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It's a shame we can't maintain/move the content from the EMB IW forum.  There are a lot of very helpful threads (google search works even if EMB search doesn't <g>).

FWIW, I still use that information, and when first starting with IW I probably would have given up without it.  Other new users will face the same issues since documentation doesn't (can't) keep up.

I can write something that crawls the forum (relatively straightforward compared to some things I've done), but I'm not going to launch into something like that without permission to use the content.   OTOH, if they would give permission to use the content then they could probably extract it from their server database pretty easily.

What are the options for retaining that info?

Other thoughts?

Dan
1+++ vote for retrieving iW history from EMB and adding them to this forum
EMBT has an NNTP gateway. That is probably the easiest way to grab it.


If you use Thunderbird, you can sync the whole group and then its local on your system and that database can easily be read as well.

I will ask EMBT if we can pull and copy the content.
(03-14-2018, 10:20 PM)kudzu Wrote: [ -> ]EMBT has an NNTP gateway. That is probably the easiest way to grab it.

If you use Thunderbird, you can sync the whole group and then its local on your system and that database can easily be read as well.

I will ask EMBT if we can pull and copy the content.

There are probably several ways of grabbing the content.  NNTP is probably the easiest (well, direct database access would be easiest but...) technically if someone who is NNTP fluent wants to do that.  I'm not NNTP strong but I've done a lot of webby interface automation.  That's a sad way to interface but sometimes it's all there is so I've had to do it with other parties.

But, the main issue is to decide (1) if you are going to make a new permanent home for IW and if so, (2) are we going to be able to integrate the "knowledge base" (lower case) of the prior "permanent home". 

The current home at EMB seems to be slowly burning down, but we'd still need permission to save the contents for ourselves.

I can help with that, but don't want to launch into it blindly without permission or support... nor do I want to go to the effort if someone else is able to do it more easily <g>.

I do think the end result of preserving the knowledge is important.

Dan
NNTP is super simple and Indy has full support for it.


I've already made a query to EMBT and received one positive response so far but need to wait for the higher up to answer as well.

There are also readonly IW NNTP groups on our server but the content is much much older.
I think its safe to pull. I would use Indy or the Thunderbird trick, and then the simplest might be to just convert all to HTML and then we can upload to our website and use google to index them.
I try to import the content via idNNTP but it's broked.
return from IW EMB via NNTP:

IdNNTP.MsgCount: 24282
IdNNTP.MsgLow  : 1
IdNNTP.MsgHigh : 28110

27872    Re: IW: Back and Forward browser's buttons    Eitan Arbel <>    Mon, 12 Mar 2018 11:26:24 -0700    <977499@forums.embarcadero.com>
27873    New Indy and IntraWeb forums    Remy Lebeau (TeamB) <no.spam@no.spam.com>    Mon, 12 Mar 2018 14:10:53 -0700    <977522@forums.embarcadero.com>
27900    Please close the forum and save the content    =?Utf-8?Q?J=C3=B6rg_Heim?= <>    Wed, 14 Mar 2018 02:07:20 -0700    <977709@forums.embarcadero.com>

I started FROM 27.000. Only these 3 messages returned
There seems to be a lot broken lately with the NNTP interface. They have had database corruption in the past, and it looks like it may have happened again Sad

Web scraping may be the only way..... Indy could do that too of course.
(03-20-2018, 06:42 PM)kudzu Wrote: [ -> ]There seems to be a lot broken lately with the NNTP interface. They have had database corruption in the past, and it looks like it may have happened again Sad

Web scraping may be the only way..... Indy could do that too of course.

I have been "over occupied" for the last few days so haven't kept up.

One thought that occurred to me is that some of the NNTP readers have their own (threading) local database, though I don't know how far they go back.

Does, as an example, XanaNews have all these messages already downloaded and living on somebody's machine?  If so, is there a way to export the IW forum?  Or get the data file specs and write an export?  Quickly looking at XanaNews I see an export, but it appears to be compressed (no raw text) and I haven't looked farther (I don't even know how far it might go back).  I think their source is available but didn't have time to dig at the moment.

Dan

(03-20-2018, 06:42 PM)kudzu Wrote: [ -> ]There seems to be a lot broken lately with the NNTP interface. They have had database corruption in the past, and it looks like it may have happened again Sad

Web scraping may be the only way..... Indy could do that too of course.

Holy smokes, the spam filters must have blown a gasket over there.  Curios how all that stuff shows up since you're supposed to have an account in order to post.

They haven't seemed to have a gatekeeper assigned for quite some time, though I know there are moderators trying to delete it when it comes up.  Better to keep it outside to begin with.  But, that won't change.

Speaking of that... I presume you need a signon here in order to post.  I don't recall trying that.  I usually try to break things when first exposed but didn't in this case.

Dan
TeamB does monitor them and clean them but they have informed me that the software is old and possibly not supported anymore and that the spam cleaning feature is very cumbersome to use and with the spam load currently its become impractical to manage it.
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