Emacs for forums?

Emacs for forums?

[James Taylor]

A very simple question follows.

So, many know that Emacs has no problem with Usenet and Reddit. That
leaves exactly one forum that I regularly visit that uses Panther as its
forum software and cannot be posted to by email.

Barring the xwidget browser, is there an Emacs package for browsing and
posting on forums of other kinds?

I'm not expecting that the answer is "yes", after quite a bit of
research. 

Re: Emacs for forums?

[HASM]

> So, many know that Emacs has no problem with Usenet and Reddit.

Gnus for usenet, but what's the consensus for reddit?

-- HASM

Re: Emacs for forums?

[James Taylor]

HASM <hasm@example.invalid> writes:

>> So, many know that Emacs has no problem with Usenet and Reddit.
>
> Gnus for usenet, but what's the consensus for reddit?
>
> -- HASM

See md4rd at https://github.com/ahungry/md4rd.

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Garreau, Alexandre]

On 2018-07-03 at 18:37, James Taylor wrote:
> HASM <hasm@example.invalid> writes:
>
>>> So, many know that Emacs has no problem with Usenet and Reddit.
>>
>> Gnus for usenet, but what's the consensus for reddit?
>>
>> -- HASM
>
> See md4rd at https://github.com/ahungry/md4rd.

So sad it’s not a gnus backend like nnrss or something alike :/

I wish there were interfaces between gnus and more BBs such as popular
webish/php software, like PHPmyBB, FluxBB, etc. would make the web
a so much acceptable place.

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Stefan Huchler]

"Garreau, Alexandre" <galex-713@galex-713.eu> writes:

> So sad it’s not a gnus backend like nnrss or something alike :/
>
> I wish there were interfaces between gnus and more BBs such as popular
> webish/php software, like PHPmyBB, FluxBB, etc. would make the web
> a so much acceptable place.

There is at least a backend for reddit for gnus. (read only)
https://github.com/paul-issartel/nnreddit

And here are some more projects.
https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=reddit+language%3A%22Emacs+Lisp%22&type=Repositories&ref=advsearch&l=Emacs+Lisp&l=

But I would also enjoy forum gnus support even more.

I don't see myself using only twitter / mastadon or reddit and skip on
forums / comment sections of websites.

So yes I would love that, too. The best I see ahead is maybe "next"
browser a lisp based browser, which maybe makes the web slightly less
anoying.

Or maybe they could make eww a lot better :D

I played around a bit with matrix which has also a emacs client but its
a live messanger so not the same topic.

https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/matrix-client-legacy-el.html

Re: Emacs for forums?

[James Taylor]

Stefan Huchler <stefan.huchler@mail.de> writes:

> So yes I would love that, too. The best I see ahead is maybe "next"
> browser a lisp based browser, which maybe makes the web slightly less
> anoying.
>
> Or maybe they could make eww a lot better :D

Oh, indeed, next is right up my alley. The fact that you can connect
slime to it is especially glorious. Still just wishing that there was no
need to invoke anything from the outside, y'know?

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Devin Prater]

As an Emacspeak user, I’d especially love forum support. The Reddit client, MD4RD, is okay, but I don’t know a way to upvote, comment, and such with it, and it doesn’t work especially well with Emacspeak, although I can use it.
Also, anything that makes EWW better is great to me.

> On Jul 4, 2018, at 10:53 PM, James Taylor <james@openmail.cc> wrote:
> 
> Stefan Huchler <stefan.huchler@mail.de> writes:
> 
>> So yes I would love that, too. The best I see ahead is maybe "next"
>> browser a lisp based browser, which maybe makes the web slightly less
>> anoying.
>> 
>> Or maybe they could make eww a lot better :D
> 
> Oh, indeed, next is right up my alley. The fact that you can connect
> slime to it is especially glorious. Still just wishing that there was no
> need to invoke anything from the outside, y'know?

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Bob Newell]

Devin Prater <r.d.t.prater@gmail.com> writes:
> Also, anything that makes EWW better is great to me.

I think w3m makes EWW better, at least in some ways. But it seems a big
issue is that so many sites require Javascript, and there is no real way
to handle that right now within the available Emacs options. (Say that
Javascript is evil if you will, but for better or worse it's a
requirement on all too many websites.)

What we really need is the next step up from EWW and w3m, but it would
be a huge amount of work.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i
* Via Gnus/BBDB/Org/Emacs/Linux *

Re: Emacs for forums?

[James Taylor]

Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net> writes:

> Devin Prater <r.d.t.prater@gmail.com> writes:
>> Also, anything that makes EWW better is great to me.
>
> I think w3m makes EWW better, at least in some ways. But it seems a big
> issue is that so many sites require Javascript, and there is no real way
> to handle that right now within the available Emacs options. (Say that
> Javascript is evil if you will, but for better or worse it's a
> requirement on all too many websites.)
>
> What we really need is the next step up from EWW and w3m, but it would
> be a huge amount of work.

I don't know about "evil", though I don't like it. As you've said, it's
ubiquity is a brute fact.

Really, there aren't any real objections that I have to integrating it
from the outside in, and yet, if one were to go that far, you might as
well focus all that effort on improving xwebkit. My one gripe about that
particular effort is that it's coming along rather slowly, probably
because it's such a niche interest no matter how you slice it.

When it comes to Emacs, it's almost never that it *can't* be done, only whether
it *will*. And some projects are going to get stuck in the *will*
question, inevitably.

*sigh*

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Skip Montanaro]

Count me in as someone who would appreciate a non-native interface to
forums. In addition to wanting an interface better integrated with
Usenet and email, some of the forum sites have annoying properties it
would be nice to paper over. Do any of these forum sites support
REST-ish APIs? How do phone-based apps like Tapatalk communicate with
these forum sites? Are they just glorified web scrapers?

Skip

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro@gmail.com> writes:

> Count me in as someone who would appreciate a non-native interface to
> forums. In addition to wanting an interface better integrated with
> Usenet and email, some of the forum sites have annoying properties it
> would be nice to paper over. Do any of these forum sites support
> REST-ish APIs? How do phone-based apps like Tapatalk communicate with
> these forum sites? Are they just glorified web scrapers?

I would also like this. For fun I looked at the Arch Linux bbs, which
turns out to use something called FluxBB, which turns out to have had a
couple abortive attempts at adding a rest API, the most recent of which
fizzled out in 2016. Oh well.

Perhaps Hacker News would be a good (relatively simple) first testing
ground.

Eric

Re: Emacs for forums?

[James Taylor]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

> I would also like this. For fun I looked at the Arch Linux bbs, which
> turns out to use something called FluxBB, which turns out to have had a
> couple abortive attempts at adding a rest API, the most recent of which
> fizzled out in 2016. Oh well.
>
> Perhaps Hacker News would be a good (relatively simple) first testing
> ground.
>
> Eric

Hmm, maybe. I tried a login, and account creation and login are possible
already with EWW on Hacker News, though I don't know if posting can be
done. Paul Graham sure saw me comin'.

As a side note, I'm very glad to not be the only one who thought this
would be nice. It's comforting to know that, if there were an elisp
hacker crazy enough to try a forum package, there wouldn't be a
userbase of 1. ;)

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

James Taylor <james@openmail.cc> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> I would also like this. For fun I looked at the Arch Linux bbs, which
>> turns out to use something called FluxBB, which turns out to have had a
>> couple abortive attempts at adding a rest API, the most recent of which
>> fizzled out in 2016. Oh well.
>>
>> Perhaps Hacker News would be a good (relatively simple) first testing
>> ground.
>>
>> Eric
>
> Hmm, maybe. I tried a login, and account creation and login are possible
> already with EWW on Hacker News, though I don't know if posting can be
> done. Paul Graham sure saw me comin'.

All I know is, if I've got a HN client on my Android phone, it should be
possible to do via Emacs. I'd be looking to add this to Gnus in
particular, though, not EWW in general.

> As a side note, I'm very glad to not be the only one who thought this
> would be nice. It's comforting to know that, if there were an elisp
> hacker crazy enough to try a forum package, there wouldn't be a
> userbase of 1. ;)

I think we could get four, at least :)

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Hikaru Ichijyo]

Something to consider as we discuss JavaScript capability and more usage
of EWW features to implement this, is that one advantage Emacs has
enjoyed up to this point as an Internet client is a much smaller attack
surface for exploits to take advantage of.  Not many comprimised/hostile
web sites out there are just waiting for someone to come around in a
browser running in a Lisp environment.

But as we start to use libxml2 and JavaScript, etc., we are starting to
head down that road where our browsing environment is just as ripe for
the picking as anyone else's.  I don't want to slow this effort down.
Believe me, there are webboards I'd be using more if I didn't have to
"mousercize" my way through them, trying to find out what articles are
new since last time by clicking sixteen web links for each one and
scrolling up and down through lots of graphics just to see if I'm done
in the forum I'm in and I can go on to the next one.

We just don't want to take on so much of this browser functionality that
Emacs starts to have some of the same security problems that big GUI
browsers tend to have.

-- 
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent
that will reach to himself.
					--Thomas Paine

Re: Emacs for forums?

[James Taylor]

Hikaru Ichijyo <ichijyo@macross.sdf.jp> writes:

> We just don't want to take on so much of this browser functionality that
> Emacs starts to have some of the same security problems that big GUI
> browsers tend to have.

Oh, I completely agree with that concern. This would undoubtedly, if it
ever happens, need to be a "bare minimum" approach that doesn't make
Emacs an interesting target.

One thought I had was to make a small external program (in a container,
maybe?) that does nothing more than take the requested webpage and make
it more palatable to Emacs, with the ability to update and change pages
on demand and no direct route to Emacs' files from that external
program. Maybe there could be editable fields that the external program
sends in a text interface for Emacs, processes after editing, and pushes
to the current forum site.

Combining that with a password manager like pass that integrates with
GPG might be interesting as well.

Of course, I don't have the ability to do any of this, it's idle musing
and no doubt reinventing the wheel in a lot of ways.

Re: Emacs for forums?

[James Taylor]

James Taylor <james@openmail.cc> writes:

> Hikaru Ichijyo <ichijyo@macross.sdf.jp> writes:
>
>> We just don't want to take on so much of this browser functionality that
>> Emacs starts to have some of the same security problems that big GUI
>> browsers tend to have.
>
> Oh, I completely agree with that concern. This would undoubtedly, if it
> ever happens, need to be a "bare minimum" approach that doesn't make
> Emacs an interesting target.
>
> One thought I had was to make a small external program (in a container,
> maybe?) that does nothing more than take the requested webpage and make
> it more palatable to Emacs, with the ability to update and change pages
> on demand and no direct route to Emacs' files from that external
> program. Maybe there could be editable fields that the external program
> sends in a text interface for Emacs, processes after editing, and pushes
> to the current forum site.
>
> Combining that with a password manager like pass that integrates with
> GPG might be interesting as well.
>
> Of course, I don't have the ability to do any of this, it's idle musing
> and no doubt reinventing the wheel in a lot of ways.

And not long after writing this, it occurred to me that what I was
suggesting was not, in any way, "small" if it has to parse Javascript
like that. :P Still, to keep Emacs away from all the heavy lifting is
probably on the right track.

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Bob Newell]

> Hmm, maybe. I tried a login, and account creation and login are possible
> already with EWW on Hacker News, though I don't know if posting can be
> done. Paul Graham sure saw me comin'.

I tried with w3m and posting is no problem. The site seems completely
usable. But of course using w3m or eww doesn't begin to address the
question of a unified interface through, say, gnus.

Now, it would be possible to write site-specific code to scrape HN,
interface to gnus, and later write back any comments to HN. I'm just
stating the obvious here. But that would be fragile to say the least,
and it would be different for each and every forum. Not a solution,
either.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

Sent via Linux Mint 17.

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net> writes:

>> Hmm, maybe. I tried a login, and account creation and login are possible
>> already with EWW on Hacker News, though I don't know if posting can be
>> done. Paul Graham sure saw me comin'.
>
> I tried with w3m and posting is no problem. The site seems completely
> usable. But of course using w3m or eww doesn't begin to address the
> question of a unified interface through, say, gnus.
>
> Now, it would be possible to write site-specific code to scrape HN,
> interface to gnus, and later write back any comments to HN. I'm just
> stating the obvious here. But that would be fragile to say the least,
> and it would be different for each and every forum. Not a solution,
> either.

HN has an API:

https://github.com/HackerNews/API

I can't tell if they ever implemented OAuth or not...

Re: Emacs for forums?

[tomas]

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On Thu, Jul 05, 2018 at 06:37:37PM -0500, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> Count me in as someone who would appreciate a non-native interface to
> forums.

Agreed. There's a war going on between the Web on the one side, which
wants me to "experience" a web site as a designer (and its Vulture --
uh Venture Capitalists) want me to "see" (and sometimes to hear)
it and me, on the other side, who just wants to get at its information
in the (for me) most convenient form possible. If I want an "experience",
I go to the movies, thankyouverymuch.

> In addition to wanting an interface better integrated with
> Usenet and email, some of the forum sites have annoying properties it
> would be nice to paper over.

Very politely put. Sometimes I feel the web site designers would
reach directly to my neurons if the current "HTML5" had an interface
(they call that "API") for that.

>                 Do any of these forum sites support
> REST-ish APIs? How do phone-based apps like Tapatalk communicate with
> these forum sites? Are they just glorified web scrapers?

I think the current situation is that they use "frameworks" which
integrate front-end and back-end more and more tightly. Still, there
is a limited offer of those frameworks and most of them are free,
thus I think there's a chance... yet. The next phase will be that
the whole front-end/back-end combo will be compiled as a huge
impenetrable Web Assembly mess. Then, our window will close.

Perhaps it opens again when some strange form of AI is capable of
reverse engineering that kind of abomination.

Sometimes I'm glad I'm old.

Cheers
- -- tomás
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Re: Emacs for forums?

[Emanuel Berg]

tomas wrote:

> Agreed. There's a war going on between the
> Web on the one side, which wants me to
> "experience" a web site as a designer (and
> its Vulture -- uh Venture Capitalists) want
> me to "see" (and sometimes to hear) it and
> me, on the other side, who just wants to get
> at its information in the (for me) most
> convenient form possible. If I want an
> "experience", I go to the
> movies, thankyouverymuch.

Especially the 3D ones from Marvel Studios!

While I don't know if "war" is the appropriate
word, I say this development has been going on
for quite a couple of years.

When JavaScript first appeared, it never
worked. Now, they say it does, so with a GUI
mindset, a mouse, and a high resolution
monitor, I see why some people like it. So now
it is not about what is bad and what is good,
it is more about whose personality is what.

Note also that even when there is no
interactive web programming to it, be it
JavaScript, PHP, or CGI with C for all that
matters, many websites that are 100% static
still won't look good in a text-only Emacs-w3m
setting, as those sites were built with the
GUI/high-resolution setting in mind, with
different font sizes carrying the notion of
importance, colors that even in the HTML sense
aren't functional, but in their setting
(i.e., in the eye of the beholder) most
definitely are (but do not work here), and
so on.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Emacs for forums?

[James Taylor]

"Garreau, Alexandre" <galex-713@galex-713.eu> writes:

> On 2018-07-03 at 18:37, James Taylor wrote:
>> HASM <hasm@example.invalid> writes:
>>
>>>> So, many know that Emacs has no problem with Usenet and Reddit.
>>>
>>> Gnus for usenet, but what's the consensus for reddit?
>>>
>>> -- HASM
>>
>> See md4rd at https://github.com/ahungry/md4rd.
>
> So sad it’s not a gnus backend like nnrss or something alike :/
>
> I wish there were interfaces between gnus and more BBs such as popular
> webish/php software, like PHPmyBB, FluxBB, etc. would make the web
> a so much acceptable place.

You and me both. It would mean one unified interface for email and every
service I use to talk to other people. Alas...

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Emanuel Berg]

James Taylor wrote:

> You and me both. It would mean one unified
> interface for email and every service I use
> to talk to other people. Alas...

You can always stop using the unsupported
services :)

I have Gnus for mail and Gmane and Usenet.
That's one interface for three things, or 2.5
at least. So it is quite good if not
complete...

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Stefan Huchler]

Emanuel Berg <moasen@zoho.com> writes:

> James Taylor wrote:

> I have Gnus for mail and Gmane and Usenet.
> That's one interface for three things, or 2.5
> at least. So it is quite good if not
> complete...

How is that complete when I want to write something related to a news
from a website or related to a youtube video?

Or if I want to discuss a podcast that has no newsgroup, but a forum and
a comment section?

Re: Emacs for forums?

[James Taylor]

Emanuel Berg <moasen@zoho.com> writes:

> You can always stop using the unsupported
> services :)
>
> I have Gnus for mail and Gmane and Usenet.
> That's one interface for three things, or 2.5
> at least. So it is quite good if not
> complete...

Believe me, if it weren't for finding a home in one forum, I would have
done that by now. The desire to have Emacs as my Grand Unified Interface
for Everything™ only goes so far, though I'm sure many would argue it's
already to the point of madness. :P

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Emanuel Berg]

Stefan Huchler wrote:

> Emanuel Berg <moasen@zoho.com> writes:
>
>> James Taylor wrote:
>
>> I have Gnus for mail and Gmane and Usenet.
>> That's one interface for three things, or 2.5
>> at least. So it is quite good if not
>> complete...
>
> How is that complete when I want to write
> something related to a news from a website or
> related to a youtube video?
>
> Or if I want to discuss a podcast that has no
> newsgroup, but a forum and a comment section?

Well, mail, Gmane, and Usenet are complete but
they don't do any of the examples you brought
up what I know.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Emacs for forums?

[Jude DaShiell]

I wonder if edbrowse could be run by emacs on those sites requiring
javascript?  The edbrowse package supports a subset of javascript but
whether that's enough to keep the web sites happy is perhaps another
matter.  If edbrowse responds to javascript it will do nothing with by
effectively returning an ok to the web site then the effort may be
worthwhile to make this work at least for people who don't freak out when
their screen effects aren't perfect.



--