Author: Ratko V Tomic
Date: 13:08:43 08/13/99
Go up one level in this thread
> I would do one file for each day. That would
> give a pretty good size.
After checking out some old archives, it seems the
loss of threads is a big problem. The most natural
form, especially given the form in which it gets
created initially, is hypertext.
1. One would group chunks by threads, and then group
several threads by date/time to fill up a file of
at least 200-300k (to max out on zip compression ratio).
Then one would view them via browser, just like
the board itself.
2. A common toc file would have links into all the
thread files.
3. With some effort alternative toc files can be
created with links by author.
4. The threads shouldn't be broken up by month, year
or any other such superficial boundary.
5. Repeating verbosity in the headers can be stripped
and relegated to the links so that it takes less
space (in file and on the screen).
6. With some effort, even quotes can be turned into
back-links to the original msg.
Positive results would be:
a) Cutting down compressed archive size and download times
(and thus the server load on this task) by a factor
of at least 2 (more if steps 5 & 6 are implemented).
b) Cutting down on decompressed archives by a much
larger factor (depends on disk granularity).
c) Easy to select and follow threads, easy to find
strings or topics
d) Pleasant to read hypertext, plus fonts & colors
choices from the browser (no specific fonts commands
should go into the html files).
e) More flexible printing options
f) Hypertext files would make possible to look at old
threads online (obviously they would have to be kept
in decomp[ressed form, at least as some cache of most
frequently accessed old threads)
g) The plain text form is still available since there are
many free html2txt converters on the web, for any
platform imaginable. And of course a browser can output
it in a txt format. (Going the other way is much harder,
once the content has the html tags stripped off).
h) The archive would became of a more permanent value with
wider audience. For example, someone with enough available
disk space on their server can host the entire archive
(as read only). That would make it more available (to the
folks who don't like going through the password hoops
or registering on line for anything).
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