[Caml-list] Type Error in OCaml Code

[Caml-list] Type Error in OCaml Code

[mukesh tiwari]

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Hi everyone,

My Coq project depends on a OCaml library [1] --the original library [2]--
which used to compile without any error in the past, but now it's no more.
If you run 'make all' in the ocaml-java directory, it throws an error '


*This expression has type Parsetree.pattern       but an expression was
expected of type         Migrate_parsetree.Ast_406.Parsetree.pattern' *

Could someone please tell me how to get rid of this error? (To me it seems
like some code restructuring in ocaml-migrate-parsetree).

Best,
Mukesh

ocaml-java git:(master) ✗ make all

File "ppx/ast_tools.ml", line 31, characters 36-55:
31 | let mk_let id expr = [%stri let [%p Pat.var (mk_loc id)] = [%e expr]]
                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error:

*This expression has type Parsetree.pattern       but an expression was
expected of type         Migrate_parsetree.Ast_406.Parsetree.pattern*
make[1]: *** [bin/ppx/ast_tools.cmo] Error 2
make: *** [bin/ocaml-java-ppx] Error 2



[1]
https://github.com/mukeshtiwari/EncryptionSchulze/tree/master/code/Workingcode/ocaml-java
[2] https://github.com/Julow/ocaml-java/

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RE: [Caml-list] Type Error in OCaml Code

[Nicolás Ojeda Bär]

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Dear Mukesh,

The solution of your problem is probably: "update the library and all its dependencies to the latest version of ppxlib/ocaml-migrate-parsetree." Unfortunately, churn in the ppx ecosystem has been a problem since the beginning (though I believe some steps have been taken recently to mitigate this issue).

For more specific help I encourage you to ask your question on Discuss https://discuss.ocaml.org/ (which I saw you have already done!).

Cheers,
Nicolas
________________________________
De : caml-list-request@inria.fr <caml-list-request@inria.fr> de la part de mukesh tiwari <mukeshtiwari.iiitm@gmail.com>
Envoyé : vendredi 14 janvier 2022 19:56
À : caml users <caml-list@inria.fr>
Objet : [Caml-list] Type Error in OCaml Code


CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.


Hi everyone,

My Coq project depends on a OCaml library [1] --the original library [2]--  which used to compile without any error in the past, but now it's no more. If you run 'make all' in the ocaml-java directory, it throws an error 'This expression has type Parsetree.pattern
       but an expression was expected of type
         Migrate_parsetree.Ast_406.Parsetree.pattern'

Could someone please tell me how to get rid of this error? (To me it seems like some code restructuring in ocaml-migrate-parsetree).

Best,
Mukesh

ocaml-java git:(master) ✗ make all

File "ppx/ast_tools.ml<http://ast_tools.ml>", line 31, characters 36-55:
31 | let mk_let id expr = [%stri let [%p Pat.var (mk_loc id)] = [%e expr]]
                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error: This expression has type Parsetree.pattern
       but an expression was expected of type
         Migrate_parsetree.Ast_406.Parsetree.pattern
make[1]: *** [bin/ppx/ast_tools.cmo] Error 2
make: *** [bin/ocaml-java-ppx] Error 2



[1] https://github.com/mukeshtiwari/EncryptionSchulze/tree/master/code/Workingcode/ocaml-java
[2] https://github.com/Julow/ocaml-java/

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[orbifx]

> For more specific help I encourage you to ask your question on Discuss https://discuss.ocaml.org/
Please keep the mailing lists going too, with people asking questions or having discussions here. Not just for announcements.

Thanks :)

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Sun, Jan 16, 2022 at 09:40:20AM +0000, orbifx wrote:
>> For more specific help I encourage you to ask your question on
>> Discuss https://discuss.ocaml.org/
>
> Please keep the mailing lists going too, with people asking questions
> or having discussions here. Not just for announcements.

+1.

Discourse (the service-as-a-software-substitute currently being used to
provide https://discuss.ocaml.org/ ) has some quite serious
accessibility flaws.  The more that discussions happen there instead of
on the mailing list, the less accessible the OCaml ecosystem is likely
to become.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Sam Kuper (2022/01/16 14:31 +0000):
> On Sun, Jan 16, 2022 at 09:40:20AM +0000, orbifx wrote:
> >> For more specific help I encourage you to ask your question on
> >> Discuss https://discuss.ocaml.org/
> >
> > Please keep the mailing lists going too, with people asking questions
> > or having discussions here. Not just for announcements.
>
> +1.
>
> Discourse (the service-as-a-software-substitute currently being used to
> provide https://discuss.ocaml.org/ ) has some quite serious
> accessibility flaws.  The more that discussions happen there instead of
> on the mailing list, the less accessible the OCaml ecosystem is likely
> to become.

Being myself blind I feel very concerned about accessibility. I admin I
didn't try the forum, but (1) all the forums I tried so far I ofudn way
mess accessible than good old mailing lists and (2) yes, mailing lists
are totally accessible and, in my opinion, very simple to use.
Many thanks for promoting the accessibility concern!

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Daniil Baturin]

On 1/17/22 16:20, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> Sam Kuper (2022/01/16 14:31 +0000):
>> On Sun, Jan 16, 2022 at 09:40:20AM +0000, orbifx wrote:
>>>> For more specific help I encourage you to ask your question on
>>>> Discuss https://discuss.ocaml.org/
>>> Please keep the mailing lists going too, with people asking questions
>>> or having discussions here. Not just for announcements.
>> +1.
>>
>> Discourse (the service-as-a-software-substitute currently being used to
>> provide https://discuss.ocaml.org/ ) has some quite serious
>> accessibility flaws.  The more that discussions happen there instead of
>> on the mailing list, the less accessible the OCaml ecosystem is likely
>> to become.
> Being myself blind I feel very concerned about accessibility. I admin I
> didn't try the forum, but (1) all the forums I tried so far I ofudn way
> mess accessible than good old mailing lists and (2) yes, mailing lists
> are totally accessible and, in my opinion, very simple to use.
> Many thanks for promoting the accessibility concern!
>
> Sébastien.

Could you try the discuss.ocaml.org forum and share your opinion about 
its accessibility?

Discourse is NOT a service-as-a-software-substitute. It's free software 
distributed under GPLv2. See https://github.com/discourse/discourse
They provide managed hosting to fund its development and make life 
simpler for people who don't have the skill or time to maintain their 
own servers. Their managed hosting is also free of charge for FOSS projects.

Its accessibility _can_ be improved by the community.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 04:33:49PM +0700, Daniil Baturin wrote:
> Discourse is NOT a service-as-a-software-substitute.

You are only partly correct, and not for the reason you gave below.

I probably should have been clearer, so let me clarify my earlier claim.


# FREE SOFTWARE

> It's free software distributed under GPLv2. See
> https://github.com/discourse/discourse

I was aware of the license before I made the statement about SaaSS.

SaaSS does not imply "proprietary":

    "SaaSS and proprietary software lead to similar harmful results, but
    the mechanisms are different.  With proprietary software, the
    mechanism is that you have and use a copy which is difficult and/or
    illegal to change.   With SaaSS, the mechanism is that you don't
    have the copy that's doing your computing. ...

    Many free software supporters assume that the problem of SaaSS will
    be solved by developing free software for servers.  ...  But if the
    programs on the server are free, that doesn't protect the server's
    users from the effects of SaaSS.  These programs liberate the server
    operator, but not the server's users."[1]

So, on that ground in isolation, I was not wrong to call hosted
Discourse instances SaaSS.

(If Discourse were licensed as AGPLv3 instead of GPLv2+, then I *might*
have been wrong to do so.  I haven't examined that point here, though.)



# SaaSS VS OTHER NETWORK SERVICES


SaaSS implies a failure to do "your own computing on data in your own
hands".[1]

Insofar as Discourse facilitates exchange of data between people,
therefore - e.g. to the extent that it replicates the functionality of
traditional mailing list manager (MLM) software - it is *not* SaaSS.

However, Discourse, like most forum software, doesn't just replace the
MLM.  It also replaces the MUA and the features for local
data-processing that the MUA provides: a UI for reading posts and
composing replies, search/browse functionality, etc.

Those (anti-)features, strictly speaking, constitute SaaSS.

That might not be bad if, like good MLMs, Discourse instances also
provided e.g. Mbox discussion archives for easy downloading and local
usage, so that users could easily avoid the SaaSS.  But unfortunately,
Discourse imposes accessibility and inconvenience barriers against
downloading that data for local usage.


Thank you for your patience and understanding,

Sam

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Daniil Baturin]

On 1/17/22 21:30, Sam Kuper wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 04:33:49PM +0700, Daniil Baturin wrote:
>> Discourse is NOT a service-as-a-software-substitute.
> You are only partly correct, and not for the reason you gave below.
>
> I probably should have been clearer, so let me clarify my earlier claim.
>
>
> # FREE SOFTWARE
>
>> It's free software distributed under GPLv2. See
>> https://github.com/discourse/discourse
> I was aware of the license before I made the statement about SaaSS.
>
> SaaSS does not imply "proprietary":
>
>      "SaaSS and proprietary software lead to similar harmful results, but
>      the mechanisms are different.  With proprietary software, the
>      mechanism is that you have and use a copy which is difficult and/or
>      illegal to change.   With SaaSS, the mechanism is that you don't
>      have the copy that's doing your computing. ...
>
>      Many free software supporters assume that the problem of SaaSS will
>      be solved by developing free software for servers.  ...  But if the
>      programs on the server are free, that doesn't protect the server's
>      users from the effects of SaaSS.  These programs liberate the server
>      operator, but not the server's users."[1]
>
> So, on that ground in isolation, I was not wrong to call hosted
> Discourse instances SaaSS.
>
> (If Discourse were licensed as AGPLv3 instead of GPLv2+, then I *might*
> have been wrong to do so.  I haven't examined that point here, though.)
>
>
>
> # SaaSS VS OTHER NETWORK SERVICES
>
>
> SaaSS implies a failure to do "your own computing on data in your own
> hands".[1]
>
> Insofar as Discourse facilitates exchange of data between people,
> therefore - e.g. to the extent that it replicates the functionality of
> traditional mailing list manager (MLM) software - it is *not* SaaSS.
>
> However, Discourse, like most forum software, doesn't just replace the
> MLM.  It also replaces the MUA and the features for local
> data-processing that the MUA provides: a UI for reading posts and
> composing replies, search/browse functionality, etc.
>
> Those (anti-)features, strictly speaking, constitute SaaSS.
>
> That might not be bad if, like good MLMs, Discourse instances also
> provided e.g. Mbox discussion archives for easy downloading and local
> usage, so that users could easily avoid the SaaSS.  But unfortunately,
> Discourse imposes accessibility and inconvenience barriers against
> downloading that data for local usage.
>
>
> Thank you for your patience and understanding,
>
> Sam
>
> [1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html

Discourse being (or not being) SaaSS and Discourse's email features 
being (or not being)
a complete replacement for a mailing list manager are separate issues, 
let's not conflate them. ;)

Discourse could be self-hosted relatively easily, it's just that the 
OCaml Foundation chose not to,
because there aren't any real benefits in that right now.

Discourse could also be improved to provide a better email interface.
It's technically possible to add pure email-based registration and 
enable email interface for all users
by default, and it will be functionally indistinguishable from a "real" 
mailing list.

If the OCaml Foundation was using using, let's say, Reddit for its 
official forum,
that would classic SaaSS at its worst—impossible to even migrate the 
data from and self-host it,
and obviously impossible for anyone but its operators to improve.

A Discourse-based forum could be made to run in a hybrid mailing 
list/forum mode,
the only question is if there's enough momentum to make it happen.

To me, as much as I hate to say it, any web UI beats a mailing list 
simply because
I don't have to wonder if the people I'd have wanted to see my message
can actually see it, or the Big Email™ companies they use using silently 
discarded it again.

It's a sad state of the ecosystem and it's incredibly ironic: email is 
more affected by the SaaSS issues
than web-based forums even though it's an open protocol stack. But we've 
got what we've got.

However, turning Discourse into a full-grown hybrid forum/MLM solution 
is technically and legally possible,
so discuss.ocaml.org being a hosted instance at the moment is not an 
unbreakable barrier,
as it would be if it was a proprietary SaaSS solution.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 09:56:33PM +0700, Daniil Baturin wrote:
> On 1/17/22 21:30, Sam Kuper wrote:
>> # SaaSS VS OTHER NETWORK SERVICES
>> 
>> SaaSS implies a failure to do "your own computing on data in your own
>> hands".[1]
>> 
>> Insofar as Discourse facilitates exchange of data between people,
>> therefore - e.g. to the extent that it replicates the functionality
>> of traditional mailing list manager (MLM) software - it is *not*
>> SaaSS.
>> 
>> However, Discourse, like most forum software, doesn't just replace
>> the MLM.  It also replaces the MUA and the features for local
>> data-processing that the MUA provides: a UI for reading posts and
>> composing replies, search/browse functionality, etc.
>> 
>> Those (anti-)features, strictly speaking, constitute SaaSS.
>> 
>> That might not be bad if, like good MLMs, Discourse instances also
>> provided e.g. Mbox discussion archives for easy downloading and local
>> usage, so that users could easily avoid the SaaSS.  But
>> unfortunately, Discourse imposes accessibility and inconvenience
>> barriers against downloading that data for local usage. [..]
>> 
>> [1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html
> 
> Discourse being (or not being) SaaSS and Discourse's email features
> being (or not being) a complete replacement for a mailing list manager
> are separate issues, let's not conflate them. ;)

Those two issues are related to each other, as explained above.


> Discourse could be self-hosted relatively easily, it's just that the
> OCaml Foundation chose not to, because there aren't any real benefits
> in that right now.

Understood.  Still, the hosting arrangements mean that discuss.ocaml.org
tends towards the SaaSS end of the spectrum.  The software isn't under
users' control, and it isn't even under the OCaml Foundation's control.


> Discourse could also be improved to provide a better email interface.
> It's technically possible to add pure email-based registration and
> enable email interface for all users by default, and it will be
> functionally indistinguishable from a "real" mailing list.

Yes.  That would be great!


> If the OCaml Foundation was using using, let's say, Reddit for its
> official forum, that would classic SaaSS at its worst—impossible to
> even migrate the data from and self-host it, and obviously impossible
> for anyone but its operators to improve.

Yes.  Reddit would probably be much worse.


> A Discourse-based forum could be made to run in a hybrid mailing
> list/forum mode, the only question is if there's enough momentum to
> make it happen.

Right.  But so far, there has not been - and in the meantime, users with
accessibility barriers to using discuss.ocaml.org miss out.


> To me, as much as I hate to say it, any web UI beats a mailing list
> simply because I don't have to wonder if the people I'd have wanted to
> see my message can actually see it, or the Big Email™ companies they
> use using silently discarded it again.

Users can readily change email provider.  But they can't readily
change discuss.ocaml.org.

So, mailing lists beat a web UI on this front.

(I'm very grateful the OCaml mailing list exists, or you and I probably
wouldn't even be able to have this conversation.)


> It's a sad state of the ecosystem and it's incredibly ironic: email is
> more affected by the SaaSS issues than web-based forums even though
> it's an open protocol stack.

Sad indeed, as far as it goes, but as I say, users can readily change
email provider - and civilised email providers do still exist.


> However, turning Discourse into a full-grown hybrid forum/MLM solution
> is technically and legally possible, so discuss.ocaml.org being a
> hosted instance at the moment is not an unbreakable barrier, as it
> would be if it was a proprietary SaaSS solution.

Right.  But so far, this has not happened - and in the meantime, users
with accessibility barriers to using discuss.ocaml.org miss out.

Best wishes,

Sam

-- 
A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: When is top-posting a bad thing?

()  ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary
/\  file formats. (Why? See e.g. https://v.gd/jrmGbS ). Thank you.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Gabriel Scherer]

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With my OCaml Foundation hat on, let me give credit where credit is due:
the Foundation wasn't actually involved in creating or maintaining the
Discourse forum. It was an initiative of Anil Madhavapeddy, and the list of
administrators and moderators is publicly available:
  https://discuss.ocaml.org/about

The fact that Discourse offers hosting for the forum reduces the
administration work quite a bit. We may not have this forum at all if we
had decided that self-hosting was a requirement.

I don't personally have a strong opinion on whether the usage of forums is
a good or bad thing, but I can only remark that while some people are more
comfortable with the mailing-list (or forced to use them for accessibility
reason, which is not the same thing at all), some other people are not
comfortable with mailing-lists anymore. Having only a mailing-list would
also cut us from a fraction of the community in practice. I think that
having both is maybe not ideal, but a good compromise. (At least people
don't feel like they have to be on Twitter or Facebook or Discord to be
well-integrated in the OCaml community. I was going to joke about TikTok,
but actually there is OCaml stuff on TikTok.)

If you know people who would be willing to work on improving the
accessibility of Discourse, we should think about funding this work. Please
get in touch!



On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 6:36 PM Sam Kuper <sampablokuper@posteo.net> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 09:56:33PM +0700, Daniil Baturin wrote:
> > On 1/17/22 21:30, Sam Kuper wrote:
> >> # SaaSS VS OTHER NETWORK SERVICES
> >>
> >> SaaSS implies a failure to do "your own computing on data in your own
> >> hands".[1]
> >>
> >> Insofar as Discourse facilitates exchange of data between people,
> >> therefore - e.g. to the extent that it replicates the functionality
> >> of traditional mailing list manager (MLM) software - it is *not*
> >> SaaSS.
> >>
> >> However, Discourse, like most forum software, doesn't just replace
> >> the MLM.  It also replaces the MUA and the features for local
> >> data-processing that the MUA provides: a UI for reading posts and
> >> composing replies, search/browse functionality, etc.
> >>
> >> Those (anti-)features, strictly speaking, constitute SaaSS.
> >>
> >> That might not be bad if, like good MLMs, Discourse instances also
> >> provided e.g. Mbox discussion archives for easy downloading and local
> >> usage, so that users could easily avoid the SaaSS.  But
> >> unfortunately, Discourse imposes accessibility and inconvenience
> >> barriers against downloading that data for local usage. [..]
> >>
> >> [1]:
> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html
> >
> > Discourse being (or not being) SaaSS and Discourse's email features
> > being (or not being) a complete replacement for a mailing list manager
> > are separate issues, let's not conflate them. ;)
>
> Those two issues are related to each other, as explained above.
>
>
> > Discourse could be self-hosted relatively easily, it's just that the
> > OCaml Foundation chose not to, because there aren't any real benefits
> > in that right now.
>
> Understood.  Still, the hosting arrangements mean that discuss.ocaml.org
> tends towards the SaaSS end of the spectrum.  The software isn't under
> users' control, and it isn't even under the OCaml Foundation's control.
>
>
> > Discourse could also be improved to provide a better email interface.
> > It's technically possible to add pure email-based registration and
> > enable email interface for all users by default, and it will be
> > functionally indistinguishable from a "real" mailing list.
>
> Yes.  That would be great!
>
>
> > If the OCaml Foundation was using using, let's say, Reddit for its
> > official forum, that would classic SaaSS at its worst—impossible to
> > even migrate the data from and self-host it, and obviously impossible
> > for anyone but its operators to improve.
>
> Yes.  Reddit would probably be much worse.
>
>
> > A Discourse-based forum could be made to run in a hybrid mailing
> > list/forum mode, the only question is if there's enough momentum to
> > make it happen.
>
> Right.  But so far, there has not been - and in the meantime, users with
> accessibility barriers to using discuss.ocaml.org miss out.
>
>
> > To me, as much as I hate to say it, any web UI beats a mailing list
> > simply because I don't have to wonder if the people I'd have wanted to
> > see my message can actually see it, or the Big Email™ companies they
> > use using silently discarded it again.
>
> Users can readily change email provider.  But they can't readily
> change discuss.ocaml.org.
>
> So, mailing lists beat a web UI on this front.
>
> (I'm very grateful the OCaml mailing list exists, or you and I probably
> wouldn't even be able to have this conversation.)
>
>
> > It's a sad state of the ecosystem and it's incredibly ironic: email is
> > more affected by the SaaSS issues than web-based forums even though
> > it's an open protocol stack.
>
> Sad indeed, as far as it goes, but as I say, users can readily change
> email provider - and civilised email providers do still exist.
>
>
> > However, turning Discourse into a full-grown hybrid forum/MLM solution
> > is technically and legally possible, so discuss.ocaml.org being a
> > hosted instance at the moment is not an unbreakable barrier, as it
> > would be if it was a proprietary SaaSS solution.
>
> Right.  But so far, this has not happened - and in the meantime, users
> with accessibility barriers to using discuss.ocaml.org miss out.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Sam
>
> --
> A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: When is top-posting a bad thing?
>
> ()  ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary
> /\  file formats. (Why? See e.g. https://v.gd/jrmGbS ). Thank you.
>

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 10:06:51PM +0100, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
> With my OCaml Foundation hat on, let me give credit where credit is
> due: the Foundation wasn't actually involved in creating or
> maintaining the Discourse forum.  It was an initiative of Anil
> Madhavapeddy,

Fair enough.


> and the list of administrators and moderators is publicly available:
> https://discuss.ocaml.org/about

Alas, only in an accessibility-limited way - i.e. not to everybody.


> The fact that Discourse offers hosting for the forum reduces the
> administration work quite a bit. We may not have this forum at all if
> we had decided that self-hosting was a requirement.

Indeed.

OTOH, the advantage of not having the forum would be that more
discussions would have happened on the mailing list, instead of being
fragmented into a different, accessibility-limited silo.


> I don't personally have a strong opinion on whether the usage of
> forums is a good or bad thing,

See below for a reason to have such an opinion, at least re: forums with
accessibility issues such as those powered by Discourse.


> but I can only remark that while some people are more comfortable with
> the mailing-list (or forced to use them for accessibility reason,
> which is not the same thing at all), some other people are not
> comfortable with mailing-lists anymore.

You seem to acknowledge that:

-   mailing lists are accessible (score: ~1 point for accessibility),
    and are also comfortable for some though not all users (score: ~0.5
    points for comfort); whereas

-   Discourse is not accessible for all users (score: ~0.5 points for
    accessibility), and is comfortable for some though not all users
    (score: ~0.5 points for comfort).

On this analysis, then, mailing lists score higher overall, especially
if accessibility is given extra weighting (as, IMO, it should be).

As mentioned earlier, the existence of a forum alongside a mailing list
tends to divert some traffic from the mailing list (where it is
accessible) to the forum (where it may not be - depending on the forum
software).

Taken together, these facts allow the conclusion that the usage of
not-universally-accessible forums, alongside or instead of mailing
lists, is a bad thing.


> [..] If you know people who would be willing to work on improving the
> accessibility of Discourse, we should think about funding this work.
> Please get in touch!

That is very good of you - thank you.

If anyone reading this is available for that work, or knows someone who
is, then I hope they will take you up on that offer.

Best wishes,

Sam

-- 
A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: When is top-posting a bad thing?

()  ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary
/\  file formats. (Why? See e.g. https://v.gd/jrmGbS ). Thank you.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Sam Kuper (2022/01/18 01:51 +0000):
> On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 10:06:51PM +0100, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
> > and the list of administrators and moderators is publicly available:
> > https://discuss.ocaml.org/about
>
> Alas, only in an accessibility-limited way - i.e. not to everybody.

FWIW I was able to read the list.

> OTOH, the advantage of not having the forum would be that more
> discussions would have happened on the mailing list,

Possibly, yes, but maybe not all those who contribute to the forum would
do so on the mailing-list.

 instead of being fragmented into a different, accessibility-limited
 silo.

About that, I was wondering. Wouldn't it be possible to create a bridge
between the forum and the mailing-list?

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[orbifx]

Gabriel, thank you for clarifying how this initiative came about. It's insightful.

Sam, you are making a valiant effort, but I doubt it's doing anything, most people have made up their minds.

Which brings to the point, that some people got to chose both what parameters constitute a good solution and the solution. I recognise it's their initiative and they can execute it as they wish and suits, but room must be left for others' preferences and their initiatives.

Mailing list and Discourse should now run in parallel and if people choose the list they shouldn't be diverted to the forum. Thus the word "too" in the subject.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Simon Cruanes]

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I think there's a tension between the needs of people who are used to
30 years old mailing list software (like the GNU mailman) and the larger
number of people used to fancy UIs like discord. To the latter group,
discourse is barely "modern" enough; to the former, it's too
javascript-heavy.

By the way Sam, I opened https://discuss.ocaml.org/about in a TUI
browser and it looked kind of ok. I don't know about registration
though, it'd be good if there was a way to register purely by email to
make it more accessible. For the rest, _once registered_, as far as I'm
concerned, it's just a mailing list software. I don't have particular
accessibility needs so I'm probably oblivious to a lot of issues.


-- 
Simon Cruanes

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Simon Cruanes (2022/01/18 15:55 +0000):
> I think there's a tension between the needs of people who are used to
> 30 years old mailing list software (like the GNU mailman) and the larger
> number of people used to fancy UIs like discord. To the latter group,
> discourse is barely "modern" enough; to the former, it's too
> javascript-heavy.

Agreed.

> By the way Sam, I opened https://discuss.ocaml.org/about in a TUI
> browser and it looked kind of ok.

Well thei=re is no real equivalence between the ability to view a page
in a text-mode browser and its accessibility. NOt even an implication in
one direction or another.

Similarly, I don't think it's expected, nowadays, that a website is
browsable without JS support for it to conform to WCAG.

> I don't know about registration
> though, it'd be good if there was a way to register purely by email to
> make it more accessible. For the rest, _once registered_, as far as I'm
> concerned, it's just a mailing list software.

Well as was mentionned, the mailing-list mode needs to be enabled and
that seems to have accessibility issues.

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 05:31:39PM +0100, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> Simon Cruanes (2022/01/18 15:55 +0000):
>> By the way Sam, I opened https://discuss.ocaml.org/about in a TUI
>> browser and it looked kind of ok.

That suggests to me that Discourse relies on browser-sniffing (probably
based on the user-agent string) to decide what to serve to the browser.

So, users whose browsers (or browser-settings) don't match the Discourse
devs' assumptions may be served non-accessible page content.


Did you manage to create an account, via a text-mode browser, btw?



> Well thei=re is no real equivalence between the ability to view a page
> in a text-mode browser and its accessibility. NOt even an implication
> in one direction or another.

For people who use text-mode browsers for accessibility reasons, it's
crucial that websites work in those browsers.

(Likewise, for people who use screen-readers, it's crucial that websites
work with screen-readers.  Mutatis mutandis.)


> Similarly, I don't think it's expected, nowadays, that a website is
> browsable without JS support for it to conform to WCAG.

WCAG 1 explicitly required websites to be usable without scripts.

WCAG 2 fudges the issue (due to pressure from Big Tech, IIRC), but very
strongly implies it.

The UK Government says:

    Some users turn off features in their browsers deliberately. You
    should respect their decision and make sure those users can still
    use your service.

https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-progressive-enhancement#do-not-assume-users-turn-off-css-or-javascript


Sam

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 05:51:21PM +0000, Sam Kuper wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 05:31:39PM +0100, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
>> Similarly, I don't think it's expected, nowadays, that a website is
>> browsable without JS support for it to conform to WCAG.
> 
> WCAG 1 explicitly required websites to be usable without scripts.
> 
> WCAG 2 fudges the issue (due to pressure from Big Tech, IIRC), but
> very strongly implies it.
> 
> The UK Government says:
> 
>     Some users turn off features in their browsers deliberately. You
>     should respect their decision and make sure those users can still
>     use your service.
> 
> https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-progressive-enhancement#do-not-assume-users-turn-off-css-or-javascript

Similarly:

    We should never rely on anything but HTML.  CSS styles and
    JavaScript should always be an additional layer which is not
    essential for the service to function.

https://accessibility-manual.dwp.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/govuk-resources

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Sam Kuper (2022/01/19 18:09 +0000):
> Similarly:
>
>     We should never rely on anything but HTML.  CSS styles and
>     JavaScript should always be an additional layer which is not
>     essential for the service to function.
>
>
>https://accessibility-manual.dwp.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/govuk-resources

One thing worth noting is that, as far as I know, text-mode browsers are
far less maintained than mainstream browser. IN particular, I am very
much in doubt about how much of HTML5 they support. So, even if they are
in theory beter suited for visually impaired people (and themselves
would not agree on that) in practice we need a realistic and sustainable
solution and it looks more realistic and sustainable to make sure
accessibility works well in a GUI-based browser. I don't think
Javascript is necessary evil. You can do accessible Javascript-based
websites and you can do very poorly accessible HTML websites.

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 08:09:06PM +0100, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> You can do accessible Javascript-based websites

Not without either "progressive enhancement" or "graceful degradation"
to ensure that the site remains accessible for people who browse without
JavaScript enabled.

Best wishes,

Sam

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Q: When is top-posting a bad thing?

()  ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary
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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Simon Cruanes]

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I didn't try to create an account, sorry. I was just curious :). I don't
think the discourse devs spent of a lot of time thinking about the full
workflow of registering + turning "mailing list mode" on, from the point
of view of accessibility/noscript users.

-- 
Simon Cruanes

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Hello,

Sam Kuper (2022/01/19 17:51 +0000):
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 05:31:39PM +0100, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> > Simon Cruanes (2022/01/18 15:55 +0000):
> >> By the way Sam, I opened https://discuss.ocaml.org/about in a TUI
> >> browser and it looked kind of ok.
>
> That suggests to me that Discourse relies on browser-sniffing (probably
> based on the user-agent string) to decide what to serve to the browser.
>
> So, users whose browsers (or browser-settings) don't match the Discourse
> devs' assumptions may be served non-accessible page content.
>
>
> Did you manage to create an account, via a text-mode browser, btw?

If you are asking me: I didn't even try that. I use Firefox with Orca
under Linux. I uselynx (text-mode browser) only for simple google
searches and for Wikipedia, almost all the time I end-up using Firefox.
I don't feel at ease with it because I feel too far away frmo the
information (it's hard to explain, sorry), but that's what gives the
best user experience, I think.

> > Well thei=re is no real equivalence between the ability to view a page
> > in a text-mode browser and its accessibility. NOt even an implication
> > in one direction or another.
>
> For people who use text-mode browsers for accessibility reasons, it's
> crucial that websites work in those browsers.

I am not sure such people exist nowadays. The visually impaired persons
follow, for most of them, the general tendency and use Windows or Mac
with screen-rendering solutions (NVDA and Jaws under Windows, VoiceOver
under MacOSX). Even among the minority of blind persons using Linux,
most of them work in the GUI. And for the minority of the minority who
uses the console, most of the time they do run X just to run Firefox. I
belong to this last category.

> (Likewise, for people who use screen-readers, it's crucial that websites
> work with screen-readers.  Mutatis mutandis.)

But working with screen-readers and being Java-script-free have become
two quite different things nowadays. Think about stuff like ARIA.

> > Similarly, I don't think it's expected, nowadays, that a website is
> > browsable without JS support for it to conform to WCAG.
>
> WCAG 1 explicitly required websites to be usable without scripts.

Yes but now the reference is WCAG 2.1, see

https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

> WCAG 2 fudges the issue (due to pressure from Big Tech, IIRC), but very
> strongly implies it.
>
> The UK Government says:
>
>     Some users turn off features in their browsers deliberately. You
>     should respect their decision and make sure those users can still
>     use your service.
>
> https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-progressive-enhancement#do-not-assume-users-turn-off-css-or-javascript

I, to, would prefer to be able to continue using lynx. I'm way more
comfortable than with Firefox. But there are so many aother batles that
I don't feel brave enough to invest energy in this one, nowadays. But I
am glad others do.

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 08:03:24PM +0100, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> Sam Kuper (2022/01/19 17:51 +0000):
>> For people who use text-mode browsers for accessibility reasons, it's
>> crucial that websites work in those browsers.
> 
> I am not sure such people exist nowadays.

They do :)


>> WCAG 1 explicitly required websites to be usable without scripts.
> 
> Yes but now the reference is WCAG 2.1, see
> 
> https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

Yes, hence my point below.  (I meant "WCAG 2.x" below, and I should have
made that explicit instead of just writing "WCAG 2".  Sorry for that.)

>> WCAG 2 fudges the issue (due to pressure from Big Tech, IIRC), but
>> very strongly implies it.


> [...] I, to, would prefer to be able to continue using lynx. I'm way
> more comfortable than with Firefox. But there are so many aother
> batles that I don't feel brave enough to invest energy in this one,
> nowadays.  But I am glad others do.

Thank you Sébastien,

Sam

-- 
A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: When is top-posting a bad thing?

()  ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary
/\  file formats. (Why? See e.g. https://v.gd/jrmGbS ). Thank you.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Edwin Török]

On Wed, 2022-01-19 at 17:31 +0100, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> Simon Cruanes (2022/01/18 15:55 +0000):
> 
> [...]
> > I don't know about registration
> > though, it'd be good if there was a way to register purely by email
> > to
> > make it more accessible. For the rest, _once registered_, as far as
> > I'm
> > concerned, it's just a mailing list software.
> 
> Well as was mentionned, the mailing-list mode needs to be enabled and
> that seems to have accessibility issues.

Here is a small python3 script that enables mailing list mode provided
that you've got a live browser logged in to discuss.ocaml.org using
Firefox, and that you have python3 and pip3 installed:

pip3 install --user requests browser-cookie3
wget https://tinyurl.com/domett -O domett.py && python3 domett.py

(If this doesn't work and fails on looking up the username from the
headers it is possible that you've logged out in the browser at some
point, closing and reopening the browser and logging in again might be
a workaround)

Discourse does have APIs for various things, including tweaking
preferences, but unfortunately not for changing mailing list mode:
https://docs.discourse.org/
For any endpoint that is not documented they suggest reverse
engineering it
(https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-reverse-engineer-the-discourse-api/20576)
which I've done.
However we still need to present some form of authentication, I was
thinking about API keys, but they're normally for admins only, and the
user-API keys appear to need a webservice to talk
to https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-api-keys-specification/48536

You've mentioned that you were able to log in with your browser, so the
above Python3 script loads the cookies from the live browser, does a
request to get the CSRF token, and then makes a PUT request to change
mailing list mode settings.
This is similar to what discourse itself would've done if you clicked
through things in the web browser.

(I thought of using Mechaml to write it, but python has a convenient
way of loading the cookies from the cookies.sqlite and mechaml doesn't
yet).

Here is the python3 script in its entirety if it is easier to run from
the email than from the tinyurl.
In theory it should work on other discourse sites, so it might be
possible to adapt this to register on meta.discourse.org (although the
email traffic from that would probably be too large and should instead
subscribe only to a particular topic).

Is is far from ideal, but it might provide you a way to read and
participate in discussions until a better solution is found:

--- CUT HERE ---
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import browser_cookie3
import requests
import logging

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)
logging.debug("About to load Firefox cookiejar")
BASE = "https://discuss.ocaml.org"
cookiejar = browser_cookie3.firefox(domain_name="discuss.ocaml.org")
logging.debug("Got cookies: %r" % ([c.name for c in cookiejar]))

s = requests.Session()
s.cookies = cookiejar
reply = s.get("%s/session/csrf" % BASE, headers={"X-Requested-With":
"XMLHttpRequest"})
csrf = reply.json()['csrf']
logging.debug("Got CSRF token")
username = reply.headers["x-discourse-username"]
logging.info("Got username %s" % username)
data = {
        "mailing_list_mode": "true",
        #        "mailing_list_mode": "true",
        "mailing_list_mode_frequency": "1",
        "email_digests": "true",
        "email_in_reply_to": "true",
        "email_messages_level": "0",
        "email_level": "0",
        "email_previous_replies": "1",
        "digest_after_minutes": "10080",
        "include_tl0_in_digests": "true",
    }
logging.info("About to set mailing list mode to %s" %
data["mailing_list_mode"])
headers = {
    "Content-Type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8",
    "X-CSRF-Token": csrf,
}
reply = s.put("%s/u/%s.json" % (BASE, username), data=data, headers=headers)
json = reply.json()
if 'success' in json:
    logging.info(json['success'])
else:
    logging.error(json)
--- CUT HERE ---


Hope this helps,
--Edwin

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Dear Edwin,

I am very sorry for this late response.

I wanted to thank you for allthe work you have done and the nice script
you came up with. It will not only be useful, it will also be a nice
starting point to learn Python and REST stuff.

One of the reasons it took me so long to respond is that I am actually a
bit scared of enabling this mailing-list mode, fearing to receive even
more e-mails that will slow me down even more.

So, the situation is that, so far, I didn't dare to even try your script
and I apologize for that. Be sure, though, that I'll keep your e-mail
preciously, both for the case I'd need to run the script, and also to
use it as a basis for learning.

Best wishes,

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Vasilis Goumas]

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Hi all,

sorry for asking here, but it might be relevant with the topic of asking
questions. I am unable to unsubscribe from this
mailing list. I have tried sending unsubscribe at least 5 times, none of
them work. How can I unsubscribe?

Best,
Bill

On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 8:46 AM Sébastien Hinderer <
Sebastien.Hinderer@inria.fr> wrote:

> Dear Edwin,
>
> I am very sorry for this late response.
>
> I wanted to thank you for allthe work you have done and the nice script
> you came up with. It will not only be useful, it will also be a nice
> starting point to learn Python and REST stuff.
>
> One of the reasons it took me so long to respond is that I am actually a
> bit scared of enabling this mailing-list mode, fearing to receive even
> more e-mails that will slow me down even more.
>
> So, the situation is that, so far, I didn't dare to even try your script
> and I apologize for that. Be sure, though, that I'll keep your e-mail
> preciously, both for the case I'd need to run the script, and also to
> use it as a basis for learning.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Sébastien.
>

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Gabriel Scherer]

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Dear Vasilis,

The list administration page is at
  https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/info/caml-list
with an "unsubscribe" page:
  https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/signoff/caml-list

(I'm assuming that you want to unsubscribe from the  caml-list@inria.fr
mailing-list, not from discuss.ocaml.org )

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Dear Gabriel,

Many thanks for your participation to this tread, I really appreciate
(both your participation as a person, and as a representative of OCaml's
fundation).

Gabriel Scherer (2022/01/17 22:06 +0100):
> The fact that Discourse offers hosting for the forum reduces the
> administration work quite a bit. We may not have this forum at all if we
> had decided that self-hosting was a requirement.
> but actually there is OCaml stuff on TikTok.)
>
> If you know people who would be willing to work on improving the
> accessibility of Discourse, we should think about funding this work. Please
> get in touch!

If somebody would volunteer, how would that work? You'd need some
guarantees that the contributions you fund get both upstreamed and
deployed, right?

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Gabriel Scherer]

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Hi list,

Gabriel Scherer (2022/01/17 22:06 +0100):
> If you know people who would be willing to work on improving the
> accessibility of Discourse, we should think about funding this work.
Please
> get in touch!

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 4:34 PM Sébastien Hinderer <
Sebastien.Hinderer@inria.fr> wrote:

> If somebody would volunteer, how would that work? You'd need some
> guarantees that the contributions you fund get both upstreamed and
> deployed, right?
>

First of all, I cannot make decisions alone, every action/expense of the
Foundation has to be approved by the executive committee (
http://ocaml-sf.org/about-us/ ).  So what I mention in this thread are just
hypotheses based on my preferences.

Now on the idea of "guarantees that contributions get upstreamed": whether
a contribution gets upstreamed depends on the work and the communication of
the contributor, but also on many factors outside their control. We
wouldn't ask a contributor to provide guarantees they can't give, and in
particular we would not condition the funding on upstreaming. If we approve
an action, and the contributor works to the best of their ability, I
believe they should be paid for their time even if it doesn't work out.

I don't have any experience with Discourse contributions, but a key to a
successful upstream contribution is always good communication (early and
often) with the upstream maintainers. In fact, I guess that the first
course of action would be to survey what has already been done
accessibility-wise for Discourse (see for example
https://meta.discourse.org/t/accessibility-audit-and-shepherd-for-making-improvements/66620/6
, https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-with-a-screen-reader/178105/27)
and understand the current status.

After looking a bit more at this: it looks like the Discourse people are
taking accessibility seriously, and it's possible that just nobody pointed
out the issues with the mailing-list registration to them. Just doing this
(studying how accessibility feedback is given, what information maintainers
are asking form, and then sending feedback on the mailing-list registration
question) could be a good first step before working on contributing the
code ourselves. And this good first step is already non-trivial work that
one could consider funding.

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 10:43:17PM +0100, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
> I don't have any experience with Discourse contributions, but a key to
> a successful upstream contribution is always good communication (early
> and often) with the upstream maintainers. In fact, I guess that the
> first course of action would be to survey what has already been done
> accessibility-wise for Discourse (see for example
> https://meta.discourse.org/t/accessibility-audit-and-shepherd-for-making-improvements/66620/6
> ,
> https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-with-a-screen-reader/178105/27)
> and understand the current status.
> 
> After looking a bit more at this: it looks like the Discourse people
> are taking accessibility seriously, and it's possible that just nobody
> pointed out the issues with the mailing-list registration to them.
> Just doing this (studying how accessibility feedback is given, what
> information maintainers are asking form, and then sending feedback on
> the mailing-list registration question) could be a good first step
> before working on contributing the code ourselves.

Unfortunately, participating in the Discourse threads above requires
registration on meta.discourse.org .

Catch-22.

Sam

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A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: When is top-posting a bad thing?

()  ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary
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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Sam Kuper (2022/01/19 22:01 +0000):
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 10:43:17PM +0100, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
> > I don't have any experience with Discourse contributions, but a key to
> > a successful upstream contribution is always good communication (early
> > and often) with the upstream maintainers. In fact, I guess that the
> > first course of action would be to survey what has already been done
> > accessibility-wise for Discourse (see for example
> > https://meta.discourse.org/t/accessibility-audit-and-shepherd-for-making-improvements/66620/6
> > ,
> > https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-with-a-screen-reader/178105/27)
> > and understand the current status.
> >
> > After looking a bit more at this: it looks like the Discourse people
> > are taking accessibility seriously, and it's possible that just nobody
> > pointed out the issues with the mailing-list registration to them.
> > Just doing this (studying how accessibility feedback is given, what
> > information maintainers are asking form, and then sending feedback on
> > the mailing-list registration question) could be a good first step
> > before working on contributing the code ourselves.
>
> Unfortunately, participating in the Discourse threads above requires
> registration on meta.discourse.org .
>
> Catch-22.

It happens so often that the thing you are supposed to use to report
accessibility issues is itself not accessible. Sad thing.

Sébastien.

> Sam
>

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 06:23:05PM +0000, Edwin Török wrote:
> Although it won't help in participating in discussions on
> discuss.ocaml.org, I've recently found out that it has an RSS mode:
> discuss.ocaml.org/latest.rss.  I don't know how good RSS software is
> from an accessibility point of view, but would this at least allow you
> to read the discussions happening there?

I'm unsure how long Discourse retains posts in its RSS feed(s), but
looking at the link you posted above, I don't see any posts older than 3
Jan 2022 (14 days ago).

That's a far cry from the Mbox archives of traditional mailing lists,
which (on well-run lists) can stretch back years/decades.  Those
archives are often goldmines of helpful information.

Also, in addition to missing the bulk of the forum's past posts, unless
users set something up to slurp the RSS feed at least every 14 days (I
don't currently have such a thing set-up), they'd also end up with gaps
in their local stores going forward.

Plus, for local searching/browsing an RSS store of any size, unless
users use an RSS-to-email bridge, they'd need to be running a decent RSS
reader in addition to a MUA.

Additionally, as you point out, even if someone did go to that trouble,
it would still not in itself enable them to post to Discourse.



> As for discourse itself it looks like they are planning on adding a
> chat feature with some limited bridging in the future. If that makes
> it possible to connect with an XMPP or Matrix client would it solve
> the accessibility issues?
> (https://meta.discourse.org/t/introducing-discourse-chat-pre-alpha/210734/5)

For me, the answer to your question would depend on two things:

1.  How well the feature was implemented (cf. RSS feed above), and

2.  My finding a satisfactory XMPP or Matrix client to run alongside my
    MUA - or perhaps some kind of XMPP-email bridge.

(For people who are already happy with their XMPP or Matrix set-ups,
only the first of the above two criteria would apply.)

Plus, if user registration still imposes accessibility hurdles, then
this would still mean read-only access for some users.


Best wishes,

Sam

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A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: When is top-posting a bad thing?

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Alan Schmitt]

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Hello Sébastien,

On 2022-01-17 10:20, Sébastien Hinderer <Sebastien.Hinderer@inria.fr> writes:

> Being myself blind I feel very concerned about accessibility. I admin I
> didn't try the forum, but (1) all the forums I tried so far I ofudn way
> mess accessible than good old mailing lists and (2) yes, mailing lists
> are totally accessible and, in my opinion, very simple to use.
> Many thanks for promoting the accessibility concern!

The OCaml forum has a mailing list mode (this is how I read it): all
posts are sent as email messages, preserving a thread structure. One can
also reply to a post by email. This mode must be set as a preference on
the site to be activated. There are limitations, however: edited
messages are not resent (so it’s impossible to know what the edit was),
and I think quotes are not preserved when replying to messages (I should
recheck that).

Following both this mailing list and the forum, I have to say there is
much more activity going on there nowadays.

Best,

Alan

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sam Kuper]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 10:53:36AM +0100, Alan Schmitt wrote:
> The OCaml forum has a mailing list mode (this is how I read it): all
> posts are sent as email messages, preserving a thread structure. One
> can also reply to a post by email. This mode must be set as a
> preference on the site to be activated.

That mode is only available to people who are first able to create an
account on the forum, log in, and find and enable the relevant setting.

If those steps have accessibility barriers for some users (which they
do), then the forum's mailing list mode is unavailable to those users.

Sam

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Hello,

Sam Kuper (2022/01/17 13:52 +0000):
> On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 10:53:36AM +0100, Alan Schmitt wrote:
> > The OCaml forum has a mailing list mode (this is how I read it): all
> > posts are sent as email messages, preserving a thread structure. One
> > can also reply to a post by email. This mode must be set as a
> > preference on the site to be activated.
>
> That mode is only available to people who are first able to create an
> account on the forum, log in, and find and enable the relevant setting.
>
> If those steps have accessibility barriers for some users (which they
> do), then the forum's mailing list mode is unavailable to those users.

I was able to create an account and found the account creation stage
smooth. I can't say whether or not it conforms to the WCAG for instance,
but in terms of user experience it went surprisingly well.

Once my account was created, I was already logged in so I didn't have to
login explicitly. However I expect this would have worked because login
is rarely inaccessible.

However, I have been unable to enable the mailing-list mode. To be more
precise, I was able to open my account menu and then to switch between
the different tabs. I was however not available to see each tab's
specific content.

Another thing I can share is that I found the web interface scaring. It
may be because I am not used to it, but really, I don't like the web. I
feel unproductive when I am in my web browser and in an hostile world.

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Hey Alan,

Many thanks for your response.

Alan Schmitt (2022/01/17 10:53 +0100):
> Hello Sébastien,
>
> On 2022-01-17 10:20, Sébastien Hinderer <Sebastien.Hinderer@inria.fr> writes:
>
> > Being myself blind I feel very concerned about accessibility. I admin I
> > didn't try the forum, but (1) all the forums I tried so far I ofudn way
> > mess accessible than good old mailing lists and (2) yes, mailing lists
> > are totally accessible and, in my opinion, very simple to use.
> > Many thanks for promoting the accessibility concern!
>
> The OCaml forum has a mailing list mode (this is how I read it):

As mentionned, I am not able to enable that mode on my own. I may ask
for help for this step, I just wanted to let people know.

> All posts are sent as email messages, preserving a thread structure. One can
> also reply to a post by email. This mode must be set as a preference on
> the site to be activated. There are limitations, however: edited
> messages are not resent (so it’s impossible to know what the edit was),
> and I think quotes are not preserved when replying to messages (I should
> recheck that).

Is it possible to start a thread by e-mail (not just to respond to
existing threads).

> Following both this mailing list and the forum, I have to say there is
> much more activity going on there nowadays.

I was assuming that the forum was more promoted than the list and that
this difference was the exmlanation. Well things may be the other way
around, and now I suspect they actually happen in both directions.

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Alan Schmitt]

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(Resending because my From address was wrong.)

On 2022-01-19 16:54, Sébastien Hinderer <Sebastien.Hinderer@inria.fr> writes:

> Is it possible to start a thread by e-mail (not just to respond to
> existing threads).

I had no idea, so I looked it up and found this post (about another discourse):
https://discourse.julialang.org/t/discourse-as-a-mailing-list/57

For the OCaml discourse, I guess this would me sending an email to
ocaml+xxx@discoursemail.com, where xxx is the short name of the category
of the discussion to start. Of course the next question is: what are
those names?

If they are the same as the url used online, I think we have:
- learning for Learning
- community for Community
- eco for Ecosystem
- site-feedback for Site Feedback

I don’t know if it’s possible to also assign tags when starting
discussions.

Best,

Alan

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Re: [Caml-list] Ask questions on the mailing lists too

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Many thanks for having devoted time to looking into this, Alan.
It just occured to me that the RT requset tracker has an email-based
interface which makes it possible to manage metadata by means of
extended headers, so in principle it should be possible to accomplish a
few things this way for Discourse.

Best wishes,

Sébastien.