or, alternately, the user could customize their interface, placing whichever controls *they* wanted to have available at all times on their window, with the ones they didn't tend to user not cluttering their window border. Multiple windows are a must; with the user being able to read several different articles at once; respond to several at once, cut & paste at will. An ideal addition would be a parser that removes all hard <CR>s (with some kind of hueristic to sence when <CR>s are intentional...) and format the messages in whatever size window was desired. Replies should be written in whatever size window the user desired; hard <CR>s always carried over, and <CR>s added in just before the message was sent off to the server (unless our server could do all of this for us). Font should be the user's choice. The Mail headers should be hidable from users that don't want to fuss with them. Ideally some interface to pathalias would exist on the server side. However, users that want to muck with that stuff must be allowed to. Never *ever* assume that the computer is smarter than the user. If by chance it is, the user will discover it in due time. When it's not, the user shouldn't be forced. As with MacTerminal, the user should be able to print selections, as well as entire messages. Also the user should be able to save selections (by selection I mean an artibrary string of text that the user selects with the cursor by dragging over it). A possible "behind the user's back" that might be added is saving the headers of any message that a user saves in the resource fork of the document, so that the user doesn't have to do that seperately in order to retain attribution. Selecting discontiguous text would be nice (automagically insert elipsis as appropiate [on a new line of the skip is over a <CR>, or on the same line if the skip doesn't cross a <CR>] so that the user doesn't have to go to the trouble -- this option should be turn off-able). Certainly not a necessity in version 1.0! Incorporating MacPaint pictures, TIFF, etc. etc. would also be nice, especially if a lot of intra-campus messages are exchanged. Perhaps in the "news group" data structure you would have a boolean that indicated whether or not mac graphics were appropiate for this group and disallow posting to "real" newsgroups. A vi/emacs editor would be nice for those that want it and are used to it. And lastly, a very snazzy About box is without question the only classy way to go on a program that does all this. Hmmm... and this was to be a quick note detailing some of my ideas... Anyone out there have anything different? Anything you would change? Peter "the dreamer" Korn -- Peter "Arrgh" Korn korn@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU {decvax,dual,hplabs,sdcsvax,ulysses}!ucbvax!korn
dkovar@bbn.com (David C. Kovar) (05/17/88)
I sent this directly to Andy but as it seems to be of general interest, I'll post it as well. The Andrew system at Carnegie Mellon University provides mail and message support. The system runs on various workstations (RTs, Suns, and uVaxes) and is introduced to the entire freshman class each year. Last I saw of it, it was very easy to learn for the beginner and quite powerful for the expert. Just before I left, we started porting the mail and messages program over to the Macintosh. (It'd already been put on to the IBM PC.) You might want to contact CMU and see what sort of documentation they have on the current system. I'm reluctant to hand out names of people at CMU that you might contact but if they are reading this group perhaps they could provide a pointer to documentation. Lacking that, I'd be willing to describe the Mac interface as it was before I left. -David Kovar DKovar@BBN.COM
dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David M. O'Rourke) (05/17/88)
In article <8465@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> ack@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy J. Williams) writes: >The big problem has been designing a user interface which presents, say, 300 >newsgroups to the user in a very simple form that even a complete neophyte >can understand and know what to do (Intuitive programming) Note that I >intend to follow the Mac Interface guidelines very closely. > >Some of the ideas have been basically: Present something akin to SFGetFile >which allows a heirarchical selecting of the news. (Treating comp and sys >and mac as successive layers in a heirarchical tree). I object to this as >it is rather dry and can be imposing to a new user. Other ideas has been a >fairly involved selection scheme which, once you have decided which groups >you want and dont want, allows you to save macros which you click on to get >the groups you want. the tree concept works! But do it in a "finder" style interface. Draw the windows with folders, and so forth. You've used the finder, steal it's interface. Also if you get a chance log on to AppleLink and take a look at what they are doing, it's kinda neat. David M. O'Rourke +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ | dorourke@polyslo | Disclaimer: All opinions in this message are mine, but | | | if you like them they can be yours too. | | | Besides I'm just a student so what do I | | | know! | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | When you have to place a disclaimer in your mail you know it's a sign | | that there are TOO many Lawyer's. | +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ack@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy J. Williams) (05/19/88)
In article <24612@bbn.COM> dkovar@bbn.com (David C. Kovar) writes: > The Andrew system at Carnegie Mellon University provides mail and message >support. The system runs on various workstations (RTs, Suns, and uVaxes) >and is introduced to the entire freshman class each year. Last I saw of it, >it was very easy to learn for the beginner and quite powerful for the >expert. >-David Kovar > DKovar@BBN.COM Thanks David, If anyone at CMU would contact me, that sounds quite like what I need. Something easy to use. Also, thanks to all who have sent mail and postings with advice, it is helping! Keep it coming!!! When we decide on a final interface I will post to the net describing it if there is an interest. -Andy ---------- Andy J. Williams '90 |Ack Systems: ack@eleazar.dartmouth.edu| _ /| Software Development +--------------------------------------+ \`o_O' ACK! Kiewit Computation Center|Hello. My $NAME is ~inigo_montoya. | ( ) / Dartmouth College |You killed my process. Prepare to vi.| U