Rockapella wrote to VK3JED <=-

Basically slow responsiveness and clumsy navigation, and on some road trips VK>(where I'm on a bus and have time to do stuff), no Internet access. There a VK>many roads not far from here with no 3G/4G Internet coverage.

Makes sense. I definitely understand the advantage of having offline capabilities in these messages. In fact, even with the ability to telnet
into Vert and read/respond there, I prefer downloading them and using
SLMR simply because the navigation and workflow is a lot easier.

Here is where something like Reddit gets more interesting as well: it is
not only a web forum (though most users interact with it in that way).
It is also a very robust web service. Because of this, there are a
number of different applications that can communicate with Reddit, that
were developed by third parties (for example, "Reddit is Fun" which is
an alternative Android/iOS app for Reddit which some people prefer over
the standard "Reddit" app).

One could potentially use Reddit's API to write an offline reader for it
that would work exactly like a more modern version of a QWK or USENET
reader.

Of course, the problem with doing that is that you would probably need a
good way to either filter out the threads you want. Reddit subscription
could help, but even within your subscriptions would be a metric
fuck-ton of data you would have to store offline. Probably not a problem
for PC-based offline access, but you might not want that much storage
taken up on your phone or tablet.

And the assumption is they won't mind the ingerent latency and generally slo VK>performance of these systems. One thing I used to like about offline mail w VK>that it consolidated all those data transfer delays into one block of severa VK>minutes or more, where you could go and make a coffee or do something else, VK>while that download was happening, unlike today where there's 5 seconds here VK>10 there and you just have to sit through it. :/

Well, you're kind of comparing apples to oranges here, too. Any given
web forum, at the very least, populates the entire page (or more) of information in one transfer. Web technology has done a pretty good job
of adapting to the latency that is the inherent design of the internet.
While the latency can be annoying if the web software is designed poorly
and needs to constantly refresh, yeah, that's a problem. In the case of
Reddit, most threads load the first 200 or 500 comments in whatever sort
order you want when you open them. Once the page is loaded, it is
essentially an offline-read because all the data is loaded (I've done
exactly this with the Reddit app in the past - loaded a few threads that
I was interested in, then went offline while travelling to read them.
The only thing I couldn't do was reply to them).

The thing is, the time to load a few hundred articles/comments is
measured in seconds, not minutes (unless, again, you have a very
particularly flaky connection), which is part of the reason why the idea
of "offline reading" isn't really considered in the design these days.

The design of most web forums is a big thing, a lot are crap to navigate.

Absolutely agree, but in the same token, some BBS messaging systems are
crap to navigate, as are some offline readers. That's a failing of the
design of that particular software, not a necessarily a failing of the technology behind the software itself.

I'll play with it more, but remain to be convinced. :)

Absolutely - ultimately the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm
just speaking from my own impression of how the one major web forum I participate in compares to the BBS world. There are a couple of web
forums that I participate in that are *absolutely* horrendous (for us
Canadian Football League fans, 3Downnation.com is a particularly shitty
one).

Except back in the day, the waiting was in one big block and didn't have to VK>attended. Today it's a few seconds here and there. Multiply by hundreds of VK>messages...

But that's not how it works with most web forums. A single load is not
just one message after one message (unless it is an absolutely
*horrendous* design). Almost all web forums I've ever seen load pages of comments in one load.

Now, depending on the forum, you may be right in that it's seconds to
reload because you've gone to a completely different *article* (again,
that would be like a "To: All" message in BBS-land where it is an
entirely new topic that someone started), but again there is an apples-to-oranges comparison that needs to be reconciled somewhat if you
really want to make a fair comparison.

On the flip side, on Reddit I can see a *lot* more threads, sorted by

Threading is of limited use (see "thread drift").

What I am referring to as "threading" in the Reddit/Web Forum sense
isn't so much the continuation of a topic, but the track of replies to
an original commenter who may have strayed into a different topic. This
is particularly one area where I have never seen BBS messaging (or even
Offline readers, though some do a better job than others here) do a good
job of tracking that kind of "thread drift". Even here (which, I'd
argue, is a good example of thread-drift, given that this whole
conversation started as a discussion about Facebook), there's really no
good way to see, at-a-glance, where you and I are continuing our
conversation about Reddit and web technology vs. others continuing the discussion of Facebook's latest fiasco. Most BBS readers are very linear
in how they present these messages, so you have to read (or at least
scan) all of the messages in order to be able to track the conversation.

At least some Newsreaders did a somewhat good job of presenting a
reply-tree so that such threads could be tracked more easily, and I'm
sure there are QWK readers that do this as well. SLMR (which I'll admit,
I'm only using for nostalgic reasons because I used it back in my BBSing hayday), only shows groups of similar subjects.

Reddit, however, groups and trees replies within their threads, so you
can scan very easily (without jumping from reply to reply) to see the
text within those reply trees so you can see more easily when a thread
has drifted and whether you want to continue to follow it. Also, if you
see a reply to one of your comments, or try to follow other "linked"
comments, you can select to jump to the "Context" of that thread in its
forum and see the tree that it sits in, as well as any other branches of
the conversation that have happened (for example, someone else jumps
into the conversation and starts their own "sub-thread"). There is
really nothing in any BBS messaging system (offline or otherwise) that
offers this.

I don't pay mmuch attention to icons, some are hard to interpret.

Well and that's fine - it is not a mandatory tool you have to use, it is
just one that is there to make navigation easier for those who do choose
to use it.

have participated. I can expand some articles on the front page and give them a quick read, before deciding if I want to read further. I

And I skim messages in probably less time! :)

Very unlikely, as you would have to course through each message
one-by-one (in a list of 50 to 200 at a time) in order to do so. All I
have to do is roll the mouse wheel to scroll down the page and then
click on whatever article I want to read.

I managed to scan around 1000 messages/day routinely. :)

Continued to next message

---
þ SLMR 2.1a
þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net

Continued from previous message

But again, remember that those 1000 messages are inclusive of all the
replies to threads that you're following. When I talk about "articles",
I am referring to what the BBS world would have been a whole new subject
(To: ALL). Each article could have as little as one or two comments
(which each would be a separate message on a BBS), or the article could
have several thousand comments.

I'm basing it on my Fidonet experiences od 20+ years ago, when there WERE hi VK>traffic echoes. Today, other than the messages I actually reply to, the res VK>takes only a couple of minutes to read/scan (and that's 50-a few hundred VK>messages, usually.

As am I. I used to run a BBS with Fidonet and was a hub for about a
dozen different FTNs at the time and I was a heavy participant in a lot
of echomail areas. I thought that GoldEd was the cats' ass at the time.
I'm actually considering setting up a "point" on this machine just so
that I can have my JAMbase back up and do my reading on GoldEd once
again.

---
þ SLMR 2.1a
þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net

Rockapella wrote to VK3JED <=-

Makes sense. I definitely understand the advantage of having offline capabilities in these messages. In fact, even with the ability to
telnet into Vert and read/respond there, I prefer downloading them and using SLMR simply because the navigation and workflow is a lot easier.

We agree on that one. That's the same reason I use an offline reader. :)

One could potentially use Reddit's API to write an offline reader for
it that would work exactly like a more modern version of a QWK or
USENET reader.

Now this is the sort of thing I like to see, having an API exposed that would allow for alternative interfaces and clients to be developed.

Of course, the problem with doing that is that you would probably need
a good way to either filter out the threads you want. Reddit
subscription could help, but even within your subscriptions would be a metric fuck-ton of data you would have to store offline. Probably not a problem for PC-based offline access, but you might not want that much storage taken up on your phone or tablet.

Would be interesting to see how much. I'm not a developer, but I can certainly test if someone comes up with something like that, and with unlimited Internet at home, I won't care how much data there is initially. Will be good for assessing the feasibility of a mobule version. :) And I'd like to see more forum developers exposing an API for this sort of thing, perhaps some sort of standard might eventually evolve (one can only hope). At least that would allow mobile app developers.

Well, you're kind of comparing apples to oranges here, too. Any given
web forum, at the very least, populates the entire page (or more) of information in one transfer. Web technology has done a pretty good job
of adapting to the latency that is the inherent design of the internet. While the latency can be annoying if the web software is designed
poorly and needs to constantly refresh, yeah, that's a problem. In the case of Reddit, most threads load the first 200 or 500 comments in

Yeah most forums I've used tend to have many short threads than fewer long ones, so yes, loading all of a thread is a huge advantage, and I like it, but in practice, that has been of relatively limited value, because the threads I tend to be interested in a numerous and short, and the long threads tend to go like those in Fidonet sysop echoes. :D Or if there are long threads that I am interested in, they are still numerous, and the read posts add to the latency, following multiple long threads. :)

whatever sort order you want when you open them. Once the page is
loaded, it is essentially an offline-read because all the data is
loaded (I've done exactly this with the Reddit app in the past - loaded
a few threads that I was interested in, then went offline while
travelling to read them. The only thing I couldn't do was reply to
them).

I would need offline reply capability, because otherwise I'd probably forget (another of my quirks). :)

The thing is, the time to load a few hundred articles/comments is
measured in seconds, not minutes (unless, again, you have a very particularly flaky connection), which is part of the reason why the
idea of "offline reading" isn't really considered in the design these days.

Again, if the structure of the threads is conducive to that.

The design of most web forums is a big thing, a lot are crap to navigate.

Absolutely agree, but in the same token, some BBS messaging systems are crap to navigate, as are some offline readers. That's a failing of the design of that particular software, not a necessarily a failing of the technology behind the software itself.

Yes, I certainly concede that point. Software design is critical - I wonder how a developer would handle me as a test subject, I am rather unusual in a few ways. :D

I'll play with it more, but remain to be convinced. :)

Absolutely - ultimately the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm
just speaking from my own impression of how the one major web forum I participate in compares to the BBS world. There are a couple of web
forums that I participate in that are *absolutely* horrendous (for us Canadian Football League fans, 3Downnation.com is a particularly shitty one).

I usually avoid them, because it's not worth the effort. The other problem I have with web forums is the proliferation of them, meaning having to remember to log into a gazillion web forums - what I call "login fatigue", and something that doesn't play nicely with the ADHD side of my nature. BBSs solved that problem too - setup a point or node to aggregate all feeds into one store, then either read on the system (telnet or GoldEd), or use an offline reader from there for the portability. :) If I enjoy a message net I simply join that network, add it to my system and read with the rest of my mail. :) Now if there was a way of aggregating web forums, that would be nice too! :)

Except back in the day, the waiting was in one big block and didn't have to
attended. Today it's a few seconds here and there. Multiply by hundreds

f

messages...

But that's not how it works with most web forums. A single load is not just one message after one message (unless it is an absolutely *horrendous* design). Almost all web forums I've ever seen load pages
of comments in one load.

Again, are those the posts you need to read or are they "old hat"? Is there a forum that can only load "unread posts in a thread" by default, but give an option to load older comments?

Now, depending on the forum, you may be right in that it's seconds to reload because you've gone to a completely different *article* (again, that would be like a "To: All" message in BBS-land where it is an
entirely new topic that someone started), but again there is an apples-to-oranges comparison that needs to be reconciled somewhat if
you really want to make a fair comparison.

Depends on traffic (see above).

On the flip side, on Reddit I can see a *lot* more threads, sorted by

Threading is of limited use (see "thread drift").

What I am referring to as "threading" in the Reddit/Web Forum sense
isn't so much the continuation of a topic, but the track of replies to
an original commenter who may have strayed into a different topic. This
is particularly one area where I have never seen BBS messaging (or even Offline readers, though some do a better job than others here) do a

On that I agree, and that's what I tend to track well. I'm not your average brain there. I'm particularly good at seeing patterns and have unusually strong recognition, which has allowed me to keep ahead of things like Internet scams, spam, hoaxes, etc, even ones I had never seen before, because of the attempts at deception required to pull off the scams. Pity there's no way to incorporate it into a spam filter. :) But yes, I haven't seen a machine based way to deal with threading or any of of the things I've mentioned in this paragraph that comes close (which is my limit of acceptability).

It's a human issue, and I think it needs a human to read the posts. :)

At least some Newsreaders did a somewhat good job of presenting a reply-tree so that such threads could be tracked more easily, and I'm
sure there are QWK readers that do this as well. SLMR (which I'll
admit, I'm only using for nostalgic reasons because I used it back in
my BBSing hayday), only shows groups of similar subjects.

Multimail groups subject by default, which is easy for skipping those threads that have hopelessly drifted. :) As I pointed out above, nothing's perfect, this is the vagueness of people. :D

Very unlikely, as you would have to course through each message
one-by-one (in a list of 50 to 200 at a time) in order to do so. All I have to do is roll the mouse wheel to scroll down the page and then
click on whatever article I want to read.

And scrolling is a pet hate, tends to be the biggest thing to give me RSI. :) I preferred the old fashioned page up/page down keys for scrolling. :)


... See if you can guess which drink will make me love you.
--- MultiMail/Win32 v0.49
þ Synchronet þ Freeway BBS, Bendigo Australia. freeway.apana.org.au

Rockapella wrote to VK3JED <=-

@VIA: VERT

Continued from previous message

But again, remember that those 1000 messages are inclusive of all the replies to threads that you're following. When I talk about "articles",
I am referring to what the BBS world would have been a whole new
subject (To: ALL). Each article could have as little as one or two comments (which each would be a separate message on a BBS), or the
article could have several thousand comments.

True (see long thread vs short thread in the previous post :) ).

I'm basing it on my Fidonet experiences od 20+ years ago, when there WERE

i

traffic echoes. Today, other than the messages I actually reply to, the

es

takes only a couple of minutes to read/scan (and that's 50-a few hundred
messages, usually.

As am I. I used to run a BBS with Fidonet and was a hub for about a
dozen different FTNs at the time and I was a heavy participant in a lot
of echomail areas. I thought that GoldEd was the cats' ass at the time. I'm actually considering setting up a "point" on this machine just so
that I can have my JAMbase back up and do my reading on GoldEd once
again.

If I had a BBS or point on this machine, I'd use GoldEd too. I used to like it. But the fact the BBS is headless, and also I tend to use multiple devices makes offline mail a better fit at this time. :)


... Apathy Error: Strike any key...or none, for that matter.
--- MultiMail/Win32 v0.49
þ Synchronet þ Freeway BBS, Bendigo Australia. freeway.apana.org.au

Vk3jed wrote to Rockapella <=-

Happy Easter!

Sorry for the late replies to you - been burning the midnight oil at
work the last couple of weeks, so have been intentionally ignoring my
computers at home and all the messages.

Now this is the sort of thing I like to see, having an API exposed that would allow for alternative interfaces and clients to be developed.

It would be interesting to see if it could be done. Theoretically it
shouldn't be too hard (relatively speaking) as most modern programming languages nowadays have an extensive JSON library available. I'm not really much of a developer, either, but I am a bit familiar with Java and C#
and did take some CompSci classes a decade ago. I am much more of a
database nerd than a programming nerd. :)

Would be interesting to see how much. I'm not a developer, but I can certainly test if someone comes up with something like that, and with unlimited Internet at home, I won't care how much data there is
initially. Will be good for assessing the feasibility of a mobule version. :) And I'd like to see more forum developers exposing an API
for this sort of thing, perhaps some sort of standard might eventually evolve (one can only hope). At least that would allow mobile app developers.

I was thinking more along the lines of limitations of storage rather
than bandwidth in downloading the content. Mobile devices would
definitely feel the pinch of such an offline system if it were just to bulk-download everything new in a day for a particularly busy forum.

Not sure what a standard would look like for something like this, other
than the existing standard of the libraries behind the web service
(JSON and HTTP). For better or worse, most web forums are unique to the
point that I don't think a standard interface would be particularly
useful or desirable. The problem with "standards" is always that they
are a compromise and make extensibility difficult.

Yeah most forums I've used tend to have many short threads than fewer
long ones, so yes, loading all of a thread is a huge advantage, and I
like it, but in practice, that has been of relatively limited value, because the threads I tend to be interested in a numerous and short,
and the long threads tend to go like those in Fidonet sysop echoes. :D
Or if there are long threads that I am interested in, they are still numerous, and the read posts add to the latency, following multiple
long threads. :)

That makes sense, and I can definitely see where downloading multiple
short threads offline would be very useful to reduce the latency that
comes with loading every new thread.

The only thing I couldn't do was reply to them.

I would need offline reply capability, because otherwise I'd probably forget (another of my quirks). :)

Same here - would also be nice if the original linked article (for
threads that start with a link rather than text, which many Reddit
articles do) would be pre-loaded somehow so that you could have some
background to refer to on the thread.

Yes, I certainly concede that point. Software design is critical - I wonder how a developer would handle me as a test subject, I am rather unusual in a few ways. :D

If my work writing reports and dashboards is any indication, the picky
test subjects are often the most fun to work with (as long as they
are open to change and experimentation). The most interesting projects
I've had to undergo were customizations to satisfy "unusual"
requirements.

Again, are those the posts you need to read or are they "old hat"? Is there a forum that can only load "unread posts in a thread" by default, but give an option to load older comments?

That is definitely a negative, and that's a very good point you bring
up. There is no real good way to filter out "read" comments, even on
Reddit, so if you leave a thread and come back later, you really have to
browse through all the comments that you may have already read to find
anything new. I've thought about how this particular issue could be
resolved (without the inefficiency of you, as a reader, having to "mark" threads as read manually), and haven't really been able to think of a
solution that doesn't involve "linear" reading a'la BBS messaging forums
or newsreaders.

At least some Newsreaders did a somewhat good job of presenting a reply-tree so that such threads could be tracked more easily, and I'm
sure there are QWK readers that do this as well. SLMR (which I'll
admit, I'm only using for nostalgic reasons because I used it back in
my BBSing hayday), only shows groups of similar subjects.

(funnily enough, I've switched to MultiMail for these replies because
SLMR has a line-limit per message that this thread has now reached).

Multimail groups subject by default, which is easy for skipping those threads that have hopelessly drifted. :) As I pointed out above, nothing's perfect, this is the vagueness of people. :D

Very, very nod.

And scrolling is a pet hate, tends to be the biggest thing to give me
RSI. :) I preferred the old fashioned page up/page down keys for scrolling. :)

I do the PgUp/PgDown thing often, too. I got a particularly good
scrolling mouse a few months ago though (Logitech MX Master - fantastic
mouse), so I find I'm using the scroll wheel a lot more nowadays than I
used to.

--- MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.49
þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net

Vk3jed wrote to Rockapella <=-

If I had a BBS or point on this machine, I'd use GoldEd too. I used to like it. But the fact the BBS is headless, and also I tend to use multiple devices makes offline mail a better fit at this time. :)

I remember when TimEd came out as freeware and a lot of people running
point systems started using it and liking it a lot. I wasn't a huge fan
of it, but it definitely had a following, especially with some of the
older people who were using it on some of the networks in which I
participated.

GoldEd was one of the few pieces of shareware I actually paid to
register as a teenager (was a pain at the time because I didn't have a
chequing account, so had to ask my parents to write cheques for things
like that). I was stoked when my registration came in, even though I
recall that I used literally zero "registered" features.

... The number you have dailed...Nine-one-one...has been changed.
--- MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.49
þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net

Rockapella wrote to Vk3jed <=-

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter back! :D

Sorry for the late replies to you - been burning the midnight oil at
work the last couple of weeks, so have been intentionally ignoring my computers at home and all the messages.

Understandable. ;)

Now this is the sort of thing I like to see, having an API exposed that would allow for alternative interfaces and clients to be developed.

It would be interesting to see if it could be done. Theoretically it shouldn't be too hard (relatively speaking) as most modern programming languages nowadays have an extensive JSON library available. I'm not really much of a developer, either, but I am a bit familiar with Java
and C# and did take some CompSci classes a decade ago. I am much more
of a database nerd than a programming nerd. :)

Yeah, I'm not much of a programmer either. Was quite good in the DOS days, but then discovered it wasn't good for my head, and walked away from it. Life's change a lot since then, and it's a lot harder to get the focus up to take up occasional coding as a hobby. :/ I'm more a networking nerd (when I'm not a jock! - yes, I am heavily involved in sport these days :) ).

I was thinking more along the lines of limitations of storage rather
than bandwidth in downloading the content. Mobile devices would
definitely feel the pinch of such an offline system if it were just to bulk-download everything new in a day for a particularly busy forum.

Yeah, that could be an issue. Wonder how much content a particularly busy forum generates. Has anyone measured it in MB/day or GB/day?

Not sure what a standard would look like for something like this, other than the existing standard of the libraries behind the web service
(JSON and HTTP). For better or worse, most web forums are unique to the point that I don't think a standard interface would be particularly
useful or desirable. The problem with "standards" is always that they
are a compromise and make extensibility difficult.

Well, it seems a lot of web forums can have code added to present a standardised web services interface. That seems to be how Tapatalk (a mobile forum reading app) does it - the forum administrator adds some scripts (forum package specific) that allow Tapatalk to work with their forum. Tapatalk isn't bad, except for me it's still online and still feels like sucking treacle through a straw when accessing content (like web forums usually do :D ). But that might give some hints as to how it could be done.

That makes sense, and I can definitely see where downloading multiple short threads offline would be very useful to reduce the latency that comes with loading every new thread.

It's the same on here, this is one of many threads, but in this QWK packet, it's only a post or two. A lot of my forum activity has been (currently, my head's not in place to deal with them ;) ) similar. )

Same here - would also be nice if the original linked article (for
threads that start with a link rather than text, which many Reddit articles do) would be pre-loaded somehow so that you could have some background to refer to on the thread.

Yes, that would be nice, though I can understand why it might not be done.

Yes, I certainly concede that point. Software design is critical - I wonder how a developer would handle me as a test subject, I am rather unusual in a few ways. :D

If my work writing reports and dashboards is any indication, the picky test subjects are often the most fun to work with (as long as they
are open to change and experimentation). The most interesting projects I've had to undergo were customizations to satisfy "unusual"
requirements.

I admit I do enjoy testing software. :)

Again, are those the posts you need to read or are they "old hat"? Is there a forum that can only load "unread posts in a thread" by default, but give an option to load older comments?

That is definitely a negative, and that's a very good point you bring
up. There is no real good way to filter out "read" comments, even on Reddit, so if you leave a thread and come back later, you really have
to browse through all the comments that you may have already read to
find anything new. I've thought about how this particular issue could
be resolved (without the inefficiency of you, as a reader, having to "mark" threads as read manually), and haven't really been able to think
of a solution that doesn't involve "linear" reading a'la BBS messaging forums or newsreaders.

And that's a major pain. Some web forums (e.g. SMF) at least allow you to show newest posts first, which can save a lot of scrolling and I don't mmind that order, but that means the system for tracking last reads must be spot on, and some aren't - I've had one where you mark a board as read, and it marks all the theads as read, but all the posts get marked unread within each thread! (arrrgh!).

At least some Newsreaders did a somewhat good job of presenting a reply-tree so that such threads could be tracked more easily, and I'm
sure there are QWK readers that do this as well. SLMR (which I'll
admit, I'm only using for nostalgic reasons because I used it back in
my BBSing hayday), only shows groups of similar subjects.

Agree re newsreaders, some do a reasonable job, and for me, offline newsreaders have a nicer "feel" (again, lack of network lag - it _really_ bugs me!). I used an offline newsreader on iOS for a while, was nice, except having to kep downloaded articles and last read pointers in sync with my main (QWK) reading was a pain. :)

I started with SLMR and quite liked it, but fairly soon I switched to Bluewave and used Bluewave format packets. I did like SLME better than Ted, so I used SLME as my editor in Bluewave.

(funnily enough, I've switched to MultiMail for these replies because
SLMR has a line-limit per message that this thread has now reached).

Haha, I'm already using Multimail, so I never noticed the limit. :D

I do the PgUp/PgDown thing often, too. I got a particularly good
scrolling mouse a few months ago though (Logitech MX Master - fantastic mouse), so I find I'm using the scroll wheel a lot more nowadays than I used to.

Might have to look that mouse up. :)


... No user-serviceable parts inside (or outside).
--- MultiMail/Win32 v0.49
þ Synchronet þ Freeway BBS, Bendigo Australia. freeway.apana.org.au

Rockapella wrote to Vk3jed <=-

I remember when TimEd came out as freeware and a lot of people running point systems started using it and liking it a lot. I wasn't a huge fan
of it, but it definitely had a following, especially with some of the older people who were using it on some of the networks in which I participated.

I never used Timed, but I do remember seeing it in tearlines.

GoldEd was one of the few pieces of shareware I actually paid to
register as a teenager (was a pain at the time because I didn't have a chequing account, so had to ask my parents to write cheques for things like that). I was stoked when my registration came in, even though I recall that I used literally zero "registered" features.

I was unemployed for the first few years of my BBSing, so paying for shareware wasn't high on my priority list at the time, but yes, there was a buzz when registration came through. I used to use postal money orders to pay for things by mail back in those days. It's so much easier now. :)

... The number you have dailed...Nine-one-one...has been changed.

Oh dear. :D


... The families of one's friends are always a disappointment.
--- MultiMail/Win32 v0.49
þ Synchronet þ Freeway BBS, Bendigo Australia. freeway.apana.org.au