Usage
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Loom has two main modes: Group view and thread view.
Group view
The group view lists all the hierarchies that the weaver daemon knows about. These are presented one with one hierarchy on each line. The number of groups in the hierarchy is displayed.Groups are also listed in the same view. Group lines say how many articles there are in each group, and also gives a short description of each group.
The user can click each hierarchy to open it, and descend into further sub-hierarchies.
(There's also a search function where you can list groups that match some string.)
Finally, the user will have found a group to read, and clicks that group link, which brings us to:
Thread view
The thread view is separated into three frames: The thread frame, the article frame, and the navigation bar.Thread frame
The thread frame displays a chunk of the threads in the group in a tree-like manner. You can scroll around and click on article links, or you can use either the standard TAB and RET keys to read each article in succession, or use the JavaScript-defined keys described below:- m: Page down the current article, and when you reach the bottom, go to the next article.
- n: Go to the next article.
- p: Go to the previous article.
When reading a group, you would normally just use the m key.
Article frame
This displays the article, nicely formatted.Navigation bar
The navbar at the bottom of the page has buttons for navigating back and forth in the threads, and also displays a plain-text link that points to a "stand-alone" version of the article. This may be handy if the user wished to send the URL in email to somebody. Finding out where you are in a frame-based system can be somewhat tricky otherwise.A search engine entry form is also in the navbar, as well as a spam reporting button.