Show HN: Retronews – TUI for HN and Lobsters emulating classical Usenet readers

I noticed the README comment about NNTP's limitations. I wonder if a new NNTP-over-HTTP protocol could find enough traction among the text-using crowd, or if ActivityPub could be used to provide a similar feature set efficiently.

Tried it, was fun.

How about automated updates every minute or so?

Usually I keep these windows open in the background and look at what pops up.

In later peak Usenet, there was also threading, and scoring.

Scoring rules would let individuals define rules for how thread subtrees and siblings are ordered, highlighted, and hidden. For example, comments by a particular user you like bump up the ordering priority for that comment, and also maybe some boost to the tree above it. And some keyword you think tends to happen in threads you don't like adds a negative score to that subtree, and maybe it hits a threshold causing it to be hidden (though the positive score from that user you like participating might save it, with you thinking that maybe they'd step into a flamewar and say something smart). And, separate from rules you defined, you could also manually hit a key to raise or lower a post or subtree (which could be used as an alternative to the earlier feature to say hide a subtree no matter whether more comments are made on it, like you might do for a flamewar).

Wow I love the look of this; gonna try it out.

Not really retro news, since it assumes everyone is using a large window and full-color terminal.

I was hoping to use it with one of my retro machines, and got

  use_default_colors() returned ERR

It should have --monochrome, and --ascii options.

The Unix ethos used to be "run anywhere on anything," but even basic programs like top assume a window of a certain size.

Similarly, Lynx markets itself as being for retro environments, but a number of its flags that would be useful in retro environments are ignored/broken.

Surprisingly (to me), htop is very well-behaved, and works even in tiny windows, or on tiny monochrome screens.

There's more to retro than just being text.

This is nice. Useful to look busy at office while reading HN

I see it's read only

Is it possible to launch a browser for writing replys/comments?

  Why not an NNTP gateway?

  NNTP doesn't support browsing threads by title (let alone paginated) and requesting their messages on demand. Clients need to fetch metadata of all available messages in all available threads in advance. Given the volume of messages on HN, synchronizing them to the gateway is not practical. Even when attempted, some clients struggle with the sheer number of messages in a single group.

That was also my first question, why not do it "properly", and while the reasons given are understandable brick walls, it seems to me that the real solution would be a re-vamping of the over-aged NNTP protocol, or even an outright new protocol.

I always liked USENET news for its "pull" approach, and for the same reason hated email newsletters. The threaded discussions via Emacs GNUS were a delight, and modern Web-based forum solutions are distractive and never respect my font/color settings; plus, they also diff in UX.