Re: emacs stackexchange beta site

[Artur Malabarba <arturmalabarba@gmail.com>]

> Don't forget this is also a USENET (NNTP) newsgroup -
> gnu.emacs.help - which can be accessed in the full
> sweetness of things with Gnus (which I hope will be an
> often-visited tag on your site!).

So do I. Right now it's still a little shy--only 3 questions as opposed to
org-mode's 49.

> >> If they would communicate with us perhaps it would
> >> be simpler to make an interface (or partial
> >> interface to begin with),
> >
> > As in..?
>
> I can think of dozens of things. Links are the first
> step. But then... There has been so much material on
> this list/group. How do you reference particularly
> interesting posts?

Popular posts in the SE network tend to be kept alive but voting. A
high rank gives them more traffic which I suppose also keeps them
alive in Web Search rankings.
I haven't yet seen discussions from here being referenced there, but
I'd like to remedy that with time.

> Indeed, how do you find them? How
> do we access your site in a way that isn't to
> far-fetched from what we are used to? For example,
> does it require JavaScript? Does it play well with
> Emacs-w3m and other in-Emacs browsing alternatives?

"Well" is not a word I'd use here. :-/
It renders, but it's not exactly pleasant. But see below!

> Using the site from and with Emacs should be a
> objective from day one, don't you think?

It is for me! I'm planning a stackexchange-mode package for Emacs.
This would allow people to read/ask/answer entirely within Emacs, but
asking and answering will require an account. So visiting their site
(and its javascript) at least once should be necessary.
In any case, current ETA is around New Year.
There's also a package called SOS for reading questions and answers.

> Thinking big can it be integrated with the message-mode, with Gnus
> and RMAIL? For example, why don't you generate a mail once a week
> with all the new questions and post it here?

The site has that ability, I'll get to that. I'd rather make each
question a separate email, but I don't want to spam the list either.
I'll bring this up on a thread of its own.

> (There was already a guy here who did a question-based interface to
> the SX sites - it was about parsing the HTML and showing the results
> in plain text - I remember many people were delighted and it seemed
> to work well but I didn't hear from him
> since.)

You might be thinking of the SOS package I mentioned above.

> What I hope for the future of computing is
> UI-agnostic: some guy likes USENET, some other guy
> likes SX, some guy likes CLI, some guy GUI, some the
> keyboard, some the mouse, and so on. Why fight about
> it? Just make the data independent from all that and
> then have everyone access it and interact with it any
> way and with any tool he or she desires.
>
> Here is an example right here:
>
> U+1F44D is the Unicode for "THUMBS UP" [1].
>
> I'm on another kind of system than most people so I
> can't see it. But I can still insert it (`C-x 8 RET
> 1f44d RET') - I hope (do you see it?):
>
> 👍
>
> You see. It is not that difficult :)

Your cheerfulness is refreshing. :-)

> Anyway, good luck!

Thanks!