http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=330412

I wrote my own interface to newest nodes and run it on my website. It uses jdporter's modules to access the XML interfaces available on PerlMonks to retrieve a list of new nodes and information about them. It caches this information in a local database. When I log in to it, I get a list of new nodes since the last time I used it. The list is threaded with all links to new nodes in white and older parent nodes in cyan.

If I click on a link, a new window opens to view the node from PerlMonks. As usual, the node is displayed with all of its descendants. Occassionally I'll see a thread that looks like it might be interesting but I can't really tell from the title. It would be nice if I could just look at the root node to see what the thread is about without asking the PerlMonks server to format the entire thread. Then, once I decide I'd like to see the replies, I could pull up the whole thread.

On each node, there is a link labeled 'print' that will bring up the node by itself but it will be formatted differently and there's no reply link. There's another option to print with replies which will display the entire thread with print formatting.

Would it be possible to get a displaymode that would only show the selected node without replies but otherwise formatted like a normal node view, including such things as the reply and code download links? Something like this could also be nicer ways to link to the 'Name Space' node and other large threads.

Edited: removed link to the 'Name Space' node.

90% of every Perl application is already written.
dragonchild

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Single node displaymode request
by hossman (Prior) on Feb 20, 2004 at 00:41 UTC

    I can't think of any harm in having a "view single node" page with the same general CSS as the existing page, minus the replies, but i would like to suggested that it NOT include a reply link.

    In my opinion it is "a good thing" that users have to at least be aware of the replies, and have hopefully skimmed them, before posting their own reply, which may be:

    • excessively redundent -- something the replier should notice, and then conciously chooseto be redundent or not.
    • Based on a missunderstanding of the orriginal node -- at which point the replier can rethink his own response based on the comments in the other replies.
    • wrong -- the replier may think he has "the answer" but when looking at other replies, may realize he is not as well informed as some of the other people who have allready posted, and can learn something new (and save otherpeople the confusion of his mistaken response.
Re: Single node displaymode request
by castaway (Parson) on Feb 20, 2004 at 08:13 UTC
    As an alternative, you could just get your own copy of the root node, using the node query xml generator. Thus PM wouldn't have to render anything much at all (no nodelets, replies, etc).

    PerlMonksTickers doesn't seem to include this one, but I'm sure you could add it (or request him to), without much trouble.

    C.

Re: Single node displaymode request
by ysth (Canon) on Feb 20, 2004 at 06:05 UTC
    I've occasionally wanted a way to set replies header depth and/or replies text depth on a one time basis, by tacking something onto the url.