I'll take that as a "no" vote, then.

Finding new messages on "that other bulletin board" is actually quite easy. It does involve a couple of steps, but they're not complicated. First, log in. Second, click on "new messages". As I've said already, I would miss the ease of scanning all messages as well, but maybe I can find a template somewhere, or make one.

I seriously doubt anyone would be driven away. We have what? a half dozen regular posters? If that? (we do seem to have a lot of lurkers - last month had over 400 visits per day on average)

If anything, all this programming talk is likely to be more bothersome to folks. It *IS* off topic, and "that other bulletin board" already has a forum set up for it so people could ignore these conversations should they choose.

And, adding new topics and expanding the bounds of Earthwaves, that might actually attract more users.

Regarding a sleep command, can you access the OS API? Sleep() is built into Windows, and if you can access the API, you can do things that aren't even part of your language. I have some experience with the API on windows. In both XB and C it's just a matter of "INLCUDE"ing the libraries. There is certainly an equivalent in Linux, if that's what you use, but I have no experience there.

There's nothing wrong with FORTRAN, but it's somewhat specialized, like PERL. But if I had to make a choice between those two, I'd choose FORTRAN.

It's not that I can't do PERL. I built a small photography website with a PERL CGI script from scratch. You're right that it's nothing to print out a bunch of HTML code. But some of the things we would want to add to the forum are a lot more involved than just a bunch of simple HTML output. Several of these things would require creating a database to keep track of certain bits of data for each user, and the ONLY way to identify which data belongs to who would be to have the user identify themselves through a log in ID before they can access those features, which is exactly what every bulletin board that does have these features does.

I choose to move to C because it is generalized, powerful, fast, has MASSIVE support (every question I've had I've found many answers to), and many of the things I want to do are designed around C constructs anyway, specifically OpenGL, which will allow me to make "awesome" graphics.

You've not seen my prototype XB program for viewing quakes in 3D. Below is a screen capture of the program running. Can you do something like that in PERL? The entire interface is made with built in XB commands. Only the map itself is OpenGL.

Brian