Re: Build Boost Back Better

From: Dominique Devienne (ddevienne_at_[hidden])
Date: 2022-04-06 11:42:26

On Wed, Apr 6, 2022 at 10:44 AM Niall Douglas via Boost
<boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On 06/04/2022 01:54, Marshall Clow via Boost wrote:
> >> https://www.discourse.org/ <https://www.discourse.org/>
> > * It doesn’t interrupt me when “new stuff is available”; I can look  at it when I want.
> > I looked at Discourse a year ago, and hated it.
> Discourse is absolutely awful.

I'd quickly mention (again?) the [Fossil-SCM-based forum][1] used for
both SQLite and Fossil itself.

Dr Richard Hipp, of SQLite fame, was fed up with fighting spam on the
ML, and decided to take
matters into his own capable hands, as he often does, and created his
own forum software, on top of his
own SCM software (Fossil), itself on top of SQLite, itself built on
Lemon, Richard's own Yacc replacement.
(he almost implemented his own SMTP, and started it in fact, but for
now uses the system one AFAIK).
Oh, and the [Web server is also based on his own of course][3].

As a long time SQLite ML member, I was strongly against it, especially
the anonymous posting,
but turns out to be a non-issue, since I can still read messages in
plain readable text in my mail client,
while replying must be done in the low-key minimal and fast web-app; I
actually even enjoy the ability to format
things in markup (markdown or fossil varieties), and even have
diagrams described in PIC format (i.e. plain text, see [2]).

As usual for My Hipp's productions, it's high quality, small, OSS, in
plain C (and TH, a TCL subset, for templating),
very fast and low resources (so cheap to host). And contrary to
SQLite, external contributions are possible, with
a larger set of committers, beside Richard who remains the main author
and shepherd for the project.

These are not commercial projects, Richard has nothing to sell you
(beside support contract on SQLite if you want).
These tools are first and foremost for Richard himself and SQLite, but
happen to be generally useful and mature IMHO.

I've used Discord and Basecamp, and don't hate them, but Fossil forums
are so lightweight, fast, and low-key,
that it's basically the antithesis of these JS-heavy Flashy "modern"
forum software, and I prefer Fossil now.

And there's no Fossil Forum "app" for phones or tablets. But the site
aims to be "responsive" enough to be useable.
And again, you also need to use the web-app for posting, not reading.

Anyways, I thought I'd be remise not to mention all the above. Even
though I doubt Boost would adopt a Fossil forum.

FWIW, --DD

[1]: https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/forum.wiki
[2]: https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/pikchr.md
[3]: https://sqlite.org/althttpd/doc/trunk/althttpd.md