Imagining an OLR

[Andrew B.]

I just thought I'd mention that it is technically possible to have an offline reader for vBulletin. To avoid the PHP interfacing issues, the reader would communicate with the vBulletin database using SQL. Logging in would require a valid user name and password. And, of course, the program would have to know how, what, and when vBulletin stores things to the database.

Not exactly an easy project. And it might require adding a couple fields and teaching vBulletin how to update them. But it is a thought.

[Judy G. Russell]

Oh my... and what a nice thought... now who do we know who codes that well???

[ndebord]

I just thought I'd mention that it is technically possible to have an offline reader for vBulletin. To avoid the PHP interfacing issues, the reader would communicate with the vBulletin database using SQL. Logging in would require a valid user name and password. And, of course, the program would have to know how, what, and when vBulletin stores things to the database.

Not exactly an easy project. And it might require adding a couple fields and teaching vBulletin how to update them. But it is a thought.

Andrew,

Is it equally possible to do the same thing with phpbb?

[Mike Landi]

Has Mr. Syd shown up here yet? ;)

[Andrew B.]

Is it equally possible to do the same thing with phpbb?I think it would be equally possible to do this with phpBB, and many other forums that live in databases. The big limitation of phpBB, though, is it's a flat board.

BTW, there is a Python script called Papercut that was developed to let Usenet readers communicate directly with a threaded PHP forum called Phorum. Some programmers adapted it to work with phpBB. And it could probably be adapted to vBulletin. But it would take someone who can unravel how to get it to work. And the NNTP protocol is pretty limited in what it can do.

[Andrew B.]

It would take some pretty sophisticated programming ability and a good understanding of PHP/MYSQL and web security. So this would not be easy. And I have no idea if there is any money to be made from this. But with such a offline reader, people could pull headers from here, desktop publishing forum, and the pets forum in the first pass. Write replies, and post to all three forums with the second pass. Not to mention all the other features. And who knows, maybe more forums would want in on this, and we could access dozens of forums, just like before.

[sidney]

Has Mr. Syd shown up here yet? ;)

I assume you mean me, even though that's Sidney, like in Nebraska, not Sydney like in Ozstralia :)

Unfortunately I think I'm going to be quite busy between my thesis (http://www.sidney.com/wp/msc-thesis-proposal/) and my volunteer work on SpamAssassin (http://spamassassin.apache.org/full/3.0.x/dist/CREDITS) as well as spending some time with my family (http://www.sidney.com/slides/birthdayteeth/). (warning: the last URL points to pictures that are 300 to 500 kbytes each page, not intended for people with slow connections)

-- sidney

[Judy G. Russell]

Your children are adorable, Sidney!

[Judy G. Russell]

And who knows, maybe more forums would want in on this, and we could access dozens of forums, just like before.
Sigh... dream on, my friend. Dream on...