Structure of threaded discussion

[Adrienne Boswell]

The threaded discussion scripts I have found so far all use nested tables
(yuk!). Other message type scripts do not show a threaded structure, and
I think that's really important.

So, let's see, start with (it should also be able to be sorted by author
or date):
<table>
<thead>
<th>Message</th><th>Author</th><th>Date</th>

But then it gets dicey, because there are messages in reply to messages,
etc. I would mark that up as:
<ul>
<li>message
<ul>
<li>re message 1</li>
<li>re message 1
<ul>
<li>re re message 1</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>message 2</li>
</ul>

All the messsages are going to come out of a table, and I'll be writing
the script. I would use a canned one, but I can't find out that meets
standards.

Any thoughts? I really would like to discuss this.

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

[Chris Morris]

Adrienne Boswell <ar****@yahoo.comwrites:

The threaded discussion scripts I have found so far all use nested tables
(yuk!). Other message type scripts do not show a threaded structure, and
I think that's really important.

So, let's see, start with (it should also be able to be sorted by author
or date):
<th>Message</th><th>Author</th><th>Date</th>

But then it gets dicey, because there are messages in reply to messages,
etc. I would mark that up as:
[nested list]

Any thoughts? I really would like to discuss this.

Thread index as a nested list, date/author index as a set of headed lists.

Something like the mailing list archives at
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/08/ but without the strange
behaviour there of treating everything 3 or more from the thread top
as being exactly 3 away - the date and author indexes don't need to
look the same as the thread index. (Note its use of <linkto give
very easy access to 'next/prev in thread' links)

Alternatively, the thread index could be a table of the date, author
and subject of thread *start* messages, which when the links are
followed gives a nested list for just that thread.

The ancient anyboard Perl CGI message board does something similar to
this, but this is unmaintained for the last five years (so almost
certainly full of major security holes) and it's got the markup you'd
expect for an application from last century (but at least uses nested
lists rather than nested tables for most of the thread display ;)
Might be worth a look for ideas, since you could easily implement a
similar look-and-feel with good-quality markup, and it does handle
threading better than most message board software.

--
Chris

[Adrienne Boswell]

Chris Morris wrote:

Adrienne Boswell <ar****@yahoo.comwrites:

The threaded discussion scripts I have found so far all use nested tables
(yuk!). Other message type scripts do not show a threaded structure, and
I think that's really important.

So, let's see, start with (it should also be able to be sorted by author
or date):
<th>Message</th><th>Author</th><th>Date</th>

But then it gets dicey, because there are messages in reply to messages,
etc. I would mark that up as:
[nested list]

Any thoughts? I really would like to discuss this.

Thread index as a nested list, date/author index as a set of headed lists.

Something like the mailing list archives at
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/08/ but without the strange
behaviour there of treating everything 3 or more from the thread top
as being exactly 3 away - the date and author indexes don't need to
look the same as the thread index. (Note its use of <linkto give
very easy access to 'next/prev in thread' links)

Alternatively, the thread index could be a table of the date, author
and subject of thread *start* messages, which when the links are
followed gives a nested list for just that thread.

The ancient anyboard Perl CGI message board does something similar to
this, but this is unmaintained for the last five years (so almost
certainly full of major security holes) and it's got the markup you'd
expect for an application from last century (but at least uses nested
lists rather than nested tables for most of the thread display ;)
Might be worth a look for ideas, since you could easily implement a
similar look-and-feel with good-quality markup, and it does handle
threading better than most message board software.

--
Chris

Thank you, Chris, that looks like it might be just the ticket. I'm
doing mine in classic ASP, so I'll be doing it from the ground up.
<voice type="Joan Crawford" movie="Mommie Dearest">No More Nested
Tables!</voice>