A new home for Dragon Code

[Bluefire]

Hello everyone!

I have noticed that it has been getting increasingly harder to come by
Dragon Code's documentation and, as such, Dragon Codes themselves. Most
sites hosting any info on it have disappeared over the years. As such, I
thought using a bit of my free time to lend a hand in preserving this
amazing thing would be worth it.

I have created a new, modern and extensive documentation website for
Dragon Code (focused on version 2, though info on the original version
can also be found there) which, at the moment, can be found here:
https://dragoncode.netlify.app

It is a work-in-progress, so I don't consider it quite finished yet. It
is also open-source, so feel free to host a copy of this website on your
own server as a means to help preserve it. To end this post, I would
like to say that any feedback would also be certainly be appreciated.

Have a nice day,
- Yours truly

--
Bluefire | https://bluefi.re | DC2.Dw Gm L W T Phvfwlt Sks
Cbk\bl-,bgy,vwh Bfl A- M- H++ $ Fc J I--# V+++ Tc+++! E-

[Sendo Shin]

Looks great! Looking forward to seeing the generator for this. ^.=.^

--
- Sendo Shin
Supreme of the House

[tom]

On Mon, 7 Sep 2020 22:37:20 +0200
Bluefire <pub...@bluefi.re> wrote:

> Hello everyone!
>
> I have noticed that it has been getting increasingly harder to come
> by Dragon Code's documentation and, as such, Dragon Codes themselves.
> Most sites hosting any info on it have disappeared over the years. As
> such, I thought using a bit of my free time to lend a hand in
> preserving this amazing thing would be worth it.
>
> I have created a new, modern and extensive documentation website for
> Dragon Code (focused on version 2, though info on the original
> version can also be found there) which, at the moment, can be found
> here: https://dragoncode.netlify.app
>
> It is a work-in-progress, so I don't consider it quite finished yet.
> It is also open-source, so feel free to host a copy of this website
> on your own server as a means to help preserve it. To end this post,
> I would like to say that any feedback would also be certainly be
> appreciated.
>
> Have a nice day,
> - Yours truly
>

It just says Loading... on a white blackground

[Bluefire]

On 08/09/2020 04:00, tom wrote:
> It just says Loading... on a white blackground

Which browser are you using, if I may ask?

[tom]

On Thu, 10 Sep 2020 10:46:45 +0200
Bluefire <pub...@bluefi.re> wrote:

> On 08/09/2020 04:00, tom wrote:
> > It just says Loading... on a white blackground
>
> Which browser are you using, if I may ask?
>

Web Browser 29.0.1. It's Goanna based. I also use xlinks2

[Bluefire]

Your web browser needs to support modern JavaScript in order for the
page to render. It may be that yours doesn't support it, or perhaps you
have it disabled, which is why you're getting a white screen. If you're
looking for a browser that will render the page correctly, all major
browsers (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Safari) should support it.

[tom]

On Fri, 11 Sep 2020 20:19:20 +0200

Bluefire <pub...@bluefi.re> wrote:

> On 10/09/2020 22:40, tom wrote:
> > On Thu, 10 Sep 2020 10:46:45 +0200
> > Bluefire <pub...@bluefi.re> wrote:
> >
> >> On 08/09/2020 04:00, tom wrote:
> >>> It just says Loading... on a white blackground
> >>
> >> Which browser are you using, if I may ask?
> >>
> >
> > Web Browser 29.0.1. It's Goanna based. I also use xlinks2
> >
>
> Your web browser needs to support modern JavaScript in order for the
> page to render. It may be that yours doesn't support it, or perhaps
> you have it disabled, which is why you're getting a white screen. If
> you're looking for a browser that will render the page correctly, all
> major browsers (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Safari) should support it.
>

Please make portable, interoperable web pages according to standards.
"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on
a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web,
when you had very little chance of reading a document written on
another computer, another word processor, or another network." -- Tim
Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996
https://anybrowser.org/campaign/

There is a tool by the W3C for checking your site and providing
feedback. https://validator.w3.org/#validate_by_uri+with_options
Set it to XHTML1.1

You are excluding a significant portion of viewers by making your site
rely on 'modern JavaSript' instead of standardized XHTML. Even more
frustrating is know that a simple text or non JavaScript alternative
could be supplied. Nonetheless, the unhappy trend is to simply tell the
user to upgrade his software. For many of us this is not an option, as
our hardware cannot support it; Among many other reasons why one would
not use a Google/Mozilla product nor should I have to.

You have obviously put a great deal of effort into rediscovering and
re-publishing the dragon code to the web, so why do an incomplete job
of it?

Let everyone with a XHTML standards compliant browser view your site.
Not just those with 'Modern Javascript'. Show your readers that you
have taken the care to create an interoperable Web page.

[Bluefire]

Portable it already is. The site runs on any static web server. This is
important, because it allows anyone to easily host a copy of the site. It
helps keep the documentation online.

The website adheres to standards as much as possible. JavaScript has long
been standardised, and many older browsers support it as well. If one
wanted to avoid Google or Mozilla, there still are alternatives available
that will work with the site.

Even if I were to switch to purely HTML and CSS, the thing is, it still
wouldn’t work because the site enforces HTTPS for additional security. The
point it, while you should sometimes indeed forgo certain things for
compatibility’s sake, past a certain point it isn’t worth it if that means
that the great, great majority ends up with a worse experience.

I have considered this, believe it or not, from the very beginning. The
site’s content is still very much in development and utilising JavaScript
makes this development much easier, which is why the site requires the use
of JavaScript to function (until development is complete, at the very
least). Once the source code for the site becomes available, feel free to
use the Markdown documents in the repository which hold the site’s content.
It requires nothing more than a basic text editor to open.

[Bluefire]

Portable it already is. The site runs on any static web server. This is
important, because it allows anyone to easily host a copy of the site. It
helps keep the documentation online.

The website adheres to standards as much as possible. JavaScript has long
been standardised, and many older browsers support it as well. If one

wanted to avoid Google or Mozilla, there are alternatives available that

will work with the site.

Even if I were to switch to purely HTML and CSS, the thing is, it still
wouldn’t work because the site enforces HTTPS for additional security. The

point is, while you should sometimes indeed forgo certain things for

compatibility’s sake, past a certain point it isn’t worth it if that means
that the great, great majority ends up with a worse experience.

Believe it or not, I have considered all of this from the very beginning.
The thing is, the site’s content is still very much in development and

utilising JavaScript makes this development much easier, which is why

that’s currently a requirement (until this development is complete, at

least). Once the source code for the site becomes available, feel free to
use the Markdown documents in the repository which hold the site’s content.
It requires nothing more than a basic text editor to open.

[Bluefire]

Sorry for the double post. Trying to use Usenet from your phone isn’t
particularity a great experience. :P

[Bluefire]

Bluefire <m...@bluefi.re> wrote:
> Sorry for the double post. Trying to use Usenet from your phone isn’t
> particularity a great experience. :P

*particularly

So... like I said. Heh...

[tom]

On Sun, 13 Sep 2020 11:41:36 -0000 (UTC)
Bluefire <m...@bluefi.re> wrote:

> Portable it already is. The site runs on any static web server. This
> is important, because it allows anyone to easily host a copy of the
> site. It helps keep the documentation online.
>
> The website adheres to standards as much as possible. JavaScript has
> long been standardised, and many older browsers support it as well.
> If one wanted to avoid Google or Mozilla, there are alternatives
> available that will work with the site.
>
> Even if I were to switch to purely HTML and CSS, the thing is, it
> still wouldn’t work because the site enforces HTTPS for additional
> security. The point is, while you should sometimes indeed forgo
> certain things for compatibility’s sake, past a certain point it
> isn’t worth it if that means that the great, great majority ends up
> with a worse experience.
>
> Believe it or not, I have considered all of this from the very
> beginning. The thing is, the site’s content is still very much in
> development and utilising JavaScript makes this development much
> easier, which is why that’s currently a requirement (until this
> development is complete, at least). Once the source code for the site
> becomes available, feel free to use the Markdown documents in the
> repository which hold the site’s content. It requires nothing more
> than a basic text editor to open.

OPEN LETTER TO WEBMASTERS

I do not feel comfortable using Firefox or Chromium. Both of those
browsers are huge and are corporate spyware. In tests they send back
MASSIVE amounts of personal data and otherwise phone home. In addition
to that, those browsers do not have as strong as tracking protection or
audited code base and they are impossible to audit externally given how
large and fast their code base moves. [1][2] Try to git clone
chromium.git sometime. You will find yourself downloading over 18
gigabytes of code.

Those browsers, especially Firefox are incredibly difficult to bootstrap
and compile on many platforms due to it's Rust dependencies and poorly
written C++ code; Requiring many downstream fixes and porting before
they can be run by users such as myself.

In addition to that the web pseudo-standards you have chosen in your new
websites are not vendor neutral. They are made by WhatWG which consists
of mainly just google [7], front organizations that are 96% funded by
Google [3], and monopolistic anti-freedom anti-competition anti-open-web
corporations who push DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) into the
web via the pseudo-standards body WhatWG [4][5] causing the Electronic
Frontier Foundation to leave the W3C [5], which tongue-in-cheekily
just snapshots the Whatwg's HTML5. The WhatWG is not a independent
conflict of interest free standards body it is a "working group".

Websites relying on JavaScript features that are
only available in the latest version of these corporate spyware
browsers such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox is harmful.

ECMA is bad design. "Let release a new "standard" every year" --
they are so disconnected from people actually implementing all of this.
Just because a committee approves it, doesn't mean it'll be adopted any
time soon, if at all.

A lot of these ""standards"" are probably done this way on purpose to
racketeer so nobody besides Google can implement them.

Please keep this in mind for future projects. What I would suggest is having
Graceful Degradation in your design like the previous websites had.
https://www.w3.org/wiki/Graceful_degradation_versus_progressive_enhancement

Please keep in mind that differently-abled people need to access your
website and many such people use browsers other than google chrome or
Firefox to do so, such as W3M and WB.

Please do not rely on features only available in the latest version of
ECMA. Please do use polyfills and graceful degradation. Please use
XHTML1.1 and XHTML1.1 BASIC wherever possible instead of HTML5. With
XHTML1.1 you actually can run an XML validation tool such as the one at
https://validator.w3.org/ and it will tell you if your site is valid
and will work on every browser or it's malformed. There is no
in-between with XHTML. It's either correct or it's not, unlike HTML. See
https://anybrowser.org/campaign/ for more information on this and
examples of more sites using XHTML.

Just a wild suggestion that I thought would be pretty cool. Could you
offer something in addition to a web interface like
a ssh based terminal interface? That would be easier to program and
very portable as well as comfortable to use and easy for people with
disabilities to interface with. Not everything has to be web. For some
reference telnet into bbs.dmine.net or ssh into
to...@ascii.town or b...@whisper.onthewifi.com sometime.

[1] https://www.spywarewatchdog.org/articles/chrome.html
[2] https://www.spywarewatchdog.org/articles/firefox.html
[3] https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/mozilla.html#finances
[4] https://www.defectivebydesign.org/
[5] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-
director-ceo-team-and-membership
[7] https://whatwg.org/sg-agreement

[Bluefire]

On 12/09/2021 20:37, tom wrote:
> I do not feel comfortable using Firefox or Chromium. Both of those
> browsers are huge and are corporate spyware. In tests they send back
> MASSIVE amounts of personal data and otherwise phone home. In addition
> to that, those browsers do not have as strong as tracking protection or
> audited code base and they are impossible to audit externally given how
> large and fast their code base moves. [1][2] Try to git clone
> chromium.git sometime. You will find yourself downloading over 18
> gigabytes of code.

If you are unable or unwilling to use a modern web browser, that's fine.
If JavaScript is disabled, a link to a Markdown file will show up. You
can open it with any text editor and read the site's content just fine.

Kind regards,
Bluefire

[arialth]

> [A bunch of barely-coherent nonsense from Tom]

Nobody cares, dude. If you're this prepared to whine on a usenet group about modern browsers including external libraries,
I know you have to be capable of understanding the complex concepts behind using a virtual machine. Or don't.

If you want to be a luddite, don't bring everyone else down at the same time. Don't inflict your bullshit on everyone else.
There's enough noise from here as it is without random neckbeards wandering in bitching about how modern browsers
are evil in a discussion about dragon code. You Stallman wannabes are insane.

[Raeadh`ani]

> > [A bunch of barely-coherent nonsense from Tom]
>

> > [Great reply from Arialth]

Especially when Bluefire was trying to do something nice/wonderful & preserve something that could have just as easily been lost to memory like so many things before have.
Tom was coming off as an ass last year & is coming off as an ass this year. At least there's consistency.