Exciting stuff!

Mon Jun 04 2018 11:00:47 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

It's a pretty obvious change when you think about how web software is done now.  It still bugs me to have to "start over" in a sense, but when the WebCit project was started in 1996 I really didn't know what I was doing.  It was a couple of CGI scripts clumsily lashed to a server process that talked to Citadel, and presenting a UI using any weird hack I could manage.  The design pattern was wrong, the code was badly laid out, and the built-in web server was bolted on four years later, adding more spaghetti to the code.  The templating language seemed like a good idea at the time, and the implementation was pretty powerful, but it made code maintenance almost impossible.

webcit-ng is written very cleanly, with good separation between layers, and avoiding some of the design mistakes made in other parts of the system.  For example, we pass all of the state of both the HTTP transaction and the Citadel session up and down the stack instead of constantly querying for thread-specific data.  And to be honest, there are places where big chunks of code are being brought over from legacy webcit to webcit-ng, but they're being cleaned up and fitted into the new program instead of trying to fix what was in the old program.

It's a great little project and I'm really happy with what we've built so far.  But that's part of what's making it take so long.  And of course it doesn't have a UI yet.  :)

Looking forward to it IG, but I share your practicality.  Still wish I had time to come up to speed on things and help in this effort.

P.S. I did not get back to the folks that were using the now deprecated citadel room sharing code.  I figure that will be locked in time (i.e. until they re-flash something and decide to test some update at a future date).  Hoping I get the time to explain all the new and exiting changes you folks are planning for the future to share with them when I am able to spend more time on implementation bits.

I am also happy to hear that you have an ear for the passion for taking in the best bits out there.  Keep up the good fight and know that your efforts (and all the Citadel coders) efforts are used and appreciated.  You are all unsung heroes as far as I am concerned.

True.  I had not thought of exploring the room features.  I had used the mailing lists in the past (great feature that goes underused I think).  The RSS feed is one I use every day though.  Another great feature.  Been doing a bit of Gopher lately for movie listings without any ads, weather reports, browsing the news.  Feels nice to be able to get the content without all the rest of the crap - same way the RSS feed does for me.  It also has the feel of using the text client (sort of).

I have been using the movim social networking/xmpp system, and truly love it - just as i love Citadel. So i just created a chatroom for anybody that might be interested on Uncensored.

https://nl.movim.eu/?login/pCWx8ntu