h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Please can someone explain how to do a conversation link. I think I understood from Gnomon's posting somewhere else that existing links will be legible eventually.

I'm struggling with it, but it might be the browser on the w**k 'puter.

Reading down a convo thread, everyone's name has a line through it.
Some posts start with a very looooong space.
And down at the bottom where the background pattern is, I find the text difficult to read.

Bea, would you have time to send browser etc details to Milla via the BR Feedback please? Here's the feedback page: A87706669

Thanks so much

TC, I've figured out how to do a link to a conversation that will work in Pliny, but it will bring you to the first posting in that conversation.

I can't link to a particular post in a conversation.

Of course, you can post a link in Pliny that brings you to a particular post. Otherwise our qotd would not work.

You have to make your link like this:


http://h2g2.com/forum/F19585/thread/T8306922/page/2/P110822382

I'll write out the instructions when I have some spare time.

It would be nice if there was a universal way to link to particular posts. I'm sorry about this, but I think I confused you with Pastey. For twas he that mentioned this point.

I can't seem to find that post now, though.

It is probably too much to hope that old links to conversations - specifically to individual posts - as posted previously, will automatically convert to a parsible (parsable?) link in the new Pliny. A small price to pay, methinks. After all - who reads old threads?

Old entries now - that's where we should be looking.

In the days of Barlesque, the BBC assigned a programmer to fix it so that links posted in old conversations would work correctly in the new system. Unfortunately, the Barlesque system was so tied into the BBC that it couldn't work without them, so Pastey had to rewrite most of it from scratch, and somewhere along the way that functionality was lost. The bits of Barlesque that he did use seem to be the ones that cause the most problems, so I'm sure they'll eventually get rewritten too.

It's certainly something that we can hope for, that the new Pliny should eventually be able to display usable links.

Lanza's posting 25 explains a universal method of posting links, which will work in any skin, although when you click on the link you will be brought to Pliny.

Eventually, when all the skins are brought over to Pliny, I suspect that this will be less of an issue.

Wow Gnomon, you seem to know an awful lot about what's been changed and what hasn't considering you've never even seen the code.

So, just to clear something up...

The code that we got when we took on h2g2:
Did *not* handle old style links.
Did *not* handle new style links.
Did *not* handle external links.

Since then, we've added lots of new code that:
*Does* handle new style links.
*Does* handle most of the old style links.
*Does* handle external links.

We now have to replace the APIs, which *never* worked, so that we can handle the rest of the links that the front end code can't handle.

So please, rather than spouting off stuff you don't actually know about, maybe ask those that do?

I wasn't talking about the code that you got from the BBC, Pastey, which I know didn't work. I was talking about the Barlesque system as run by the BBC before they abandoned it. I remember a BBC programmer, although I don't remember his name, fixing it so that Ripley-style links worked in Barlesque.

And perhaps you could give a little more thought and care before slagging off someone who actually does know quite a bit about how h2g2 used to operate, and who has done a lot of work for this site in the past.

Even someone as self-confident as me feels quite intimidated when you come down like a ton of bricks on my posts. I shudder to think what effect it has other people.

It's not pleasant.

Perhaps you should listen to your own advice before, and we'll call it implying to be polite, that other people have broken things?

You've been on a serious misery streak regarding this site for a while now. It may come as a surprise to you, that there's more than just you that has done a lot to keep this site running, there's more than just me that are still here, every day, working hard in their own time.

So please, remember that before continuing to insult everyone's hard work.

I wasn't suggesting that you broke anything, and I'm sorry if anyone got that impression.

What I said was that:

1. The BBC released Barlesque in such a way that it couldn't display Ripley links.

2. They fixed this problem.

3. Then they broke Barlesque so badly in separating it from the rest of their BBC stuff that it couldn't be got working.

4. You wrote most of Pliny from scratch. (Good on you!)

5. The bits of Barlesque that you used are the main ones that still cause problems, and these problems will probably disappear when you get around to rewriting those bits from scratch (which I'm assuming you will have to do.)

This is not a criticism of you or your work.

"The bits of Barlesque that you used are the main ones that still cause problems" How is that not a criticism?

Sorry, but if you don't mean for that to be a criticism you might want to chose your words a bit more carefully.

Sorry. I meant that there are still a number of problems in the Pliny system and those are in code that was taken from the BBC, not in code that you wrote.

That is my understanding of your statements about the BBC-provided APIs being the cause of some of the bugs.

Sho will probably be along shortly to kick us out of her journal.

Then let's end it here

There *are* problems still, but we're working on them. There's so much more that is great about this site than there is that's broken, it's best to focus and promote the good while we fix the bad

Hear hear!

Sho will be very disappointed that she will not have to use her slapping hand on you guys any more

Keep up the good w*rk, Pastey