Implementation - continued .....

Threaded article navigation: When reading an article that is part of a thread it is often the case that the user would like to view any replies to the current article or view the parent article to discover the source of the article’s comments. Threaded navigation allows a user to perform this action and to step forwards or backwards within a specific thread.

Individual user preferences: As mentioned previously in this report, individual user preferences are very important for personalising articles posted to a news group and allowing other users of the service to identify an article’s author by name, rather than by e-mail.

Import & export newsrc: It is possible that a user will use a different Usenet reader as their primary reader and only make use of this system when their primary reader is unavailable or because they are not physically located at the machine they commonly use. In order to make it easier for users to adopt the system when they require it’s use, the system allows importing of a newsrc generated by their primary news reader. This means that this system will be able to identify which news groups the user is subscribed to and which articles the user has already read with their primary news reader and so the user will not be required to re-setup their news reader to read the groups they require and find the latest articles posted. Likewise, the system allows for exporting of a newsrc file so that the user can then update their primary news reader with this information and they will not have to do similar re-configuration when they return to using it.

Multiple style sheet support: Similar to ‘Interface templating’, multiple style sheets allows the entire user interface to be redesigned with no changes to the script being made, nor the HTML it outputs. This can also be used for disability concerns, by creating a style sheet which uses particularly large fonts, or by using specific colours, those users with an impaired vision disability may still use the system.

For Future Implementation

A limited development life cycle meant that unfortunately not all of the enhancement suggestions could be implemented. The following is a list of some of the enhancements and suggestions that could not be implemented within the time period allocated for system development.

Postscript or PDF output of articles: Rather than outputting a HTML representation of a particular article, this would output the article as either a Postscript or PDF file which the user could then save for future reference.

RDF/RSS (XML) feeds: Using an XML feed such as RDF or RSS, a user would be able to configure a 3rd party application to load one of the system’s pages and then generate a summarised listing of all new articles or any other part of the system. This is particularly useful with news Web sites as a 3rd party application, such as an e-mail reader, can be configured to provide summaries of the day’s news collected fromWeb sites offering this service.

Interface templating: With the inclusion of ‘Multiple style sheet support’, this enhancement was low priority. The inclusion of a templating engine within the system would allow each page of the system to be changed by the system’s administrator without the main Perl script being altered. Alternatively, the inclusion of a dynamic templating engine into the system would allow a simple scripting language to be included within the static HTML templates which would then be parsed by the system prior to delivery to the user’s Web browser.