Web Groupware

Jon Udell's "HTML + NNTP = Groupware" (September Web Project) hit on several important points but didn't mention that the Web was originally designed to do what he's describing: collaborative authoring. When Tim Berners-Lee invented this stuff, he was trying to provide a way for people to collaborate on document authoring so that dispersed groups could write scientific papers. That's why the little-known and even less-used CHECKIN and CHECKOUT methods are part of the HTTP standard. POST was meant to allow people to post articles and papers to newsgroups; it wasn't meant to receive results from a form as it is now used.

The only advantage of using NNTP/INND over the Web is that replication is better supported (this is where Lotus Notes scores). How about d oing all this stuff using a Web browser and a Java applet that would add the relevant headers to an HTTP POST request so that you wouldn't have to split the subject line into name, company, and keywords? This would allow you to make the user interface more intuitive, and you wouldn't get misformed subject lines. The display of threading wouldn't be as easy (newsreaders have threading built in), but if Lotus Domino can do outlining "twisties" on the fly, why can' t a Web server script? Doing it this way removes the problem of old text-only news readers, and we're back to a thin vanilla client with any smarts being added as Java applets that get downloaded and updated when required, plus some server-side scripting for sorting, outlining, and thread displaying.

Hubert Matthews
hubert@patrol.i-way.co.uk

Very true about the Web's origins. And yet oddly, the Web has emerged into popular consciousness as primarily a read-only med ium. Meanwhile, the Usenet has become a read-write medium for the masses. My strategy is to go with the flow.

The biggest advantage of using NNTP/INND is: no server-side programming required at all to deal with a basic document database, with discussions, with binary attachments, and now even with HTML. It wasn't planned this way, but the combo of NNTP servers and clients has become in a way more useful than the combo of HTTP servers and clients, that is, for the particular class of application to which I'm trying to draw attention. This is a very large, important class of application.

A Web server script can do those things you mention. I've written lots of things like that. But I'm trying to focus on what can be done with out-of-the-box tools and no programming. --Jon Udell