Please wait...
Should look into 9Front, and perhaps Mothra browser
Mon Apr 15 2024 15:43:12 EDT from darknetuserI use the terminal specifically because it allows me to visit Uncensored without having to commit 1.5 gigabytes of RAM torunning a bloated bew browser that is not necessary at all.
Should look into 9Front, and perhaps Mothra browser
just keep in mind that mothra doesn't do JS. it might work on the current webcit (I'll have to try it) but doubtful it will work with the new one, and definitely not with xterm.js.
I find the mouse inefficient. I'll use it when I need to, but if I can do what I need to do without it, i'll skip it. i'm quite fond of the text client for that reason, but wouldn't be objectionable to something like xterm.js either. i'd spin it up in a minimal browser and just let it sit there, alt-tab to it when i wanted to use it. Which is pretty much how I survive modern OS's anyway.
What do you think? Do you use the text client because it's your
preferred experience and you don't care what software provides it, or
do you use it specifically because it doesn
't require a browser?
The second one. The environment that I connect from does not even have X (or Wayland, or Windows, you get the idea).
If you need some extra hands on the text client, I might be able to make some of my time available as a way of giving back.
But those are things that require a bit more of a controlled environment, which xterm.js would be.
Also I uninstalled Kitty after finding out how widely the rest of the industry is working to standardize Sixel graphics.
I have noticed that when I connect to the Uncensored Citalde instance, it spills some weird characters just after the access prompt that look quite like color control?
My current terminal is xterm and it gives me a black and white Citadel experience. I tried with a different Terminal emulator and got a full colorful rainbow experience so that is when I realized there is color support.
When you connect to the client, it sends out a terminal inquiry and waits one second. Just about any modern terminal will answer back with its capabilities, and the Citadel client then knows that it's dealing with a reasonably ANSI-capable terminal so it will display the client in color.
If there is no answer, we assume a "dumb" terminal and output no color or any other terminal control sequences. I just tried it with xterm and got full color, so I'm not sure what is different between my xterm and your xterm.
But I thought you were accessing Uncensored using a locally installed copy of the client and connecting over the darknet?
2024-09-09 21:30 from IGnatius T Foobar
Yes. There were some changes to it just a couple of days ago but it's
always been more or less like this --
When you connect to the client, it sends out a terminal inquiry and
waits one second. Just about any modern terminal will answer back with
its capabilities, and the Citadel client then knows that it's dealing
with a reasonably ANSI-capable terminal so it will display the client
in color.
If there is no answer, we assume a "dumb" terminal and output no color
or any other terminal control sequences. I just tried it with xterm
and got full color, so I'm not sure what is different between my xterm
and your xterm.
But I thought you were accessing Uncensored using a locally installed
copy of the client and connecting over thedarknet?
Then I bet the problem is the terminal capabilities enquiry is likely to take more than one second over i2p and cause unreliable results XD
I have a standard i2p tunnel running on a router which points to Uncensored's telnet i2p service. I connect to that tunnel remoely using a VPN through sucky networks. Latency is bound to be bad.
I have a standard i2p tunnel running on a router which points to
Uncensored's telnet i2p service. I connect to that tunnel remoely using
a VPN through sucky networks. Latency is bound to be bad.
Oooh, that might do it. And I fear that making the detect loop more than one second might be a big turnoff for people on low latency fast networks.
Do you have a machine on which you could run your own copy of the client?
The user experience is far better that way anyway.
Hey text client users ... let me get your opinion on a change I am considering. Since the Citadel system has a long standing tradition (nearly 43 years, if you go back as far as the CP/M version) I do not take this lightly.
One of the original design tenets of the Citadel BBS, which was a text-only experience from its 1981 inception until WebCit 1.0 in 1996, was that each room is presented as a single linear thread. There were no "threads", no "topics", and until we added quoting (a feature which made some people very upset) there wasn't even a "Reply" feature. If you wanted to reply to a message, you stopped reading and then hit "Enter message".
The modern Citadel system does keep track of thread references. When you select "Reply", the message you create is stamped with the identity of the message to which you are replying. If you view a thread in an IMAP client, for example, you'll see the entire flow of a thread preserved and presented in the correct order. We use the standard semantics so it works between hosts, across all software, etc. And it works in message board rooms as well as email rooms.
But when someone is reading through a message board room in the text client, if they hit "Stop" and then "Enter" it obviously doesn't do that; it "begins a new thread" but our old-school text client denizen neither knows nor cares that this is happening.
So here is my proposal; let me know what you think about it:
Today I am committing a change to the text client that changes the "Enter message" command to "Enter message (begin a new thread)". I am also considering an increase to the gravitas of this change by enforcing a "Subject:" prompt on new threads. This effects a change in text client culture that makes users think in terms of threaded conversations instead of each room just being a free-running string of messages. Important: there would not be a "threaded view" in the text client; messages would still be presented in each room in the order they were entered; we are just trying to discourage the behavior of selecting "Enter message" when the "Reply" command is more appropriate.
Here are the benefits:
WebCit-NG is already presenting public rooms as a "Forums" app that bears resemblance to the way users expect a "web forum" to look in the modern era. Although the "Go to next room with new messages" button is still there and will always be there, the "list of rooms" appears as a list of forums, one per line, grouped by floors (so there's still categorization). But if we can enforce the behavior of "new topic" vs "reply" in the text client, we can also enforce this in WebCit, and make it LOOK that way. In other words, the user can opt to list out topics/threads within a room instead of just the entire room.
Here are the drawbacks:
Someone, somewhere, is likely to say "But muh Citadel tradition!" The thing that made Citadel famous during the dialup era was that it didn't do any of that. Citadel was minimalist in that once you entered a room, you simply continued the conversation that was already there. Or you didn't. It didn't matter. There were no threads, there wasn't even the ability to add a Subject to a message.
So what do you think?
Is this diversion from tradition worth it? Is there anyone left who cares? We are weighing the benefit of attracting users based on Citadel being usable as a modern, cutting-edge message board system (in addition to all the other things it does now) vs. the weight of breaking with tradition. I will always try to keep the text client experience as traditional as possible. If it were possible to pull CrT out of hell and sit him down in front of a terminal, he ought to be able to recognize the modern text client as a "real" Citadel BBS.
So what say you, text client users? If we make it clear that the "Enter message" command now constitutes "Beginning a new thread" is that so disruptive that it shouldn't be done? Or are the benefits worth it?
I have no dog in this race, and against my normal 'i hate change' 'get off my lawn' sort of attitude, but my 2 cents is that its 2024, its time to move forward.
Hi!!
Just wondering if telnet into uncensored IS what we are referring to as the text client. I read through the entire support thread and could find no info on how to use the text client.
I have since used telnet to access the bbl -WOW- brings back memories :)
I really like it, but wondering how to change floors. I am still needing the info in the support room, but can't work out how to change to the home of citidel floor to browse the rooms. At the moment, I just go to the web click on rooms and then back to terminal enter accurate name of room.
For what it's worth, I don't have a problem with this change.
1- is telnet into uncensored what I see referred to as 'the text client'? Or is there something else?
2- How to browse the floors to see what rooms are on them from the bbl telnet? I can find the accurate name of the room by going to uncensored via web browser and then just .G to go to specific room on the bbl, but no way of browsing floors that I know of. Any help would be awesome :)
And I'm relatively new to Citadel, so I have no attachments to historic behavior.
2024-09-15 20:48 from flexistrength
Subject: Re: telnet to bbl is 'text client?"
i'm not sure what you mean by that. I was not suggesting a change, but
rather asking 2 questions.
1- is telnet into uncensored what I see referred to as 'the text
client'? Or is there something else?
2- How to browse the floors to see what rooms are on them from the bbl
telnet? I can find the accurate name of the room by going to uncensored
via web browser and then just .G to go to specific room on the bbl, but
no way of browsing floors that I know of. Any help would be awesome :)
1 - The text client is a specific piece of software (aka. the client) with its own protocol and everything. If you are using the telnet interface, what telnet does is to invoke the text client at the other point of the connection anyway.
2 - I just usually hit "g" until I have seen all the rooms with new messages :-) There is also a goto-floor command you may use with ;G
i forget 99.999999% of the time.
Mon Sep 16 2024 12:44:24 EDT from darknetuserI think just enforcing a subject for new hreads would suffice, personally. It is a feature I'd like to see anyway, because half the time I just forget to introduce a Subject.
Subject: Re: telnet to bbl is 'text client?"
1- is telnet into uncensored what I see referred to as 'the text
client'? Or is there something else?
2- How to browse the floors to see what rooms are on them from the bbl
telnet? I can find the accurate name of the room by going to uncensored
via web browser and then just .G to go to specific room on the bbl, but
no way of browsing floors that I know of. Any help would be awesome :)
When you telnet to Uncensored (or connect with SSH as user "bbs", or click the "use this browser-based client" link from the landing page) you are indeed running "the text client". You're connecting to a copy of it running on our server, but you can also run a copy of it on your own machine.
To understand why it looks the way it does, you have to understand that Citadel was originally written, nearly 43 years ago, as a bulletin board system. It was a small monolithic system that ran inside of 64 KB of memory on an 8-bit CP/M machine. The text-based user interface was considered very streamlined and easy to use compared to other BBs of the era, which printed big banners and menus and other things that consumed a lot of bandwidth.
We brought Citadel into the multiuser unix world in 1987, converted it into a client/server architecture in 1994, added the web user interface in 1996, and began its evolution into a general purpose groupware/collaboration suite in 1998. The last vestiges of the "this looks like an overgrown BBS" look are disappearing as we build WebCit-NG, which will almost make the "rooms" metaphor disappear. The text client, on the other hand, is re-emphasizing the idea of a Citadel site presented to the user as a classic text-mode BBS.
And we love it! From old-school BBS denizens, to people on the darknet, to folks running on low-bandwidth transports such as amateur radio, the text interface remains the favorite of anyone who wants to immerse themselves in a Citadel community without the overpolished look of the mainstream web. (I'm using it right now, in fact.)
To answer your question: floor commands begin with the semicolon. You can type ;? to get a list of all floor commands, for example ;K to list all rooms on all floors. However, the normal way of visiting a Citadel in text mode is to simply hit "G" (Goto next room) which takes you to the next room with unread messages. If there are rooms with unread messages on the current floor, you will be taken to the next one. If not, it will bring you to the *next* floor and look for rooms with unread messages there. When you make it all the way through the site, you end up back in the Lobby.
During your visit to each room with unread messages, you can type "N" to "read New messages" which will show you new messages in the order they were posted, "Reply" to the ones you find interesting, and of course "E" to "Enter a new message" (which, as we're currently dicsussing, begins a new thread -- but you won't see threads in the text client).
I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you continue to log in and be part of our community. It is a long and glorious tradition. :)
So what say you, text client users? If we make it clear that the "Enter message" command now constitutes "Beginning a new thread" is that so disruptive that it shouldn't be done? Or are the benefits worth it?
I don't think anyone around here does.
I know the one in Debian repos is pretty far behind.
Sun Sep 22 2024 10:03:03 EDT from Kurisu. which also leads to the additional question of who actually maintains that package? Works great, but since we're on the subject I'm curious.