Message Index Display Configuration

("Chronological" displays show messages simply in the order in which they were posted; "threaded" displays show messages in indented lists, with responses directly beneath their parent messages. In either style, a normal list puts the newest messages at the bottom, while a reversed list, obviously, does the reverse. The "reversed theaded" display, though somewhat awkward, is the "default" index style of many Web-based bulletin boards, including Matt Wright's "WWWBoard" script, and is the style with which many users are most familiar. The "mixed threaded" display is a bit of a half-breed; it arranges primary messages with the newest at the top, thus tending to keep newer messages toward the top of the page, but arranges responses with the newest at the bottom, thus preserving a more "intuitive" threading structure. "Compressed" displays show on the main index page only the first message of each thread; responses are available only by going to the primary message's page. This keeps the index page a bit smaller, but also, of course, makes the responses a bit more difficult to access. Finally, "guestbook-style" displays show the full text of messages on the main index page in a strict chronological manner; "threaded guestbook-style" displays show an index page very similar to that of the "compressed" displays, but show the full text of all messages in a thread on a single page.)