Jargons of Info Tech industry

(A Love of Jargons)

Xah Lee, 2002 Feb

People in the computing field like to spur the use of spurious jargons.
The less educated they are, the more they like extraneous jargons, such
as in the Unix & Perl community. Unlike mathematicians, where in
mathematics there are no fewer jargons but each and every one are
absolutely necessary. For example, polytope, manifold,
injection/bijection/surjection, group/ring/field.., homological,
projective, pencil, bundle, lattice, affine, topology, isomorphism,
isometry, homeomorphism, aleph-0, fractal, supremum/infimum, simplex,
matrix, quaternions, derivative/integral, ... and so on. Each and every
one of these captures a concept, for which practical and theoretical
considerations made the terms a necessity. Often there are synonyms for
them because of historical developments, but never =E2=80=9Cjargons for
jargon's sake=E2=80=9D because mathematicians hate bloats and irrelevance.

The jargon-soaked stupidity in computing field can be grouped into
classes. First of all, there are jargons for marketing purposes. Thus
you have Mac OS =E2=80=9CX=E2=80=9D, Windows =E2=80=9CXP=E2=80=9D, Sun OS t=
o Solaris and the
versioning confusion of 4.x to 7 to 8 and also the so called
=E2=80=9CPlatform=E2=80=9D instead of OS. One flagrant example is Sun Micro=
system's
Java stuff. Oak, Java, JDK, JSDK, J2EE, J2SE enterprise edition or no,
from java 1.x to 1.2 =3D=3D Java 2 now 1.3, JavaOne, JFC, Jini, JavaBeans,
entity Beans, Awk, Swing... fucking stupid Java and fuck Sun
Microsystems. This is just one example of Jargon hodgepodge of one
single commercial entity. Marketing jargons cannot be avoided in modern
society. They abound outside computing field too. The Jargons of
marketing came from business practice, and they can be excusable
because they are kinda a necessity or can be considered as a naturally
evolved strategy for attracting attention in a laissez-faire economy
system.

The other class of jargon stupidity is from computing practitioners, of
which the Unix/Perl community is exemplary. For example, the name Unix
& Perl themselves are good examples of buzzing jargons. Unix is
supposed to be opposed of Multics and hints on the offensive and
tasteless term eunuchs. PERL is cooked up to be =E2=80=9CPractical Extracti=
on
& Reporting Language=E2=80=9D and for the precise marketing drama of being
also =E2=80=9CPathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister=E2=80=9D. These types =
of
jargons exudes juvenile humor. Cheesiness and low-taste is their
hall-mark. If you are familiar with unixism and perl programing, you'll
find tons and tons of such jargons embraced and verbalized by unix &
perl lovers. e.g. grep, glob, shell, pipe, man, regex, more, less,
tarball, shebang, Schwartzian Transform, croak, bless, interpolation,
TIMTOWTDI, DWIM, RFC, RTFM, I-ANAL, YMMV and so on.

There is another class of jargon moronicity, which i find them most
damaging to society, are jargons or spurious and vague terms used and
brandished about by programers that we see and hear daily among design
meetings, online tech group postings, or even in lots of computing
textbooks or tutorials. I think the reason for these, is that these
massive body of average programers usually don't have much knowledge of
significant mathematics, yet they are capable of technical thinking
that is not too abstract, thus you ends up with these people defining
or hatching terms a-dime-a-dozen that's vague, context dependent,
vacuous, and their commonality are often a result of sopho-morons
trying to sound big.

Here are some examples of the terms in question:

 =E2=80=A2 anonymous functions or lambda or lamba function
 =E2=80=A2 closure
 =E2=80=A2 exceptions (as in Java)
 =E2=80=A2 list, array, vector, aggregate
 =E2=80=A2 hash (or hash table) =E2=86=90 fantastically stupid
 =E2=80=A2 rehash (as in csh or tcsh)
 =E2=80=A2 regular expression (as in regex, grep, egrep, fgrep)
 =E2=80=A2 name space (as in Scheme vs Common Lisp debates)
 =E2=80=A2 depth first/breadth first (as in tree traversing.)
 =E2=80=A2 operator
 =E2=80=A2 operator overloading
 =E2=80=A2 polymorphism
 =E2=80=A2 inheritance
 =E2=80=A2 first class objects
 =E2=80=A2 pointers, references
 =E2=80=A2 tail recursion

My time is limited, so i'll just give a brief explanation of my thesis
on selective few of these examples among the umpteen.

In a branch of math called lambda calculus, in which much theories of
computation are based on, is the origin of the jargon _lambda function_
that is so frequently reciprocated by advanced programering donkeys. In
practice, a subroutine without side-effects is supposed to be what
=E2=80=9Clambda function=E2=80=9D means. Functional languages often can def=
ine them
without assigning them to some variable (name), therefore the
=E2=80=9Cfunction without side-effects=E2=80=9D are also called =E2=80=9Can=
onymous
functions=E2=80=9D. One can see that these are two distinct concepts. If
mathematicians are designing computer languages, they would probably
just called such thing _pure functions_. The term conveys the meaning,
without the =E2=80=9Clamba=E2=80=9D abstruseness. (in fact, the mathematics
oriented language Mathematica refers to lambda function as pure
function, with the keyword Function.) Because most programers are
sopho-morons who are less capable of clear thinking but nevertheless
possess human vanity, we can see that they have not adopted the clear
and fitting term, but instead you see lambda function this and that
obfuscations dropping from their mouths constantly.

Now the term =E2=80=9Cclosure=E2=80=9D can and indeed have meant several th=
ings in
the computing field. The most common is for it to mean a subroutine
that holds some memory but without some disadvantages of modifying a
global variable. Usually such is a feature of a programing language.
When taken to extreme, we have the what's called Object Oriented
Programing methodology and languages. The other meaning of
=E2=80=9Cclosure=E2=80=9D i have seen in text books, is for it to indicate =
that the
things in the language is =E2=80=9Cclosed=E2=80=9D under the operations of =
the
language. For example, for some languages you can apply operations or
subroutines to any thing in the language. (These languages are often
what's called =E2=80=9Cdynamic typing=E2=80=9D or =E2=80=9Ctypeless=E2=80=
=9D). However, in
other languages, things have types and cannot be passed around
subroutines or operators arbitrarily. One can see that the term
=E2=80=9Cclosure=E2=80=9D is quite vague in conveying its meaning. The term
nevertheless is very popular among talkative programers and dense
tutorials, precisely because it is vague and mysterious. These
pseudo-wit living zombies, never thought for a moment that they are
using a moronic term, mostly because they never clearly understand the
concepts behind the term among the contexts. One can particular see
this exhibition among Perl programers. (for an example of the
fantastically stupid write-up on closure by the Perl folks, see
=E2=80=9Cperldoc perlfaq7=E2=80=9D and =E2=80=9Cperldoc perlref=E2=80=9D.)

in the so-called =E2=80=9Chigh-level=E2=80=9D computing languages, there ar=
e often
data types that's some kind of a collection. The most illustrative is
LISt Processing language's lists. Essentially, the essential concept is
that the language can treat a collection of things as if it's a single
entity. As computer languages evolve, such collection entity feature
also diversified, from syntax to semantics to implementation. Thus,
beside lists, there are also terms like vector, array, matrix, tree,
hash/=E2=80=9Chash table=E2=80=9D/dictionary. Often each particular term is=
 to
convey a particular implementation of collection so that it has certain
properties to facilitate specialized uses of such groupy. The Java
language has such groupy that can illustrate the point well. In Java,
there are these hierarchy of collection-type of things:

 Collection
   Set (AbstractSet, HashSet)
     SortedSet (TreeSet)
   List (AbstractList, LinkedList, Vector, ArrayList)

 Map (AbstractMap, HashMap, Hashtable)
   SortedMap (TreeMap)

The words without parenthesis are Java Interfaces, and ones in are
implementations. The interface hold a concept. The deeper the level,
the more specific or specialized. The implementation carry out
concepts. Different implementation gives different algorithmic
properties. Essentially, these hierarchies of Java show the potential
complexity and confusion around groupy entities in computer languages.
Now, among the programers we see daily, who never really thought out of
these things, will attach their own specific meaning to
list/array/vector/matrix/etc type of jargons in driveling and
arguments, oblivious to any thought of formalizing what the fuck they
are really talking about. (one may think from the above tree-diagram
that Java the language has at least put clear distinction to interface
and implementation, whereas in my opinion they are one fantastic fuck
up too, in many respects.)

---------------------
This post is archived at
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/jargons.html
=C2=A9 Copyright 2002 by Xah Lee.

 Xah
 xah@xahlee.org
=E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/

Xah Lee wrote:

> Jargons of Info Tech industry
> 
> (A Love of Jargons)
> 
> Xah Lee, 2002 Feb

Congratulations, this time you managed to get to your second paragraph 
before your Tourette's kicked in.

-- 
Erik Max Francis && max@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
   Behind an able man there are always other able men.
   -- (a Chinese proverb)

Hi All--

Erik Max Francis wrote:
> 
> Xah Lee wrote:
> 
> > Jargons of Info Tech industry
> >
> > (A Love of Jargons)
> >
> > Xah Lee, 2002 Feb
> 
> Congratulations, this time you managed to get to your second paragraph
> before your Tourette's kicked in.
> 

You made it that far?  Congratulations.  I barely got past the name of
the troll.

Metta,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
God N Locomotive Works
http://www.pauahtun.org/
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
Author:  Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours

Xah Lee wrote:
> Jargons of Info Tech industry
>
> (A Love of Jargons)
>
> Xah Lee, 2002 Feb
>
> People in the computing field like to spur the use of spurious
> jargons. The less educated they are, the more they like extraneous
[...]

Just for the records at Google et.al. in case someone stumbles across Xah's
masterpieces in the future:
Xah is very well known as the resident troll in many NGs and his
'contributions' are less then useless.

Best is to just ignore him.

But for heaven's sake unless you want to embarrass yourself really badly
don't take any of his postings serious because he has proven again and again
that he has no clue whatsoever about computer science or programming.

jue 

On 11 Aug 2005 18:23:42 -0700, "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> wrote or
quoted :

>The Jargons of
>marketing came from business practice, and they can be excusable
>because they are kinda a necessity or can be considered as a naturally
>evolved strategy for attracting attention in a laissez-faire economy
>system.

Jargon is a name that hides what it does.  The idea is those in the
know can sound much more intelligent than they really are.

In Java you have the JDK -- Java Development Kit.  That is a pretty
clear name for what it is.

You have the JRE the Java Runtime Environment. I might have shortened
it to Java Base.

Oak, Tiger, Dragonfly etc are internal codenames. They are really
nobody's business but Sun's.


You have JAF -- Java Activation Framework. Now that's jargon. You have
no idea knowing its name what it is for.

JMF Java Media Framework could have been shortened to Java Media.

JavaMail is pretty clear.

Java Web Start is self-explanatory.  Perhaps Java Web Launch would be
a tiny bit clearer.

J2EE Java 2 Enterprise Edition. The 2 is a lot of Bullshit.  Sun
marketing people keep trying to screw with the logical progression of
version numbers.  The edition says nothing, and the Enterprise gives
you a hint this is not for hobbyist programmers.


J2SE Java 2 Standard Edition. This is needlessly wordy. they could
have called it Standard Java.

If you use short names then you don't need acronyms.  Without
acronyms, names can be self-explanatory.

I think your beef is not with Jargon, but with so many acronyms.

Roedy Green <look-on@mindprod.com.invalid> writes:
> On 11 Aug 2005 18:23:42 -0700, "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> wrote or
> quoted :
[ the usual nonsense ]
>
> Jargon [...]
[snip]

Take a look at the Newsgroups: line.  Then look for other articles Xah
Lee has posted, and see if you can make sense of any of them.  If you
must post a followup, at least limit the newsgroups to those where it
might be topical.

         +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
         |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
         |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
         |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
         |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
         |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
         +-------------------+             /         \
                 |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
                 |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
   @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
   \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
    \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
==============================================================

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center             <*>  <http://users.sdsc.edu/~kst>
We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this.

Xah Lee is a known troll. You are retarded to reply to his drivel.


-- 
James Stroud
UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
Box 951570
Los Angeles, CA 90095

http://www.jamesstroud.com/

J�rgen Exner wrote:
> Just for the records at Google et.al. in case someone stumbles across Xah's
> masterpieces in the future:
> Xah is very well known as the resident troll in many NGs and his
> 'contributions' are less then useless.

And you are the resident troll-reply service, posting this reply every time?

> Best is to just ignore him.

You just broke that rule.

> But for heaven's sake unless you want to embarrass yourself really badly
> don't take any of his postings serious because he has proven again and again
> that he has no clue whatsoever about computer science or programming.

Fine.  Many people don't.  Whoever takes the time to read Xah's postings 
(I don't) will probably be able to find that out by himself.

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

Xah Lee wrote:
> [...]
> My time is limited, so i'll just give a brief explanation of my thesis
> [...]
This is what psychology calls a disordered self-perception.

-- 
"Thomas:Fritsch$ops:de".replace(':','.').replace('$','@')

"J�rgen Exner" <jurgenex@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:BATKe.19727$0d.11740@trnddc07...
> Xah Lee wrote:
>> Jargons of Info Tech industry
>>
>> (A Love of Jargons)
>>
>> Xah Lee, 2002 Feb
>>
>> People in the computing field like to spur the use of spurious
>> jargons. The less educated they are, the more they like extraneous
> [...]
>
> Just for the records at Google et.al. in case someone stumbles across 
> Xah's
> masterpieces in the future:
> Xah is very well known as the resident troll in many NGs and his
> 'contributions' are less then useless.

He sent a lovely one to some of the language groups the other day, 
explaining why Jonathan Swift was a poor writer. 

> Xah is very well known as the resident troll in many NGs and his
'contributions' are less then useless.
>
> Best is to just ignore him.

Did you know that some deranged people take sexual pleasure out of starting
fires? Apparently some of the latest forest/bush fires in southern Europe
were even started by firemen (with their pants down?).

Maybe characters like Xah take some kind of sexual pleasure out of posting
his kind of posts... the tought doesn't bear thinking, does it?

"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:

> "J�rgen Exner" <jurgenex@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:BATKe.19727$0d.11740@trnddc07...
> > Xah Lee wrote:
> >> Jargons of Info Tech industry
> >>
> >> (A Love of Jargons)
> >>
> >> Xah Lee, 2002 Feb
> >>
> >> People in the computing field like to spur the use of spurious
> >> jargons. The less educated they are, the more they like extraneous
> > [...]
> >
> > Just for the records at Google et.al. in case someone stumbles across 
> > Xah's
> > masterpieces in the future:
> > Xah is very well known as the resident troll in many NGs and his
> > 'contributions' are less then useless.
> 
> He sent a lovely one to some of the language groups the other day, 
> explaining why Jonathan Swift was a poor writer. 

That's remarkable, considering he doesn't realize "jargon" is a
collective noun.

Joe

jan V wrote:
> Did you know that some deranged people take sexual pleasure out of starting
> fires? Apparently some of the latest forest/bush fires in southern Europe
> were even started by firemen (with their pants down?).

I've only heard of people trying to extinguish fires with their pants 
down.  Oh well...

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

In comp.lang.perl.misc Xah Lee <xah@xahlee.org> wrote:
> The other class of jargon stupidity is from computing practitioners, of
> which the Unix/Perl community is exemplary. For example, the name Unix
> & Perl themselves are good examples of buzzing jargons. Unix is
> supposed to be opposed of Multics and hints on the offensive and
> tasteless term eunuchs.

Now that connexion is a product of a truely warped mind.

Axel

axel@white-eagle.invalid.uk writes:

>In comp.lang.perl.misc Xah Lee <xah@xahlee.org> wrote:
>> The other class of jargon stupidity is from computing practitioners, of
>> which the Unix/Perl community is exemplary. For example, the name Unix
>> & Perl themselves are good examples of buzzing jargons. Unix is
>> supposed to be opposed of Multics and hints on the offensive and
>> tasteless term eunuchs.
>
>Now that connexion is a product of a truely warped mind.

and one devoid of any trace of humour.

mkb.

the other canonical responses:

- killfile killfile killfile
- nothing to see here ... keep moving
- don't cross-post your replies, don't rile the perl users.

axel@white-eagle.invalid.uk wrote:
> In comp.lang.perl.misc Xah Lee <xah@xahlee.org> wrote:
>
>> The other class of jargon stupidity is from computing practitioners,
>> of which the Unix/Perl community is exemplary. For example, the name
>> Unix & Perl themselves are good examples of buzzing jargons. Unix is
>> supposed to be opposed of Multics and hints on the offensive and
>> tasteless term eunuchs.
> 
> Now that connexion is a product of a truely warped mind.

If you really must feed the troll, please at least set follow-ups
to cut things back.

-- 
"If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use
 the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article.  Click on 
 "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the 
 "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson

Xah Lee wrote:
> Jargons of Info Tech industry
> 
> (A Love of Jargons)
> 
> Xah Lee, 2002 Feb
> 
> The jargon-soaked stupidity in computing field can be grouped into
> classes <SNIP> ... <SNIP> One flagrant example is Sun Microsystem's
> Java stuff <SNIP> ... <SNIP> fucking stupid Java and fuck Sun
> Microsystems. This is just one example of Jargon hodgepodge of one
> single commercial entity. 
> 
> The other class of jargon stupidity is from computing practitioners, of
> which the Unix/Perl community is exemplary <SNIP> ... <SNIP> These types of
> jargons exudes juvenile humor. Cheesiness and low-taste is their
> hall-mark.
> 
> There is another class of jargon moronicity, which i find them most
> damaging to society,  <SNIP> ... <SNIP> I think the reason for these, is that these
> massive body of average programers usually don't have much knowledge of
> significant mathematics,  <SNIP> ... <SNIP> these people defining
> or hatching terms  <SNIP> ... <SNIP> are often a result of sopho-morons
> trying to sound big.
> 
  <SNIP> ... <SNIP> Because most programers are
> sopho-morons who are less capable of clear thinking but nevertheless
> possess human vanity,  <SNIP> ... <SNIP> 
> 
  <SNIP> ... <SNIP> One can see that the term
> “closure” is quite vague in conveying its meaning. The term
> nevertheless is very popular among talkative programers and dense
> tutorials, precisely because it is vague and mysterious. These
> pseudo-wit living zombies, never thought for a moment that they are
> using a moronic term,  <SNIP> ... <SNIP> (for an example of the
> fantastically stupid write-up on closure by the Perl folks <SNIP> ... <SNIP> 
> 
  <SNIP> ... <SNIP>
> 
  <SNIP> ... <SNIP> (one may think from the above tree-diagram
> that Java the language has at least put clear distinction to interface
> and implementation, whereas in my opinion they are one fantastic fuck
> up too, in many respects.)
> 

I've extracted the preceding castigating snippets from Mr. Lee's Jargon 
"thesis". :)) When reciprocated upon his own posts; one could offer up 
the proverb, "he who lives in glass houses should not throw stones."

His inflammatory rhetoric - light on facts, weak in application, and 
generously peppered with self-aggrandizing insults - would probably 
offend Jerry Springer by comparison.

Perhaps the "professor" should more carefully scrutinize himself before 
attempting to castigate others, less he acquire the reputation of a 
hypocrite, e.g. -
   "are often a result of sopho-morons trying to sound big.";
   "who are less capable of clear thinking but nevertheless possess
    human vanity";
    "These types of jargons exudes juvenile humor.";
    "Cheesiness and low-taste is their hall-mark."

Elementary courses in Critical Reasoning, Topical Research, Grammar, 
Creative Writing, and Technical Writing also seem warranted.

A little one on one time with a mental health practitioner probably 
wouldn't hurt either. :))

P.S. Until then, does anyones else deem it appropriate to give 
"professor" Lee the nickname "Xah Lee Springer"?

Alex <the_bearded_oneder@yahoo.com> writes:
> Xah Lee wrote:
[SSSNNNIIIPPP!!!]
> I've extracted the preceding castigating snippets from Mr. Lee's
> Jargon "thesis".
[SSSNNNIIIPPP!!!]

*Please stop posting followups to this off-topic nonsense.  Just
ignore it.  Responding to spam is spam; responding to a troll gives
him exactly what he wants and annoys the heck out of the rest of us.

         +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
         |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
         |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
         |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
         |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
         |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
         +-------------------+             /         \
                 |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
                 |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
   @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
   \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
    \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
==============================================================

Followups redirected appropriately.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center             <*>  <http://users.sdsc.edu/~kst>
We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this.

Unix, RFC, and Line Truncation

[Note: unix tradition requires that a return be inserted at every 70
characters in email messages or so so that each line are less than 80
characters. Unixers made this as a requirement into an RFC document.]

Xah Lee, 20020511

This truncation of lines business is a hatred of mine, from email
formatting to formatting of program codes. I have been fighting with
the unix slew of morons about the line cut for years. The unix morons
are the number one excuse expert, that whenever in an argument they'll
mention some RFC =E2=80=9Cspecifications=E2=80=9D. (RFC =3D Really Fucking =
Common,
invented by mostly unix folks in the 70s.)

the unix morons, think that the world should truncate lines just like
their incompetent operating system silently truncate lines (and it
still DOES, folks! e.g. ps, tar, tcsh.) Around 1998 when i was using
Outlook Express or Eudora before that, i remember i can set lines to
not hard-wrap, and i did. Boy that always pissed the unix blockheads.
In their diddly eyes and lousy email software, i'm breaking standards,
making things hard to read, and being a stupid ass. Their brain fail to
see what unix ways are not capable of. These guys are the same slew of
morons who cry in pain about how the web should not commercialize
(circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
and lynx is the best browser (circa 1995), and GUI is for sissys and
mouse is for pussies and Apple computer is for kids (circa 1987).

There is no reason for a paragraph encoding to be splattered with end
of line characters, nor the human labor expended. There is reason for
paragraphs to be displayed not too wide, and that is readability. What
the unixer could not get clear of is a distinction of concepts. Because
their fantastically hacked-up operating system operate by the principle
that lines should not be some 80 chars or else it will be truncated and
*silently* too, thus it became _necessarily_ their _habit_ and thought
that line truncation business is natural and a human duty. Unknown of
these setups, the unix geeks go by their presumption that all text
should be hard wrapped, as if parameters should be hard-coded.

I recall, two particular unix hotshots who bugged me about the line
truncations business is the Perl priest Tom Christiansen, who used to
reside over comp.lang.perl.*, and another unix jockey Chris Nandor, who
was a MacPerl proponent now the main maintainer. It is not a
coincidence that the people who go out of their way to complain about
any =E2=80=9Cformat=3Dflowed=E2=80=9D or softwrapped or logically-formatted=
 lines in
emails are always the unixers. The unix twits will start a flame war
over a petty formatting issue, because it's unix's training to bent
over pettiness, not to mention they are the ones who are retarded on
the issue of line truncation.

As i have alluded to above, there are serious problems with the
line-truncation ways of thinking. The gist is that it is a form of
physical formatting as opposed to logical. (think softwrap vs hardwrap,
parameter vs hard-code) Those who are familiar with the history or
reason for SGML and HTML should understand the problem. Many of you
familiar with drive of evolution of HTML from 1995 days to today's CSS
& XML should also understand the issue. We wish to encode information,
and be flexible about representation, not botching info into one
particular representation.

The harm done by the unixers to society is of a long lasting and
pervasive nature. First is the RFC, which serves as the mob's standard,
which requires that every emailer should be broken like unix, so that
unix can process them without problems. Fuck unix and fuck unix geeks.
Secondly, it drains human labor. Right this second there are hundreds
of people pressing returns or fixing jagged lines unnecessarily.
Thinking and computer could have done that for us, if not for fucking
stupid unix and its people. Thirdly, a generation of programs and
programer's times are wasted over tools that mutilate paragraphs into
pieces. (in emacs, there's fill-paragraph etc, and in BBEdit it's just
called =E2=80=9CHard Wrap=E2=80=9D) Fourthly, physical formatting ultimately
multiply the process required on the data, as we can see in emails,
especially in combination with the stupid quote convention: =E2=80=9C>=E2=
=80=9D
(that's another unix invention.). But most importantly is that the
hard-liners instilled a bad notion, a confusion, that generated a
entire generation of utterly stupid programing languages and monkey
coders, starting with unix's C language.

As of 200506, the following two sites shows that
as late as 2001, unix tool tar (BSD) still truncate long file names.
=E2=80=A2 http://www.sourcekeg.co.uk/www.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/mac-os-x.ht=
ml
(local copy)
http://nrg.cs.usm.my/~tcwan/macosx_essentials.htm
(local copy)

--------------------
This post is archived at:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/truncate_line.html

 Xah
 xah@xahlee.org
=E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/

"Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> writes:
[the usual]

         +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
         |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
         |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
         |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
         |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
         |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
         +-------------------+             /         \
                 |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
                 |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
   @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
   \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
    \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
==============================================================

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center             <*>  <http://users.sdsc.edu/~kst>
We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this.

>          +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
>          |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
>          |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
>          |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
>          |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
>          |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
>          +-------------------+             /         \
>                  |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
>                  |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
>    @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
>    \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
>     \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
> /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Please don't use ASCII art... not everyone uses a fixed-width font for his
newsreader...............
(your picture looks all mangled here)

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005, jan V wrote:

> Please don't use ASCII art... not everyone uses a fixed-width font for his
> newsreader...............

Then I humbly submit thet they are using broken and/or badly
configured readers.  ;-)

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

Rich Teer wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Aug 2005, jan V wrote:
> 
> 
>>Please don't use ASCII art... not everyone uses a fixed-width font for his
>>newsreader...............
> 
> 
> Then I humbly submit thet they are using broken and/or badly
> configured readers.  ;-)
> 
Not to mention the fact that if they are unix morons they probably have 
no idea what length the lines are anyway :-).

If only everyone would do things Xah Lee's way we wouldn't have to see 
all his twaddle.

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC             http://www.holdenweb.com/

On 22 Aug 2005 11:43:09 -0700, "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> wrote or
quoted :

>the unix morons, think that the world should truncate lines just like
>their incompetent operating system silently truncate lines (and it
>still DOES, folks! e.g. ps, tar, tcsh.) Around 1998 when i was using
>Outlook Express or Eudora before that, i remember i can set lines to
>not hard-wrap, and i did. 

The telephone did not evolve, other than touch tone dialing.  It took
cellphones to let people start over several times to get any changes.

Communications are slow to evolve because they require both ends to
change.  This is almost impossible to accomplish politically.

This is why email and newsgroups will have to die and be replaced with
something entirely new that lets you transmit richer content, prevents
spam, verifies authorship, tracks attributions, does instant delivery
notification etc.

The problem is it will be very difficult for anything no matter how
cheap or technologically brilliant to get a foothold against the quite
wonderful entrenched distributed delivery of newsgroups.

Perhaps at some point will at least allow program listing that don't
wrap inappropriately, and HTML for displaying tables.
 

In article <IJpOe.175886$zs4.9923722@phobos.telenet-ops.be>, jan V
<nul@nul.be> writes
>>          +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
>>          |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
>>          |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
>>          |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
>>          |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
>>          |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
>>          +-------------------+             /         \
>>                  |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
>>                  |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
>>    @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
>>    \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
>>     \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
>> /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
>
>Please don't use ASCII art... not everyone uses a fixed-width font for his
>newsreader...............

I thought usenet specified fixed font. If you  use something else don't
complain. 

The Troll don't look pretty in fixed font either:-)
-- 
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org      www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"jan V" <nul@nul.be> writes:
>>          +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
>>          |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
>>          |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
>>          |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
>>          |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
>>          |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
>>          +-------------------+             /         \
>>                  |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
>>                  |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
>>    @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
>>    \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
>>     \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
>> /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
>
> Please don't use ASCII art... not everyone uses a fixed-width font for his
> newsreader...............
> (your picture looks all mangled here)

If "PLEASE DO NOT" and "FEED THE TROLLS" are legible, even if they
aren't aligned as intended, the message has gotten through.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center             <*>  <http://users.sdsc.edu/~kst>
We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this.

Keith Thompson wrote:
> "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> writes:
> [the usual]

At least he noticed that tar sucks.  There's nothing better than tarring 
your backup back to disk, only to notice that the pathnames were "too 
long."  Great!

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

"jan V" <nul@nul.be> wrote:

> >          +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
> >          |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
> >          |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
> >          |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
> >          |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
> >          |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
> >          +-------------------+             /         \
> >                  |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
> >                  |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
> >    @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
> >    \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
> >     \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
> > /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
> 
> Please don't use ASCII art... not everyone uses a fixed-width font for his
> newsreader...............
> (your picture looks all mangled here)

That's your own fault, though, innit?

Richard

Xah Lee wrote:

You stupid UNIX donkey!  Why you wrap your email?  You wasted time 
formatting email that you could have used to read Python documentation 
and critique it!  How you expect to change world if you spend time 
formatting email???  And I no want hear you let Google groups format 
it!  If you use stupid UNIX-using, text monkey service like Google to 
format your email, then you no longer worthy to be our prince!!

I, Lah Xee, master of wit and expert grammarian must rise to occasion 
and become pre-eminent troll for common good of all mankind!  Down with 
UNIX!!  Down with Mac!!  Down with Perl!!  Down with Xah Lee!!  You will 
all bow before my astonishing wisdom and knowledge!!

Now, why do this so-called "print" statement in Python f*ck up my text 
by splattering it with end of line characters?

Lah Xee
Master Grammarian
Pre-Eminent Troll

>Unix, RFC, and Line Truncation
>
>[Note: unix tradition requires that a return be inserted at every 70
>characters in email messages or so so that each line are less than 80
>characters. Unixers made this as a requirement into an RFC document.]
>
>Xah Lee, 20020511
>
>This truncation of lines business is a hatred of mine, from email
>formatting to formatting of program codes. I have been fighting with
>the unix slew of morons about the line cut for years. The unix morons
>are the number one excuse expert, that whenever in an argument they'll
>mention some RFC “specifications”. (RFC = Really Fucking Common,
>invented by mostly unix folks in the 70s.)
>
>the unix morons, think that the world should truncate lines just like
>their incompetent operating system silently truncate lines (and it
>still DOES, folks! e.g. ps, tar, tcsh.) Around 1998 when i was using
>Outlook Express or Eudora before that, i remember i can set lines to
>not hard-wrap, and i did. Boy that always pissed the unix blockheads.
>In their diddly eyes and lousy email software, i'm breaking standards,
>making things hard to read, and being a stupid ass. Their brain fail to
>see what unix ways are not capable of. These guys are the same slew of
>morons who cry in pain about how the web should not commercialize
>(circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
>and lynx is the best browser (circa 1995), and GUI is for sissys and
>mouse is for pussies and Apple computer is for kids (circa 1987).
>
>There is no reason for a paragraph encoding to be splattered with end
>of line characters, nor the human labor expended. There is reason for
>paragraphs to be displayed not too wide, and that is readability. What
>the unixer could not get clear of is a distinction of concepts. Because
>their fantastically hacked-up operating system operate by the principle
>that lines should not be some 80 chars or else it will be truncated and
>*silently* too, thus it became _necessarily_ their _habit_ and thought
>that line truncation business is natural and a human duty. Unknown of
>these setups, the unix geeks go by their presumption that all text
>should be hard wrapped, as if parameters should be hard-coded.
>
>I recall, two particular unix hotshots who bugged me about the line
>truncations business is the Perl priest Tom Christiansen, who used to
>reside over comp.lang.perl.*, and another unix jockey Chris Nandor, who
>was a MacPerl proponent now the main maintainer. It is not a
>coincidence that the people who go out of their way to complain about
>any “format=flowed” or softwrapped or logically-formatted lines in
>emails are always the unixers. The unix twits will start a flame war
>over a petty formatting issue, because it's unix's training to bent
>over pettiness, not to mention they are the ones who are retarded on
>the issue of line truncation.
>
>As i have alluded to above, there are serious problems with the
>line-truncation ways of thinking. The gist is that it is a form of
>physical formatting as opposed to logical. (think softwrap vs hardwrap,
>parameter vs hard-code) Those who are familiar with the history or
>reason for SGML and HTML should understand the problem. Many of you
>familiar with drive of evolution of HTML from 1995 days to today's CSS
>& XML should also understand the issue. We wish to encode information,
>and be flexible about representation, not botching info into one
>particular representation.
>
>The harm done by the unixers to society is of a long lasting and
>pervasive nature. First is the RFC, which serves as the mob's standard,
>which requires that every emailer should be broken like unix, so that
>unix can process them without problems. Fuck unix and fuck unix geeks.
>Secondly, it drains human labor. Right this second there are hundreds
>of people pressing returns or fixing jagged lines unnecessarily.
>Thinking and computer could have done that for us, if not for fucking
>stupid unix and its people. Thirdly, a generation of programs and
>programer's times are wasted over tools that mutilate paragraphs into
>pieces. (in emacs, there's fill-paragraph etc, and in BBEdit it's just
>called “Hard Wrap”) Fourthly, physical formatting ultimately
>multiply the process required on the data, as we can see in emails,
>especially in combination with the stupid quote convention: “>”
>(that's another unix invention.). But most importantly is that the
>hard-liners instilled a bad notion, a confusion, that generated a
>entire generation of utterly stupid programing languages and monkey
>coders, starting with unix's C language.
>
>As of 200506, the following two sites shows that
>as late as 2001, unix tool tar (BSD) still truncate long file names.
>• http://www.sourcekeg.co.uk/www.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/mac-os-x.html
>(local copy)
>http://nrg.cs.usm.my/~tcwan/macosx_essentials.htm
>(local copy)
>
>--------------------
>This post is archived at:
>http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/truncate_line.html
>
> Xah
> xah@xahlee.org
>∑ http://xahlee.org/
>
>  
>

Xah Lee wrote:
> (circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),

I think e-mail should be text only.  I have both my email and news 
readers set to display in plain text only.  It prevents the marketeers 
and spammers from obtaining feedback that my email address is valid.  A 
surprising amount of information can be obtained from your computer by 
allowing HTML and all of it's baggage when executing on your computer. 
Phishing comes to my mind first and it works because people click the 
link without looking to see where the link really takes them.

> reason for SGML and HTML should understand the problem. Many of you
> familiar with drive of evolution of HTML from 1995 days to today's CSS
> & XML should also understand the issue. We wish to encode information,

I do not want spammers to encode information in their emails.

>  Xah
> 

Please go to jobs.org

Len

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

"l v" <lv@aol.com> wrote in message 
news:1124804082_1011@spool6-east.superfeed.net...
> Xah Lee wrote:
>> (circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
>
> I think e-mail should be text only.  I have both my email and news readers 
> set to display in plain text only.  It prevents the marketeers and 
> spammers from obtaining feedback that my email address is valid.  A 
> surprising amount of information can be obtained from your computer by 
> allowing HTML and all of it's baggage when executing on your computer. 
> Phishing comes to my mind first and it works because people click the link 
> without looking to see where the link really takes them.

A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail and Usenet 
posts. 

"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> wrote:

> "l v" <lv@aol.com> wrote in message 
> news:1124804082_1011@spool6-east.superfeed.net...
> > Xah Lee wrote:
> >> (circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
> >
> > I think e-mail should be text only.  I have both my email and news readers 
> > set to display in plain text only.  It prevents the marketeers and 
> > spammers from obtaining feedback that my email address is valid.  A 
> > surprising amount of information can be obtained from your computer by 
> > allowing HTML and all of it's baggage when executing on your computer. 
> > Phishing comes to my mind first and it works because people click the link 
> > without looking to see where the link really takes them.
> 
> A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail and Usenet 
> posts. 

Used to be that the formatting-only subset of HTML was called HTML.

Used to be that people were wise to itinerant kooks such as the OP.

Richard

In comp.lang.perl.misc Chris Hills <chris@phaedsys.org> wrote:
> In article <IJpOe.175886$zs4.9923722@phobos.telenet-ops.be>, jan V
> <nul@nul.be> writes
>>>          +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
>>>          |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
>>>          |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
>>>          |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
>>>          |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
>>>          |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
>>>          +-------------------+             /         \
>>>                  |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
>>>                  |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
>>>    @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
>>>    \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
>>>     \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
>>> /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
>>
>>Please don't use ASCII art... not everyone uses a fixed-width font for his
>>newsreader...............
 
> I thought usenet specified fixed font. If you  use something else don't
> complain. 
 
> The Troll don't look pretty in fixed font either:-)

I don't think trolls are supposed to look pretty, but rather ugly.

Axel

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005, Mike Schilling wrote:

> A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail and Usenet
> posts.

Nope; plain text for both mediums is, IMHO, th eonly way to go.

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

Mike Schilling wrote:
> "l v" <lv@aol.com> wrote in message 
> news:1124804082_1011@spool6-east.superfeed.net...
> 
>>Xah Lee wrote:
>>
>>>(circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
>>
>>I think e-mail should be text only.  I have both my email and news readers 
>>set to display in plain text only.  It prevents the marketeers and 
>>spammers from obtaining feedback that my email address is valid.  A 
>>surprising amount of information can be obtained from your computer by 
>>allowing HTML and all of it's baggage when executing on your computer. 
>>Phishing comes to my mind first and it works because people click the link 
>>without looking to see where the link really takes them.
> 
> 
> A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail and Usenet 
> posts. 
> 
> 

I would *agree*  (your news reader may bold that last word)

Len

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

l v wrote:
> Xah Lee wrote:
>> (circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
> 
> I think e-mail should be text only.  I have both my email and news 
> readers set to display in plain text only.  It prevents the marketeers 

Be generous in what you accept and conservative in what you send ;)

I always send plaintext emails, but Thunderbird can also display HTML. 
Of course I don't let it load remote images in the HTML, so no feedback 
for the marketers.

> and spammers from obtaining feedback that my email address is valid.  A 
> surprising amount of information can be obtained from your computer by 
> allowing HTML and all of it's baggage when executing on your computer. 

When that HTML execution accesses further remote resources.

> Phishing comes to my mind first and it works because people click the 
> link without looking to see where the link really takes them.

That's a problem, yes.  As usual, education helps.

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> writes:

> Keith Thompson wrote:
>> "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> writes:
>> [the usual]

> At least he noticed that tar sucks.  There's nothing better than tarring 
> your backup back to disk, only to notice that the pathnames were "too 
> long."  Great!

That's been fixed for quite some time, though.  The current GNU tar
(1.15.1) writes POSIX.1-2001 (PAX) archives, and has read them for
quite a long time before.


Regards,
Roger

- -- 
Roger Leigh
                Printing on GNU/Linux?  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/
                Debian GNU/Linux        http://www.debian.org/
                GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848.  Please sign and encrypt your mail.
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/>

iD8DBQFDC5T5VcFcaSW/uEgRAmJ6AKDsqFmvoBsOqsm/6zIfHQleMpI5KwCgsR6Q
yO7hX52yq/iHIHC2yJ6hF2A=
=MCYF
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Roger Leigh wrote:
>> At least he noticed that tar sucks.  There's nothing better than tarring 
>> your backup back to disk, only to notice that the pathnames were "too 
>> long."  Great!
> 
> That's been fixed for quite some time, though.  The current GNU tar
> (1.15.1) writes POSIX.1-2001 (PAX) archives, and has read them for
> quite a long time before.

Don't remember where it bit me.  Either Free- or NetBSD, or Mac OS 10.3, 
but it was sometime after 2002...  probably not GNU tar, though.

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:

> "l v" <lv@aol.com> wrote in message 
> news:1124804082_1011@spool6-east.superfeed.net...
>> Xah Lee wrote:
>>> (circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
>>
>> I think e-mail should be text only.  I have both my email and news readers 
>> set to display in plain text only.  It prevents the marketeers and 
>> spammers from obtaining feedback that my email address is valid.  A 
>> surprising amount of information can be obtained from your computer by 
>> allowing HTML and all of it's baggage when executing on your computer. 
>> Phishing comes to my mind first and it works because people click the link 
>> without looking to see where the link really takes them.
>
> A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail and Usenet 
> posts. 

Used to be people who wanted to send formatted text via email would
use rich text. It never really caught on. But given that most of the
people sending around formatted text are using point-n-click GUIs to
create the stuff, the main advantage of HTML - that it's easy to write
by hand - isn't needed.

   <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

l v <lv@aol.com> wrote:

> Mike Schilling wrote:
> > A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail and Usenet 
> > posts. 
> 
> I would *agree*  (your news reader may bold that last word)

It had bloody better not. You're cross-posting this to a C newsgroup,
where *ptr* 4 is a legal (albeit inadvisably spaced) expression.

Richard

rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) writes:

> l v <lv@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Mike Schilling wrote:
>> > A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail and Usenet 
>> > posts. 
>> 
>> I would *agree*  (your news reader may bold that last word)
>
> It had bloody better not. You're cross-posting this to a C newsgroup,
> where *ptr* 4 is a legal (albeit inadvisably spaced) expression.
>

Or _ptr_ for that matter (does it underline for you?)

Well, at least on my newsreader (gnus), I can toggle the behaviour. Ditto
for smileys:

(setq gnus-treat-display-smileys nil)

Dragan

-- 
Dragan Cvetkovic, 

To be or not to be is true. G. Boole      No it isn't.  L. E. J. Brouwer

!!! Sender/From address is bogus. Use reply-to one !!!

"Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> wrote in message 
news:86wtmcm1j9.fsf@bhuda.mired.org...
> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> "l v" <lv@aol.com> wrote in message
>> news:1124804082_1011@spool6-east.superfeed.net...
>>> Xah Lee wrote:
>>>> (circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
>>>
>>> I think e-mail should be text only.  I have both my email and news 
>>> readers
>>> set to display in plain text only.  It prevents the marketeers and
>>> spammers from obtaining feedback that my email address is valid.  A
>>> surprising amount of information can be obtained from your computer by
>>> allowing HTML and all of it's baggage when executing on your computer.
>>> Phishing comes to my mind first and it works because people click the 
>>> link
>>> without looking to see where the link really takes them.
>>
>> A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail and 
>> Usenet
>> posts.
>
> Used to be people who wanted to send formatted text via email would
> use rich text. It never really caught on. But given that most of the
> people sending around formatted text are using point-n-click GUIs to
> create the stuff, the main advantage of HTML - that it's easy to write
> by hand - isn't needed.

But the other advantage, that it's an existing and popular standard, 
remains. 

Mike Schilling wrote:
> "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> wrote in message
>> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:
>>> "l v" <lv@aol.com> wrote in message
>>>> Xah Lee wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> (circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
>>>>
>>>> I think e-mail should be text only.  I have both my email and
>>>> news readers set to display in plain text only.  It prevents
>>>> the marketeers and spammers from obtaining feedback that my
>>>> email address is valid.  A surprising amount of information
>>>> can be obtained from your computer by allowing HTML and all
>>>> of it's baggage when executing on your computer. Phishing
>>>> comes to my mind first and it works because people click the
>>>> link without looking to see where the link really takes them.
>>>
>>> A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail
>>> and Usenet posts.
>>
>> Used to be people who wanted to send formatted text via email
>> would use rich text. It never really caught on. But given that
>> most of the people sending around formatted text are using
>> point-n-click GUIs to create the stuff, the main advantage of
>> HTML - that it's easy to write by hand - isn't needed.
> 
> But the other advantage, that it's an existing and popular
> standard, remains.

However, for both e-mail and news, it is totally useless.  It also
interferes with the use of AsciiArt, while opening the recipient to
the dangers above.

-- 
"If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use
 the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article.  Click on 
 "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the 
 "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson

CBFalconer wrote:
> Mike Schilling wrote:
>> "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> wrote in message
>>> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:
>>>> "l v" <lv@aol.com> wrote in message
>>>>> Xah Lee wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> (circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
>>>>>
>>>>> I think e-mail should be text only.  I have both my email and
>>>>> news readers set to display in plain text only.  It prevents
>>>>> the marketeers and spammers from obtaining feedback that my
>>>>> email address is valid.  A surprising amount of information
>>>>> can be obtained from your computer by allowing HTML and all
>>>>> of it's baggage when executing on your computer. Phishing
>>>>> comes to my mind first and it works because people click the
>>>>> link without looking to see where the link really takes them.
>>>>
>>>> A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail
>>>> and Usenet posts.
>>>
>>> Used to be people who wanted to send formatted text via email
>>> would use rich text. It never really caught on. But given that
>>> most of the people sending around formatted text are using
>>> point-n-click GUIs to create the stuff, the main advantage of
>>> HTML - that it's easy to write by hand - isn't needed.
>> 
>> But the other advantage, that it's an existing and popular
>> standard, remains.
> 
> However, for both e-mail and news, it is totally useless.  It also
> interferes with the use of AsciiArt, while opening the recipient to
> the dangers above.

And HTML has the tendency to make e-mail and Usenet posts unnecessarily 
bigger, which will continue to be a bugger until broadband links become 
common enough.

-- Denis

"CBFalconer" <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:430D7366.C2126F6D@yahoo.com...
> Mike Schilling wrote:
>> "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> wrote in message
>>> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:
>>>> "l v" <lv@aol.com> wrote in message
>>>>> Xah Lee wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> (circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995),
>>>>>
>>>>> I think e-mail should be text only.  I have both my email and
>>>>> news readers set to display in plain text only.  It prevents
>>>>> the marketeers and spammers from obtaining feedback that my
>>>>> email address is valid.  A surprising amount of information
>>>>> can be obtained from your computer by allowing HTML and all
>>>>> of it's baggage when executing on your computer. Phishing
>>>>> comes to my mind first and it works because people click the
>>>>> link without looking to see where the link really takes them.
>>>>
>>>> A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail
>>>> and Usenet posts.
>>>
>>> Used to be people who wanted to send formatted text via email
>>> would use rich text. It never really caught on. But given that
>>> most of the people sending around formatted text are using
>>> point-n-click GUIs to create the stuff, the main advantage of
>>> HTML - that it's easy to write by hand - isn't needed.
>>
>> But the other advantage, that it's an existing and popular
>> standard, remains.
>
> However, for both e-mail and news, it is totally useless.

Useless except in that it can describe formatting, which is what it would be 
used for?  (

> It also
> interferes with the use of AsciiArt,

Except that it can specify the use of a fixed-width font, which makes Ascii 
Art work.  It can also distinguish between text that can be reformatted for 
flow and text than can not.

So I think you meant to say that it *enables* Ascii Art.

> while opening the recipient to
> the dangers above.

Which is why a formatting-only subset, which doesn't cause any such dangers, 
is required.  As I said above.

Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today already 
comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser), so that a message saved to a file 
can be read very easily. 

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Mike Schilling wrote:

> Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today already
> comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser), so that a message saved to a file
> can be read very easily.

I think you're missing the point: email and Usenet are, historically have
been, and should always be, plain text mediums.  If I wanted to look at
prettily formatted HTML, I'd use a web browser to look at the web.

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

"Rich Teer" <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote in message 
news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0508250932360.5888@zen.rite-group.com...
> On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Mike Schilling wrote:
>
>> Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today already
>> comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser), so that a message saved to a 
>> file
>> can be read very easily.
>
> I think you're missing the point: email and Usenet are, historically have
> been, and should always be, plain text mediums.

Gosh, if you say they should be, there's no point trying to have an 
intelligent discussion, is there?

Mike Schilling wrote:
> "Rich Teer" <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote in message
> news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0508250932360.5888@zen.rite-group.com...
> > On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Mike Schilling wrote:
> >
> >> Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today already
> >> comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser), so that a message saved to a
> >> file
> >> can be read very easily.
> >
> > I think you're missing the point: email and Usenet are, historically have
> > been, and should always be, plain text mediums.
>
> Gosh, if you say they should be, there's no point trying to have an
> intelligent discussion, is there?

Not to mention that e-mail is practically to the point where it is
{not} a plain text medium.  I notice this especially in a corporate
environment (where, at least where I work, I get at least 10 times the
number of e-mails at work than I do on my private account) HTML e-mail
is the de-facto standard.  I have a tendancy to send out plain text
e-mail, and I'm practically the only one, as HTML formatting is the
default for the mail client on every corporate machine at my job.

But let's not forget that most people which send me e-mail personally
also have HTML tags in e-mail...  So if e-mail {is} a plain text
medium, somebody needs to tell the general public, because I think they
must've missed a memo.

If we argue that people are evolving the way e-mail is handled, and
adding entire new feature sets to something which has been around since
the earliest days of the internet, then that's perfectly feasable.
HTML itself has grown.  We've also added Javascript and Shockwave.  The
websites of today don't even resemble the websites of 10 years ago,
e-mail of today only remotely resembles the original, so the argument
that usenet should never change seems a little heavy-handed and
anachronistic.

--T Beck

"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:

> "Rich Teer" <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote in message 
> news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0508250932360.5888@zen.rite-group.com...
> > On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Mike Schilling wrote:
> >
> >> Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today
> >> already comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser), so that a
> >> message saved to a file can be read very easily.
> >
> > I think you're missing the point: email and Usenet are,
> > historically have been, and should always be, plain text mediums.
> 
> Gosh, if you say they should be, there's no point trying to have an 
> intelligent discussion, is there?

Errm, isn't that what you're doing as well then? Rich just gave an
opinion, you've been giving an opinion. Rich's opinion happens to have
a lot of history and good reasons behind it. I don't see why it should
be viewed as some kind of discussion ending dogmatism.

Although it might not be bad if this discussion ended :-)

Joe

Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Mike Schilling wrote:
> 
>> Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today
>> already comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser), so that a message
>> saved to a file can be read very easily.
> 
> I think you're missing the point: email and Usenet are, historically
> have been, and should always be, plain text mediums.  If I wanted to
> look at prettily formatted HTML, I'd use a web browser to look at the
> web. 

Just have a look at some web based message boards, and you might see why it 
would be another disaster on Usenet. Moreoever, why keep people insisting 
on making Usenet "better"? If you want HTML and fancy mark up, start a 
message board. You probably can get even more people.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

"T Beck" <Tracy.Beck@Infineon.com> wrote:

> If we argue that people are evolving the way e-mail is handled, and
> adding entire new feature sets to something which has been around
> since the earliest days of the internet, then that's perfectly
> feasable. HTML itself has grown.  We've also added Javascript and
> Shockwave.

They are not additions to HTML, like PNG is no addition to HTML, or wav, 
mp3, etc.

> The websites of today don't even resemble the websites of
> 10 years ago,

Depends a lot on what site you visit. You can make a website of 10 years 
ago look modern with roughly the same HTML of 10 years ago, and a style 
sheet. (E.g. visit: http://johnbokma.com/ and turn off the stylesheet. And 
there are way better examples)

> e-mail of today only remotely resembles the original, so

Because there is no real alternative to email? If there was, email would 
have died, at least for me, long ago.

> the argument that usenet should never change seems a little
> heavy-handed and anachronistic.

No, simple since there *are* alternatives: web based message boards. Those 
alternatives *do* support HTML formatting (often the subset mentioned 
earlier). However, Usenet is a stranger to most people on the Internet, 
even with Usenet access, and hence, there is no real reason to see it 
changed into something that is "available" for years and years to more 
people: www.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

"T Beck" <Tracy.Beck@Infineon.com> writes:

> Mike Schilling wrote:
> > "Rich Teer" <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote in message
> > news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0508250932360.5888@zen.rite-group.com...
> > > On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Mike Schilling wrote:
> > >
> > >> Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer
> > >> today already comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser), so
> > >> that a message saved to a file can be read very easily.
> > >
> > > I think you're missing the point: email and Usenet are,
> > > historically have been, and should always be, plain text
> > > mediums.
> >
> > Gosh, if you say they should be, there's no point trying to have an
> > intelligent discussion, is there?
> 
> Not to mention that e-mail is practically to the point where it is
> {not} a plain text medium.  I notice this especially in a corporate
> environment (where, at least where I work, I get at least 10 times the
> number of e-mails at work than I do on my private account) HTML e-mail
> is the de-facto standard.  I have a tendancy to send out plain text
> e-mail, and I'm practically the only one, as HTML formatting is the
> default for the mail client on every corporate machine at my job.

If you're using exchange for email servers it might be reformatting
mail sent as plain text anyway. Waste of bandwidth.

> But let's not forget that most people which send me e-mail personally
> also have HTML tags in e-mail...  So if e-mail {is} a plain text
> medium, somebody needs to tell the general public, because I think they
> must've missed a memo.
> 
> If we argue that people are evolving the way e-mail is handled, and
> adding entire new feature sets to something which has been around since
> the earliest days of the internet, then that's perfectly feasable.
> HTML itself has grown.  We've also added Javascript and Shockwave.  The
> websites of today don't even resemble the websites of 10 years ago,
> e-mail of today only remotely resembles the original, so the argument
> that usenet should never change seems a little heavy-handed and
> anachronistic.

That's a good point, but just because things are evolving doesn't mean
they're making more sense. Html does waste bandwidth, it does open up
avenues for malware that text mail doesn't, etc.

It seems to me that any intelligent person has to turn off so many
"features" in html mail clients that they lose many of what are seen
of as advantages.

I suspect I either missed some of this thread or I'm misunderstanding
some of it. If what the OP was trying to suggest was a more confined
form of html, say, something that doesn't allow links, I'd consider
that a good thing. I doubt anyone will use it though, I think MS wants
all the bells and whistles, and all the embracing and extending it can
do. If they don't support such an html subset for email I suspect it
won't go anywhere.

But why bother? An html subset that takes everything away but
formatting sounds pretty much like what I'm doing right now with
gnus. 

Joe

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Mike Schilling wrote:

[Off Topic discussion of netiquette, seen on comp.lang.perl.misc:]

> Gosh, if you say they should be, there's no point trying to have an 
> intelligent discussion, is there?

Discussion about netiquette on any of these cross-posted groups cannot 
by definition be "intelligent": there are proper places to discuss the 
netiquette (they'd have "news" as their top hierarchy, not "comp"), 
and your posting was cross-posted to none of them.

[f'ups set]  [I have been trolled, mea culpa]

<joe@invalid.address> wrote in message 
news:m3ll2qx73f.fsf@invalid.address...
> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> "Rich Teer" <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote in message
>> news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0508250932360.5888@zen.rite-group.com...
>> > On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Mike Schilling wrote:
>> >
>> >> Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today
>> >> already comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser), so that a
>> >> message saved to a file can be read very easily.
>> >
>> > I think you're missing the point: email and Usenet are,
>> > historically have been, and should always be, plain text mediums.
>>
>> Gosh, if you say they should be, there's no point trying to have an
>> intelligent discussion, is there?
>
> Errm, isn't that what you're doing as well then? Rich just gave an
> opinion, you've been giving an opinion. Rich's opinion happens to have
> a lot of history and good reasons behind it. I don't see why it should
> be viewed as some kind of discussion ending dogmatism.

I see a difference between "X would be useful for A, B, and C" and "Y will 
always be the only proper way."

Don't you?

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, John Bokma wrote:

> Just have a look at some web based message boards, and you might see why it
> would be another disaster on Usenet. Moreoever, why keep people insisting
> on making Usenet "better"? If you want HTML and fancy mark up, start a
> message board. You probably can get even more people.

Right.  I avoid web based forums like the plague.  Why?  Because apart
from the (usually) very low SNR, for me interacting with a browser is
more effort than using my email/news client of 10+ years, pine.

I find that fact that something is technically possible (e.g., HTML
email and Usenet) is not necessarily a good argument for actully
DOING it.

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

������ Xah!

11 aug 2005 at 18:23, Xah Lee wrote:

 XL> Jargons of Info Tech industry
 XL> (A Love of Jargons)
 XL> Xah Lee, 2002 Feb
 XL> People in the computing field like to spur the use of spurious
....skipped...

Look at this site for some info: http://lleo.aha.ru/na/en


Alexander, zatv@bk.ru

"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:

> <joe@invalid.address> wrote in message 
> news:m3ll2qx73f.fsf@invalid.address...
> > "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:

> > Errm, isn't that what you're doing as well then? Rich just gave an
> > opinion, you've been giving an opinion. Rich's opinion happens to have
> > a lot of history and good reasons behind it. I don't see why it should
> > be viewed as some kind of discussion ending dogmatism.
> 
> I see a difference between "X would be useful for A, B, and C" and
> "Y will always be the only proper way."
> 
> Don't you?

Sure, but so what? They still are both opinions. 

I used to see a tagline that said "The world would be a much different
place if I were in charge of lightning". I don't think Rich has
something like that in mind though.

[crossposting removed to eliminate clearly inappropriate groups]

Joe

In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> 
> > the argument that usenet should never change seems a little
> > heavy-handed and anachronistic.
> 
> No, simple since there *are* alternatives: web based message boards. Those 
> alternatives *do* support HTML formatting (often the subset mentioned 

.... and generally these "web based message boards" (i.e. forums I
assume you mean) have none of the useful tools that Usenet offers and
are much, much slower.

> earlier). However, Usenet is a stranger to most people on the Internet, 
> even with Usenet access, and hence, there is no real reason to see it 
> changed into something that is "available" for years and years to more 
> people: www.
> 
> -- 
> John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
>                Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
>             Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
>                         

-- 
Chris Green

usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
> In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
>>> the argument that usenet should never change seems a little
>>> heavy-handed and anachronistic.
>> No, simple since there *are* alternatives: web based message boards. Those 
>> alternatives *do* support HTML formatting (often the subset mentioned 
> 
> ... and generally these "web based message boards" (i.e. forums I
> assume you mean) have none of the useful tools that Usenet offers and
> are much, much slower.

That is because NNTP and its applications didn't evolve to feed the 
glitzy need lots of users have.

Sadly web forums (esp. the ugly, sloooow PHPBB, and the unspeakable 
Google groups) are increasingly replacing usenet, but there are 
exceptions (DragonflyBSD).

On the information side (in contrast to the discussion side) RSS is 
replacing Usenet, with some obvious disadvantages: go on vacation, 
return after a week, and -- yahoo! -- all your RSS feeds only turn of 
the, say, most recent 30 articles, while your newsgroups all show 
everything you missed.

There is no real reason why NNTP couldn't be used like RSS (i.e. contain 
a small description and a web link as message text), or why a newsgroup 
shouldn't we written in HTML and contain a (default, or user-provided) 
CSS sheet.  If things were that way, suddenly people *would* use Outlook 
and Thunderbird for news-reading, while today everything is just 
Browser+HTTP.

Oh, yes:</rant>

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:

> CSS sheet.  If things were that way, suddenly people *would* use Outlook

No no no!  Let's keep those Outhouse lusers away from Usenet.  There's
tto much top posting as it is!

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 joe@invalid.address wrote:

> place if I were in charge of lightning". I don't think Rich has
> something like that in mind though.

I don't.

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:

> In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
>> 
>> > the argument that usenet should never change seems a little
>> > heavy-handed and anachronistic.
>> 
>> No, simple since there *are* alternatives: web based message boards.
>> Those alternatives *do* support HTML formatting (often the subset
>> mentioned 
> 
> ... and generally these "web based message boards" (i.e. forums I
> assume you mean) have none of the useful tools that Usenet offers and
> are much, much slower.

Yup, Slow because of all the HTML and avatars. And you suggest to introduce 
such a thing to Usenet?

And which useful tools do you require?

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:

> On the information side (in contrast to the discussion side) RSS is 
> replacing Usenet,

LOL, how? I can't post to RSS feeds. Or do you mean for lurkers?

> There is no real reason why NNTP couldn't be used like RSS (i.e.
> contain a small description and a web link as message text),

It has been used like that for ages (or as long as I can remember).

> or why a
> newsgroup shouldn't we written in HTML and contain a (default, or
> user-provided) CSS sheet.

It's called www. It's already here (or there)

> If things were that way, suddenly people
> *would* use Outlook and Thunderbird for news-reading,

But why do you want that? (Oh, and you can't read news with Outlook). Why 
do you want more people on Usenet? 

> while today
> everything is just Browser+HTTP.

And what's wrong with that?

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:
> Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today already 
> comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser)

No, they don't. Minimalist Unix distributions don't include a browser
by default. I know the BSD's don't, and suspect that gentoo Linux
doesn't. 

HTML is designed to degrade gracefully (never mind that most web
authors and many browser developers don't seem to comprehend this), so
you don't really need a "subset" html to get the safety features you
want. All you need to do is disable the appropriate features in the
HTML renderer in your news and mail readers. JavaScript, Java, and any
form of object embedding. Oh yeah, and frames.

No problem.

   <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> writes:
> > Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today already 
> > comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser)
> 
> No, they don't. Minimalist Unix distributions don't include a browser
> by default. I know the BSD's don't, and suspect that gentoo Linux
> doesn't. 

Lynx?

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:

> Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> writes:
>> > Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today
>> > already comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser)
>> 
>> No, they don't. Minimalist Unix distributions don't include a browser
>> by default. I know the BSD's don't, and suspect that gentoo Linux
>> doesn't. 
> 
> Lynx?

Emacs?

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

>HTML is designed to degrade gracefully (never mind that most web
>authors and many browser developers don't seem to comprehend this), so
>you don't really need a "subset" html to get the safety features you
>want. All you need to do is disable the appropriate features in the
>HTML renderer in your news and mail readers. JavaScript, Java, and any
>form of object embedding. Oh yeah, and frames.

And links.  And cookies.  And any kind of external site or local
file access.  And browser history.  

					Gordon L. Burditt

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usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
[snip]
> ... and generally these "web based message boards" (i.e. forums I
> assume you mean) have none of the useful tools that Usenet offers and
> are much, much slower.
[snip]

Arrgh, I *emphatically* *hate* Web-based-(almost anything). Why, oh WHY,
would we subject ourselves to Web-based message boards and Webmail
services? When using a proper e-mail client, your bandwidth usage
consists of downloading your e-mail. When using a Webmail service, your
bandwidth usage consists of downloading the message, PLUS the entire
user interface. Additionally, a user interface operating inside an HTML
renderer can NEVER be as fast as a native-code user interface with only
the e-mail message itself passed through the renderer. I mean, the way
Webmail works, you're at the message list and click on a message to
view. This causes a whole new page, user-interface and all, to be
loaded. In comparison, that's like shutting down and re-opening your
e-mail program for every single message you want to view!

Why can't we use the Web for what it was meant for: viewing hypertext
pages? Why must we turn it into a wrapper around every application
imaginable?

....

</rant>

Chris
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So says Chris from his webmail account...

On 8/25/05, Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>=20
> usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
> [snip]
> > ... and generally these "web based message boards" (i.e. forums I
> > assume you mean) have none of the useful tools that Usenet offers and
> > are much, much slower.
> [snip]
>=20
> Arrgh, I *emphatically* *hate* Web-based-(almost anything). Why, oh WHY,
> would we subject ourselves to Web-based message boards and Webmail
> services? When using a proper e-mail client, your bandwidth usage
> consists of downloading your e-mail. When using a Webmail service, your
> bandwidth usage consists of downloading the message, PLUS the entire
> user interface. Additionally, a user interface operating inside an HTML
> renderer can NEVER be as fast as a native-code user interface with only
> the e-mail message itself passed through the renderer. I mean, the way
> Webmail works, you're at the message list and click on a message to
> view. This causes a whole new page, user-interface and all, to be
> loaded. In comparison, that's like shutting down and re-opening your
> e-mail program for every single message you want to view!
>=20
> Why can't we use the Web for what it was meant for: viewing hypertext
> pages? Why must we turn it into a wrapper around every application
> imaginable?
>=20
> ...
>=20
> </rant>
>=20
> Chris
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> ME8mWt2eVNpPUckJ3NT39KY=3D
> =3DTdTk
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>

Chris Head wrote:
> 
.... snip ...
> 
> Why can't we use the Web for what it was meant for: viewing
> hypertext pages? Why must we turn it into a wrapper around every
> application imaginable?

Because the Lord High PoohBah (Bill) has so decreed.  He has
replaced General bullMoose.

-- 
Chuck F (cbfalconer@yahoo.com) (cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
   <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>  USE worldnet address!

Gordon Burditt wrote:
> 
>> HTML is designed to degrade gracefully (never mind that most web
>> authors and many browser developers don't seem to comprehend this),
>> so you don't really need a "subset" html to get the safety features
>> you want. All you need to do is disable the appropriate features in
>> the HTML renderer in your news and mail readers. JavaScript, Java,
>> and any form of object embedding. Oh yeah, and frames.
> 
> And links.  And cookies.  And any kind of external site or local
> file access.  And browser history.

What is the risk with browser history?

-- 
Chuck F (cbfalconer@yahoo.com) (cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
   <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>  USE worldnet address!

Mike Schilling wrote:
> 
> I see a difference between "X would be useful for A, B, and C" and "Y will 
> always be the only proper way."
> 
> Don't you?

Y would not be useful because of the bandwidth it consumes, the malware 
it would introduce, the additional time spent focusing on the format 
rather than quality of the content and, frankly, because it's useless. 
As Rich already said, if one wants to look at neatly formatted content, 
one can always visit the web. Usenet is meant to be an 
information-sharing facility, and I cannot see *any* reason why it 
should be exposed to all the disadvantages stated in numerous places in 
thread to gain a pale "advantage" such as flashy content. We already 
have a World Wide Web, no need to make Usenet it's clone.

-- Denis

Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
> [snip]
>> ... and generally these "web based message boards" (i.e. forums I
>> assume you mean) have none of the useful tools that Usenet offers and
>> are much, much slower.
> [snip]
> 
> Arrgh, I *emphatically* *hate* Web-based-(almost anything). Why, oh
> WHY, would we subject ourselves to Web-based message boards and
> Webmail services? When using a proper e-mail client, your bandwidth
> usage consists of downloading your e-mail. When using a Webmail
> service, your bandwidth usage consists of downloading the message,
> PLUS the entire user interface.

Not necessary when using (i)frames + cache

> Additionally, a user interface operating inside an HTML
> renderer can NEVER be as fast as a native-code user interface with
> only the e-mail message itself passed through the renderer.

Nowadays, more then futile.

> I mean, the way
> Webmail works, you're at the message list and click on a message to
> view. This causes a whole new page, user-interface and all, to be
> loaded. In comparison, that's like shutting down and re-opening your
> e-mail program for every single message you want to view!

This can be designed much better by using iframes, maybe even Ajax.

> Why can't we use the Web for what it was meant for: viewing hypertext
> pages? Why must we turn it into a wrapper around every application
> imaginable?

Because it works?

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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John Bokma wrote:
[snip]
>>usage consists of downloading your e-mail. When using a Webmail
>>service, your bandwidth usage consists of downloading the message,
>>PLUS the entire user interface.
> 
> 
> Not necessary when using (i)frames + cache

True. Perhaps Hotmail is not very well designed, but it doesn't use
frames. I'm not really familiar with other Webmail systems, but the one
provided by my ISP doesn't either.

> 
> 
>>Additionally, a user interface operating inside an HTML
>>renderer can NEVER be as fast as a native-code user interface with
>>only the e-mail message itself passed through the renderer.
> 
> 
> Nowadays, more then futile.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Even on my 2.8GHz Pentium 4,
using Thunderbird to juggle messages is noticeably faster than wandering
around Hotmail. Complex HTML rendering still isn't absolutely
instantaneous. It's significantly more painful when I use my 433MHz
Celeron. It simply takes a long time to jump between message, inbox,
other message, inbox, other other message, inbox, etc.

> 
> 
>>I mean, the way
>>Webmail works, you're at the message list and click on a message to
>>view. This causes a whole new page, user-interface and all, to be
>>loaded. In comparison, that's like shutting down and re-opening your
>>e-mail program for every single message you want to view!
> 
> 
> This can be designed much better by using iframes, maybe even Ajax.

Agreed. Judicious use of frames (internal or otherwise) or
Javascript-based partial reloads could seriously improve the situation.
They might also provide an easier way for Webmail providers to implement
their pages in valid HTML: if you render the entire e-mail message alone
 in a frame, you don't have to start stripping out pieces of e-mail
because they already exist (html and body elements, for example)

> 
> 
>>Why can't we use the Web for what it was meant for: viewing hypertext
>>pages? Why must we turn it into a wrapper around every application
>>imaginable?
> 
> 
> Because it works?
> 

.... and purpose-built client applications (e.g. Thunderbird) don't?
Maybe I'm old-fashioned but I still very much prefer thick clients. They
simply feel much more solid. Perhaps part of it is that thin clients
have to communicate with the server at least a little bit for just about
everything they do, while thick clients can do a lot of work without ANY
Internet round-trip delay at all. Hotmail has to talk to the server to
move a message from one mailbox to another. Thunderbird doesn't. Ergo,
Thunderbird is faster as soon as the Internet gets congested.

Chris
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"Denis Kasak" <denis.kasak@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:dem3hh$o9h$1@news1.xnet.hr...
> Mike Schilling wrote:
>>
>> I see a difference between "X would be useful for A, B, and C" and "Y 
>> will always be the only proper way."
>>
>> Don't you?
>
> Y would not be useful because of the bandwidth it consumes, the malware it 
> would introduce, the additional time spent focusing on the format rather 
> than quality of the content and, frankly, because it's useless.

Threaded mail-readers too, screen-based editors , spell-checkers, all 
useless frills.

>>> HTML is designed to degrade gracefully (never mind that most web
>>> authors and many browser developers don't seem to comprehend this),
>>> so you don't really need a "subset" html to get the safety features
>>> you want. All you need to do is disable the appropriate features in
>>> the HTML renderer in your news and mail readers. JavaScript, Java,
>>> and any form of object embedding. Oh yeah, and frames.
>> 
>> And links.  And cookies.  And any kind of external site or local
>> file access.  And browser history.
>
>What is the risk with browser history?

spyware and viruses (which can come from places other than email)
sending it somewhere.  Actually, there's not much point in keeping
a browser history if all it can contain is mail in YOUR mailbox
that may or may not have been already deleted.

						Gordon L. Burditt

John Bokma wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:
> 
>> On the information side (in contrast to the discussion side) RSS is 
>> replacing Usenet,
> 
> LOL, how? I can't post to RSS feeds. Or do you mean for lurkers?

I said "information side", meaning stuff like RSS is used for.

>> There is no real reason why NNTP couldn't be used like RSS (i.e.
>> contain a small description and a web link as message text),
> 
> It has been used like that for ages (or as long as I can remember).

Yes, but for some reason people jumped onto the RSS hype.  I wonder why. 
  Heck, even I am subscribed to a bunch of RSSes, because those 
institutions don't offer NNTP ;)

>> or why a
>> newsgroup shouldn't we written in HTML and contain a (default, or
>> user-provided) CSS sheet.
> 
> It's called www. It's already here (or there)

Well, but forums only emulate the posting/reply structure.  It would 
make more sense to use NNTP for that, and use $WHATEVER, e.g. HTML, for 
markup inside the posts.  WWW is something else; a bunch of pages with 
hyperlinks to each other.  Maybe we shouldn't call web forums and other 
dynamic websites www, as they don't really follow that purpose.  They 
are just abuses of HTTP/HTML/JS for thin clienting. ;)

>> If things were that way, suddenly people
>> *would* use Outlook and Thunderbird for news-reading,
> 
> But why do you want that? (Oh, and you can't read news with Outlook). Why 
> do you want more people on Usenet? 

No, I'm not talking about usenet.  I'm glad if the SNR keeps as high 
(haha) as it is, and messages in plain text.

I'm talking about using the technology for communication, instead of 
reinventing the wheel with crappy web forums.

Oh, and I've heard there are people reading our in-house newsgroup with 
Outlook.

>> while today
>> everything is just Browser+HTTP.
> 
> And what's wrong with that?

It's slow and pointless.  All interaction that's more than clicking a 
link has to be emulated with Javascript (heard of Ajax already?) to make 
it more smooth.

NNTP has advantages like giving you only the headlines first, so you can 
choose what to check out.  Then you can get the article if you like (in 
the communication case) or the news description (in the RSSoid case) and 
maybe click on a link inside.  Saves bandwidth and is quite faster than 
waiting for some overloaded PHP server to send you a bunch of HTML 
tables.  Responding doesn't involve *any* HTTP requests, just a keypress 
and you're typing.

Web forums are stone-age, as are most web-pages.

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

In comp.lang.perl.misc Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:
> usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
> > In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> >>> the argument that usenet should never change seems a little
> >>> heavy-handed and anachronistic.
> >> No, simple since there *are* alternatives: web based message boards. Those 
> >> alternatives *do* support HTML formatting (often the subset mentioned 
> > 
> > ... and generally these "web based message boards" (i.e. forums I
> > assume you mean) have none of the useful tools that Usenet offers and
> > are much, much slower.
> 
> That is because NNTP and its applications didn't evolve to feed the 
> glitzy need lots of users have.
> 
I don't think they have "glitzy need", they are just fed glitzy (but
slow) forums as the way to get support etc.  If they were told about
the alternatives as well and told how to use them then I thiink those
alternatives would be used.

"NNTP and its applications" have evolved to provide a set of much more
sophisticated means of accessing and giving information than any forum
I've ever seen.


> Sadly web forums (esp. the ugly, sloooow PHPBB, and the unspeakable 
> Google groups) are increasingly replacing usenet, but there are 
> exceptions (DragonflyBSD).
> 
One good solution is a furum which is also accessible by NNTP.


> On the information side (in contrast to the discussion side) RSS is 
> replacing Usenet, with some obvious disadvantages: go on vacation, 
> return after a week, and -- yahoo! -- all your RSS feeds only turn of 
> the, say, most recent 30 articles, while your newsgroups all show 
> everything you missed.
> 
Same applies to most newsfeeds, depending on retention.  If you want
to look a long way back in a thread, use Google Groups.

-- 
Chris Green

In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
> 
> > In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> >> 
> >> > the argument that usenet should never change seems a little
> >> > heavy-handed and anachronistic.
> >> 
> >> No, simple since there *are* alternatives: web based message boards.
> >> Those alternatives *do* support HTML formatting (often the subset
> >> mentioned 
> > 
> > ... and generally these "web based message boards" (i.e. forums I
> > assume you mean) have none of the useful tools that Usenet offers and
> > are much, much slower.
> 
> Yup, Slow because of all the HTML and avatars. And you suggest to introduce 
> such a thing to Usenet?
> 
No, quite the opposite, I like Usenet News as it is.


> And which useful tools do you require?
> 
A choice of news readers to suit different people with different
interfaces, filtering, kill files, etc. etc.  A forum provides a
single, usually rather limited, interface for the user with no way for
the user to change it radically.

-- 
Chris Green

Mike Meyer wrote:
> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:
>> Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today already 
>> comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser)
> 
> No, they don't. Minimalist Unix distributions don't include a browser
> by default. I know the BSD's don't, and suspect that gentoo Linux
> doesn't. 
> 
> HTML is designed to degrade gracefully (never mind that most web
> authors and many browser developers don't seem to comprehend this), so
> you don't really need a "subset" html to get the safety features you
> want. All you need to do is disable the appropriate features in the
> HTML renderer in your news and mail readers. JavaScript, Java, and any
> form of object embedding. Oh yeah, and frames.

That's a good idea.  I have parts of it disabled.  The advantage of 
disabling them all is that you don't have to visit all those crappy 
modern websites, because they don't work.

What I hate about most are the sites that don't even *mention* that they 
want cookies.  Often I have to wonder, reinput input fields etc. and 
then after ten minutes trying *bang*, the idea, maybe to allow cookies 
for that site.  Some people really don't have a clue, but kludgy "web 
standards technologies" (by the oh-so-omnisavant W3C) kind of force it.

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:

>>>Additionally, a user interface operating inside an HTML
>>>renderer can NEVER be as fast as a native-code user interface with
>>>only the e-mail message itself passed through the renderer.
>> 
>> Nowadays, more then futile.
> 
> Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Even on my 2.8GHz Pentium 4,
> using Thunderbird to juggle messages is noticeably faster than
> wandering around Hotmail. Complex HTML rendering still isn't
> absolutely instantaneous.

It can be made much faster. There will always be a delay since messages
have to be downloaded, but with a fast connection and a good design, the
delay will be very very small and the advantages are big. 

> It's significantly more painful when I use my 433MHz
> Celeron. It simply takes a long time to jump between message, inbox,
> other message, inbox, other other message, inbox, etc.

....

>> This can be designed much better by using iframes, maybe even Ajax.
> 
> Agreed. Judicious use of frames (internal or otherwise) or
> Javascript-based partial reloads could seriously improve the
> situation. They might also provide an easier way for Webmail providers
> to implement their pages in valid HTML: if you render the entire
> e-mail message alone 
>  in a frame, you don't have to start stripping out pieces of e-mail
> because they already exist (html and body elements, for example)

Yup.

>>>Why can't we use the Web for what it was meant for: viewing hypertext
>>>pages? Why must we turn it into a wrapper around every application
>>>imaginable?
>> 
>> Because it works?
> 
> ... and purpose-built client applications (e.g. Thunderbird) don't?

if A -> B, it doesn't say that B -> A :-) I.e. that it works via HTML
doesn't mean it doesn't with a dedicated client ;-). 

I live in Mexico, most people here rely on so called Internet cafes for
their connection, and even the use of a computer. For them Thunderbird
*doesn't work*. 

> Maybe I'm old-fashioned but I still very much prefer thick clients.
> They simply feel much more solid. Perhaps part of it is that thin
> clients have to communicate with the server at least a little bit for
> just about everything they do, while thick clients can do a lot of
> work without ANY Internet round-trip delay at all.

Each has it's place. A bug in a thick client means each and everyone has
to be fixed. With a thin one, just one has to be fixed :-D. 

> Hotmail has to talk to the server to
> move a message from one mailbox to another. Thunderbird doesn't.

Depends on where your mailbox resides. Isn't there something called
MAPI? (I haven't used it myself, but I recall something like that). 

> Ergo,
> Thunderbird is faster as soon as the Internet gets congested.

Ah, yeah, wasn't that predicted to happen in like 2001?

Also, unless you have some program that kills spam on the server, you 
have to download all with Thunderbird. I remember a funny day when I got 
2000 messages/hour due to a virus outbreak :-( With hotmail, if you have 
100 new messages you download them when you read them. Or kill them when 
you don't want to read.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Mike Schilling wrote:
> 
> Threaded mail-readers too, screen-based editors , spell-checkers, all 
> useless frills.

Interestingly enough, I have explained my opinion in the part of the 
post you have trimmed. On the other hand, things you mentioned are far 
from being useless. They introduce no intrinsical slowdown due to 
increased bandwidth consumation, nor potential security problems. They 
have no downsides I can possibly think of and have many advantages. They 
are useful. HTML on Usenet is not.

-- Denis

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>> Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:
>> 
>>> On the information side (in contrast to the discussion side) RSS is 
>>> replacing Usenet,
>> 
>> LOL, how? I can't post to RSS feeds. Or do you mean for lurkers?
> 
> I said "information side", meaning stuff like RSS is used for.

Nah, I wouldn't call it a replacement. Maybe of mailinglists with latest 
news.

>>> There is no real reason why NNTP couldn't be used like RSS (i.e.
>>> contain a small description and a web link as message text),
>> 
>> It has been used like that for ages (or as long as I can remember).
> 
> Yes, but for some reason people jumped onto the RSS hype.

You think so? Like on push technology, VRML, and what more? Most of my 
friends have no clue what RSS is. Maybe in IE7, when it's more hidden, 
people will use it. But I wouldn't call it a hype, unless a hype is 
something many people shout you have to have it (hmm...)

>  I wonder
> why. 
>   Heck, even I am subscribed to a bunch of RSSes, because those 
> institutions don't offer NNTP ;)

But they probably have (or had) a mailing list.

>>> or why a
>>> newsgroup shouldn't we written in HTML and contain a (default, or
>>> user-provided) CSS sheet.
>> 
>> It's called www. It's already here (or there)
> 
> Well, but forums only emulate the posting/reply structure.  It would 
> make more sense to use NNTP for that,

Why? It now works in the browser, you don't need to install another 
client. Moreover, many people, especially where I live, don't have a 
computer at home. Same for many students I know, they use the computer 
at school. And many people I know with a job use the computer at work.
And not everybody wants to install a client for each and every protocol. 
Hence why things like webmessenger are used.

> and use $WHATEVER, e.g. HTML,
> for markup inside the posts.  WWW is something else; a bunch of pages
> with hyperlinks to each other.  Maybe we shouldn't call web forums and
> other dynamic websites www, as they don't really follow that purpose. 

Nonsense.

> They are just abuses of HTTP/HTML/JS for thin clienting. ;)

Like UUencode is abuse of ASCII? LOL!

>> But why do you want that? (Oh, and you can't read news with Outlook).
>> Why do you want more people on Usenet? 
> 
> No, I'm not talking about usenet.  I'm glad if the SNR keeps as high 
> (haha) as it is, and messages in plain text.
> 
> I'm talking about using the technology for communication, instead of 
> reinventing the wheel with crappy web forums.

What is exactly crappy about those forums?

> Oh, and I've heard there are people reading our in-house newsgroup
> with Outlook.

Amazing, since I always understood that it can't do NNTP.

>>> while today
>>> everything is just Browser+HTTP.
>> 
>> And what's wrong with that?
> 
> It's slow and pointless.

The huge success of web based message boards seems so say something 
entirely different. When I post with X-news, there is a delay, when I 
post with my browser, there is a delay. I have no idea which delay is 
more significant. Maybe they are too close.

> All interaction that's more than clicking a 
> link has to be emulated with Javascript (heard of Ajax already?

Yes, I even mentioned it in this thread. And what's the problem?

> ) to
> make it more smooth.

HTML was never a programming language, and will never be. Hence for 
fancy stuff you have to use a programming language. Nothing wrong with 
that. 

> NNTP has advantages like giving you only the headlines first, so you
> can choose what to check out.

Funny, I see the same when I use phpBB. Headlines.

>  Then you can get the article if you
> like (in the communication case)

Yup, same with phpBB, I click a link, and bzzzt.. there is the article, 
and the replies to it.

> or the news description (in the
> RSSoid case)

Yup, there is a mod for phpBB that makes it possible to give each post 
besides a title a short description.

> and maybe click on a link inside.  Saves bandwidth and is
> quite faster than waiting for some overloaded PHP server to send you a
> bunch of HTML tables.

Hence, overloaded servers shouldn't use PHP, or use special caching 
tricks. I can't remember having seen slow boards, even not the ones with 
hundreds of simultaneous users (for example phpbb.com).

> Responding doesn't involve *any* HTTP requests,

No, but it requires sending your post to an NNTP server. Which takes 
time (when I press send, I don't see this window close immediately).

> just a keypress and you're typing.

Just a mouse click.

> Web forums are stone-age, as are most web-pages.

Maybe you should visit one and check out for yourself. Age has little to 
do with it, Usenet is way older, works. IRC is way older, works.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:

> "NNTP and its applications" have evolved to provide a set of much more
> sophisticated means of accessing and giving information than any forum
> I've ever seen.

Example(s). And do users need those sophisticated things?

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:

> In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:

[ web based boards ]

>> And which useful tools do you require?
>> 
> A choice of news readers to suit different people with different
> interfaces,

- different browsers, different stylesheets, different board styles 
(themes).

> filtering,

There is often a search function, which filters away everything that 
doesn't match. There are also things like word filters, etc.

> kill files,

<http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=150586&highlight=ignore>

> etc. etc.

http://www.phpbb.com/mods/

> A forum provides a
> single, usually rather limited, interface for the user with no way for
> the user to change it radically.

Does the user want this? And with a user stylesheet you can change it 
quite radically :-)

And in return the user gets: colors, fonts, font sizes, embedding of 
images, flash, you name it. Moving avatars, even sounds.

Oh, yes, I would love to see an XML interface on the board I use. Maybe 
I can just install a mod, or write one myself.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:

> What I hate about most are the sites that don't even *mention* that
> they want cookies.  Often I have to wonder, reinput input fields etc.
> and then after ten minutes trying *bang*, the idea, maybe to allow
> cookies for that site.

So your browser doesn't warn you?

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Denis Kasak <denis.kasak@gmail.com> wrote:

> Mike Schilling wrote:
>> 
>> Threaded mail-readers too, screen-based editors , spell-checkers, all 
>> useless frills.
> 
> Interestingly enough, I have explained my opinion in the part of the 
> post you have trimmed. On the other hand, things you mentioned are far 
> from being useless. They introduce no intrinsical slowdown due to 
> increased bandwidth consumation, nor potential security problems.

You can't be sure: errors in the handling of threads can cause a buffer 
overflow, same for spelling checking :-D

> They 
> have no downsides I can possibly think of

Some people never use them, and hence they use memory and add risks.

> and have many advantages. They 
> are useful. HTML on Usenet is not.

Of course can HTML be useful on Usenet. The problem is that it will be much 
more often abused instead of used.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I'm talking about using the technology for communication, instead of 
> > reinventing the wheel with crappy web forums.
> 
> What is exactly crappy about those forums?
> 
They are slow

They are inflexible

They are slow

They don't allow the user to choose how to view them, the interface is
imposed on the user.

They are slow

They don't have killfiles or scoring

They are slow

-- 
Chris Green

In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
> 
> > "NNTP and its applications" have evolved to provide a set of much more
> > sophisticated means of accessing and giving information than any forum
> > I've ever seen.
> 
> Example(s). And do users need those sophisticated things?
> 
Kill files

Selecting posts and threads based on a scoring system

A huge variety of different newsreaders allowing different users to
access the news in they way they want.

I don't use all the possibilities (e.g. I don't use kill files) but I
do use a 'minority' text based newsreader because it is ideal for me.
I don't get the option of a text based forum reader - I doubt many
forums work with lynx.

-- 
Chris Green

In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> 
> > They 
> > have no downsides I can possibly think of
> 
> Some people never use them, and hence they use memory and add risks.
> 
So they can choose a newsreader that doesn't have these facilities, no
extra memory use, no risk.

-- 
Chris Green

John Bokma wrote:
> usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
> 
>> In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> 
> [ web based boards ]
> 
>>> And which useful tools do you require?
>>>
>> A choice of news readers to suit different people with different
>> interfaces,
> 
> - different browsers, different stylesheets, different board styles 
> (themes).

But the UI is still *forced* on you by the website; no choice.  There's 
only a very limited choice, and it invariably *includes* the UI.  With 
NNTP *you* choose how to interpret and display the data you get.

> http://www.phpbb.com/mods/

Great.  How can I, the user, choose, how to use a mod on a given web 
server?  What if the web server runs another board than PHPBB?

>> A forum provides a
>> single, usually rather limited, interface for the user with no way for
>> the user to change it radically.
> 
> Does the user want this? And with a user stylesheet you can change it 
> quite radically :-)

The look, not the feel.

> And in return the user gets: colors, fonts, font sizes, embedding of 
> images, flash, you name it. Moving avatars, even sounds.

As I wrote earlier, you *could* run a web forum over NNTP, and use HTML 
posts instead of plain text.  It would have the advantages of NNTP.

> Oh, yes, I would love to see an XML interface on the board I use. Maybe 
> I can just install a mod, or write one myself.

What would that XML be for?  Any particular *use*?

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

John Bokma wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:
> 
>> What I hate about most are the sites that don't even *mention* that
>> they want cookies.  Often I have to wonder, reinput input fields etc.
>> and then after ten minutes trying *bang*, the idea, maybe to allow
>> cookies for that site.
> 
> So your browser doesn't warn you?

About what?  I have cookies off, with explicit exception for sites where 
I want cookies.  When the crappy website doesn't bother to MENTION that 
it wants cookies, i.e. give me an error page, how am I to know that it 
needs cookies?  Do I want EVERY website to ask me "do you allow XY to 
set a cookie?"  NO!

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

In comp.lang.perl.misc Mike Schilling <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Denis Kasak" <denis.kasak@gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:dem3hh$o9h$1@news1.xnet.hr...
>> Mike Schilling wrote:

>>> I see a difference between "X would be useful for A, B, and C" and "Y 
>>> will always be the only proper way."

>>> Don't you?

>> Y would not be useful because of the bandwidth it consumes, the malware it 
>> would introduce, the additional time spent focusing on the format rather 
>> than quality of the content and, frankly, because it's useless.
 
> Threaded mail-readers too, screen-based editors , spell-checkers, all 
> useless frills.

All dependent on and only affecting the user who employs them. It
does not require other users to do anything.

It is none of my business whether you used vi, emacs, ed or whatever
to compose your message; whether you ran a spell checker over it;
or how you read messages and respond to them - perhaps you telnet'd
to the news server and made your transactions manually.

Axel
 

usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:

> In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
>> > 
>> > I'm talking about using the technology for communication, instead of 
>> > reinventing the wheel with crappy web forums.
>> 
>> What is exactly crappy about those forums?
>> 
> They are slow

I have no problems with it. Moreover, since I use an NNTP server which is a 
bit remote, it's way slower compared to the web forums I use.

> They are inflexible

Examples?

> They don't allow the user to choose how to view them, the interface is
> imposed on the user.

False. The user can pick themes, often several. The user can use a user 
stylesheet or several. And you can always write your own client :-D.

> They don't have killfiles or scoring

You can install a mod to kill people.
And I have no doubt that there is a scoring mod, or one can be written in a 
few hours.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:

> In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
>> usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
>> 
>> > "NNTP and its applications" have evolved to provide a set of much more
>> > sophisticated means of accessing and giving information than any forum
>> > I've ever seen.
>> 
>> Example(s). And do users need those sophisticated things?
>> 
> Kill files

there is a mod for that (at least for phpBB)

> Selecting posts and threads based on a scoring system

If there is no mod, one can be easily written.

> A huge variety of different newsreaders allowing different users to
> access the news in they way they want.

Different browsers, stylesheets, themes.

> I don't use all the possibilities (e.g. I don't use kill files) but I
> do use a 'minority' text based newsreader because it is ideal for me.
> I don't get the option of a text based forum reader - I doubt many
> forums work with lynx.

But have you tested it? You just blurb out random statements, based on gut 
feelings. Yes, phpBB works with lynx. And I doubt it's a rare exception.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>> usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
>> 
>>> In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
>> 
>> [ web based boards ]
>> 
>>>> And which useful tools do you require?
>>>>
>>> A choice of news readers to suit different people with different
>>> interfaces,
>> 
>> - different browsers, different stylesheets, different board styles 
>> (themes).
> 
> But the UI is still *forced* on you by the website; no choice. 
> There's only a very limited choice, and it invariably *includes* the
> UI.  With NNTP *you* choose how to interpret and display the data you
> get. 

With a web based forum too. Example: 
http://johnbokma.com/perl/phpbb-remote-backup.html

>> http://www.phpbb.com/mods/
> 
> Great.  How can I, the user, choose, how to use a mod on a given web 
> server?

Ask the admin?

> What if the web server runs another board than PHPBB?

Check if there is a mod, and ask the admin.

>> Does the user want this? And with a user stylesheet you can change it
>> quite radically :-)
> 
> The look, not the feel.

Wild guess: (signed) javascript and iframes? on your local computer?

Otherwise: fetch HTML, parse it, restructure it, and have the
application run a local webserver. Python, Perl, piece of cake. 

>> And in return the user gets: colors, fonts, font sizes, embedding of 
>> images, flash, you name it. Moving avatars, even sounds.
> 
> As I wrote earlier, you *could* run a web forum over NNTP, and use
> HTML posts instead of plain text.  It would have the advantages of
> NNTP. 
> 
>> Oh, yes, I would love to see an XML interface on the board I use.
>> Maybe I can just install a mod, or write one myself.
> 
> What would that XML be for?  Any particular *use*?

RSS feeds? XML-RPC? Access to the board with a better mark up then HTML
supports? 

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>> Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:
>> 
>>> What I hate about most are the sites that don't even *mention* that
>>> they want cookies.  Often I have to wonder, reinput input fields etc.
>>> and then after ten minutes trying *bang*, the idea, maybe to allow
>>> cookies for that site.
>> 
>> So your browser doesn't warn you?
> 
> About what?

That the site wants to set a cookie? Lynx does that.

> I have cookies off, with explicit exception for sites where 
> I want cookies.  When the crappy website doesn't bother to MENTION that 
> it wants cookies, i.e. give me an error page, how am I to know that it 
> needs cookies?  Do I want EVERY website to ask me "do you allow XY to 
> set a cookie?"  NO!

So what do you want? An error page for every site that wants to set a 
cookie?

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:

> In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
>> 
>> > They 
>> > have no downsides I can possibly think of
>> 
>> Some people never use them, and hence they use memory and add risks.
>> 
> So they can choose a newsreader that doesn't have these facilities, no
> extra memory use, no risk.

That's besides the point, the point was that extra functionality has no 
downsides. They have.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> writes:

>> A forum provides a
>> single, usually rather limited, interface for the user with no way for
>> the user to change it radically.
>
> Does the user want this? And with a user stylesheet you can change it 
> quite radically :-)
>
> And in return the user gets: colors, fonts, font sizes, embedding of 
> images, flash, you name it. Moving avatars, even sounds.

Sounds scary. When I want to read a text, I don't need the whole multimedia
experience.

Bye, Dragan

-- 
Dragan Cvetkovic, 

To be or not to be is true. G. Boole      No it isn't.  L. E. J. Brouwer

!!! Sender/From address is bogus. Use reply-to one !!!

Dragan Cvetkovic <me@privacy.net> wrote:

> John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> writes:
> 
>>> A forum provides a
>>> single, usually rather limited, interface for the user with no way
>>> for the user to change it radically.
>>
>> Does the user want this? And with a user stylesheet you can change it
>> quite radically :-)
>>
>> And in return the user gets: colors, fonts, font sizes, embedding of 
>> images, flash, you name it. Moving avatars, even sounds.
> 
> Sounds scary. When I want to read a text, I don't need the whole
> multimedia experience.

so use Lynx :-)

One forum I visit is about scorpions. And really, it talks a bit easier 
about scorpions if you have an image to look at :-D.

In short: Usenet = Usenet, and www = www. Why some people want to move 
people from www to Usenet or vice versa is beyond me. If 80% of the current 
Usenet users stop posting, Usenet is not going to die :-D

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

John Bokma wrote:
> 
> You can't be sure: errors in the handling of threads can cause a buffer 
> overflow, same for spelling checking :-D

Yes, they can, provided they are not properly coded. However, those 
things only interact locally with the user and have none or very limited 
interaction with the user on the other side of the line. As such, they 
can hardly be exploitable.

> Some people never use them, and hence they use memory and add risks.

On a good newsreader the memory use difference should be irrelevantly 
small, even if one does not use the features. I would call that a 
nitpicky argument. Also, the risk in question is not comparable because 
of the reasons stated above. The kind of risk you are talking about 
happens with /any/ software. To stay away from that we shouldn't have 
newsreaders (or any other software, for that matter) in the first place.

> Of course can HTML be useful on Usenet. The problem is that it will be much 
> more often abused instead of used.

No, you missed the point. I am arguing that HTML is completely and 
utterly /useless/ on Usenet. Time spent for writing HTML in Usenet posts 
is comparable to that spent on arguing about coding style or writing 
followups to Xah Lee. It adds no further insight on a particular 
subject, but _does_ add further delays, spam, bandwidth consumation, 
exploits, and is generally a pain in the arse. It's redundant.

-- Denis

John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> writes:

> usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:

>> They don't have killfiles or scoring
>
> You can install a mod to kill people.

Gee, didn't know that it's that powerful. One more reason not to use web
forums :-)

Dragan

-- 
Dragan Cvetkovic, 

To be or not to be is true. G. Boole      No it isn't.  L. E. J. Brouwer

!!! Sender/From address is bogus. Use reply-to one !!!

John Bokma wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:
> 
>> John Bokma wrote:
>>> http://www.phpbb.com/mods/
>> 
>> Great.  How can I, the user, choose, how to use a mod on a given web 
>> server?
> 
> Ask the admin?

And that is, in your opinion, completely comparable to running your own, 
private client? Is the admin obliged to install the mod? Is the admin 
even reachable?

>> What if the web server runs another board than PHPBB?
> 
> Check if there is a mod, and ask the admin.

See above.

>>> Does the user want this? And with a user stylesheet you can change it
>>> quite radically :-)
>> 
>> The look, not the feel.
> 
> Wild guess: (signed) javascript and iframes? on your local computer?
> 
> Otherwise: fetch HTML, parse it, restructure it, and have the
> application run a local webserver. Python, Perl, piece of cake. 

You seem to be forgetting that we are mainly talking about end users 
here who most probably will not have the sufficient expertise to do all 
that. And even if they do, it's still time consuming.

John Bokma wrote:
> 
> so use Lynx :-)
> 
> One forum I visit is about scorpions. And really, it talks a bit easier 
> about scorpions if you have an image to look at :-D.
>
> In short: Usenet = Usenet, and www = www. Why some people want to move 
> people from www to Usenet or vice versa is beyond me. If 80% of the current 
> Usenet users stop posting, Usenet is not going to die :-D

Agreed. This is actually your first post with which content I agree 
totally. From your other posts I got the impression that you are one of 
those people that are trying to make Usenet and WWW more similar to one 
another.

-- Denis

usenet@isbd.co.uk wrote:
> 
.... snip ...
>
> Same applies to most newsfeeds, depending on retention.  If you
> want to look a long way back in a thread, use Google Groups.

Except for those anti-social zealots who use an X-noarchive header.

-- 
"If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use
 the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article.  Click on 
 "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the 
 "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson

John Bokma wrote:
> "T Beck" <Tracy.Beck@Infineon.com> wrote:
>
> > If we argue that people are evolving the way e-mail is handled, and
> > adding entire new feature sets to something which has been around
> > since the earliest days of the internet, then that's perfectly
> > feasable. HTML itself has grown.  We've also added Javascript and
> > Shockwave.
>
> They are not additions to HTML, like PNG is no addition to HTML, or wav,
> mp3, etc.
>
[snip]

Wasn't the point... I never said they were.  HTML is at version 4.0(I
think?) now, AND we've added extra layers of stuff you can use
alongside of it.  The internet is a free-flowing evolving place... to
try to protect one little segment like usenet from ever evolving is
just ensuring it's slow death, IMHO.

That's all...

--T Beck

On Fri, 26 Aug 2005, John Bokma wrote:

> people from www to Usenet or vice versa is beyond me. If 80% of the current
> Usenet users stop posting, Usenet is not going to die :-D

Heh.  Quite the opposite, I reckon: it would get much better (higher SNR)!  :-)

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

T Beck wrote:
> 
> Wasn't the point... I never said they were.  HTML is at version 4.0(I
> think?) now, AND we've added extra layers of stuff you can use
> alongside of it.  The internet is a free-flowing evolving place... to
> try to protect one little segment like usenet from ever evolving is
> just ensuring it's slow death, IMHO.
> 
> That's all...

HTML is at version 4.01 to be precise, but that is precisely off-topic. 
This discussion has being going on for long enough. It is held in a 
large crosspost to newsgroups that have nothing to do with HTML or the 
evolution of Usenet. The bottom line is that most Usenet users like it 
the way it is now, and it certainly serves it's purpose. The Web and 
Usenet should not mix as they are two distinct entities and merging them 
would lose some of their distinctive qualities, making the Internet a 
poorer place.

I suggest letting the matter rest or taking it to a more appropriate 
newsgroup.

-- Denis

John Bokma wrote:
>> I have cookies off, with explicit exception for sites where 
>> I want cookies.  When the crappy website doesn't bother to MENTION that 
>> it wants cookies, i.e. give me an error page, how am I to know that it 
>> needs cookies?  Do I want EVERY website to ask me "do you allow XY to 
>> set a cookie?"  NO!
> 
> So what do you want? An error page for every site that wants to set a 
> cookie?

No, the few sites where I actually have to log in to do anything useful, 
when they're well-coded, tell me that they need cookies, and if I think 
I like that website I make an exception entry for that site, allowing 
cookies.  Most sites just bombard you with useless, crap cookies (maybe 
advertising), so they are silently ignored by my browser.

The only thing I hate is when I am directed to some website that needs 
cookies, but doesn't tell me.  A couple times I did a survey, wasting 
maybe 10 minutes of my life for a good cause, and then there was an 
error. Great!  I guess that page needed cookies, but didn't bother to 
tell me.  Back button didn't work, either, so I just left that website.

OTOH, people who can't code can be fun, too, such as when you visit a 
website and there are lots of PHP, Java, SQL, or ASP errors ;)

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

>The only thing I hate is when I am directed to some website that needs 
>cookies, but doesn't tell me.  A couple times I did a survey, wasting 
>maybe 10 minutes of my life for a good cause, and then there was an 
>error. Great!  I guess that page needed cookies, but didn't bother to 
>tell me.  Back button didn't work, either, so I just left that website.

Some sites do much worse than that.  If you have cookies off, they
cause an infinite redirect loop.  Sometimes my browser manages to
detect this after a few minutes and shut it off, and sometimes it
doesn't (usually on different sites).  I think I can manually get
out of this with the STOP button, but until I do, it likely causes
a lot of useless load on the web site.

					Gordon L. Burditt

CBFalconer wrote:
> Chris Head wrote:
> 
> .... snip ...
> 
>>Why can't we use the Web for what it was meant for: viewing
>>hypertext pages? Why must we turn it into a wrapper around every
>>application imaginable?
> 
> 
> Because the Lord High PoohBah (Bill) has so decreed.  He has
> replaced General bullMoose.

Not particularly his doing. SGI was using a Netscape plugin to 
distribute and install operating-system patches when Billionaire 
"Intelligent Design" Billy was still denying that TCP/IP had a future.

And there are places for web forums: public feedback pages, for example. 
(Add RSS and/or e-mail and/or NNTP feeds for more advanced users.)

-- 
John W. Kennedy
"The grand art mastered the thudding hammer of Thor
And the heart of our lord Taliessin determined the war."
   -- Charles Williams.  "Mount Badon"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

John Bokma wrote:
> Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>John Bokma wrote:
> 
> 
>>>>Additionally, a user interface operating inside an HTML
>>>>renderer can NEVER be as fast as a native-code user interface with
>>>>only the e-mail message itself passed through the renderer.
>>>
>>>Nowadays, more then futile.
>>
>>Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Even on my 2.8GHz Pentium 4,
>>using Thunderbird to juggle messages is noticeably faster than
>>wandering around Hotmail. Complex HTML rendering still isn't
>>absolutely instantaneous.
> 
> 
> It can be made much faster. There will always be a delay since messages
> have to be downloaded, but with a fast connection and a good design, the
> delay will be very very small and the advantages are big. 

What advantages would those be (other than access from 'net cafes, but
see below)?

[snip]

>>... and purpose-built client applications (e.g. Thunderbird) don't?
> 
> 
> if A -> B, it doesn't say that B -> A :-) I.e. that it works via HTML
> doesn't mean it doesn't with a dedicated client ;-). 
> 
> I live in Mexico, most people here rely on so called Internet cafes for
> their connection, and even the use of a computer. For them Thunderbird
> *doesn't work*. 

This point I agree with. There are some situations - 'net cafes included
- - where thick e-mail clients don't work. Even so, see below.

> 
> 
>>Maybe I'm old-fashioned but I still very much prefer thick clients.
>>They simply feel much more solid. Perhaps part of it is that thin
>>clients have to communicate with the server at least a little bit for
>>just about everything they do, while thick clients can do a lot of
>>work without ANY Internet round-trip delay at all.
> 
> 
> Each has it's place. A bug in a thick client means each and everyone has
> to be fixed. With a thin one, just one has to be fixed :-D. 

True. However, if people are annoyed by a Thunderbird bug, once it's
fixed, most people will probably go and download the fix (the
Thunderbird developers really only need to fix the bug once too).

> 
> 
>>Hotmail has to talk to the server to
>>move a message from one mailbox to another. Thunderbird doesn't.
> 
> 
> Depends on where your mailbox resides. Isn't there something called
> MAPI? (I haven't used it myself, but I recall something like that). 

IMAP. It stores the messages on the server. Even so, it only has to
transfer the messages, not the bloated UI. I concede that Webmail might
be just as fast when using a perfectly-designed Javascript/frames-driven
interface. In the real world, Webmail isn't (unfortunately) that perfect.

As I said above regarding 'net cafes:

If the Internet cafe has an e-mail client installed on their computers,
you could use IMAP to access your messages. You'd have to do a bit more
configuration than for Webmail, so it depends on the user I guess.
Personally I doubt my ISP would like me saving a few hundred megs of
e-mail on their server, while Thunderbird is quite happy to have 1504
messages in my Inbox on my local machine. If I had to use an Internet
cafe, I would rather use IMAP than Webmail.

> 
> 
>>Ergo,
>>Thunderbird is faster as soon as the Internet gets congested.
> 
> 
> Ah, yeah, wasn't that predicted to happen in like 2001?

Wasn't what predicted to happen? Congestion? It happens even today
(maybe it's the Internet, maybe it's the server, whatever...). Hotmail
is often pretty slow.

> 
> Also, unless you have some program that kills spam on the server, you 
> have to download all with Thunderbird. I remember a funny day when I got 
> 2000 messages/hour due to a virus outbreak :-( With hotmail, if you have 
> 100 new messages you download them when you read them. Or kill them when 
> you don't want to read.
> 

Fortunately I'm not plagued by spam. I get around 150 messages per day.
Of those, about 140 are from a mailing list, 5 are personal, and 5 are
spam. I used to get about 100 messages per day of which 90 or so were
spam, but it suddenly stopped. To this day, I have not figured out why.
Nevertheless, I agree that not having to download all those messages is
one place where Webmail blows POP out of the water (but IMAP, which
could be a sort of "middle ground", doesn't suffer from this).

Chris
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Denis Kasak <denis.kasak@gmail.com> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>> 
>> so use Lynx :-)
>> 
>> One forum I visit is about scorpions. And really, it talks a bit
>> easier about scorpions if you have an image to look at :-D.
>>
>> In short: Usenet = Usenet, and www = www. Why some people want to
>> move people from www to Usenet or vice versa is beyond me. If 80% of
>> the current Usenet users stop posting, Usenet is not going to die :-D
> 
> Agreed. This is actually your first post with which content I agree 
> totally. From your other posts I got the impression that you are one
> of those people that are trying to make Usenet and WWW more similar to
> one another.

No, not at all. My point is what I wrote above. But also, a lot of 
functionality available on Usenet is also available on www. You don't 
*have* to convert people to Usenet, and to warn them against a forum on 
www. For day to day usage I experience hardly any difference. I mean, I am 
not struggeling when I post a message on a web board. And if things take 
time to download (for example a thread with many many pictures), I switch 
to another tab and do something else (tab browsing is fun :-). Each has its 
place. I don't want www on Usenet, and I don't want Usenet on www.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 26 Aug 2005, John Bokma wrote:
> 
>> people from www to Usenet or vice versa is beyond me. If 80% of the
>> current Usenet users stop posting, Usenet is not going to die :-D
> 
> Heh.  Quite the opposite, I reckon: it would get much better (higher
> SNR)!  :-) 

:-D. I recently contributed to a thread in which someone was afraid that 
Usenet was going to die, because he had the impression there where less 
people on it. There are more people on it compared to 20 years ago, when it 
was about to die (like every 2 years).

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Denis Kasak <denis.kasak@gmail.com> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>> 
>> You can't be sure: errors in the handling of threads can cause a
>> buffer overflow, same for spelling checking :-D
> 
> Yes, they can, provided they are not properly coded. However, those 
> things only interact locally with the user and have none or very
> limited interaction with the user on the other side of the line. As
> such, they can hardly be exploitable.

Uhm... one post can affect a number of clients, hence quite exploitable.

>> Some people never use them, and hence they use memory and add risks.
> 
> On a good newsreader the memory use difference should be irrelevantly 
> small, even if one does not use the features. I would call that a 
> nitpicky argument.

Xnews - 10 M
Thunderbird - 20 M

There was a time I had only 128M in this computer :-D. And there was a time 
I read news on a RISC OS machine. I guess the client was about 300 K (!).

> Also, the risk in question is not comparable
> because of the reasons stated above. The kind of risk you are talking
> about happens with /any/ software.

True. The more code, the more possibilities on holes.

> To stay away from that we shouldn't
> have newsreaders (or any other software, for that matter) in the first
> place.

telnet :-P.

>> Of course can HTML be useful on Usenet. The problem is that it will
>> be much more often abused instead of used.
> 
> No, you missed the point. I am arguing that HTML is completely and 
> utterly /useless/ on Usenet.

But I beg to differ :-). I can think of several *good* uses of HTML on 
Usenet. But like I said, it will be abused. And you can't enforce a subset 
of HTML.

> Time spent for writing HTML in Usenet

But you are not going to *write* HTML, you let your client hide that. I 
mean, it's not that hard to have a client turn *bold* into <strong>bold
</strong> :-).

> posts is comparable to that spent on arguing about coding style or

Agreed, I have learned things from arguing on coding style, even adjusted 
my style based on it.

> writing followups to Xah Lee.

Ok, now there is something one shouldn't spent time on :-)

> It adds no further insight on a
> particular subject,

Yes, it does. That's why for example figures, tables, and now and then 
colours are used in scientific publications. ASCII art, now that's a huge 
waste of time.

> but _does_ add further delays, spam, bandwidth
> consumation, exploits, and is generally a pain in the arse. It's
> redundant. 

I have to disagree. Mind, I am not saying that HTML *should* be used on 
Usenet, I am happy with Usenet as it is, but I wouldn't call it useless nor 
redundant.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Denis Kasak <denis.kasak@gmail.com> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>> Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:
>> 
>>> John Bokma wrote:
>>>> http://www.phpbb.com/mods/
>>> 
>>> Great.  How can I, the user, choose, how to use a mod on a given web
>>> server?
>> 
>> Ask the admin?
> 
> And that is, in your opinion, completely comparable to running your
> own, private client?

Oh, but if you want your own private client, feel free to come up with
one. I for one would welcome an XML interface to for example phpBB. (Not
sure if such a thing exists). So I agree with you for a part. 

However, how many people, do *need* a kill file? Most boards have active
moderators. Also, in my experience, most boards are a tighter knit crowd
with less need for kill filing. 

> Is the admin obliged to install the mod?

No, but in my experience, they listen.

> Is the admin 
> even reachable?

Of course.

>> Otherwise: fetch HTML, parse it, restructure it, and have the
>> application run a local webserver. Python, Perl, piece of cake. 
> 
> You seem to be forgetting that we are mainly talking about end users 
> here

No, I am not. Most end users of those boards don't *require* what you
want, you look at a board from a programmers point of view. And hence,
as a programmer you *can* do such things. 

> who most probably will not have the sufficient expertise to do all

moreover he/she doesn't care.
 
> that. And even if they do, it's still time consuming.

If I am not happy with my Usenet client, I have the same problem. I like
Xnews for example, but AFAIK it's closed source. I don't know of any
open source Windows client that comes close to Xnews. 

It's time consuming because there is (yet) no need for it. When I
started to use Usenet there where only a handful of clients (IIRC), nn
and another one (rn?) are the only ones that I can recall. 

Like I said, it's not that hard to create a SOAP/XML-RPC interface to,
for example phpBB. Maybe it's already there. The tools are there. And a
next step could be to create a wrapper, one end acts as a local nntp
server, the other end talks using XML with phpBB. 

Once that's written, you could use (probably within limits) a Usenet
client :-) 

Now this seems to be cross posted in several comp.lang groups. Anyone?

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

"T Beck" <Tracy.Beck@Infineon.com> wrote:

> 
> John Bokma wrote:
>> "T Beck" <Tracy.Beck@Infineon.com> wrote:
>>
>> > If we argue that people are evolving the way e-mail is handled, and
>> > adding entire new feature sets to something which has been around
>> > since the earliest days of the internet, then that's perfectly
>> > feasable. HTML itself has grown.  We've also added Javascript and
>> > Shockwave.
>>
>> They are not additions to HTML, like PNG is no addition to HTML, or
>> wav, mp3, etc.
>>
> [snip]
> 
> Wasn't the point... I never said they were.

"HTML itself has grown.  We've also added Javascript"

I read that as: JavaScript is an addition to HTML.

> HTML is at version 4.0(I
> think?)

4.01? And I think it will stay there, since XML seems to be the future.

> now, AND we've added extra layers of stuff you can use
> alongside of it.  The internet is a free-flowing evolving place... to
> try to protect one little segment like usenet from ever evolving is
> just ensuring it's slow death, IMHO.

And if so, who cares? As long as people hang out on Usenet it will stay.
Does Usenet need al those extra gimmicks? To me, it would be nice if a
small set would be available. But need? No. 

The death of Usenet has been predicted for ages. And I see only more and
more groups, and maybe more and more people on it. 

As long as people who have to say something sensible keep using it, it
will stay. 

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>>> I have cookies off, with explicit exception for sites where 
>>> I want cookies.  When the crappy website doesn't bother to MENTION
>>> that it wants cookies, i.e. give me an error page, how am I to know
>>> that it needs cookies?  Do I want EVERY website to ask me "do you
>>> allow XY to set a cookie?"  NO!
>> 
>> So what do you want? An error page for every site that wants to set a
>> cookie?
> 
> No, the few sites where I actually have to log in to do anything
> useful, when they're well-coded, tell me that they need cookies, and
> if I think I like that website I make an exception entry for that
> site, allowing cookies.  Most sites just bombard you with useless,
> crap cookies (maybe advertising), so they are silently ignored by my
> browser.

Delete them after each session automatically, except the ones on the 
exception list. You are clearly not an average user, so your usage pattern 
probably only messes up the stats they obtain via cookies anyway.

I have long ago given up on manually accepting each and every cookie, and 
trying to guess it's purpose.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>> Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:

[HTML]

>> It can be made much faster. There will always be a delay since
>> messages have to be downloaded, but with a fast connection and a good
>> design, the delay will be very very small and the advantages are big.
> 
> What advantages would those be (other than access from 'net cafes, but
> see below)?

And workplaces. Some people have more then one computer in the house. My 
partner can check her email when I had her over the computer. When I 
want to check my email when she is using it, I have to change the 
session, fire up Thunderbird (which eats away 20M), and change the 
session back.

[ .. ]

>> Each has it's place. A bug in a thick client means each and everyone
>> has to be fixed. With a thin one, just one has to be fixed :-D. 
> 
> True. However, if people are annoyed by a Thunderbird bug, once it's
> fixed, most people will probably go and download the fix (the
> Thunderbird developers really only need to fix the bug once too).

Most people who use Thunderbird, yes. Different with OE, I am sure. With 
a thin client *everybody*.

>> Depends on where your mailbox resides. Isn't there something called
>> MAPI? (I haven't used it myself, but I recall something like that). 
> 
> IMAP. It stores the messages on the server. Even so, it only has to
> transfer the messages, not the bloated UI.

But technically the UI (whether bloated or not) can be cached, and with 
Ajax/Frames, etc. there is not really a need to refresh the entire page. 
With smarter techniques (like automatically zipping pages), and 
techniques like transmitting only deltas (Google experimented with this 
some time ago) and better and faster rendering, the UI could be as fast 
as a normal UI. 

Isn't the UI in Thunderbird and Firefox created using JavaScript and 
XML? Isn't how future UIs are going to be made?

> I concede that Webmail
> might be just as fast when using a perfectly-designed
> Javascript/frames-driven interface. In the real world, Webmail isn't
> (unfortunately) that perfect.

Maybe because a lot of users aren't really heavy users. A nice example 
(IMO) of a web client that works quite good: webmessenger ( 
http://webmessenger.msn.com/ ). It has been some time since I used it 
the last time, but if I recall correctly I hardly noticed that I was 
chatting in a JavaScript pop up window.

> As I said above regarding 'net cafes:
> 
> If the Internet cafe has an e-mail client installed on their
> computers, you could use IMAP to access your messages. You'd have to
> do a bit more configuration than for Webmail, so it depends on the
> user I guess. Personally I doubt my ISP would like me saving a few
> hundred megs of e-mail on their server, while Thunderbird is quite
> happy to have 1504 messages in my Inbox on my local machine. If I had
> to use an Internet cafe, I would rather use IMAP than Webmail.

I rather have my email stored locally :-) But several webmail services 
offer a form to download email.

>>>Ergo,
>>>Thunderbird is faster as soon as the Internet gets congested.
>> 
>> Ah, yeah, wasn't that predicted to happen in like 2001?
> 
> Wasn't what predicted to happen? Congestion? It happens even today
> (maybe it's the Internet, maybe it's the server, whatever...). Hotmail
> is often pretty slow.

I read sometime ago that about 1/3 of traffic consists out of bittorrent 
traffic... If the Internet gets congested, new techniques are needed, 
like mod_gzip on every server, a way to transfer only deltas of webpages 
if an update occured (like Google did some time ago). Better handling of 
RSS (I have the impression that there is no "page has not been 
modified" thing like with HTML, or at least I see quite some clients 
fetch my feed every hour, again and again).

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

John Bokma wrote:
[cookies]
> Delete them after each session automatically, except the ones on the 
> exception list.

But why?  I simply don't even take them, except my exception list ;)

Some people have all cookies turned off.

> You are clearly not an average user, so your usage pattern 
> probably only messes up the stats they obtain via cookies anyway.
> 
> I have long ago given up on manually accepting each and every cookie, and 
> trying to guess it's purpose.

Exactly.  That's why I don't do that.  I just block them all, except 
some good sites where I want to be auto-logged in.

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

On Fri, 26 Aug 2005, John Bokma wrote:

> And workplaces. Some people have more then one computer in the house. My
> partner can check her email when I had her over the computer. When I

I know this is entirely inappropriate and OT, but am I th eonly person
who reads that sentence with a grin?  The idea of my wife checking her
email while I'm "doing her" over my computer is most amusing!  :-)

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

> I know this is entirely inappropriate and OT, [...]

Yeah -- unlike the rest of this misbegotten thread, which is right
bang on-topic for all five newsgroups and is not suffering at all from
topic drift, no not in the least.

b

John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> writes:

> Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> writes:
>>> > Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today
>>> > already comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser)
>>> 
>>> No, they don't. Minimalist Unix distributions don't include a browser
>>> by default. I know the BSD's don't, and suspect that gentoo Linux
>>> doesn't. 
>> 
>> Lynx?
>
> Emacs?

Neither one is installed by default on the systems in question. Both
are available via the system packaging tools.

fetch is installed on FreeBSD, but all it does is download the
contents of a URL - it doesn't render them.

  <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

gordonb.vu2n4@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) writes:

>>HTML is designed to degrade gracefully (never mind that most web
>>authors and many browser developers don't seem to comprehend this), so
>>you don't really need a "subset" html to get the safety features you
>>want. All you need to do is disable the appropriate features in the
>>HTML renderer in your news and mail readers. JavaScript, Java, and any
>>form of object embedding. Oh yeah, and frames.
>
> And links.  And cookies.  And any kind of external site or local
> file access.  And browser history.  

That depends on whether you're trying to keep an HTML message from
doing anything nasty (like revealing that you read it) when you render
it, or to make sure it *never* does anything nasty, no matter what you
do with the message.

If all you want is the former - which is what the OP asked for, and I
was replying to - then nothing on the list you gave is required. Some
of the things you list are a danger even without HTML; most modern
news/mail readers will follow links in flat ascii.

          <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> writes:
> No, the few sites where I actually have to log in to do anything
> useful, when they're well-coded, tell me that they need cookies, and
> if I think I like that website I make an exception entry for that
> site, allowing cookies.  Most sites just bombard you with useless,
> crap cookies (maybe advertising), so they are silently ignored by my
> browser.

I believe (but I'm not sure) that some releases of apache could be
configured in such a way that they would start using cookies without
you having to turn them on.

> The only thing I hate is when I am directed to some website that needs
> cookies, but doesn't tell me.  A couple times I did a survey, wasting
> maybe 10 minutes of my life for a good cause, and then there was an
> error. Great!  I guess that page needed cookies, but didn't bother to
> tell me.  Back button didn't work, either, so I just left that website.

Try turning off JavaScript (I assume you don't because you didn't
complain about it). Most of the sites on the web that use it don't
even use the NOSCRIPT tag to notify you that you have to turn the
things on - much less use it to do something useful.

Sturgeon's law applies to web sites, just like it does to everything
else.

    <mike

-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> writes:
> Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> I mean, the way
>> Webmail works, you're at the message list and click on a message to
>> view. This causes a whole new page, user-interface and all, to be
>> loaded. In comparison, that's like shutting down and re-opening your
>> e-mail program for every single message you want to view!
> This can be designed much better by using iframes, maybe even Ajax.

Definitely with Ajax. That's one of the things it does really well.

>> Why can't we use the Web for what it was meant for: viewing hypertext
>> pages? Why must we turn it into a wrapper around every application
>> imaginable?
> Because it works?

Because you can - if you know how to use HTML properly - distribute
your application to platforms you've never even heard of - like the
Nokia Communicator.

I started writing web apps when I was doing internal tools development
for a software development company that had 90+ different platform
types installed inhouse. It was a *godsend*. By deploying one
well-written app, I could make everyone happy, without having to do
versions for the Mac, Windows, DOS (this was a while ago), getting it
to compile on umpteen different Unix version, as well as making it
work on proprietary workstation OS's.

Of course, considering the state of most of the HTML on the web, I
have *no* idea why most of them are doing this.

     <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> writes:
> It's time consuming because there is (yet) no need for it. When I
> started to use Usenet there where only a handful of clients (IIRC), nn
> and another one (rn?) are the only ones that I can recall. 

By the time nn was out, there were a number of radically diffrent
alternatives. The original news client (not NNTP - it predated that)
was readnews. rn was the first alternative to gain any popularity. By
the time it came out, there were alterntiave curses-based readers like
notes and vnews. By the time nn came out, there were even X-based news
readers available like xrn and xvnews.

It may be that the site you were at only offered a few readers. But
that's a different issue.

All of this is from memory, of course - and may well be wrong.

       <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 26 Aug 2005, John Bokma wrote:
> 
>> And workplaces. Some people have more then one computer in the house. My
>> partner can check her email when I had her over the computer. When I
> 
> I know this is entirely inappropriate and OT, but am I th eonly person
> who reads that sentence with a grin?  The idea of my wife checking her
> email while I'm "doing her" over my computer is most amusing!  :-)

Aargh :-D.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote:

> John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> writes:
> 
>> Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> writes:
>>>> > Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today
>>>> > already comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser)
>>>> 
>>>> No, they don't. Minimalist Unix distributions don't include a browser
>>>> by default. I know the BSD's don't, and suspect that gentoo Linux
>>>> doesn't. 
>>> 
>>> Lynx?
>>
>> Emacs?
> 
> Neither one is installed by default on the systems in question. Both
> are available via the system packaging tools.
> 
> fetch is installed on FreeBSD, but all it does is download the
> contents of a URL - it doesn't render them.

My brain does :-D

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote:

> John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> writes:
>> It's time consuming because there is (yet) no need for it. When I
>> started to use Usenet there where only a handful of clients (IIRC), nn
>> and another one (rn?) are the only ones that I can recall. 
> 
> By the time nn was out, there were a number of radically diffrent
> alternatives. The original news client (not NNTP - it predated that)
> was readnews. rn was the first alternative to gain any popularity. By
> the time it came out, there were alterntiave curses-based readers like
> notes and vnews. By the time nn came out, there were even X-based news
> readers available like xrn and xvnews.

I recall something like pine? (or was that mail, and was there something 
pine related for usenet?)

> It may be that the site you were at only offered a few readers. 

Probably more correct: I now and then used telnet to connect, so uhm.. no 
X. And more important, I didn't look further :-)

> But
> that's a different issue.
> 
> All of this is from memory, of course - and may well be wrong.

Those were the days, thanks.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

i left the usenet in the latter half of the '80s.  a few weeks
ago i decided i wanted to do a new project with a new language,
and chose python.  so i joined this mailing list, which is
gated to the usenet.  i am impressed that the s:n has not
gotten significantly worse than when i left, about 0.25, this
message being my contribution to the noise.

the s here is pretty darn good.  but the n is pretty silly.

randy

On Fri, 26 Aug 2005 22:33:22 GMT, Rich Teer wrote:

> On Fri, 26 Aug 2005, John Bokma wrote:
> 
>> ..My partner can check her email when I had her over the computer. 
....
> ...The idea of my wife checking her
> email while I'm "doing her" over my computer is most amusing!  :-)

It does raise the question though.  Is it mundane sex, 
...or riveting email, that causes this phenomenon?    ;-)

[ F'Ups set to c.l.j.p. only ]

-- 
Andrew Thompson
physci.org 1point1c.org javasaver.com lensescapes.com athompson.info
"You live with apes, man, it's hard to be clean."
Marilyn Manson 'The Beautiful People'

Mike Meyer wrote:
>> This can be designed much better by using iframes, maybe even Ajax.
 >
> Definitely with Ajax. That's one of the things it does really well.

But then you're probably limited to the big 4 of browsers: MSIE, 
Mozilla, KHTML/Safari, Opera.  Ok, that should cover most desktop users, 
but you might run into problems on embedded.

I've also noticed that especially web forums and dynamic websites take 
up looots of memory on my machine (but then I have loooots).

>>> Why can't we use the Web for what it was meant for: viewing hypertext
>>> pages? Why must we turn it into a wrapper around every application
>>> imaginable?
>> Because it works?
> 
> Because you can - if you know how to use HTML properly - distribute
> your application to platforms you've never even heard of - like the
> Nokia Communicator.

If the NC has software that can properly interpret all that HTML, CSS, 
JavaScript plus image formats, yes.  But who guarantees that?  I'd 
rather develop a native client for the machine that people actually WANT 
to use, instead of forcing them to use that little-fiddly web browser on 
a teeny tiny display.

And again: connections might be slow, a compact protocol is better than 
loading the whole UI every time.  And while Ajax might work, despite the 
UI being maybe too big for the little browser window, and even if it 
works, it's still probably more work than a simple, native UI.  First of 
all it needs to load all the JS on first load, secondly sometimes for a 
flexible UI you'd have to replace huge parts of the page with something 
else.  Native UIs are more up to the task.

> I started writing web apps when I was doing internal tools development
> for a software development company that had 90+ different platform
> types installed inhouse. It was a *godsend*. By deploying one

If that's 90+ GUI platforms, then I agree.  I just wonder who wrote 
fully standards compliant web browsers for those 90 platforms.  If you 
have one Windows GUI (maybe C#), one Mac GUI (Cocoa), one Gtk GUI for X, 
you're done.  A GUI should be the smallest bunch of work on any given 
application, so it's not prohibitive to write a couple of them, IMHO. 
But then I've only ever used Swing and Cocoa and the latter *is* really 
convenient, might be that the others are a PITA, who knows...

> well-written app, I could make everyone happy, without having to do
> versions for the Mac, Windows, DOS (this was a while ago), getting it
> to compile on umpteen different Unix version, as well as making it
> work on proprietary workstation OS's.

Well, stick to POSIX and X APIs and your stuff should run fine on pretty 
much all Unices.  I never understood those people who write all kinds of 
weird ifdefs to run on all Unices.  Maybe that was before my time, 
during the Unix wars, before POSIX.  And if it's not Unix, what's a 
prop. workstation OS?

> Of course, considering the state of most of the HTML on the web, I
> have *no* idea why most of them are doing this.

Yep.  Maybe it would be best to reengineer the whole thing as ONE UI 
spec+action language, incompatible with the current mess, compact, so it 
can be implemented with minimum fuss.  And most of all, I wouldn't use a 
MARKUP language, as a real application is not text-based (at least not 
as characteristic #1).

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

Mike Meyer wrote:
> Try turning off JavaScript (I assume you don't because you didn't
> complain about it). Most of the sites on the web that use it don't
> even use the NOSCRIPT tag to notify you that you have to turn the
> things on - much less use it to do something useful.

I had JS off for a long time, but now so many websites expect it, and 
even make browsing more convenient, that I grudgingly accepted it. ;)

> Sturgeon's law applies to web sites, just like it does to everything
> else.

Yep.  Filtering is the future in the overloaded world.

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert

In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
>> What advantages would those be (other than access from 'net cafes, but
>> see below)?
 
> And workplaces. Some people have more then one computer in the house. My 
> partner can check her email when I had her over the computer. When I 
> want to check my email when she is using it, I have to change the 
> session, fire up Thunderbird (which eats away 20M), and change the 
> session back.
 
Not a Windows solution, but I find the 'screen' utility invaluable as
I can have my email, news, and an editor open in different screens
and then when I need to move to a different machine, I can simply
detach and reattach screen without disturbing anything that
might be running.

Axel

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> writes:
> Mike Meyer wrote:
>>> This can be designed much better by using iframes, maybe even Ajax.
>> Definitely with Ajax. That's one of the things it does really well.
> But then you're probably limited to the big 4 of browsers: MSIE,
> Mozilla, KHTML/Safari, Opera.  Ok, that should cover most desktop
> users, but you might run into problems on embedded.

True - using Ajax definitely defeats what I consider to be the best
feature of the web.

>>>> Why can't we use the Web for what it was meant for: viewing hypertext
>>>> pages? Why must we turn it into a wrapper around every application
>>>> imaginable?
>>> Because it works?
>> Because you can - if you know how to use HTML properly - distribute
>> your application to platforms you've never even heard of - like the
>> Nokia Communicator.
> If the NC has software that can properly interpret all that HTML, CSS,
> JavaScript plus image formats, yes.  But who guarantees that?

You don't need that guarantee. All you need is a reasonable HTML
renderer. The folks at W3C are smart, and did a good job of designing
the technologies so they degrade gracefully. Anyone with any
competence can design web pages that will both take advantage of
advanced technologies if they are present and still work properly if
they aren't. Yeah, the low-end interface harks back to 3270s, but IBM
had a *great* deal of success with that technology.

> I'd rather develop a native client for the machine that people
> actually WANT to use, instead of forcing them to use that
> little-fiddly web browser on a teeny tiny display.

You missed the point: How are you going to provide native clients for
platforms you've never heard of?

> And again: connections might be slow, a compact protocol is better
> than loading the whole UI every time.  And while Ajax might work,
> despite the UI being maybe too big for the little browser window, and
> even if it works, it's still probably more work than a simple, native
> UI.  First of all it needs to load all the JS on first load, secondly
> sometimes for a flexible UI you'd have to replace huge parts of the
> page with something else.  Native UIs are more up to the task.

I'm not arguing that native UI's aren't better. I'm arguing that web
applications provide more portability - which is important for some
applications and some developers.

>> I started writing web apps when I was doing internal tools development
>> for a software development company that had 90+ different platform
>> types installed inhouse. It was a *godsend*. By deploying one
> If that's 90+ GUI platforms, then I agree.

Why do you care if they are GUI or not? If you need to provide the
application for them, you need to provide the application for
them. Them not being GUI just means you can't try and use a standard
GUI library. It also means you have to know what you're doing when you
write HTML so that it works properly in a CLUI. But your native app
would have to have a CLUI anyway.

> I just wonder who wrote fully standards compliant web browsers for
> those 90 platforms.

Nobody. I doubt there's a fully standards compliant web browser
available for *any* platform, much less any non-trivial collection of
them. You write portable web applications to the standards, and design
them to degrade gracefully. Then you go back and work around any new
bugs you've uncovered in the most popular browsers - which
historically are among the *worst* at following standards.

> If you have one Windows GUI (maybe C#), one Mac GUI (Cocoa), one Gtk
> GUI for X, you're done.

You think you're done. A lot of developers think you can stop with the
first one or two. You're all right for some applications. For others,
you're not.  Personally, I like applications that run on all the
platforms I use - and your set doesn't cover all three of those
systems.

>> well-written app, I could make everyone happy, without having to do
>> versions for the Mac, Windows, DOS (this was a while ago), getting it
>> to compile on umpteen different Unix version, as well as making it
>> work on proprietary workstation OS's.
> Well, stick to POSIX and X APIs and your stuff should run fine on
> pretty much all Unices.

You know, the same kind of advice applies to writing portable web
apps. Except when you do it with HTML, "portability" means damn near
any programmable device with a network interface, not some relatively
small fraction of all deployed platforms.

> I never understood those people who write all kinds of weird ifdefs
> to on all Unices. Maybe that was before my time, during the
> Unix wars, before POSIX.

There were standards before POSIX. They didn't cover everything people
wanted to do, or didn't do them as fast as the OS vendor wanted. So
Unix vendors added their own proprietary extensions, which software
vendors had to use to get the best performance out of their
applications, which they had to do if they wanted people to buy/use
them.

That's still going on - people are adding new functionality that isn't
covered by POSIX to Unix systems all the time, or they are adding
alternatives that are better/faster than the POSIX version, and there
are lots of things that applications want to do that simply aren't
covered by POSIX. And not all implementations are created equal. Some
platforms malloc's provide - to be polite - less than optimal
performance under conditions real applications encounter, so those
applications conditionally use different malloc implementations. The
same thing applies to threads, except such code typically includes a
third option of not using threads at all. And so on.

And we haven't even started talking about the build process...

Basically, deciding to write to POSIX is a decision to trade away
performance on/to some platforms for portability to more
platforms. It's the same decision as deciding to write a web app,
except the tradeoffs are different. Each of the three solutions has a
different set of costs and benefits, and the correct choice will
depend on your application.

> And if it's not Unix, what's a prop. workstation OS?

They've mostly died out since then. At the time, there were things
like Domain and VMS. 

>> Of course, considering the state of most of the HTML on the web, I
>> have *no* idea why most of them are doing this.
> Yep.  Maybe it would be best to reengineer the whole thing as ONE UI
> spec+action language, incompatible with the current mess, compact, so
> it can be implemented with minimum fuss.  And most of all, I wouldn't
> use a MARKUP language, as a real application is not text-based (at
> least not as characteristic #1).

You mean most of the applications I run aren't real applications?
Right now, my desktop has exactly two GUI applications open on it - a
mixer and gkrellm. Everything else is characeter based. Hell, even my
window manager is character based.

I think you're right - a web standard designed for writing real
applications probably wouldn't start life as a markup for text. The
only thing I can think of that even tries is Flash, but it's
proprietary so I don't know much about it.

Care to tell me how you would design such a format if the goal were to
*not* lose any portability - which means it has to be possible to
design interfaces that work properly on character devices, things like
Palms three-color greyscale displays, and devices without pointers or
without keyboards, or even in an audio-only environment.

       <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

On Sat, 27 Aug 2005, Mike Meyer wrote:

> I think you're right - a web standard designed for writing real
> applications probably wouldn't start life as a markup for text. The
> only thing I can think of that even tries is Flash, but it's

What about Java?

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

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Hash: SHA1

John Bokma wrote:
> Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>John Bokma wrote:
>>
>>>Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> [HTML]
> 
> 
>>>It can be made much faster. There will always be a delay since
>>>messages have to be downloaded, but with a fast connection and a good
>>>design, the delay will be very very small and the advantages are big.
>>
>>What advantages would those be (other than access from 'net cafes, but
>>see below)?
> 
> 
> And workplaces. Some people have more then one computer in the house. My 
> partner can check her email when I had her over the computer. When I 
> want to check my email when she is using it, I have to change the 
> session, fire up Thunderbird (which eats away 20M), and change the 
> session back.
> 
> [ .. ]

Hmm. That would just be a matter of preference. Personally I moved my
Thunderbird profile into a shared directory and pointed everyone at it.
Now only one login session can run Thunderbird at a time, but any login
can see everyone's mailboxes.

> 
> 
>>>Each has it's place. A bug in a thick client means each and everyone
>>>has to be fixed. With a thin one, just one has to be fixed :-D. 
>>
>>True. However, if people are annoyed by a Thunderbird bug, once it's
>>fixed, most people will probably go and download the fix (the
>>Thunderbird developers really only need to fix the bug once too).
> 
> 
> Most people who use Thunderbird, yes. Different with OE, I am sure. With 
> a thin client *everybody*.

True. As a programmer I don't usually think about the people who never
download updates. The way I look at it, if somebody doesn't have the
latest version, they shouldn't be complaining about a bug. I guess thin
clients could be taken to mean you have a very light-weight auto-update
system ;)

> 
> 
>>>Depends on where your mailbox resides. Isn't there something called
>>>MAPI? (I haven't used it myself, but I recall something like that). 
>>
>>IMAP. It stores the messages on the server. Even so, it only has to
>>transfer the messages, not the bloated UI.
> 
> 
> But technically the UI (whether bloated or not) can be cached, and with 
> Ajax/Frames, etc. there is not really a need to refresh the entire page. 
> With smarter techniques (like automatically zipping pages), and 
> techniques like transmitting only deltas (Google experimented with this 
> some time ago) and better and faster rendering, the UI could be as fast 
> as a normal UI. 
> 
> Isn't the UI in Thunderbird and Firefox created using JavaScript and 
> XML? Isn't how future UIs are going to be made?

I believe it is. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but that's neither
here nor there.

> 
> 
>>I concede that Webmail
>>might be just as fast when using a perfectly-designed
>>Javascript/frames-driven interface. In the real world, Webmail isn't
>>(unfortunately) that perfect.
> 
> 
> Maybe because a lot of users aren't really heavy users. A nice example 
> (IMO) of a web client that works quite good: webmessenger ( 
> http://webmessenger.msn.com/ ). It has been some time since I used it 
> the last time, but if I recall correctly I hardly noticed that I was 
> chatting in a JavaScript pop up window.

Haven't ever needed to use that program.

> 
> 
>>As I said above regarding 'net cafes:
>>
>>If the Internet cafe has an e-mail client installed on their
>>computers, you could use IMAP to access your messages. You'd have to
>>do a bit more configuration than for Webmail, so it depends on the
>>user I guess. Personally I doubt my ISP would like me saving a few
>>hundred megs of e-mail on their server, while Thunderbird is quite
>>happy to have 1504 messages in my Inbox on my local machine. If I had
>>to use an Internet cafe, I would rather use IMAP than Webmail.
> 
> 
> I rather have my email stored locally :-) But several webmail services 
> offer a form to download email.

I've not seen a service that allows that. Sounds nice.

> 
> 
>>>>Ergo,
>>>>Thunderbird is faster as soon as the Internet gets congested.
>>>
>>>Ah, yeah, wasn't that predicted to happen in like 2001?
>>
>>Wasn't what predicted to happen? Congestion? It happens even today
>>(maybe it's the Internet, maybe it's the server, whatever...). Hotmail
>>is often pretty slow.
> 
> 
> I read sometime ago that about 1/3 of traffic consists out of bittorrent 
> traffic... If the Internet gets congested, new techniques are needed, 
> like mod_gzip on every server, a way to transfer only deltas of webpages 
> if an update occured (like Google did some time ago). Better handling of 
> RSS (I have the impression that there is no "page has not been 
> modified" thing like with HTML, or at least I see quite some clients 
> fetch my feed every hour, again and again).
> 

Eventually you reach the point where it's not bandwidth any more, it's
server load. All these things like mod_gzip, deltas, and so on add
server load.

As to the point about "page not modified", it's not in the HTML spec,
it's in the HTTP spec. RFC2616 (HTTP1.1) defines an "If-Modified-Since"
header a client may send to the server indicating that it has a cached
copy of the page at that date. If the page has not changed, the server
should send HTTP 304 (not modified) with no content. For best results
(due to clock mismatches etc), the client should set the
If-Modified-Since header to the value of the Last-Modified header sent
by the server when the page was first requested and cached.

I think we can agree that in some cases, Webmail is better, and in
others, clients are better. Much of this will be personal preference,
and I would like to see ISPs offering both methods of accessing e-mail
(as mine in fact does - POP3 and Webmail).

Chris
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Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> writes:
> Mike Meyer wrote:
>> Try turning off JavaScript (I assume you don't because you didn't
>> complain about it). Most of the sites on the web that use it don't
>> even use the NOSCRIPT tag to notify you that you have to turn the
>> things on - much less use it to do something useful.
> I had JS off for a long time, but now so many websites expect it, and
> even make browsing more convenient, that I grudgingly accepted it. ;)

I've turned it on because I'm using an ISP that requires me to log in
via a javascript only web page. They have a link that claims to let
non-JS browsers log in, but it doesn't work. My primary browser
doesn't support JavaScript or CSS, and is configured with images
turned off, mostly because I want the web to be fast. What it does
have is the ability to launch one of three different external browsers
on either the current page or any link on the page, so those faciities
are a few keystrokes away. The default browser on my mac has all that
crap turned on, but I dont have anything I consider either import or
sensitive on it, and the only client who has data on it considers such
thinsg an acceptable risk.

>> Sturgeon's law applies to web sites, just like it does to everything
>> else.
> Yep.  Filtering is the future in the overloaded world.

And to the best of my knowledge, Google filters out content that my
primary desktop browser can't display.

         <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

axel@white-eagle.invalid.uk writes:
> In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
>> Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> What advantages would those be (other than access from 'net cafes, but
>>> see below)?
>> And workplaces. Some people have more then one computer in the house. My 
>> partner can check her email when I had her over the computer. When I 
>> want to check my email when she is using it, I have to change the 
>> session, fire up Thunderbird (which eats away 20M), and change the 
>> session back.
> Not a Windows solution, but I find the 'screen' utility invaluable as
> I can have my email, news, and an editor open in different screens
> and then when I need to move to a different machine, I can simply
> detach and reattach screen without disturbing anything that
> might be running.

For a more  portable solution, check out VNC.

    <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

previously i've made serious criticisms on Python's documentations
problems.
(see http://xahlee.org/perl-python/re-write_notes.html )

I have indicated that a exemplary documentation is Wolfram Research
Incorporated's Mathematica language. (available online at
http://documents.wolfram.com/mathematica/ )

Since Mathematica is a proprietary language costing over a thousand
dollars and most people in the IT industry are not familiar with it, i
like to announce a new discovery:

this week i happened to read the documentation of Microsoft's
JavaScript. See
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/script56/html/js56jsconjscriptfunda=
mentals.asp

This entire documentary is a paragon of technical writing. It has
clarity, conciseness, and precision. It does not abuse jargons, it
doesn't ramble, it doesn't exhibit author masturbation, and it covers
its area extremely well and complete. The documentation set are very
well organized into 3 sections: Fundamentals, Advanced, Reference. The
tutorial section =E2=80=9Cfundamentals=E2=80=9D is extremely simple and to =
the
point. The =E2=80=9Cadvanced=E2=80=9D section gives a very concise yet easy=
 to read
on some fine details of the language. And its language reference
section is complete and exact.

I would like the IT industry programers and the OpenSource fuckheads to
take note of this documentation so that you can learn.

Also, this is not the only good documentation in the industry. As i
have indicated, Mathematica documentation is equally excellent. In
fact, the official Java documentation (so-called Java API by Sun
Microsystems) is also extremely well-written, even though that Java the
language is unnecessarily very complex and involves far more technical
concepts that necessitate use of proper jargons as can be seen in their
doc.

A additional note i like to tell the OpenSource coding morons in the
industry, is that in general the fundamental reason that Perl, Python,
Unix, Apache etc documentations are extremely bad in multiple aspects
is because of OpenSource fanaticism. The fanaticism has made it that
OpenSource people simply became UNABLE to discern quality. This
situation can be seen in the responses of criticisms of OpenSource
docs. What made the situation worse is the OpenSource's mantra of
=E2=80=9Ccontribution=E2=80=9D =E2=80=94 holding hostile any negative criti=
cism unless
the critic =E2=80=9Ccontributed=E2=80=9D without charge.

Another important point i should point out is that the OpenSource
morons tend to attribute =E2=80=9Clack of resources=E2=80=9D as a excuse fo=
r their
lack of quality. (when they are kicked hard to finally admit that they
do lack quality in the first place) No, it is not lack of resources
that made the OpenSource doc criminally incompetent. OpenSource has
created tools that take far more energy and time than writing manuals.
Lack of resource of course CAN be a contribution reason, along with
OpenSource coder's general lack of ability to write well, among other
reasons, but the main cause as i have stated above, is OpenSource
fanaticism. It is that which have made them blind.

PS just to note, that my use of OpenSource here do not include Free
Software Foundation's Gnu's Not Unix project. GNU project in general
has very excellent documentation. GNU docs are geeky in comparison to
the commercial entity's docs, but do not exhibit jargon abuse,
rambling, author masturbation, or hodgepodge as do the OpenSource ones
mentioned above.

 Xah
 xah@xahlee.org
=E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/

On Sat, 27 Aug 2005, Xah Lee wrote:

His usual crap.

                                  ___________________
                          /|  /|  |                  |
                          ||__||  |      Please do   |
                         /   O O\__         NOT      |
                        /          \     feed the    |
                       /      \     \     trolls     |
                      /   _    \     \ ______________|
                     /    |\____\     \     ||
                    /     | | | |\____/     ||
                   /       \|_|_|/   \    __||
                  /  /  \            |____| ||
                 /   |   | /|        |      --|
                 |   |   |//         |____  --|
          * _    |  |_|_|_|          |     \-/
       *-- _--\ _ \     //           |
         /  _     \\ _ //   |        /
       *  /   \_ /- | -     |       |
         *      ___ c_c_c_C/ \C_c_c_c____________

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

On 27 Aug 2005 14:59:34 -0700, "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> declaimed the
following in comp.lang.python:

	<tsk> Opens with a tirade about Python documentation yet cross-posts
to FIVE groups.

> I would like the IT industry programers and the OpenSource fuckheads to
> take note of this documentation so that you can learn.
>
	And a statement like this is supposed to encourage such folks to
listen to you?

	That's like a politician calling the people with the money "ignorant
peons" as he asks them to donate to his campaign.

-- 
 > ============================================================== <
 >   wlfraed@ix.netcom.com  | Wulfraed  Dennis Lee Bieber  KD6MOG <
 >      wulfraed@dm.net     |       Bestiaria Support Staff       <
 > ============================================================== <
 >           Home Page: <http://www.dm.net/~wulfraed/>            <
 >        Overflow Page: <http://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/>        <

Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> writes:
> On Sat, 27 Aug 2005, Mike Meyer wrote:
>> I think you're right - a web standard designed for writing real
>> applications probably wouldn't start life as a markup for text. The
>> only thing I can think of that even tries is Flash, but it's
> What about Java?

Using HTML, I can build applications that work properly on anything
from monochrome terminals to the latest desktop box. Is there a
UI toolkit for Java that's that flexible?

   <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> writes:
> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com> writes:
> > Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today already
> > comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser)
>
> No, they don't. Minimalist Unix distributions don't include a browser
> by default. I know the BSD's don't, and suspect that gentoo Linux
> doesn't.

Quite right.

> HTML is designed to degrade gracefully (never mind that most web
> authors and many browser developers don't seem to comprehend this), so
> you don't really need a "subset" html to get the safety features you
> want. All you need to do is disable the appropriate features in the
> HTML renderer in your news and mail readers.

Not all news readers have an embedded web browser though :-(

Mike Meyer wrote:
>> I'd rather develop a native client for the machine that people
>> actually WANT to use, instead of forcing them to use that
>> little-fiddly web browser on a teeny tiny display.
> 
> You missed the point: How are you going to provide native clients for
> platforms you've never heard of?

Who says I have to?  With open protocols, everybody can.  I know many 
platforms that STILL don't have a browser that would work with most 
websites out there.  They all have NNTP, SMTP and POP clients. 
Text-mode, GUI-mode, your choice.

>> And again: connections might be slow, a compact protocol is better
>> than loading the whole UI every time.  And while Ajax might work,
>> despite the UI being maybe too big for the little browser window, and
>> even if it works, it's still probably more work than a simple, native
>> UI.  First of all it needs to load all the JS on first load, secondly
>> sometimes for a flexible UI you'd have to replace huge parts of the
>> page with something else.  Native UIs are more up to the task.
> 
> I'm not arguing that native UI's aren't better. I'm arguing that web
> applications provide more portability - which is important for some
> applications and some developers.

Like Java provides more portability.  Unless you ran NetBSD in 2003 
(there was no Java back then that worked for me), hm, IRIX?, Plan9, BeOS 
the list goes on...  LOTS of platforms don't have the manpower to 
develop a client that renders all of the huge bloated wagonload of W3C 
tech that was only designed for *markup* from the beginning.

>>> I started writing web apps when I was doing internal tools development
>>> for a software development company that had 90+ different platform
>>> types installed inhouse. It was a *godsend*. By deploying one
>> If that's 90+ GUI platforms, then I agree.
> 
> Why do you care if they are GUI or not? If you need to provide the
> application for them, you need to provide the application for
> them. Them not being GUI just means you can't try and use a standard
> GUI library. It also means you have to know what you're doing when you
> write HTML so that it works properly in a CLUI. But your native app
> would have to have a CLUI anyway.

Ok, UI then ;)
I don't care what UIs people like and use.

>> I just wonder who wrote fully standards compliant web browsers for
>> those 90 platforms.
> 
> Nobody. I doubt there's a fully standards compliant web browser

Nobody, huh?  Then how could you run just ANY web application on those 
platforms?

> available for *any* platform, much less any non-trivial collection of
> them. You write portable web applications to the standards, and design
> them to degrade gracefully. Then you go back and work around any new

Oh right, they degrade gracefully.  So without Javascript or cookies 
(the former is often not implemented) you get a HTML page with an error 
notice -- if you're lucky.

A server AND client for a simple protocol designed for its task (i.e. 
not FTP for instance) can be implemented in much less work than even 
designing even part of a web application backend that does that kind of 
stuff.  Plus you're not bound by HTTP request structure, you can use 
publish/subscribe or whatever communication style you want for efficiency.

> bugs you've uncovered in the most popular browsers - which
> historically are among the *worst* at following standards.
> 
>> If you have one Windows GUI (maybe C#), one Mac GUI (Cocoa), one Gtk
>> GUI for X, you're done.
> 
> You think you're done. A lot of developers think you can stop with the
> first one or two. You're all right for some applications. For others,
> you're not.  Personally, I like applications that run on all the
> platforms I use - and your set doesn't cover all three of those
> systems.

Ok, I'd be interested to hear what those are.  VMS, RiscOS, Mac OS 9...?

>>> well-written app, I could make everyone happy, without having to do
>>> versions for the Mac, Windows, DOS (this was a while ago), getting it
>>> to compile on umpteen different Unix version, as well as making it
>>> work on proprietary workstation OS's.
>> Well, stick to POSIX and X APIs and your stuff should run fine on
>> pretty much all Unices.
> 
> You know, the same kind of advice applies to writing portable web
> apps. Except when you do it with HTML, "portability" means damn near
> any programmable device with a network interface, not some relatively
> small fraction of all deployed platforms.

Only that even years ago lots of even small platforms would run X, but 
even today MANY platforms don't run a browser with XHTML/HTML4+JS+CSS 
(well, okay, the CSS isn't that important).

>> I never understood those people who write all kinds of weird ifdefs
>> to on all Unices. Maybe that was before my time, during the
>> Unix wars, before POSIX.
> 
> There were standards before POSIX. They didn't cover everything people
> wanted to do, or didn't do them as fast as the OS vendor wanted. So
> Unix vendors added their own proprietary extensions, which software
> vendors had to use to get the best performance out of their
> applications, which they had to do if they wanted people to buy/use
> them.

Performance?  Hm, like epoll/kqueue vs select?  Can't think of examples 
here, but I pretty much only know BSD/POSIX.

> That's still going on - people are adding new functionality that isn't
> covered by POSIX to Unix systems all the time, or they are adding
> alternatives that are better/faster than the POSIX version, and there
> are lots of things that applications want to do that simply aren't
> covered by POSIX. And not all implementations are created equal. Some
> platforms malloc's provide - to be polite - less than optimal
> performance under conditions real applications encounter, so those
> applications conditionally use different malloc implementations. The

Well, OF COURSE malloc is ONE general purpose function that HAS to carry 
some overhead.  I routinely use my frontend(s) for it, to cluster 
allocations locally (for caching and alloc performance).  Matter of a 
100 LOC usually.  No problem at all.

If a system's scheduler, or select implementation sucks, though, I'd 
complain to the vendor or simply abandon the platform for another. 
Competition is good :)

> same thing applies to threads, except such code typically includes a
> third option of not using threads at all. And so on.

Well, who doesn't do threads after several years of POSIX IMHO can't be 
taken seriously.  Ok, the BSDs didn't until recently, but those are 
volunteer projects.

> And we haven't even started talking about the build process...

If the libraries are installed, just build and link it (if you use 
standard C, POSIX + 3rd party libs that do the same).  If not, then 
tough luck -- it couldn't even run in theory then.

> Basically, deciding to write to POSIX is a decision to trade away
> performance on/to some platforms for portability to more
> platforms. It's the same decision as deciding to write a web app,
> except the tradeoffs are different. Each of the three solutions has a
> different set of costs and benefits, and the correct choice will
> depend on your application.

I'd like to hear about those performance problems...  If someone can't 
make the standard calls efficient, they should leave the business and 
give their customers Linux or BSD.

>> And if it's not Unix, what's a prop. workstation OS?
> 
> They've mostly died out since then. At the time, there were things
> like Domain and VMS. 

Never heard of Domain, but VMS is called NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista now (with 
some enhancements and a new GUI). ;)

>>> Of course, considering the state of most of the HTML on the web, I
>>> have *no* idea why most of them are doing this.
>> Yep.  Maybe it would be best to reengineer the whole thing as ONE UI
>> spec+action language, incompatible with the current mess, compact, so
>> it can be implemented with minimum fuss.  And most of all, I wouldn't
>> use a MARKUP language, as a real application is not text-based (at
>> least not as characteristic #1).
> 
> You mean most of the applications I run aren't real applications?
> Right now, my desktop has exactly two GUI applications open on it - a
> mixer and gkrellm. Everything else is characeter based. Hell, even my
> window manager is character based.

I meant not using text elements.  Of course it includes text, in your 
case predominantly.  But even most curses clients have other elements 
sometimes, like links.  A standard spec language could cater easily for 
text clients, but a text language like HTML has a harder time to cater 
for good GUI clients.  Most apps I use have buttons and menus that I 
wouldn't want to express with markup (and web pages that try to do that 
most invariably suck).

> I think you're right - a web standard designed for writing real
> applications probably wouldn't start life as a markup for text. The
> only thing I can think of that even tries is Flash, but it's
> proprietary so I don't know much about it.

Java has been mentioned in the other response, but there's also all 
other kinds of application frameworks.  Only XUL is markup based, with 
the effect that there's almost no text at all between the markup tags I 
guess ;)

> Care to tell me how you would design such a format if the goal were to
> *not* lose any portability - which means it has to be possible to
> design interfaces that work properly on character devices, things like
> Palms three-color greyscale displays, and devices without pointers or
> without keyboards, or even in an audio-only environment.

Colors can be sampled down.  Even the new Enlightenment libs do that 
(they say).  For mapping a GUI client to a text client, ok, tough.  Face 
it, lots of things just can't be expressed in pure text.  Images, PDF 
viewing, video, simulation with graphical representations...

Pointers could be added to any kind of machine, and even without it, you 
could give it a gameboy-style controller for cursor movement (i.e. arrow 
keys).

I'm just not talking about a language for audio- and text-mode clients ;)

-- 
My ideal for the future is to develop a filesystem remote interface (a 
la Plan 9) and then have it implemented across the Internet as the 
standard rather than HTML.  That would be ultimate cool.
	Ken Thompson

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> writes:
> Mike Meyer wrote:
>>> I'd rather develop a native client for the machine that people
>>> actually WANT to use, instead of forcing them to use that
>>> little-fiddly web browser on a teeny tiny display.
>> You missed the point: How are you going to provide native clients for
>> platforms you've never heard of?
> Who says I have to?  With open protocols, everybody can.  I know many
> platforms that STILL don't have a browser that would work with most
> websites out there.  They all have NNTP, SMTP and POP
> clients. Text-mode, GUI-mode, your choice.

The people who are distributing applications via the web. You want to
convince them to quit using web technologies, you have to provide
something that can do the job that they do.

>>> And again: connections might be slow, a compact protocol is better
>>> than loading the whole UI every time.  And while Ajax might work,
>>> despite the UI being maybe too big for the little browser window, and
>>> even if it works, it's still probably more work than a simple, native
>>> UI.  First of all it needs to load all the JS on first load, secondly
>>> sometimes for a flexible UI you'd have to replace huge parts of the
>>> page with something else.  Native UIs are more up to the task.
>> I'm not arguing that native UI's aren't better. I'm arguing that web
>> applications provide more portability - which is important for some
>> applications and some developers.
> Like Java provides more portability.  Unless you ran NetBSD in 2003
> (there was no Java back then that worked for me), hm, IRIX?, Plan9,
> BeOS the list goes on...  LOTS of platforms don't have the manpower to
> develop a client that renders all of the huge bloated wagonload of W3C
> tech that was only designed for *markup* from the beginning.

I'm still waiting for an answer to that one - where's the Java toolkit
that handles full-featured GUIs as well as character cell
interfaces. Without that, you aren't doing the job that the web
technologies do.

>>> I just wonder who wrote fully standards compliant web browsers for
>>> those 90 platforms.
>> Nobody. I doubt there's a fully standards compliant web browser
> Nobody, huh?  Then how could you run just ANY web application on those
> platforms?

The same way you write POSIX applications in the face of buggy
implementations - by working around the bugs in the working part of
the implementation, and using conditional code where that makes a
serious difference.

>> available for *any* platform, much less any non-trivial collection of
>> them. You write portable web applications to the standards, and design
>> them to degrade gracefully. Then you go back and work around any new
> Oh right, they degrade gracefully.  So without Javascript or cookies
> (the former is often not implemented) you get a HTML page with an
> error notice -- if you're lucky.

You left off the important part of what I had to say - that the
application be written by a moderately competent web author.

> A server AND client for a simple protocol designed for its task
> (i.e. not FTP for instance) can be implemented in much less work than
> even designing even part of a web application backend that does that
> kind of stuff.

Well, if it that easy (and web applications are dead simple), it
should be done fairly frequently. Care to provide an example?

>> You think you're done. A lot of developers think you can stop with
>> the
>> first one or two. You're all right for some applications. For others,
>> you're not.  Personally, I like applications that run on all the
>> platforms I use - and your set doesn't cover all three of those
>> systems.
> Ok, I'd be interested to hear what those are.  VMS, RiscOS, Mac OS 9...?

FreeBSD, OS X and a Palm Vx.

> If a system's scheduler, or select implementation sucks, though, I'd
> complain to the vendor or simply abandon the platform for
> another. Competition is good :)

Complaining to the vendor doesn't always get the bug fixed. And
refusing to support a platform isn't always an option. Sometimes, you
have to byte the bullet and work around the bug on that platform.

>> same thing applies to threads, except such code typically includes a
>> third option of not using threads at all. And so on.
> Well, who doesn't do threads after several years of POSIX IMHO can't
> be taken seriously.  Ok, the BSDs didn't until recently, but those are
> volunteer projects.

Not all platforms are POSIX. If you're ok limiting your application to
a small subset of the total number of platforms available, then
there's no advantage to using web technologies. Some of us aren't
satisifed with that, though.

>> And we haven't even started talking about the build process...
> If the libraries are installed, just build and link it (if you use
> standard C, POSIX + 3rd party libs that do the same).  If not, then
> tough luck -- it couldn't even run in theory then.

You have to have the right build tool installed. Since you use BSD,
you've surely run into typing "make" only to have it blow up because
it expects gmake.

>>>> Of course, considering the state of most of the HTML on the web, I
>>>> have *no* idea why most of them are doing this.
>>> Yep.  Maybe it would be best to reengineer the whole thing as ONE UI
>>> spec+action language, incompatible with the current mess, compact, so
>>> it can be implemented with minimum fuss.  And most of all, I wouldn't
>>> use a MARKUP language, as a real application is not text-based (at
>>> least not as characteristic #1).
>> You mean most of the applications I run aren't real applications?
>> Right now, my desktop has exactly two GUI applications open on it - a
>> mixer and gkrellm. Everything else is characeter based. Hell, even my
>> window manager is character based.
> I meant not using text elements.  Of course it includes text, in your
> case predominantly.  But even most curses clients have other elements
> sometimes, like links.  A standard spec language could cater easily
> for text clients, but a text language like HTML has a harder time to
> cater for good GUI clients.  Most apps I use have buttons and menus
> that I wouldn't want to express with markup (and web pages that try to
> do that most invariably suck).

Well, marking up text is a pretty poor way to describe a UI - but
anything that is going to replace web technologies has to have a
media-independent way to describe the UI. One of the things that made
the web take off early was that anyone with a text editor could create
web pages. I think that's an important property to keep - you want the
tools that people use to create applications be as portable/flexible
as the applications. Since most GUI's are written in some programming
language or another, and most programming langauges are still flat
text, a GUI description as flat text exists for most GUIs, so this
requirement isn't a handicap.

>> I think you're right - a web standard designed for writing real
>> applications probably wouldn't start life as a markup for text. The
>> only thing I can think of that even tries is Flash, but it's
>> proprietary so I don't know much about it.
> Java has been mentioned in the other response, but there's also all
> other kinds of application frameworks.  Only XUL is markup based, with
> the effect that there's almost no text at all between the markup tags
> I guess ;)

You don't have to guess - finding examples of XUL isn't hard at all. I
think XML gets used in a lot of places where it isn't appropriate. One
of the few places where it is appropriate is where you want a file
format that lots of independent implementations are going to be
reading. This could well be one of those times.

>> Care to tell me how you would design such a format if the goal were to
>> *not* lose any portability - which means it has to be possible to
>> design interfaces that work properly on character devices, things like
>> Palms three-color greyscale displays, and devices without pointers or
>> without keyboards, or even in an audio-only environment.
> Colors can be sampled down.  Even the new Enlightenment libs do that
> (they say).  For mapping a GUI client to a text client, ok, tough.
> Face it, lots of things just can't be expressed in pure text.  Images,
> PDF viewing, video, simulation with graphical representations...

Applications aren't one of those things. Even applications that work
with those things don't need GUI interfaces.

> Pointers could be added to any kind of machine, and even without it,
> you could give it a gameboy-style controller for cursor movement
> (i.e. arrow keys).

Yeah, if you're willing to tell your potential users "Go out and buy
more hardware". If you're Microsoft, you probably do that with the
addendum "from us". Not being Microsoft or a control freak, I want
applications that work with whatever the users already have.

> I'm just not talking about a language for audio- and text-mode clients ;)

Then you're not talking about replacing HTML et. al.

     <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Mike Meyer wrote:
> I'm still waiting for an answer to that one - where's the Java toolkit
> that handles full-featured GUIs as well as character cell
> interfaces. Without that, you aren't doing the job that the web
> technologies do.

Where is the text-mode browser that would even run part of the web apps 
I use, like home-banking, all web forums, server configuration 
interfaces, etc.?  I think we should leave both these questions open. 
(In fact, as to UIs using Java, blech!  Haven't seen a really good one...)

>>>> I just wonder who wrote fully standards compliant web browsers for
>>>> those 90 platforms.
>>> Nobody. I doubt there's a fully standards compliant web browser
>> Nobody, huh?  Then how could you run just ANY web application on those
>> platforms?
> 
> The same way you write POSIX applications in the face of buggy
> implementations - by working around the bugs in the working part of
> the implementation, and using conditional code where that makes a
> serious difference.

But as soon as some user of platform 54 tries your website, she'll 
encounter some weird behavior without even knowing why.  And maybe so 
will you, especially if you don't have that platform there for testing. 
  I don't understand how this web thing changes anything...  With POSIX 
at least you have a real bug-report for the guy responsible for it.  If 
a platform keeps being buggy, with no fixes coming, screw them.  Every 
user will see that sooner or later, and these platforms die.  Even 
Windows is quite stable/reliable after 10+ years NT!

>>> available for *any* platform, much less any non-trivial collection of
>>> them. You write portable web applications to the standards, and design
>>> them to degrade gracefully. Then you go back and work around any new
>> Oh right, they degrade gracefully.  So without Javascript or cookies
>> (the former is often not implemented) you get a HTML page with an
>> error notice -- if you're lucky.
> 
> You left off the important part of what I had to say - that the
> application be written by a moderately competent web author.

But if you can cater for all kinds of sub-platforms, then why not just 
provide a CLI as well as those GUI interfaces, when we're duplicating 
work to begin with? ;)

If it doesn't run without JS, then you lock out 90% of all alive 
platforms (and maybe 1% of all alive users :D) anyway.

>> A server AND client for a simple protocol designed for its task
>> (i.e. not FTP for instance) can be implemented in much less work than
>> even designing even part of a web application backend that does that
>> kind of stuff.
> 
> Well, if it that easy (and web applications are dead simple), it
> should be done fairly frequently. Care to provide an example?

We have all the web standards, with various extensions over the years. 
Some FTP clients even don't crash if they see that some server doesn't 
yet support the extension from RFC XY1234$!@.  Then there's tons of 
inter-application traffic in XML already, growing fast.  Then there are 
s-expressions (Lisp XML if you want).  Then probably thousands of ad-hoc 
line-based text protocols, but I don't know how well they can be 
extended.  There's CORBA.  Most web standards are simple, at least if 
you would subtract the weird stuff (and IMHO there should be new 
versions of everything with the crap removed).  XML is somewhat simple, 
just hook libxml.

There's NNTP.  There's RSS.  There's Atom.  The latter two emerged quite 
painlessly, even though you could maybe use some website for what they 
provide.  But this way you have lots of clients for lots of platforms 
already.

>>> You think you're done. A lot of developers think you can stop with
>>> the
>>> first one or two. You're all right for some applications. For others,
>>> you're not.  Personally, I like applications that run on all the
>>> platforms I use - and your set doesn't cover all three of those
>>> systems.
>> Ok, I'd be interested to hear what those are.  VMS, RiscOS, Mac OS 9...?
> 
> FreeBSD, OS X and a Palm Vx.

Didn't I say, a GUI for the Mac, for X11, and Windows?  That only leaves 
out the Palm.  I heard they aren't too hard to program for, either.  But 
I haven't heard of a really decent browser for pre-OS5 PalmOS (not sure 
about OS5).

>> If a system's scheduler, or select implementation sucks, though, I'd
>> complain to the vendor or simply abandon the platform for
>> another. Competition is good :)
> 
> Complaining to the vendor doesn't always get the bug fixed. And
> refusing to support a platform isn't always an option. Sometimes, you
> have to byte the bullet and work around the bug on that platform.

Sure, but you can tell your customers that unfortunately their system 
vendor refuses to fix a bug and ask THEM to ask that vendor.  Boy, will 
they consider another platform in the future, where bugs do get fixed ;)

>>> same thing applies to threads, except such code typically includes a
>>> third option of not using threads at all. And so on.
>> Well, who doesn't do threads after several years of POSIX IMHO can't
>> be taken seriously.  Ok, the BSDs didn't until recently, but those are
>> volunteer projects.
> 
> Not all platforms are POSIX. If you're ok limiting your application to
> a small subset of the total number of platforms available, then
> there's no advantage to using web technologies. Some of us aren't
> satisifed with that, though.

Sure.  You have to look where your users are.  Chances are that with 
obscure systems they can't use most web-apps either.

>>> And we haven't even started talking about the build process...
>> If the libraries are installed, just build and link it (if you use
>> standard C, POSIX + 3rd party libs that do the same).  If not, then
>> tough luck -- it couldn't even run in theory then.
> 
> You have to have the right build tool installed. Since you use BSD,
> you've surely run into typing "make" only to have it blow up because
> it expects gmake.

With 3rd party-stuff, yes.  The little that I've written yet compiled 
immediately (with pmake and gmake), except for C99 (the FreeBSD I tried 
had gcc 2.95 installed).  But now I write all C as pre-99 anyway, looks 
cleaner, IMHO.

> Well, marking up text is a pretty poor way to describe a UI - but
> anything that is going to replace web technologies has to have a
> media-independent way to describe the UI. One of the things that made
> the web take off early was that anyone with a text editor could create
> web pages. I think that's an important property to keep - you want the
> tools that people use to create applications be as portable/flexible
> as the applications. Since most GUI's are written in some programming
> language or another, and most programming langauges are still flat
> text, a GUI description as flat text exists for most GUIs, so this
> requirement isn't a handicap.

That's true, though I think the future of development lies in overcoming 
that program-code-as-text thing (NOT visual programming, just 
tool-based, structured).  Smalltalk did it decades ago.

> You don't have to guess - finding examples of XUL isn't hard at all. I
> think XML gets used in a lot of places where it isn't appropriate. One
> of the few places where it is appropriate is where you want a file
> format that lots of independent implementations are going to be
> reading. This could well be one of those times.

Maybe, but for applications that aren't predominantly concerned about 
text, I'd really rather use a structured data type (like s-expressions), 
not text markup like XML.  For hypertext, XHTML is fine, though, if a 
bit verbose.

[follow-up set to comp.unix.programmer]

(I just noticed I replaced my sig with something web-related yesterday. 
  This is pure coincidence :D)

-- 
My ideal for the future is to develop a filesystem remote interface
(a la Plan 9) and then have it implemented across the Internet as
the standard rather than HTML.  That would be ultimate cool.
	Ken Thompson

In comp.lang.perl.misc Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote:
> axel@white-eagle.invalid.uk writes:
>> In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
>>> Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> What advantages would those be (other than access from 'net cafes, but
>>>> see below)?
>>> And workplaces. Some people have more then one computer in the house. My 
>>> partner can check her email when I had her over the computer. When I 
>>> want to check my email when she is using it, I have to change the 
>>> session, fire up Thunderbird (which eats away 20M), and change the 
>>> session back.
>> Not a Windows solution, but I find the 'screen' utility invaluable as
>> I can have my email, news, and an editor open in different screens
>> and then when I need to move to a different machine, I can simply
>> detach and reattach screen without disturbing anything that
>> might be running.
 
> For a more  portable solution, check out VNC.
 
I know... but it is a bugger to set up and I believe it is no longer
freeware (if it ever was), and it does not have the stark simplicity
which screen has... I only need to have a compiled version of screen
on the machine on which I do most of my work and be able to ssh/telnet
to that machine without involving any additional software installations
on other machines.

Axel

John Bokma wrote:
> "T Beck" <Tracy.Beck@Infineon.com> wrote:
>
> >
[snip]
> > alongside of it.  The internet is a free-flowing evolving place... to
> > try to protect one little segment like usenet from ever evolving is
> > just ensuring it's slow death, IMHO.
>
> And if so, who cares? As long as people hang out on Usenet it will stay.
> Does Usenet need al those extra gimmicks? To me, it would be nice if a
> small set would be available. But need? No.
>
> The death of Usenet has been predicted for ages. And I see only more and
> more groups, and maybe more and more people on it.
>
> As long as people who have to say something sensible keep using it, it
> will stay.
>
I suppose I was (as many people on the internet have a bad habit of
doing) being more caustic than was strictly necessary.  I don't really
forsee the death of usenet anytime soon, I just don't think the idea of
it evolving is necessarily bad.  I don't really have alot of vested
interest one way or the other, to be honest, and I'm perfectly happy
with the way it is.

I just think it's a naive view to presume it never will change, because
change is what the internet as a whole was built on.

I think I'll calmly butt out now  ^_^

-- T Beck

Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@web.de> writes:
> Mike Meyer wrote:
>> I'm still waiting for an answer to that one - where's the Java toolkit
>> that handles full-featured GUIs as well as character cell
>> interfaces. Without that, you aren't doing the job that the web
>> technologies do.
> Where is the text-mode browser that would even run part of the web
> apps I use, like home-banking, all web forums, server configuration
> interfaces, etc.?  I think we should leave both these questions
> open. (In fact, as to UIs using Java, blech!  Haven't seen a really
> good one...)

If your web apps are well-written, any of them should work. As
previously stated, Sturgeon's law applies to the web, so chances are
good they aren't well-written.

>>>>> I just wonder who wrote fully standards compliant web browsers for
>>>>> those 90 platforms.
>>>> Nobody. I doubt there's a fully standards compliant web browser
>>> Nobody, huh?  Then how could you run just ANY web application on those
>>> platforms?
>> The same way you write POSIX applications in the face of buggy
>> implementations - by working around the bugs in the working part of
>> the implementation, and using conditional code where that makes a
>> serious difference.
> But as soon as some user of platform 54 tries your website, she'll
> encounter some weird behavior without even knowing why.  And maybe so
> will you, especially if you don't have that platform there for
> testing. I don't understand how this web thing changes anything...

The only difference is that the user of Platform 54 has a chance to
use your app. Sure, it may not work because that platforms bugs are
radically different from the bugs in the platforms you tested
on. Raising the possibility of your app working from "no way in hell"
to "maybe" is significant.

> With POSIX at least you have a real bug-report for the guy responsible
> for it.  If a platform keeps being buggy, with no fixes coming, screw
> them.  Every user will see that sooner or later, and these platforms
> die.  Even Windows is quite stable/reliable after 10+ years NT!

You do? All your porters reliably give you bug reports? Can I have
some?

>>>> available for *any* platform, much less any non-trivial collection of
>>>> them. You write portable web applications to the standards, and design
>>>> them to degrade gracefully. Then you go back and work around any new
>>> Oh right, they degrade gracefully.  So without Javascript or cookies
>>> (the former is often not implemented) you get a HTML page with an
>>> error notice -- if you're lucky.
>> You left off the important part of what I had to say - that the
>> application be written by a moderately competent web author.
> But if you can cater for all kinds of sub-platforms, then why not just
> provide a CLI as well as those GUI interfaces, when we're duplicating
> work to begin with? ;)

Because I'd rather not duplicate the work.

>>> A server AND client for a simple protocol designed for its task
>>> (i.e. not FTP for instance) can be implemented in much less work than
>>> even designing even part of a web application backend that does that
>>> kind of stuff.
>> Well, if it that easy (and web applications are dead simple), it
>> should be done fairly frequently. Care to provide an example?
>
> We have all the web standards, with various extensions over the
> years. Some FTP clients even don't crash if they see that some server
> doesn't yet support the extension from RFC XY1234$!@.  Then there's
> tons of inter-application traffic in XML already, growing fast.  Then
> there are s-expressions (Lisp XML if you want).  Then probably
> thousands of ad-hoc line-based text protocols, but I don't know how
> well they can be extended.  There's CORBA.  Most web standards are
> simple, at least if you would subtract the weird stuff (and IMHO there
> should be new versions of everything with the crap removed).  XML is
> somewhat simple, just hook libxml.

These don't answer the question. Maybe because I didn't explain it
fully. Do you have an example of an application that implements a
simple protocol along with a client and server where HTTP+HTML were
considered as an alternative, and rejected as "more difficult" than
the path actually chosen?

> There's NNTP.  There's RSS.  There's Atom.  The latter two emerged
> quite painlessly, even though you could maybe use some website for
> what they provide.  But this way you have lots of clients for lots of
> platforms already.

NNTP predates HTTP. Atom (and I assume RSS) uses HTTP as a transport,
so there's no new protocol invovled - just a new file format.

>>>> You think you're done. A lot of developers think you can stop with
>>>> the
>>>> first one or two. You're all right for some applications. For others,
>>>> you're not.  Personally, I like applications that run on all the
>>>> platforms I use - and your set doesn't cover all three of those
>>>> systems.
>>> Ok, I'd be interested to hear what those are.  VMS, RiscOS, Mac OS 9...?
>> FreeBSD, OS X and a Palm Vx.
> Didn't I say, a GUI for the Mac, for X11, and Windows?  That only
> leaves out the Palm.  I heard they aren't too hard to program for,
> either.  But I haven't heard of a really decent browser for pre-OS5
> PalmOS (not sure about OS5).

There are number of different browsers available for the pre OS5
Palms. They're more than adequate for the tools I want to use.  In
particular, Palm.net was built on HTML. On the palm side, you
"compiled" a set of HTML files to create an application. Requests for
remote objects went through a proxy that compressed them to save
bandwidth. Very strange stuff.

>>> If a system's scheduler, or select implementation sucks, though, I'd
>>> complain to the vendor or simply abandon the platform for
>>> another. Competition is good :)
>> Complaining to the vendor doesn't always get the bug fixed. And
>> refusing to support a platform isn't always an option. Sometimes, you
>> have to byte the bullet and work around the bug on that platform.
> Sure, but you can tell your customers that unfortunately their system
> vendor refuses to fix a bug and ask THEM to ask that vendor.  Boy,
> will they consider another platform in the future, where bugs do get
> fixed ;)

Yup. You and that platform vendor are no win the set of vendors that
don't fix bugs. Personally, I'd rather provide a workaround and keep
the customer.

>>>> same thing applies to threads, except such code typically includes a
>>>> third option of not using threads at all. And so on.
>>> Well, who doesn't do threads after several years of POSIX IMHO can't
>>> be taken seriously.  Ok, the BSDs didn't until recently, but those are
>>> volunteer projects.
>> Not all platforms are POSIX. If you're ok limiting your application
>> to
>> a small subset of the total number of platforms available, then
>> there's no advantage to using web technologies. Some of us aren't
>> satisifed with that, though.
> Sure.  You have to look where your users are.  Chances are that with
> obscure systems they can't use most web-apps either.

Right. Chances are they can only use well-written ones. If you write
those, your stuff will stand out for them.

>> Well, marking up text is a pretty poor way to describe a UI - but
>> anything that is going to replace web technologies has to have a
>> media-independent way to describe the UI. One of the things that made
>> the web take off early was that anyone with a text editor could create
>> web pages. I think that's an important property to keep - you want the
>> tools that people use to create applications be as portable/flexible
>> as the applications. Since most GUI's are written in some programming
>> language or another, and most programming langauges are still flat
>> text, a GUI description as flat text exists for most GUIs, so this
>> requirement isn't a handicap.
> That's true, though I think the future of development lies in
> overcoming that program-code-as-text thing (NOT visual programming,
> just tool-based, structured).  Smalltalk did it decades ago.

Last time I looked at smalltalk, it still presented program code as
text. So I think you need to clarify what you mean.

>> You don't have to guess - finding examples of XUL isn't hard at all. I
>> think XML gets used in a lot of places where it isn't appropriate. One
>> of the few places where it is appropriate is where you want a file
>> format that lots of independent implementations are going to be
>> reading. This could well be one of those times.
> Maybe, but for applications that aren't predominantly concerned about
> text, I'd really rather use a structured data type (like
> s-expressions), not text markup like XML.  For hypertext, XHTML is
> fine, though, if a bit verbose.

I'd rather use something which has a formal mechanism for defining
what legal documents are. XML provides DTDs. If you really want
S-expressions, we could use an SGML DTD that let you write them, and
get the best of both worlds.

> [follow-up set to comp.unix.programmer]

comp.lang.python (where I've been reading this) added to followups.

> (I just noticed I replaced my sig with something web-related
> yesterday. This is pure coincidence :D)
> -- 
> My ideal for the future is to develop a filesystem remote interface
> (a la Plan 9) and then have it implemented across the Internet as
> the standard rather than HTML.  That would be ultimate cool.

Yeah. I once worked on implementing the Rexx command interface as an
internet protocol. It doesn't have the coolness factor of Plan 9's
filesystem command interfaces, but it's not far from it.

           <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Mike Meyer wrote:
> If your web apps are well-written, any of them should work. As
> previously stated, Sturgeon's law applies to the web, so chances are
> good they aren't well-written.

:)

>> But as soon as some user of platform 54 tries your website, she'll
>> encounter some weird behavior without even knowing why.  And maybe so
>> will you, especially if you don't have that platform there for
>> testing. I don't understand how this web thing changes anything...
> 
> The only difference is that the user of Platform 54 has a chance to
> use your app. Sure, it may not work because that platforms bugs are
> radically different from the bugs in the platforms you tested
> on. Raising the possibility of your app working from "no way in hell"
> to "maybe" is significant.

Ok, there's a chance...

>> With POSIX at least you have a real bug-report for the guy responsible
>> for it.  If a platform keeps being buggy, with no fixes coming, screw
>> them.  Every user will see that sooner or later, and these platforms
>> die.  Even Windows is quite stable/reliable after 10+ years NT!
> 
> You do? All your porters reliably give you bug reports? Can I have
> some?

No, I mean, when you compile something on POSIX and it doesn't work, you 
have a bug to report.  Of course many vendors might ignore them, and 
often don't send you any feedback at all (unfortunately), probably 
because contact between the company's programmer and you is considered 
bad for some reason (I'd consider it good support).

> These don't answer the question. Maybe because I didn't explain it
> fully. Do you have an example of an application that implements a
> simple protocol along with a client and server where HTTP+HTML were
> considered as an alternative, and rejected as "more difficult" than
> the path actually chosen?

No, because I don't know who considered HTTP+HTML before going the other 
way.  HTTP certainly is used increasingly (for XML transfers, WebDAV, 
RSS, ...), because it's quite simple widely implemented.  But as I said, 
there's RSS as a new standard, there's DAV and others.  They don't use 
HTML, because custom protocols can be easy but have advantages.  I guess 
it differs.  Some applications make a lot of sense in a hypertext 
context; others don't.

>> There's NNTP.  There's RSS.  There's Atom.  The latter two emerged
>> quite painlessly, even though you could maybe use some website for
>> what they provide.  But this way you have lots of clients for lots of
>> platforms already.
> 
> NNTP predates HTTP. Atom (and I assume RSS) uses HTTP as a transport,
> so there's no new protocol invovled - just a new file format.

Yes.  I consider HTML a kind of protocol in that sense, though.  It's a 
format, and it needs interpretation, too.

>> Sure, but you can tell your customers that unfortunately their system
>> vendor refuses to fix a bug and ask THEM to ask that vendor.  Boy,
>> will they consider another platform in the future, where bugs do get
>> fixed ;)
> 
> Yup. You and that platform vendor are no win the set of vendors that
> don't fix bugs. Personally, I'd rather provide a workaround and keep
> the customer.

Short-term definitely.  Long-term I'd try to migrate the customer 
(depending on how much influence I have in their IT context).

>>> Not all platforms are POSIX. If you're ok limiting your application
>>> to
>>> a small subset of the total number of platforms available, then
>>> there's no advantage to using web technologies. Some of us aren't
>>> satisifed with that, though.
>> Sure.  You have to look where your users are.  Chances are that with
>> obscure systems they can't use most web-apps either.
> 
> Right. Chances are they can only use well-written ones. If you write
> those, your stuff will stand out for them.

Very good point.  You give me back my faith in web-apps ;)

>> That's true, though I think the future of development lies in
>> overcoming that program-code-as-text thing (NOT visual programming,
>> just tool-based, structured).  Smalltalk did it decades ago.
> 
> Last time I looked at smalltalk, it still presented program code as
> text. So I think you need to clarify what you mean.

You have class and method browsers, while most Java and C code is still 
edited file-wise (though with options to hide methods except for their 
declaration header).  I think it makes sense to ignore the file thing 
and just use browsers like that (kind of like having every C function in 
one file, but with the headers and visibility of functions managed by 
your IDE/build system, not by you by hand.

>>> You don't have to guess - finding examples of XUL isn't hard at all. I
>>> think XML gets used in a lot of places where it isn't appropriate. One
>>> of the few places where it is appropriate is where you want a file
>>> format that lots of independent implementations are going to be
>>> reading. This could well be one of those times.
>> Maybe, but for applications that aren't predominantly concerned about
>> text, I'd really rather use a structured data type (like
>> s-expressions), not text markup like XML.  For hypertext, XHTML is
>> fine, though, if a bit verbose.
> 
> I'd rather use something which has a formal mechanism for defining
> what legal documents are. XML provides DTDs. If you really want
> S-expressions, we could use an SGML DTD that let you write them, and
> get the best of both worlds.

Well, sometimes, sure.  But quite often I think people don't bother with 
DTDs anyway (and of course you could design a DTD format for sexps and 
write a validator; I'd even guess there exists at least one somewhere 
out there).  Lots of customers will probably ask for XML, so that mostly 
the way to go.

-- 
My ideal for the future is to develop a filesystem remote interface
(a la Plan 9) and then have it implemented across the Internet as
the standard rather than HTML.  That would be ultimate cool.
	Ken Thompson

Chris Head <chris2k01@hotmail.com> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:

>> And workplaces. Some people have more then one computer in the house.
>> My partner can check her email when I had her over the computer. When
>> I want to check my email when she is using it, I have to change the 
>> session, fire up Thunderbird (which eats away 20M), and change the 
>> session back.
>> 
>> [ .. ]
> 
> Hmm. That would just be a matter of preference. Personally I moved my
> Thunderbird profile into a shared directory and pointed everyone at
> it. Now only one login session can run Thunderbird at a time, but any
> login can see everyone's mailboxes.

She uses hotmail, yahoo!, etc. and I don't want her accidently delete my 
email.

>> Most people who use Thunderbird, yes. Different with OE, I am sure.
>> With a thin client *everybody*.
> 
> True. As a programmer I don't usually think about the people who never
> download updates. The way I look at it, if somebody doesn't have the
> latest version, they shouldn't be complaining about a bug.

A lot of non-programmers have no idea that there are bugs in their 
software other then the crashing ones.
 
>> Maybe because a lot of users aren't really heavy users. A nice
>> example (IMO) of a web client that works quite good: webmessenger ( 
>> http://webmessenger.msn.com/ ). It has been some time since I used it
>> the last time, but if I recall correctly I hardly noticed that I was 
>> chatting in a JavaScript pop up window.
> 
> Haven't ever needed to use that program.

Some of my customers use it. It has its uses, especially the block 
option :-D. (I don't believe that being available 24/7 has a positive 
effect on my work).

>> I rather have my email stored locally :-) But several webmail
>> services offer a form to download email.

s/form/way/

> I've not seen a service that allows that. Sounds nice.

IIRC gmail does it.

[ reducing traffic ]
> Eventually you reach the point where it's not bandwidth any more, it's
> server load. All these things like mod_gzip, deltas, and so on add
> server load.

True. On the other hand, servers get more and more powerful.

> As to the point about "page not modified", it's not in the HTML spec,

Hence I wrote:

>> RSS (I have the impression that there is no "page has not been 
>> modified" thing like with HTML,

> content. For best results (due to clock mismatches etc), the client
> should set the If-Modified-Since header to the value of the
> Last-Modified header sent by the server when the page was first
> requested and cached. 

But feed readers, at least the one I have had a look at, seem not to 
support this...

> I think we can agree that in some cases, Webmail is better, and in
> others, clients are better. Much of this will be personal preference,
> and I would like to see ISPs offering both methods of accessing e-mail
> (as mine in fact does - POP3 and Webmail).

Agreed.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

"T Beck" <Tracy.Beck@Infineon.com> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:

[ Death of Usenet has been predicted often ]

> I suppose I was (as many people on the internet have a bad habit of
> doing) being more caustic than was strictly necessary.  I don't really
> forsee the death of usenet anytime soon, I just don't think the idea of
> it evolving is necessarily bad.  I don't really have alot of vested
> interest one way or the other, to be honest, and I'm perfectly happy
> with the way it is.

me too.

> I just think it's a naive view to presume it never will change, because
> change is what the internet as a whole was built on.

I can't think of changes that are coming to Usenet (other then ipv6)

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> "T Beck" <Tracy.Beck@Infineon.com> wrote:
 
>> I suppose I was (as many people on the internet have a bad habit of
>> doing) being more caustic than was strictly necessary.  I don't really
>> forsee the death of usenet anytime soon, I just don't think the idea of
>> it evolving is necessarily bad.  I don't really have alot of vested
>> interest one way or the other, to be honest, and I'm perfectly happy
>> with the way it is.
 
> me too.
 
>> I just think it's a naive view to presume it never will change, because
>> change is what the internet as a whole was built on.
 
> I can't think of changes that are coming to Usenet (other then ipv6)

The old saying holds true - if it is not broken, do not fix it.

Of course what the original poster did not consider is why
the standard line length was laid down... the VT100 terminals
(and related ones) had a line length which was 80 characters
(ok, with some options to switch to 132 characters if I
remember correctly)... and that is the first machine through
which I access Usenet. And the version of vi which I used
at the time was not very good with dealing with long lines.
But it worked.

Axel

axel@white-eagle.invalid.uk wrote:

> Of course what the original poster did not consider is why
> the standard line length was laid down... the VT100 terminals
> (and related ones) had a line length which was 80 characters
> (ok, with some options to switch to 132 characters if I
> remember correctly)... and that is the first machine through
> which I access Usenet. And the version of vi which I used
> at the time was not very good with dealing with long lines.
> But it worked.

Technically there is word wrap, but for a lot of messages using a non-
proportional font, non-wrapped makes a lot of sense (more even), for 
example program listings and ascii art :-D

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
            Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html
                        

Perl's documentation has come of age: http://perldoc.perl.org/

Python morons really need to learn:

=E2=80=A2 ample example codes.

=E2=80=A2 example codes are linked to the appropriate doc location for each
code word in the example.

=E2=80=A2 written in a task-oriented style, or manifest-functionality style.
That is, it does not have fucking pretensions of a computer science
mode or fucking clean aloofness. It either is oriented towards tasks
programers need to do, as in module documentations, or document the
language as it manifestly functions. (e.g. input, output, side effects;
concrete description of object's methods and variables.)

The Python docs (docs.python.org), is organized in some
incomprehensible computer sciency structure that is impossible to find
anything. And the entire doc go to the extra mile to avoid any
task-oriented writing or examples as if those are pests that can lower
their fucking status. And when the Python docs tries to document its
functions, it doesn't talk straight but instead throwing fucking bunch
of abstract objects and models jargons.

--------------
The Perl documentations, at least in its presentation (organization,
focus) and technology (DHTML...) aspects, has come of age.

However, the Perl doc's content and writing per se, remains the worst
garbage possible. (and Python's is in the same ball park) The negative
aspects people want to avoid are:

=E2=80=A2 do not tech geek. Both perlers and pythoners do tech geeking. That
is, mentioning of extraneous jargons, warnings, implementation details,
little style guide here and there, unconscious opportunistic OpenSource
propaganda pitch-ins, historic information provisions, insider jokes,
author masturbation on language design and comparisons... etc. (with
Perl, this may be understandable or irrelevant because it is their
nature and design to be juvenile. They revel in it. But with Python, of
its people's computer sciency aloofness and cleanness pretensions
meanwhile don't really exhibit any ability to think and write better,
are one fucking assholes.)

=E2=80=A2 Do think clearly before writing. Both Perl and Python docs's
writing quality are extremely bad. What they primarily lack is the
ability to think clearly before writing. Perl docs write in the fashion
of happy-go-lucky juvenile ramble, and Pythoner's in the fashion of
computer sciency confoundedness. Both are incomprehensible.

One easy way to test this, is for Pythoners to read Perl docs and vice
versa.

Pythoners will find that, you really don't know what the fuck the
Perlers are talking about. Same with Perler with Python docs. However,
you will not get the same feeling on well written docs, such as Java or
Mathematica. (assume that the people here have been in the programing
industry for several years, and are not familiar with the other
languages in question.)

What the Perlers & Pythoners need to do, is to horn their skills
outside of coding. Study philosophy, study economics, history, social
sciences, and mathematics. Also, study functional programing or hang
out in functional programing communities or hardcore GNU community many
also improve vastly your critical thinking and doc writing abilities.

------------
More about documentation can be found here:
http://www.xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/gubni_papri.html

 Xah
 xah@xahlee.org
=E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/

Rudy Schockaert wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
>     � Do think clearly before writing. 
> 
> </snip>
> 
> You should start thinking before you write something. Do you really 
> think anyone takes you serious the way you talk?
> I haven't seen anything constructive yet from your side. You always have 
> to comment, why don't you start writing documentation yourself if it 
> bothers you so much. Write it the way you think it should be written and 
> show the rest of the community you are capable of doing anything else 
> but fucking qwasting others peoples time.

1. Do not feed the trolls.

2. I offered $100 for a rewrite of the "re" documentation if he could 
persuade 5 regular readers of c.l.py to tell me his version was 
superior. Emails received: 0. 'Nuff said :-)

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006                          www.pycon.org

On Wednesday 21 September 2005 05:41, Xah Lee wrote:
> One easy way to test this, is for Pythoners to read Perl docs and
> vice versa.
>
> Pythoners will find that, you really don't know what the fuck the
> Perlers are talking about. Same with Perler with Python docs.

At the risk of feeding the troll here... point defeated. I learned 
Python before I learned Perl, but consider myself to now be fluent in 
both. And I find the docs for both to be immensely useful and fairly 
well-organized (OK, so sometimes I have to hunt a bit longer than I'd 
like in the Perl docs, but perldoc.perl.org looks promising). And in my 
early stages of Python from C++, and Perl from Python, shell, and C, I 
really didn't have any trouble figuring out what was going on.

So, Guido, Fred Drake, and everyone else involved in writing Python 
docs: done well you have. Keep up the good work. Python IMHO has some 
of the best docs in the open-source world (on a par with Vim).

- Michael

Ed Hotchkiss wrote:
> I'm new to Python, not programming. I agree with the point regarding the 
> interpreter. 

I couldn't (with a quick skimming) find any references to the 
interpreter in the thread, so I'll guess the original assertion was 
something like "showing new-comers the interpreter is stupid and wastes 
their time".

> what is that? who uses that!? 

As a (more than) full time Python programmer, I can say that I use the 
interactive interpreter daily, and it contributes significantly to my 
prototyping of new code and reverse-engineering of existing code.  I 
could imagine that other people might not find it that useful, but the 
"who uses that!?" response is hard for me to understand.
--
Benji York

Ed Hotchkiss wrote:
> I'm new to Python, not programming. I agree with the point regarding the
> interpreter. what is that? who uses that!?

I spend most of my work day at the interpreter. I don't write programs;
I write libraries which I control with the interpreter. It's a
fantastically useful and productive way to work.

> Why are most examples like
> that, rather than executed as .py files?

If all of the examples were .py files, then many of them would have to
have print statements sprinkled through them and a separate block to
show the output. For most of the examples, I'd rather see the input and
output interleaved so I know what corrseponds with what.

> Another problem that I have (which does get annoying after awhile), is
> not using foo and bar. Spam and Eggs sucks. It's not funny, although
> Monty Python does rock. Why not use silly+walks instead.

Is this really a significant problem for you?

-- 
Robert Kern
rkern@ucsd.edu

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
 Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
  -- Richard Harter

Ed Hotchkiss wrote:

> I'm new to Python, not programming. I agree with the point regarding 
> the interpreter. what is that? who uses that!? Why are most examples 
> like that, rather than executed as .py files?

I think showing examples at the Python interpreter prompt is *very* 
helpful and IMHO a preferred method in plenty of cases.  If I'm showing 
someone a piece of code that returns some object the type of which 
you're not really that familiar with, would you rather be running it in 
a script, or on a command prompt (or, my preference is to either copy 
and paste the example to a script an run it with ``python -i`` or paste 
it to an edit in IPython)?  With IPython (or vanilla Python interpreter 
with parse-and-bind tab completion turned on), you can inspect the 
object quite easily.  Again, IMHO, much easier than from a script.

>  
> Another problem that I have (which does get annoying after awhile), is 
> not using foo and bar. Spam and Eggs sucks. It's not funny, although 
> Monty Python does rock. Why not use silly+walks instead.

Eh.  Life's too short for me to get up in a roar about such as this.  
And Python's too good of a language for me to be overly bothered by 
example naming conventions.  YMMV.

>  
> ***/me puts on Monty Python and turns the computer off***
>  
> -edward

Jeremy Jones wrote:
> Ed Hotchkiss wrote:
> 
> 
>>I'm new to Python, not programming. I agree with the point regarding 
>>the interpreter. what is that? who uses that!? Why are most examples 
>>like that, rather than executed as .py files?
> 
> 
> I think showing examples at the Python interpreter prompt is *very* 
> helpful and IMHO a preferred method in plenty of cases.  If I'm showing 
> someone a piece of code that returns some object the type of which 
> you're not really that familiar with, would you rather be running it in 
> a script, or on a command prompt (or, my preference is to either copy 
> and paste the example to a script an run it with ``python -i`` or paste 
> it to an edit in IPython)?  With IPython (or vanilla Python interpreter 
> with parse-and-bind tab completion turned on), you can inspect the 
> object quite easily.  Again, IMHO, much easier than from a script.
> 
> 
>> 
>>Another problem that I have (which does get annoying after awhile), is 
>>not using foo and bar. Spam and Eggs sucks. It's not funny, although 
>>Monty Python does rock. Why not use silly+walks instead.
> 
> 
> Eh.  Life's too short for me to get up in a roar about such as this.  
> And Python's too good of a language for me to be overly bothered by 
> example naming conventions.  YMMV.
> 
Jim Hugunin's keynote speech at this year's PyCon was accompanied by a 
projection if his interactive interpreter session, and I know I wasn't 
alone in finding this a convincing example of Microsoft's (well, Jim's, 
really) full integration of Python into the .net framework.

Modules are good, but the interactive interpreter is a brilliant way to 
show off what modules can do.

As for "Why not foo and bar rather than spam and eggs?", all I can think 
of to say is "Get over it".

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006                          www.pycon.org

"Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> writes:
[ the usual ]

         +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
         |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
         |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
         |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
         |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
         |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
         +-------------------+             /         \
                 |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
                 |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
   @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
   \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
    \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
==============================================================

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center             <*>  <http://users.sdsc.edu/~kst>
We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this.

This guy deserves two ascii trolls:

                                  ___________________
                          /|  /|  |                  |
                          ||__||  |      Please do   |
                         /   O O\__         NOT      |
                        /          \     feed the    |
                       /      \     \     trolls     |
                      /   _    \     \ ______________|
                     /    |\____\     \     ||
                    /     | | | |\____/     ||
                   /       \|_|_|/   \    __||
                  /  /  \            |____| ||
                 /   |   | /|        |      --|
                 |   |   |//         |____  --|
          * _    |  |_|_|_|          |     \-/
       *-- _--\ _ \     //           |
         /  _     \\ _ //   |        /
       *  /   \_ /- | -     |       |
         *      ___ c_c_c_C/ \C_c_c_c____________


         +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
         |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
         |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
         |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
         |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
         |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
         +-------------------+             /         \
                 |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
                 |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
   @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
   \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
    \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
==============================================================

-- 
M�ns Rullg�rd
mru@inprovide.com

"M�ns Rullg�rd" <mru@inprovide.com> wrote in message
news:yw1xr7biqpm1.fsf@ford.inprovide.com...
> This guy deserves two ascii trolls:
>
>                                   ___________________
>                           /|  /|  |                  |
>                           ||__||  |      Please do   |
>                          /   O O\__         NOT      |
>                         /          \     feed the    |
>                        /      \     \     trolls     |
>                       /   _    \     \ ______________|
>                      /    |\____\     \     ||
>                     /     | | | |\____/     ||
>                    /       \|_|_|/   \    __||
>                   /  /  \            |____| ||
>                  /   |   | /|        |      --|
>                  |   |   |//         |____  --|
>           * _    |  |_|_|_|          |     \-/
>        *-- _--\ _ \     //           |
>          /  _     \\ _ //   |        /
>        *  /   \_ /- | -     |       |
>          *      ___ c_c_c_C/ \C_c_c_c____________
>
>
>          +-------------------+             .:\:\:/:/:.
>          |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:
>          |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:
>          |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='
>          |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )
>          |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\
>          +-------------------+             /         \
>                  |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \
>                  |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\
>    @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW
>    \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__
>     \||/         |  |         |      jgs (______Y______)
> /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
> ==============================================================

And the Original Troll:

                            s
                           sS.
                        S, $Ss,
                         SSs$$SSs,   s
                          SSs$$SSSSs,Ss.
                           SSs$$SSSS$$ss
                          sSSs$$SSS$$sSSS. s
                         sSSSs$$SSSSS$$sSSs$s,
                       sSSSSs$$SSSSSSS$$sSS$$SS,
                  s sSSSSSSs$$SSSSSSS$$sSSSs$$SSs,
                 sSs$$SSSSs$$SSSSSSS$$sSSSSSS$$SSSSs
               sSSs$$SSSSSS$$SSSSSS$$sSSSSSSs$$SSSSSS,
             sSSSS$$SSSSSSSS$SSSSSSS$$sSSSSSSS$$SSSSSSs,
           sSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSs
          SSSSSSS$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS$$SSSSSSSSSS,
        .SSSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSSSS,
        SSSSSSSSS$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS$$SSSSSSSSSSSSS,
       .SSSSSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
       $SSSSSSSSSSS$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
      .s$$SSSSSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS'
      SSs$$SSSSSSSSSS$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS$s
      SSSSs$$SSSSSSSSS$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS$$sS
      SSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS$$sSSS
      `SSSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS$$sSSSSS
       SSSSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS$$sSSSSSSS'
       `SSSSSSs$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS$$sSSSSSSSS
        SSSSSs$$SSSSSSS%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%SSSSSS$$sSSSSSS'
        `SSSSSSSSSSS%,;mmmmmnv%%;;;%%vnmmmmm;,%SSSSSSSSSS'
         `SSSSSSS.vnnmmvvvvvmmn%%;%%nmmvvvvvmmnnv.SSSSSS'
          `S%%%%,vnnmmvv'  `vmmn%;%nmmv'  `vvmmnnv,%%%S'
          /vmnnnvnnmmmvv,  .vnnnv;vnnnv,  .vvmmmnnvnnnmv\
         ;vm;%%nvnnnnnnnvvvv%;mmmmmmm;%vvvvnnnnnnnvn%%;mv;
         `vmm;%nvnnmmmmnnv%;mmmmmmmmmmm;%vnnmmmmnnvn%;mmv'
           `vmmnvnnmmmmnvv%;m%%mmmmm%%m;%vvnmmmmnnvnmmv'
              \vvvnnnvvv;vvvvvnnnnnnnvvvvv;vvvnnnvvv/
                \vvnnn;vvv;vvvvvvvvvvvvv;vvv;nnnvv/
                    \vvnnnvv;%;%;%;%;%;vvnnnvv/
                    .,v% \nnnmmmmmmmmmnnn/%v,.
                 .,vvnnnvv%;%;%;%;%;%;%;%vvnnvv,.
             .,vvnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnvv,.
           ,vvnnnnnnnnvvvvnnnnnnnnnnnnnnvvvvnnnnnnnnvv,
        ,vvnnnnnnnnnvvmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnmmmmvvnnnnnnnnnvv,
     .vvnnnnnnnnnn `mmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnmmmm' nnnnnnnnnnvv.
   .vvnnnnnnnnnn'  mmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnmm  `nnnnnnnnnnvv.
  vmmvnmmvnmmv'   .nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn,   `vmmnvmmnvmmv
  `nm%nm%nm%'     nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn     `%mn%mn%mn'
                  nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
                  nnnnnnnnnnnnnn(*)nnnnnnnnnnnnn
                 .vmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnmmv,
               .vnvmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnmmmmvnv.
              .vvnvvvmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnmmmmvvvnvv.
              vvnnnnvvvvmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnmmmvvvvvnnnvv
             .vvnnnnnnnvvvvvvvv'   `vvvvvvvnnnnnnnvv.
             vvnnnnnnnnnnnnnnvv     vvnnnnnnnnnnnnnvv
            .vvnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnv     vnnnnnnnnnnnnnnvv.
            vnmnvnmnvnmnvnmnvnm.   .mnvnmnvnmnvnmnvnmv
            vmmm%mmm%mmm%mmm%mmm   mmm%mmm%mmm%mmm%mmm

"Steve Holden" <steve@holdenweb.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.747.1127321959.509.python-list@python.org...
> Jim Hugunin's keynote speech at this year's PyCon was accompanied by a 
> projection if his interactive interpreter session, and I know I wasn't 
> alone in finding this a convincing example of Microsoft's (well, Jim's, 
> really) full integration of Python into the .net framework.
> Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
> Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
> PyCon TX 2006                          www.pycon.org

Which .Net integreation technology are you speaking of?
BTW, PyCon.org seems to be down (at least not reachable from here at the 
moment.)

thanks

Mike wrote:

> > Jim Hugunin's keynote speech at this year's PyCon was accompanied by a
> > projection if his interactive interpreter session, and I know I wasn't
> > alone in finding this a convincing example of Microsoft's (well, Jim's,
> > really) full integration of Python into the .net framework.

>
> Which .Net integreation technology are you speaking of?

http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/ironpython

</F>

Mike wrote:
> "Steve Holden" <steve@holdenweb.com> wrote in message 
> news:mailman.747.1127321959.509.python-list@python.org...
> 
>>Jim Hugunin's keynote speech at this year's PyCon was accompanied by a 
>>projection if his interactive interpreter session, and I know I wasn't 
>>alone in finding this a convincing example of Microsoft's (well, Jim's, 
>>really) full integration of Python into the .net framework.
>>Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
>>Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
>>PyCon TX 2006                          www.pycon.org
> 
> 
> Which .Net integreation technology are you speaking of?
> BTW, PyCon.org seems to be down (at least not reachable from here at the 
> moment.)
> 
> thanks
> 
> 
I spoke of IronPython, which generates CLR code.

I believe pycon.org will shortly re-emerge as a redirect to a 
subdirectory of the python.org domain, but I'm no longer in charge, so 
this may not be accurate. RSN ...

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006                          www.pycon.org

"Steve Holden" <steve@holdenweb.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.836.1127471336.509.python-list@python.org...
> Mike wrote:
>> "Steve Holden" <steve@holdenweb.com> wrote in message 
>> news:mailman.747.1127321959.509.python-list@python.org...
>>
>>>Jim Hugunin's keynote speech at this year's PyCon was accompanied by a 
>>>projection if his interactive interpreter session, and I know I wasn't 
>>>alone in finding this a convincing example of Microsoft's (well, Jim's, 
>>>really) full integration of Python into the .net framework.
>>>Steve Holden       +44 150 684nin 7255  +1 800 494 3119
>>>Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
>>>PyCon TX 2006                          www.pycon.org
>>
>>
>> Which .Net integreation technology are you speaking of?
>> BTW, PyCon.org seems to be down (at least not reachable from here at the 
>> moment.)
>>
>> thanks
>>
>>
> I spoke of IronPython, which generates CLR code.
>
> I believe pycon.org will shortly re-emerge as a redirect to a subdirectory 
> of the python.org domain, but I'm no longer in charge, so this may not be 
> accurate. RSN ...

Glad to see this cool project is still up and running. I downloaded it and 
ran some examples without incident.

Looks like I'm having a bad week w/these URLs, because now I'm not able to 
access http://lists.ironpython.com/listinfo.cgi/users-ironpython.com .
I was hoping to get at the archives to see if I can glean more info before I 
asked too many questions...

Is there any way at the moment to get all the "niceities" w.r.t. development 
w/I.P.? (E.g., code completion, source debugging, etc.)
I assume a Visual Studio plug-in would be natural, but I'm not sure it's 
around yet.

thanks,
m




>
> regards
>  Steve
> -- 
> Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
> Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
> PyCon TX 2006                          www.pycon.org
> 

"Mike" <vimakefile@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:HfydnbcfL6Pnd6TeRVn-uQ@comcast.com...
> Looks like I'm having a bad week w/these URLs, because now I'm not able to 
> access http://lists.ironpython.com/listinfo.cgi/users-ironpython.com .
> I was hoping to get at the archives to see if I can glean more info before 
> I asked too many questions...

It's back up... 

Mike wrote:
> "Mike" <vimakefile@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
> news:HfydnbcfL6Pnd6TeRVn-uQ@comcast.com...
> 
>>Looks like I'm having a bad week w/these URLs, because now I'm not able to 
>>access http://lists.ironpython.com/listinfo.cgi/users-ironpython.com .
>>I was hoping to get at the archives to see if I can glean more info before 
>>I asked too many questions...
> 
> 
> It's back up... 
> 
> 
Speaking of other implementations, I am reminded that Jython has been 
receiving some [PSF-sponsored] attention recently, and wanted to 
persuade as many as possible to give it a try.

It's a couple of months since Brian Zimmer made the release, but I am 
pretty sure that the developers on Jython would be grateful for more 
feedback.

   http://sourceforge.net/projects/jython/

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006                          www.pycon.org

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 08:32:09 -0500, l v <lv@aol.com> wrote or quoted :

>I think e-mail should be text only. 

I disagree.  Your problem  is spam, not HTML. Spam is associated with
HTML and people have in Pavlovian fashion come to hate HTML.

But HTML is not the problem!

That is like hating all choirs because televangelists use them.
  
HTML allows properly aligned table, diagrams, images, use of
colour/fonts to encode speakers. emphasis, hyperlinks.

I try to explain Java each day both on my website on the plaintext
only newsgroups. It is so much easier to get my point across in HTML.

Program listings are much more readable on my website.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 08:15:25 GMT, CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com>
wrote or quoted :

>  It also
>interferes with the use of AsciiArt, 

second only in irritation to spam.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

In comp.lang.c Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:

> I disagree.  Your problem  is spam, not HTML. Spam is associated with
> HTML and people have in Pavlovian fashion come to hate HTML.

I disagree with your disagreement - I at least dislike HTML-only mail
because I often read it in a text-based environment.  I've received a
significant amountof Nigerian spam in plain text lately.

> Program listings are much more readable on my website.

Courier is typically the de facto fixed-width font, and I find that it
is rather too wide a font for program listings.

-- 
Christopher Benson-Manica  | I *should* know what I'm talking about - if I
ataru(at)cyberspace.org    | don't, I need to know.  Flames welcome.

>>I think e-mail should be text only. 
>
>I disagree.  Your problem  is spam, not HTML. Spam is associated with
>HTML and people have in Pavlovian fashion come to hate HTML.
>
>But HTML is not the problem!

HTML enables a heck of a lot of problems:  "web bugs" in email,
links to fake sites that appear as real ones in what shows up
on the screen, Javascript viruses, denial-of-service attacks
(pages that open two windows when you close one), etc.

>That is like hating all choirs because televangelists use them.

I liken it more to hating all viruses because some of them 
install keyloggers.

						Gordon L. Burditt

On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:14:45 GMT, Roedy Green
<my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:

>On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 08:32:09 -0500, l v <lv@aol.com> wrote or quoted :
>
>>I think e-mail should be text only. 
>
>I disagree.  Your problem  is spam, not HTML. Spam is associated with
>HTML and people have in Pavlovian fashion come to hate HTML.
>
>But HTML is not the problem!
>
>That is like hating all choirs because televangelists use them.
>  
>HTML allows properly aligned table, diagrams, images, use of
>colour/fonts to encode speakers. emphasis, hyperlinks.

None of which I want in email. If you're writing a book, write a book,
and either provide a link or attachment.
>
>I try to explain Java each day both on my website on the plaintext
>only newsgroups. It is so much easier to get my point across in HTML.
>
>Program listings are much more readable on my website.

My copy of javac seems to prefer plain text, and so do I ;-)
-- 
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

In article <3nd5k1dhv77j1bs88qjdl66cc0jnattvka@4ax.com>,
   Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:
> >I think e-mail should be text only. 

> I disagree.  Your problem  is spam, not HTML. Spam is associated with
> HTML and people have in Pavlovian fashion come to hate HTML.

> But HTML is not the problem!

HTML in email is a problem. It makes emails much bigger, and senders often
"show off" by including irrelevant things in what they send just because
they can.

> That is like hating all choirs because televangelists use them.

It is not unreasonable to hate choirs singing advertising jingles. Choirs,
like HTML, have their place, but it isn't in emails.

-- 
David Wild using RISC OS on broadband

[Removed X-posting]

On Tue, 2005-10-04 at 17:14 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 08:32:09 -0500, l v <lv@aol.com> wrote or quoted :
> 
> >I think e-mail should be text only. 
> 
> I disagree.  Your problem  is spam, not HTML. Spam is associated with
> HTML and people have in Pavlovian fashion come to hate HTML.
> 
> But HTML is not the problem! 

And guns don't kill people: people kill people!

Seriously though, plain-text is just plain [n]etiquette (for most
newsgroups/mailing lists (at least the technical ones)).  Follow the
rules and avoid becoming a social outcast.  If your particular forum
allows/encourages HTML then <tag> away!  

( This post is neither x-posted, HTML-ized, closed-captioned nor
simulcast in Spanish or HD )

On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:14:45 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 08:32:09 -0500, l v <lv@aol.com> wrote or quoted :
> 
>>I think e-mail should be text only. 
> 
> I disagree.  Your problem  is spam, not HTML. Spam is associated with
> HTML and people have in Pavlovian fashion come to hate HTML.

Nonsense. I came to hate HTML emails long before I received spam.

> But HTML is not the problem!

Yes it is. HTML means that after I've specified my email client use my
favourite font, in the size I like, people send me emails that over-ride
my choice. Invariably they use a font I don't even have. 

Even more invariably, they set the point size directly rather than in
relative terms, and they are on Windows, where point sizes are about 20%
oversized. The consequences of this is that text generated on Windows
appears approximately one fifth smaller on Linux, Macintosh and any other
system that uses proper typesetter's point sizes.

Invariably, the sort of people who use HTML emails end up sending you a
forward of a forward of a forward of a forward of a forward of an email
saying that Bill Gates will give you $10,000 for every copy of the email
you forward, and it will be written in light blue text on a background
picture of bluebirds eating blueberries, and at the end of every paragraph
will be a row of thirty animated smileys.

Almost the biggest predictor of whether I will want to trash somebody's
email without reading it is whether they use HTML mail.

> That is like hating all choirs because televangelists use them.
>   
> HTML allows properly aligned table, diagrams, images, use of
> colour/fonts to encode speakers. emphasis, hyperlinks.
> 
> I try to explain Java each day both on my website on the plaintext only
> newsgroups. It is so much easier to get my point across in HTML.
> 
> Program listings are much more readable on my website.

These are all valid uses of *formatted* text. But HTML is not
formatted text. HTML is a web page markup language -- it is much more than
merely formatting text. That's why HTML can be used for putting web-bugs
into emails, allowing tracking of emails. That's a security hole that
threatens privacy, and is enough of a reason to prohibit HTML emails alone.

Then there is the issue of storage space. I tend to archive emails I
receive. For the same content, HTML mails tend to be anything from four
to one hundred times bigger than the plain text mail would have been,
depending on just how bad the sending mail client is. Regardless of how
cheap hard disks are, how many gigabytes they now hold, if everybody sent
HTML mail, I would be able to store less than one quarter the number of
emails than I could if people just used plain text. That's a significant
drain for businesses that are required by law to store all emails for
seven years (as they are business records).

There is a good argument to be made that mail clients should support a
subset of HTML so as to provide rich text. But even that comes at a
serious cost (animated smileys, urgh) and in my opinion, the good things
you can do with formatted text don't make that cost worth paying.


-- 
Steven.

In article <1127299284.748225.68560@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
 "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> wrote:

<snip lot of drivel>

While I don't like to feed the trolls, I do find his posts amusing. He 
is like a spoilt child seeking attention.

Alan Balmer <albalmer@att.net> wrote or quoted:
> On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:14:45 GMT, Roedy Green

> >I try to explain Java each day both on my website on the plaintext
> >only newsgroups. It is so much easier to get my point across in HTML.
> >
> >Program listings are much more readable on my website.
> 
> My copy of javac seems to prefer plain text, and so do I ;-)

Plain text is a badly impoverished medium for explaining things in.

For one thing, code on my web site tends to get syntax highlighted.
There's no way I could do that in plain text.
-- 
__________
 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim@tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.

In article <Io1x9B.AL8@bath.ac.uk>,
   Tim Tyler <tim@tt1lock.org>  wrote:
> Plain text is a badly impoverished medium for explaining things in.

> For one thing, code on my web site tends to get syntax highlighted.
> There's no way I could do that in plain text.

On your web site the use of additional features is often, but not always,
justified - but we were talking about emails where the use of HTML bulks up
the email for very little gain.

-- 
David Wild using RISC OS on broadband

On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:57:13 -0000, gordonb.u09l7@burditt.org (Gordon
Burditt) wrote or quoted :

>HTML enables a heck of a lot of problems:  "web bugs" in email,
>links to fake sites that appear as real ones in what shows up
>on the screen, Javascript viruses, denial-of-service attacks
>(pages that open two windows when you close one), etc.
>
>>That is like hating all choirs because televangelists use them.
>
>I liken it more to hating all viruses because some of them 
>install keyloggers.

 I take it then you avoid browsers or use Lynx?  No you FIX the
problems rather than wear a hair shirt. Same for email. Why should
rich expressions only be permitted to those with websites.  

Some people use email PRIMARILY for sharing photos.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 09:38:49 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
<steve@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :

>Yes it is. HTML means that after I've specified my email client use my
>favourite font, in the size I like, people send me emails that over-ride
>my choice. Invariably they use a font I don't even have. 

I would suggest then a better solution is to implement CSS in email,
the way you do in browsers to deal with that same problem.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 09:38:49 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
<steve@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :

>Even more invariably, they set the point size directly rather than in
>relative terms, and they are on Windows, where point sizes are about 20%
>oversized.

 that is like giving up Java because there was a bug in the Windows
JVM. FIX THE BUG.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

In article <1pbgk1pbcu3u27vblor052ass03epq5vqr@4ax.com>,
   Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:
> I take it then you avoid browsers or use Lynx?  No you FIX the
> problems rather than wear a hair shirt. Same for email. Why should
> rich expressions only be permitted to those with websites. 
> 

Between consenting adults, yes, but for general use **in emails**, no.

> Some people use email PRIMARILY for sharing photos.

I do, frequently, without any need for HTML.

-- 
David Wild using RISC OS on broadband

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:

> On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 09:38:49 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :
>
>>Yes it is. HTML means that after I've specified my email client use my
>>favourite font, in the size I like, people send me emails that over-ride
>>my choice. Invariably they use a font I don't even have. 
>
> I would suggest then a better solution is to implement CSS in email,
> the way you do in browsers to deal with that same problem.

The only way I've seen a browser fix this is to ignore the clients CSS
completely. That breaks a lot of HTML, becuase CSS has turned "tag
soup" authors into "div soup" authors.

If you've got a browser with a better solution, what's the browser,
and what's the solution?

    <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Mike Meyer wrote:
> If you've got a browser with a better solution, what's the browser,
> and what's the solution?

There is no single solution.

On one side you got control freaks who condemn everyone who dares send 
an email with something other than what you've got your own email set up 
to use. "You dare specify the font sized when I finally figured out that 
10 is just right? Infidel!"

On the other side you got people who would like to have slightly more 
control over their email formatting than the ability to hit enter to 
denote a line break. "Whaddya mean I can't specify bold text to 
emphasize a point?"

As long as you got something called a feature, there will always be 
people who will be able to abuse it.

Now, if you want to get into a big huff because someone you knows use a 
font that is "slightly oversized" because of Windows, then I think you 
missed the point of the email altogether, which was probably to convey a 
message.

Just the same as people that sends bright red text on green background 
seems to miss the whole issue of "appropriate".

It doesn't matter what is used, decided, controlled, allowed, removed, 
whatever. Some people will always like it, some will hate it, some will 
abuse it, but most of all there will always be people that will discuss it.

Hopefully most people will use it for what it is.

In any case, html email is here to stay. Or perhaps I should remove html 
and say "richly formatted", whatever that might mean in the future.

But trying to keep your email world into a pure text-based 
no-formatting-whatsoever world, that's a fantasy bubble that is bound to 
burst, sooner rather than later.

Deal with it.

-- 
Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen
http://usinglvkblog.blogspot.com/
mailto:lasse@vkarlsen.no
PGP KeyID: 0x2A42A1C2

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:

> On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:57:13 -0000, gordonb.u09l7@burditt.org (Gordon
> Burditt) wrote or quoted :
>
>>HTML enables a heck of a lot of problems:  "web bugs" in email,
>>links to fake sites that appear as real ones in what shows up
>>on the screen, Javascript viruses, denial-of-service attacks
>>(pages that open two windows when you close one), etc.
>>
>>>That is like hating all choirs because televangelists use them.
>>
>>I liken it more to hating all viruses because some of them 
>>install keyloggers.
>
>  I take it then you avoid browsers or use Lynx?

It's not quite that bad. You run multiple browsers: your default
browser turns off all the crap that can run code on your machine. You
use a second browser that has most of that turned on, and bookmark the
sites that need those features that you now trust. Maybe your browser
lets you have multiple profiles, in which case you can use those
instead of multiple browsers. Unless your goat browser is IE (or
Mozilla on Unix), you should keep a copy of IE (Mozilla on Unix)
around, with an untouched configuration, for the sites that either
enforce their belief that they only work on IE, or are one of those
rare sats where correctly believe that. Finally, you configure your
mail and news readers to *not* decode MIME messages unless given an
explicit command to do so.

I understand some browsers now let you enable dangers features on a
site-by-site basis. I'll check those out one of these days.

FWIW, I like w3m as a default browser, because it has the ability to
launch external browsers on a page or link.

> No you FIX the problems rather than wear a hair shirt. Same for
> email. Why should rich expressions only be permitted to those with
> websites.

The technial problems have been solved for over a decade. NeXT shipped
systems that used text/richtext, which has none of the problems that
HTML has.  The problems are *social* - you've got to arrange for
people to use mail/news readers that understand a rich text format
that isn't a vector for viruses.

> Some people use email PRIMARILY for sharing photos.

That doesn't take HTML. I get - and send - pictures via email all the
time, with nary a tag of HTML in sight.

      <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:57:13 -0000, gordonb.u09l7@burditt.org (Gordon
Burditt) wrote or quoted :

>
>HTML enables a heck of a lot of problems:  "web bugs" in email,
>links to fake sites that appear as real ones in what shows up
>on the screen, Javascript viruses, denial-of-service attacks
>(pages that open two windows when you close one), etc.

Just how long do you want to stall evolution?  Do you imagine people
200 years from now will be still be using pure ASCII text unable to
find a solution to JavaScript viruses (turn off JS), pop-up( disable
popups) etc.?
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 17:41:38 -0400, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

>If you've got a browser with a better solution, what's the browser,
>and what's the solution?

Try Opera. You can merge the two. 
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 00:03:05 +0200, Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen
<lasse@vkarlsen.no> wrote or quoted :

>On one side you got control freaks who condemn everyone who dares send 
>an email with something other than what you've got your own email set up 
>to use. "You dare specify the font sized when I finally figured out that 
>10 is just right? Infidel!"

This is one of the marvels of CSS once you get the hang of it.  If you
don't like bright red letters on green backgrounds, you can CHANGE
that. You can change the fonts, sizes etc etc. You can if you want get
something very like plain ASCII text.

So from an aesthetic point of view, once people learn how it works,
CSS lets sender and receiver compromise on what the message looks
like. No other medium gives ANY control to the receiver about how a
message is formatted.

One of the most important changes in the ability to select special
fonts for the those without prefect vision and larger fonts.

There is also the philosophical question. When my nephew sends me a
message, do I have a right to warp his intent even if I don't like the
aesthetics?  That is part of his message.

Should my email reader fix the spelling mistakes in the emails sent me
by angry US soldiers?  Or is that part of the message?

There are three different issues getting muddled together:

1. avoiding spam

2. making mail from well meaning but inept friends more readable.

3. what constitutes a good general style for general correspondence.
How should you use rich text appropriately.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:

> On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:57:13 -0000, gordonb.u09l7@burditt.org (Gordon
> Burditt) wrote or quoted :
> 
>>
>>HTML enables a heck of a lot of problems:  "web bugs" in email,
>>links to fake sites that appear as real ones in what shows up
>>on the screen, Javascript viruses, denial-of-service attacks
>>(pages that open two windows when you close one), etc.
> 
> Just how long do you want to stall evolution?  Do you imagine people
> 200 years from now will be still be using pure ASCII text unable to
> find a solution to JavaScript viruses (turn off JS), pop-up( disable
> popups) etc.?

I've already the impression that a lot of people are moving from email to 
IM. I prefer email, but some of my customers prefer IM.

Also, with Unicode support in a plain text environment it's also possible 
to make links to fake sites. It's even possible with pure ASCII I mean:

HTTP://WWW.G00GLE.COM/ or even: http://www.goog1e.com/.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
                                        I ploink googlegroups.com :-)
                        

On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, Roedy Green wrote:

> Some people use email PRIMARILY for sharing photos.

WHat the hell has that got to do with HTML email?  Sending photos
is an example of what attachments are for.

> --
> Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
> http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.
>

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen wrote:

> But trying to keep your email world into a pure text-based
> no-formatting-whatsoever world, that's a fantasy bubble that is bound to
> burst, sooner rather than later.

Not here.  I've configured my email server to reject HTML emails
before I even see them, and more often tham not I'll delete any
others that sneak through the gate.

If people want me to read their email, they should send it to me
in an open, universal format, which for email is plain text.  It's
as simple as that.

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:

> On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 17:41:38 -0400, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote
> or quoted :
>>If you've got a browser with a better solution, what's the browser,
>>and what's the solution?
> Try Opera. You can merge the two. 

Merge the two CSS files? Most browsers do that - that's why they call
them "cascading" style sheets. Got a sample style sheet that you use
that prevernts authors from overriding things?

For the font size problem, Camino has a simple solution: a "minimum
size" for fonts. That's why it's my default OS X browser (well, that
and that Terminal sucks as a scripting tool). I'm not sure you can do
that with CSS.

     <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, Roedy Green wrote:
> 
>> Some people use email PRIMARILY for sharing photos.
> 
> WHat the hell has that got to do with HTML email?

The photo doesn't have to be included (as in attached)? with the email?

> Sending photos
> is an example of what attachments are for.

Yeah, yeah, and 640K is enough for everybody. Same song, different tune.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
                                        I ploink googlegroups.com :-)
                        

Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen wrote:
> 
>> But trying to keep your email world into a pure text-based
>> no-formatting-whatsoever world, that's a fantasy bubble that is bound to
>> burst, sooner rather than later.
> 
> Not here.  I've configured my email server to reject HTML emails
> before I even see them, and more often tham not I'll delete any
> others that sneak through the gate.

Good for you. If I do that, I lose some customers. Your private war is a 
joke, and one day you'll wake up. What a waste of energy.

> If people want me to read their email, they should send it to me
> in an open, universal format, which for email is plain text.  It's
> as simple as that.

Is Unicode allowed, or is 7 bit ASCII the only right way?

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
                                        I ploink googlegroups.com :-)
                        

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
> This is one of the marvels of CSS once you get the hang of it.  If you
> don't like bright red letters on green backgrounds, you can CHANGE
> that. You can change the fonts, sizes etc etc. You can if you want get
> something very like plain ASCII text.

Show us *examples*! Do you create a style sheet for every site you
visit that overrides there classes? What?

> So from an aesthetic point of view, once people learn how it works,
> CSS lets sender and receiver compromise on what the message looks
> like. No other medium gives ANY control to the receiver about how a
> message is formatted.

Sorry, but that's bullshit. The receiver controls the viewer software,
and hence ultimately has complete control over *everything*. If I use
ghostscript as the viewer for ps and pdf files, I can install font map
files to replace all the standardd sans serif fonts with serifed
fonts, and so on. Some viewer applications may require editing the
magic .c, .cpp, etc. configuration files, but that's possible so long
as you're sending something other than pictures of words.

> There is also the philosophical question. When my nephew sends me a
> message, do I have a right to warp his intent even if I don't like the
> aesthetics?  That is part of his message.

If HTML is a medium, only someone really ignorant of the medium will
think that their presentation is preserved. As has been pointed out,
moving the file from Windows to other platforms changes the font
sizes. The physical monitor size, the screen size, the readers window
size, the dpi on the monitor, even the color depth on low-end devices
all change the presentation. The fonts you use may not be installed on
the recipients platform - I particularly like the idea that if you use
a font installed by some application, the only person who'll see it
the way you intended is the guy who bought the other copy of that
application.

So what you're really asking is if you have the right to read his
message on anything but his favorite rendering agent configured the
way he likees it, on his favorite computer configured the way he likes
it.

> Should my email reader fix the spelling mistakes in the emails sent me
> by angry US soldiers?  Or is that part of the message?

I say let Harlan Ellison decide.

> There are three different issues getting muddled together:
>
> 1. avoiding spam

I think what you mean here is "avoiding malware". Spam should be dealt
with before it gets to your mail reader.

> 2. making mail from well meaning but inept friends more readable.
>
> 3. what constitutes a good general style for general correspondence.
> How should you use rich text appropriately.

Well, if you want your presentation preserved, you don't send rich
text, you send pictures of words.

      <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Roedy Green wrote:
> Just how long do you want to stall evolution?  Do you imagine people
> 200 years from now will be still be using pure ASCII text unable to
> find a solution to JavaScript viruses (turn off JS), pop-up( disable
> popups) etc.?

People in their sky-cars turning off JavaScript in their browsers: what
a thought!

But to suggest a seemingly endless list of "user customisations" to
prevent heightened exposure to irritating advertisers, phishing
attempts, malware and so on is to miss the point, just as Bill Gates
smugly does so (and I say this at the risk of sounding like a certain
other "contributor" to this newsgroup) by saying that computer software
isn't good enough and could be better/more secure/more stable, despite
running a software monopoly for the past decade or so and having an
unparalleled opportunity to do something about the situation instead of
just "milking it".

Every so often, discussions like these remind me of some ancient work I
once did on the topic of avoiding some of the issues raised by mobile
code and mobile content. Despite the likes of Mr Gates who will
probably try and persuade you that we're on the cutting edge
(presumably before demanding a premium to "sort it all out"), many of
the issues have been known about for a good while. Of course, that
doesn't mean that the software industry is in any hurry to do anything
about it.

Paul

"John Bokma" <john@castleamber.com> wrote in message 
news:Xns96E9BE10C8F6Dcastleamber@130.133.1.4...
> Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen wrote:
>>
>>> But trying to keep your email world into a pure text-based
>>> no-formatting-whatsoever world, that's a fantasy bubble that is bound to
>>> burst, sooner rather than later.
>>
>> Not here.  I've configured my email server to reject HTML emails
>> before I even see them, and more often tham not I'll delete any
>> others that sneak through the gate.
>
> Good for you. If I do that, I lose some customers. Your private war is a
> joke, and one day you'll wake up. What a waste of energy.
>

LOL! Maybe this inane thread can finally die now...

Matt 

Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen <lasse@vkarlsen.no> writes:
> But trying to keep your email world into a pure text-based
> no-formatting-whatsoever world, that's a fantasy bubble that is bound
> to burst, sooner rather than later.

I read mail over an ssh connection to a Unix shell.  I have no easy
way to read html email with a graphics browser.  I occasionally get
html email that I want to read.  I save it in a file and read it with
lynx, which so far works perfectly well.  I find html email to be a
PITA and as someone else said, html in email is an almost sure sign
that it's a message that I want to trash without reading it.  But for
the rare exceptions, lynx as far as I know is 100% w3 standards
compliant, and it's plain text (and it works on terminals with no font
control) .  So there's no incompatibility between html and pure
text-based display.

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> writes:
> I read mail over an ssh connection to a Unix shell.  I have no easy
> way to read html email with a graphics browser.

You don't need a grahics browser - you just need a browser. I read
mail in emacs, and use emacs-w3m to view html in the mailer. Works for
most things, and doesn't have the nasty side effect of letting the
sender know I read it by fetching images from their web site.

> I occasionally get html email that I want to read.  I save it in a
> file and read it with lynx, which so far works perfectly well.  I
> find html email to be a PITA and as someone else said, html in email
> is an almost sure sign that it's a message that I want to trash
> without reading it.

Unfortunately, I've found that HTML email comes in two flavors: That
which sets content-type to text/html in the headers, and that which
sets it to some form of multipart in the headers. I used to bounce all
mail of either form. Then I discovered that the AOL client - used by
my relatives - could *not* be set to not send HTML email. At least it
sends text/plain as well. On investigation, most legit email does
sends multipart/mixed, so I only reject mail whose sole content is
text/html.

        <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> writes:
> > I read mail over an ssh connection to a Unix shell.  I have no easy
> > way to read html email with a graphics browser.
> 
> You don't need a grahics browser - you just need a browser.

Right, precisely.  I use lynx, as I explained.  It renders the html as
plain text and doesn't violate any standards by doing so.  The html is
nothing but a pain in the neck that lynx removes, so they may as well
send text email in the first place.  Lynx shows that all the fancy
html formatting crap is just advisory at best.  It's perfectly fine
for a browser to ignore it.

>>HTML enables a heck of a lot of problems:  "web bugs" in email,
>>links to fake sites that appear as real ones in what shows up
>>on the screen, Javascript viruses, denial-of-service attacks
>>(pages that open two windows when you close one), etc.
>>
>>>That is like hating all choirs because televangelists use them.
>>
>>I liken it more to hating all viruses because some of them 
>>install keyloggers.
>
> I take it then you avoid browsers or use Lynx?  

Last time I checked, it was impossible to send me an unsolicited
web site.  It is trivial, however, to send unsolicited email or
post unsolicited articles on USENET.  

No, I don't trust Lynx to read email or USENET articles.

>No you FIX the
>problems 

And how do you fix the problem of unsolicited USENET articles?
(*ALL* of them are unsolicited to someone).  Or unsolicited
email?  

>rather than wear a hair shirt. Same for email. Why should
>rich expressions only be permitted to those with websites.  

Web sites can't send you stuff unsolicited, and most of them have
enough stake in their reputation to keep the obnoxious stuff off
of them, since if they have viruses chances are you can't trust
buying anything from them.  "web bugs" aren't a problem with web
sites since the server logs log *all* the hits, and they don't have
to use hidden ones.  And I don't visit web sites without a good
reason to do so (that excludes seeing the URL in some SPAM).  Oh,
yes, and Javascript is turned off.

>Some people use email PRIMARILY for sharing photos.

And what does sharing photos (attachments) have to do with HTML?
USENET text groups are not the appropriate place for photos.

					Gordon L. Burditt

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:33:13 GMT, Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com>
wrote or quoted :

>WHat the hell has that got to do with HTML email?  Sending photos
>is an example of what attachments are for.

Normally you send photos to grandma with captions under each photo.
That is far more convenient for the technopeasant receiver than
dealing with multiple attachments.

People keep thinking of email as a techie preserve.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On 8 Oct 2005 23:39:27 GMT, John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote or
quoted :

>Yeah, yeah, and 640K is enough for everybody. Same song, different tune.

For how long.  Surely attachments are a stop gap. Can you imagine
people sharing images that way 100 years from now?

Why should we wait for the future?  The problems blocking easy to use
photo sharing are not technological but social.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 04:44:25 -0000, gordonb.7vhwj@burditt.org (Gordon
Burditt) wrote or quoted :

>And how do you fix the problem of unsolicited USENET articles?
>(*ALL* of them are unsolicited to someone).  Or unsolicited
>email?  

Read my essay.
http://mindprod.com/projects.html/mailreadernewsreader.html

I talk around those problems.

It requires a fresh start.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 19:56:50 -0400, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

>Show us *examples*! Do you create a style sheet for every site you
>visit that overrides there classes? What?

Why don't you download a copy of Opera, see
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/opera.html

Then try out the feature.  Click View | style | user
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:35:40 GMT, Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com>
wrote or quoted :

>If people want me to read their email, they should send it to me
>in an open, universal format, which for email is plain text.  It's
>as simple as that.

This is pulling a King Canute.  There is not even a mechanism in email
protocols to warn your correspondents of your demand.  I have been
bugging Eudora for years for at least a bit in the address book to
record the recipient's preference for plain or formatted emails. They
have so far ignored me.

There is nothing wrong with formatted text. You are confusing
formatted text with spam.

You think you hated formatted text, but you really hate spam.

If your lover sent you a message with photo, and even musical
accompaniment, I doubt you would feel offended.  It is the CONTENT
bugging you, not the HTML.

You imagine that the two are inexplicably linked. That is just because
the technology is immature. There is no fundamental reason that
formatted  spam should have an easier time penetrating your defenses
than plain text spam.  I am using Spamnix.  It think it leaks about
50/50 formatted and plain text spam.

Eudora warns you of deceptive links in HTML. There are many more such
things that have yet to be done to deal with malicious emails.  I
think we should focus on those rather than reverting to the days of
the TTY.I don't think it would buy you much. Formatted emails can't
hurt you if you don't allow them to automatically run any code.  It is
unfair to blame formatting for the foolish practice off allowing
untrusted code to run without even an ok.  They have nothing to do
with each other.





-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On 08 Oct 2005 18:59:39 -0700, Paul Rubin
<http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote or quoted :

>
>I read mail over an ssh connection to a Unix shell.  I have no easy
>way to read html email with a graphics browser. 

So the rest of the world should forgo rich communication because of
your obsolete software?  How could anything every evolve with that
attitude?
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Mike Meyer:
> Paul Rubin:

>> I read mail over an ssh connection to a Unix shell.  I have no easy
>> way to read html email with a graphics browser.
>
> You don't need a grahics browser - you just need a browser. I read
> mail in emacs, and use emacs-w3m to view html in the mailer. Works for
> most things, and doesn't have the nasty side effect of letting the
> sender know I read it by fetching images from their web site.
>
>> I occasionally get html email that I want to read.  I save it in a
>> file and read it with lynx, which so far works perfectly well.  I
>> find html email to be a PITA and as someone else said, html in email
>> is an almost sure sign that it's a message that I want to trash
>> without reading it.
>
> Unfortunately, I've found that HTML email comes in two flavors: That
> which sets content-type to text/html in the headers, and that which
> sets it to some form of multipart in the headers. I used to bounce all
> mail of either form. Then I discovered that the AOL client - used by
> my relatives - could *not* be set to not send HTML email. At least it
> sends text/plain as well. On investigation, most legit email does
> sends multipart/mixed, so I only reject mail whose sole content is
> text/html.

Let procmail make all those decisions and transformations for you.

I have a maildir called 'raw' where I keep a copy of all non-spammish
mail.

Copies of the same messages also get delivered in the right mailboxes,
by procmail.
A message that contains only html, is piped though lynx -dump -stdin.
A message containing both HTML and a plain/text-part, is de-mime-d,
leaving only the plain/text-part (unless that part contains only a silly
remark).
Footers and long signatures are limited or even deleted. Etc., etc. (I
like my mail cooked.)

One of the reasons that I started with Perl, is that I want to rewrite
procmail in Perl.

-- 
Affijn, Ruud    <http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh770781&cmd=tunermini>

"Gewoon is een tijger."

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:

> On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 04:44:25 -0000, gordonb.7vhwj@burditt.org (Gordon
> Burditt) wrote or quoted :
>
>>And how do you fix the problem of unsolicited USENET articles?
>>(*ALL* of them are unsolicited to someone).  Or unsolicited
>>email?  
>
> Read my essay.
> http://mindprod.com/projects.html/mailreadernewsreader.html
>
> I talk around those problems.

Actually, you present a design that forces a solution that makes them
do what you want down their throats, never mind what they want, or
what they've been doing. It shows an amazing ignorance about the
internet and how people behave on it. Like most antispam proposals, it
won't actually stop spam, just force spammers to concentrate on
different channels. You seem to have randomly broken quoting for
people who download mail and read it offline, and for any medium
that's unreliable or doesn't reliably deliver messages "in order" -
which includes mail and news.  Virus writers will love the ability to
change peoples address books remotely. The problem of differing
character sets is technically solved. Practically, the solution
doesn't work because people implementing the software ignore the
standards. What's your server going to do when it gets messages with
characters in them that aren't valid in the charset that it's declared
as being? Better yet, what's it going to do when the characters are
valid, but the declared charset isn't the one the author actually
used? You implementation sketch only covers the client talking to the
first server (in that it requires the client to encrypt a challange
phrase with the private key belonging the email id, which is
presumably what 2822 uses for the envelope sender). Most mail on the
internet goes through at least two servers, and news is much
worse. For instance, your messages apparently passed through 10
servers getting to me. You really have to deal with store and forward,
or convince a large number of corporations that potentially hostile
users should be allowed to talk directly to their mail servers, which
isn't very likely. Kudos for recognizing that spam needs to be dealt
with by people with guns, but you lose half of them for making ISPS
liable for it.

I also read the comment about wanting an automated "Ask them to run my
browser in my favorite configuration", which is equally naive. A lot
of sites have such cruft on them already. I find them funny - I surf
the web on three different platforms, none of them Windows. Any
pointer to download a new browser or plugin for Windows just impresses
me with the authors lack of skills. The only browser I know of that
runs on all three platforms is Opera, and it's something radically
different on one of the three. Even should you get the platform right,
almost nobody is going to bother upgrading following the download
links. The very small percentage of users who are real geeks will
silently thank you for the notice, and update their software. Most
users will ignore it so long as the page isn't obviously broken. For
those for whom it's broken, all but small percentage will simply find
some other site to visit. I'd suggest that anyone thinking about writing

> It requires a fresh start.

You think you're the only person - and probably not the first - to
propose such? People a lot smarter than either of us, with a lot more
pull and a lot more reason to want it to happen have worked on this -
and it ain't happened yet. I wouldn't bet on it happening anytime
soon.

        <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 20:43:12 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:

>>I liken it more to hating all viruses because some of them 
>>install keyloggers.
> 
>  I take it then you avoid browsers or use Lynx?  No you FIX the
> problems rather than wear a hair shirt. 

No, I avoid browsers that are broken, e.g. those that have ActiveX. If
people send a link to a website that includes ActiveX, then no matter how
great the advantages, the disadvantages are more.

Likewise I avoid emails that are broken. If it looks like it will contain
web-bugs, javascript exploits, or badly formatted unreadable text, then I
avoid any mail client that can't display it in plain text.

And by "looks like", I mean "contains any HTML".

> Same for email. Why should
> rich expressions only be permitted to those with websites.  

Because the disadvantages of HTML email are greater than the advantages.
If people mail me HTML mail, I make a snap judgement -- trash it or read
it? It is usually trash it. There are only so many emails with purple text
on indigo backgrounds that a man can read before deciding that the
tasteless, clueless masses should never been given the ability to format
text.

> Some people use email PRIMARILY for sharing photos.

Which you can do by attaching the photo to the email. Even mutt or pine
can attach binary files to an email.


-- 
Steven.

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 20:44:12 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:

> On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 09:38:49 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :
> 
>>Yes it is. HTML means that after I've specified my email client use my
>>favourite font, in the size I like, people send me emails that over-ride
>>my choice. Invariably they use a font I don't even have. 
> 
> I would suggest then a better solution is to implement CSS in email,
> the way you do in browsers to deal with that same problem.

Are you volunteering? Good. Let me know when your done, I'd love to see it.

In the meantime, I'll continue viewing emails in plain text, and if they
contain HTML I'll choose for myself whether to render it, or trash it, or
manually read through the code looking for content.


-- 
Steven.

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 22:39:38 GMT
Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:

> So from an aesthetic point of view, once people learn how it works,
> CSS lets sender and receiver compromise on what the message looks
> like. No other medium gives ANY control to the receiver about how a
> message is formatted.

My mail reader renders HTML as text. Usually, that gets the message
through without the impediments the sender included.
Of course one can render anything in one's computer exactly the way one
wants, given comptence and time. Mutual agreement on a CSS is possible,
but for widespread usage it  needs to be a standardised CSS, and then
we're back in the featuritis spiral. 

> One of the most important changes in the ability to select special
> fonts for the those without prefect vision and larger fonts.

That's exactly why I don't want people to muck with the presentation of
an email. I've set up my machine to render standard ASCII emails
execatly the way I want, with the font that I can read, in a size that
optimises ease and visible text. I don't care that someone would like
to inline a 5000x3000 JPEG from their 15 megapixel camera, or render
text in white on black, or any other silly format. If they want me to
see a document in _exactly_ the way they prepared it, let them use PDF.
It's there, and it works well.

> There is also the philosophical question. When my nephew sends me a
> message, do I have a right to warp his intent even if I don't like the
> aesthetics?  That is part of his message.

That question is answered above - if your nephew wants you to see
exactly what he produced, let him use the format specifically designed
for the purpose. And yes, philosophically speaking the recipient can do
anything they like with the message, including not reading it at all.
Anything else would be preposterous. 
 
> Should my email reader fix the spelling mistakes in the emails sent me
> by angry US soldiers?  Or is that part of the message?

If you want it to do that, yes. Wheter including the corrected message
in the reply is a good idea is another question (mostly related to how
the relation is, how it should be, and how big the soldier in question
is).

> There are three different issues getting muddled together:
> 
> 1. avoiding spam

Which happens to use HTML to obfuscate the message and avoid getting
caught by filters. 

> 2. making mail from well meaning but inept friends more readable.

Who happen to use HTML because they don't have a clue.

> 3. what constitutes a good general style for general correspondence.
> How should you use rich text appropriately.

Which happens to be largely superfluous as far as conveying intent is
concerned. 

Email works well without rich text, especially when combined with
attachments that use a format sender and recipient have agreed to. 
We don't need more, and we shouldn't assume that more complex
technology equates to an improvement. Example: it's not because we can
use a gazillion typefaces in pastel colours that documents that we
should do so. 

Take care,
-- 
Stefaan
-- 
As complexity rises, precise statements lose meaning,
and meaningful statements lose precision. -- Lotfi Zadeh 

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:

> On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 19:56:50 -0400, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote
> or quoted :
>
>>Show us *examples*! Do you create a style sheet for every site you
>>visit that overrides there classes? What?
>
> Why don't you download a copy of Opera, see
> http://mindprod.com/jgloss/opera.html

What makes you think I don't have a copy of Opera? Just so happens
I've got a registred copy on my newest computer.

> Then try out the feature.  Click View | style | user

My copy of Opera doesn't have that menu entry. I suspect you're making
platform-specific suggestions.

Trying it on a different platform, it looks like it does what I said
earlier: user mode simply disables the authors style sheets. None of
the "merging" you suggested was going on is actually happening

Can you demonstrate this "merging" you talked about? For example, show
me how to get the "Opera help" page to display with the authors layout
but my fonts.

    <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 20:44:44 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:

> On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 09:38:49 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :
> 
>>Even more invariably, they set the point size directly rather than in
>>relative terms, and they are on Windows, where point sizes are about 20%
>>oversized.
> 
>  that is like giving up Java because there was a bug in the Windows
> JVM. FIX THE BUG.

Only Microsoft can do that. They designed their font system in such a way
that it ignored real typesetters measurements, probably so it would be
deliberately incompatible with font sizes on the Mac. Either that or just
through incompetence. Now, it is almost certainly unfixable in Win9x and
XP -- it would break too many people's Word documents and web pages.
Microsoft could maybe fix it in Vista, if they care too. As if it matters
what they put in Vista.

But that isn't going to stop lusers setting the font size to 5pt or 55pt
just because they think it is kewl. Until we can send fatal electric
shocks through the Internet, there is little we can do to stop that.


-- 
Steven.

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
> >I read mail over an ssh connection to a Unix shell.  I have no easy
> >way to read html email with a graphics browser. 
> 
> So the rest of the world should forgo rich communication because of
> your obsolete software?  How could anything every evolve with that
> attitude?

There is nothing obsolete about lynx.  It completely conforms to the
w3 standard.  Anyway, email is a text medium and attempts to "evolve"
it almost always make it worse.

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
> There is no fundamental reason that formatted spam should have an
> easier time penetrating your defenses than plain text spam.

Formatted spam can include pictures of words. That's a common spam
tactic - send a multipart/alternative with a text part that look like
a letter from aunt jane - and mention that you're sending a
picture. The picture part is basically a jpeg of a flyer for the spam
companies product.

If you've got a spam filter that can determine that a picture of words
is spam, I'd like to know about it.

   <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 00:03:05 +0200, Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen wrote:

> Now, if you want to get into a big huff because someone you knows use a 
> font that is "slightly oversized" because of Windows, then I think you 
> missed the point of the email altogether, which was probably to convey a 
> message.

Talk about missing the point, pun intended. The point isn't that there is
some tiny difference in font sizes. It is that small font sizes which are
just readable under Windows are unreadably small on Linux and Mac.

If you want to convey a message, it helps if the recipient can actually
read the damn thing without having to get out a magnifying glass.


-- 
Steven.

Oh, and another point...

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 00:03:05 +0200, Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen wrote:

> But trying to keep your email world into a pure text-based 
> no-formatting-whatsoever world, that's a fantasy bubble that is bound to 
> burst, sooner rather than later.

Nonsense. I can easily set up a filter to dump non-plain text email
straight into the trash. If I choose, I never need see a HTML mail. Ever.

In fact, since the single strongest predictor of spam is the use of HTML,
I predict that a lot more people than you think have HTML emails either
deleted or dumped in a spam folder.


-- 
Steven.

"Dr.Ruud" <rvtol+news@isolution.nl> writes:
> Let procmail make all those decisions and transformations for you.

I prefer qmail dot-commands. It provides an architecture for
controlling the delivery of email, and lets you write the smarts of
the mail processing in whatever language you want.

> I have a maildir called 'raw' where I keep a copy of all non-spammish
> mail.

I call mine archives. I also remove duplicate email before it gets to
the mailbox.

> Copies of the same messages also get delivered in the right mailboxes,
> by procmail.

Yup, qmail does that for me.

> A message that contains only html, is piped though lynx -dump -stdin.

I build a bounce message explaing that it wasn't read, and send that
back to the sender.

> A message containing both HTML and a plain/text-part, is de-mime-d,
> leaving only the plain/text-part (unless that part contains only a silly
> remark).
> Footers and long signatures are limited or even deleted. Etc., etc. (I
> like my mail cooked.)

I don't do those things. Then again - my mail reader makes deals with
them on request.

> One of the reasons that I started with Perl, is that I want to rewrite
> procmail in Perl.

Try qmail - it may solve the problem with a lot less work.

    <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 22:25:23 +0000, Roedy Green wrote about HTML emails:

> Just how long do you want to stall evolution?

Evolution doesn't mean "use whatever broken solution Microsoft and Hotmail
popularized, just because all my friends are using it."

If and when somebody puts out a good rich text email format, I'll use it.
Until then, I won't use HTML.

> Do you imagine people 200 years from now will be still be using pure
> ASCII text unable to find a solution to JavaScript viruses (turn off
> JS), pop-up( disable popups) etc.?

Firstly, I don't care what people will be using in 200 years. I don't care
if in 200 years the default email format is so big and bloated that it
takes three weeks to download even a single sentence, because I won't be
around to suffer.

If you think that people will be using the current data formats for email
in two centuries, you're crazy.


-- 
Steven.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 07:19:29 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:

> On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:33:13 GMT, Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com>
> wrote or quoted :
> 
>>WHat the hell has that got to do with HTML email?  Sending photos
>>is an example of what attachments are for.
> 
> Normally you send photos to grandma with captions under each photo.

No, normally YOU send photos to grandma with captions under each photo.
My grandma doesn't put captions in her photo album, and she doesn't need
captions on her photos in email.

> That is far more convenient for the technopeasant receiver than
> dealing with multiple attachments.

Only if your photos are so obscure and confusing that they need captions.

"Here's Johnny with the dog. Here is Johnny with the dog again. This one
is Johnny on his own. Here is the dog. Oh look, it is Johnny with the dog
again -- that's the dog on the left, in case it isn't clear. Just for a
change, this is Johnny wearing a hat. It is blue with a feather in it,
in case you couldn't tell from, oh I don't know, looking at the actual
picture."



-- 
Steven.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 07:40:55 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:

> There is nothing wrong with formatted text. You are confusing
> formatted text with spam.

No. YOU are confusing HTML email (broken, dangerous, bad) with formatted
text (maybe good, maybe bad). 

I've hated HTML emails well before I received my first spam. I still hate
it, long after I've got my spam problem under control.

If and when somebody comes up with a non-broken, non-dangerous way of
allowing formatting in emails, I'll consider it. But HTML is not and never
will be that format.

-- 
Steven.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 07:42:18 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:

> On 08 Oct 2005 18:59:39 -0700, Paul Rubin
> <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote or quoted :
> 
>>
>>I read mail over an ssh connection to a Unix shell.  I have no easy
>>way to read html email with a graphics browser. 
> 
> So the rest of the world should forgo rich communication because of
> your obsolete software?  How could anything every evolve with that
> attitude?

Hardly obsolete, any more than hammers are obsolete just because we have
Concords.

(The Concord... now *there* is an obsolete technology.)

You may have noticed that even Microsoft have acknowledged the power and
flexibility of text-based shells, and will be (if they get the technology
right in time) building one into Vista.

-- 
Steven.

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:39:27 +0000, John Bokma wrote:

> Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, Roedy Green wrote:
>> 
>>> Some people use email PRIMARILY for sharing photos.
>> 
>> WHat the hell has that got to do with HTML email?
> 
> The photo doesn't have to be included (as in attached)? with the email?

I'll repeat the question: what do attachments have to do with HTML emails?


-- 
Steven.

Mike Meyer:

> Try qmail - it may solve the problem with a lot less work.

I checked my .procmailrc, and saw that mail with qmail anywhere in the
headers, goes to a spambox here.

;)

-- 
Affijn, Ruud    <http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh770781&cmd=tunermini>

"Gewoon is een tijger."

In comp.lang.java.programmer Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote or quoted:

> The technial problems have been solved for over a decade. NeXT shipped
> systems that used text/richtext, which has none of the problems that
> HTML has.  The problems are *social* - you've got to arrange for
> people to use mail/news readers that understand a rich text format
> that isn't a vector for viruses.

It's not HTML that has problems, it's Microsoft's crappy software.

Writing virus-free HTML renderers is not hard - but of course
Microsoft can still screw it up.

Don't blame HTML for viruses - *every* document format Microsoft has
anything to do with becomes a vector for viruses.

They *even* managed to get virulent spreadsheets and word processor 
documents!
-- 
__________
 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim@tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.

In comp.lang.java.programmer Steven D'Aprano <steve@removethiscyber.com.au> wrote or quoted:
> On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 07:19:29 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:
> > Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com>:

> >>WHat the hell has that got to do with HTML email?  Sending photos
> >>is an example of what attachments are for.
> > 
> > Normally you send photos to grandma with captions under each photo.
> 
> No, normally YOU send photos to grandma with captions under each photo.
> My grandma doesn't put captions in her photo album, and she doesn't need
> captions on her photos in email.
> 
> > That is far more convenient for the technopeasant receiver than
> > dealing with multiple attachments.
> 
> Only if your photos are so obscure and confusing that they need captions.
> 
> "Here's Johnny with the dog. Here is Johnny with the dog again. This one
> is Johnny on his own. Here is the dog. Oh look, it is Johnny with the dog
> again -- that's the dog on the left, in case it isn't clear. Just for a
> change, this is Johnny wearing a hat. It is blue with a feather in it,
> in case you couldn't tell from, oh I don't know, looking at the actual
> picture."

What have you got against captions?

Giving photos captions is a *very* common practice.
-- 
__________
 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim@tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.

In comp.lang.java.programmer Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote or quoted:
> Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:

> > Read my essay.
> > http://mindprod.com/projects.html/mailreadernewsreader.html
> >
> > I talk around those problems.
> 
> Actually, you present a design that forces a solution that makes them
> do what you want down their throats, never mind what they want, or
> what they've been doing. It shows an amazing ignorance about the
> internet and how people behave on it. Like most antispam proposals, it
> won't actually stop spam, just force spammers to concentrate on
> different channels. You seem to have randomly broken quoting for
> people who download mail and read it offline, and for any medium
> that's unreliable or doesn't reliably deliver messages "in order" -
> which includes mail and news.  Virus writers will love the ability to
> change peoples address books remotely.

Since - in Roedy's essay - messages are digitally signed, authority
to advise about any email address updates would presumably be confined
to those people with access to the sender's private key.

Even /without/ any form of authentication, a standard change-of-address 
message - which is understood by mail readers - is a fine and sensible 
idea.
-- 
__________
 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim@tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.

In comp.lang.java.programmer Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote or quoted:

> Read my essay.
> http://mindprod.com/projects.html/mailreadernewsreader.html

FYI, this bit: 

``Like ICQ, someone cannot send you mail without your prior permission. 
  They can't send you mail because they don't have your public key to
  encrypt the mail.''

....is pretty confusing - because "public key" is a term with a technical
meaning in cryptography - and a public key really *is* public.

If you want to allow email only from a list of senders, then you use
a simple white list.  Cryptography is not needed or desirable if this
is the intended goal.
-- 
__________
 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim@tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.

In comp.lang.java.programmer Paul Boddie <paul@boddie.org.uk> wrote or quoted:
> Roedy Green wrote:

> > Just how long do you want to stall evolution?  Do you imagine people
> > 200 years from now will be still be using pure ASCII text unable to
> > find a solution to JavaScript viruses (turn off JS), pop-up( disable
> > popups) etc.?
> 
> People in their sky-cars turning off JavaScript in their browsers: what
> a thought!

Javascript can be turned off in *mail readers* - by their manufacturers.
-- 
__________
 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim@tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.

Tim Tyler wrote:
<snip>
>>Only if your photos are so obscure and confusing that they need captions.
>>
>>"Here's Johnny with the dog. Here is Johnny with the dog again. This one
>>is Johnny on his own. Here is the dog. Oh look, it is Johnny with the dog
>>again -- that's the dog on the left, in case it isn't clear. Just for a
>>change, this is Johnny wearing a hat. It is blue with a feather in it,
>>in case you couldn't tell from, oh I don't know, looking at the actual
>>picture."
> 
> 
> What have you got against captions?
> 
> Giving photos captions is a *very* common practice.

Perhaps he has a search engine that can find blue hats in an image and 
recognize people?

-- 
Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen
http://usinglvkblog.blogspot.com/
mailto:lasse@vkarlsen.no
PGP KeyID: 0x2A42A1C2

In comp.lang.java.programmer Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote or quoted:
> Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
> > On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 19:56:50 -0400, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote

> >>Show us *examples*! Do you create a style sheet for every site you
> >>visit that overrides there classes? What?
> >
> > Why don't you download a copy of Opera, see
> > http://mindprod.com/jgloss/opera.html
> 
> What makes you think I don't have a copy of Opera? Just so happens
> I've got a registred copy on my newest computer.
> 
> > Then try out the feature.  Click View | style | user
> 
> My copy of Opera doesn't have that menu entry. I suspect you're making
> platform-specific suggestions.
> 
> Trying it on a different platform, it looks like it does what I said
> earlier: user mode simply disables the authors style sheets. None of
> the "merging" you suggested was going on is actually happening.

The "user mode" uses style sheets you specify.

There's a whole bunch of built-in ones - and you can cascade them:

``User style sheets

``There is also the inclusion of 12 packaged user style sheets and an easy 
  menu application interface (View > Style). These sheets can be cascaded 
  together, with or without the page's styles. They are mostly for 
  accessibility, accessible web design and plain coolness: Emulate text 
  browser, Nostalgia, Accessibility Layout, Show images and links only, 
  High contrast, Hide non-linking images, Disable tables and Use default 
  forms design.

  There are also three style sheets that are worth mentioning specially: 
  Hide certain-sized elements, Debug with outline, and Show structural 
  elements. Hide certain-sized elements is basically that CSS-powered 
  inline ad-killer that Eric A. Meyer came up with a few years ago. Debug 
  with outline uses the newly added support for the "outline" property to 
  display key elements. Finally, Show structural elements, which with the 
  acrobatic use of generated content, attribute selectors and counters, 
  shows the HTML tags inline, as well as the meta and link data, and a 
  report on the number of font tags and nested tables. Now this is cool!''

 - http://www.evolt.org/article/Opera_7_Released/1/54851/
-- 
__________
 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim@tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.

In comp.lang.java.programmer Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote or quoted:
> Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
> > On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 17:41:38 -0400, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote:

> >>If you've got a browser with a better solution, what's the browser,
> >>and what's the solution?
> > Try Opera. You can merge the two. 
> 
> Merge the two CSS files? Most browsers do that - that's why they call
> them "cascading" style sheets. Got a sample style sheet that you use
> that prevernts authors from overriding things?

Custom style sheets are usually applied after those in the document -
when they are both being applied.

That way, the custom style sheet has the final word.
-- 
__________
 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim@tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.

On Sun, 9 Oct 2005 13:44:42 GMT
Tim Tyler <tim@tt1lock.org>  wrote:

> In comp.lang.java.programmer Roedy Green
> <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote or quoted:
> 
> > Read my essay.
> > http://mindprod.com/projects.html/mailreadernewsreader.html

It's gone :-)


> FYI, this bit: 
> 
> ``Like ICQ, someone cannot send you mail without your prior
> permission. They can't send you mail because they don't have your
> public key to encrypt the mail.''
> 
> ...is pretty confusing - because "public key" is a term with a
> technical meaning in cryptography - and a public key really *is*
> public.
> 
> If you want to allow email only from a list of senders, then you use
> a simple white list.  Cryptography is not needed or desirable if this
> is the intended goal.

But what is desirable is the possibility to authenticate the sender of
the message as genuine, given the ease with which SMTP headers can be
spoofed. Maybe this is suggested in Mr Green's essay, but
cryptographically signed email (using the originator's _private_ key),
where the signature and hence the originator of the mail can be verified
independently, would be very useful. The problem is to get everyone to
use digital signatures, and to ensure that such a signature can be
linked to an individual or business. I've no illusions here.

Take care,

-- 
Stefaan
-- 
As complexity rises, precise statements lose meaning,
and meaningful statements lose precision. -- Lotfi Zadeh 

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 13:36:26 +0000, Tim Tyler wrote:

> Since - in Roedy's essay - messages are digitally signed, authority
> to advise about any email address updates would presumably be confined
> to those people with access to the sender's private key.

If I have the sender's private key, then I can pretend to be him. That
would mean that when you received an email from the sender, you couldn't
be sure if it actually came from him or not, thus defeating the purpose of
having a private key.

> Even /without/ any form of authentication, a standard change-of-address 
> message - which is understood by mail readers - is a fine and sensible 
> idea.

So any random person -- or bot -- could send an email to my business
associates, telling them that my email address had changed to
industrial_espionage@spyware.com, please send all your confidential
information directly there thank you very much.

Yeah. Fine *and* sensible.


-- 
Steven.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 13:44:42 +0000, Tim Tyler wrote:

> In comp.lang.java.programmer Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote or quoted:
> 
>> Read my essay.
>> http://mindprod.com/projects.html/mailreadernewsreader.html
> 
> FYI, this bit: 
> 
> ``Like ICQ, someone cannot send you mail without your prior permission. 
>   They can't send you mail because they don't have your public key to
>   encrypt the mail.''
> 
> ...is pretty confusing - because "public key" is a term with a technical
> meaning in cryptography - and a public key really *is* public.

The term you want is "wrong", not "confusing".

-- 
Steven.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 15:50:12 +0200, Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen wrote:

> Tim Tyler wrote:
> <snip>
>>>Only if your photos are so obscure and confusing that they need captions.
>>>
>>>"Here's Johnny with the dog. Here is Johnny with the dog again. This one
>>>is Johnny on his own. Here is the dog. Oh look, it is Johnny with the dog
>>>again -- that's the dog on the left, in case it isn't clear. Just for a
>>>change, this is Johnny wearing a hat. It is blue with a feather in it,
>>>in case you couldn't tell from, oh I don't know, looking at the actual
>>>picture."
>> 
>> 
>> What have you got against captions?
>> 
>> Giving photos captions is a *very* common practice.
> 
> Perhaps he has a search engine that can find blue hats in an image and 
> recognize people?

Yes. It is called "eyes". I look at the image, and miracle upon miracles,
I recognise Johnny wearing a hat.

Then, if I have any need to save that image rather than trash it, I name
it and file it in a directory appropriately, so that I can instantly find
it later without needing to call up a search engine.

Honestly, anyone would think that photos and photo albums never existed
before Google. Why force one particular bad technological solution on
everyone for the sake of something which many people don't even perceive
as a problem?



-- 
Steven.

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:39:27 +0000, John Bokma wrote:
> 
> 
>>Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, Roedy Green wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Some people use email PRIMARILY for sharing photos.
>>>
>>>WHat the hell has that got to do with HTML email?
>>
>>The photo doesn't have to be included (as in attached)? with the email?
> 
> 
> I'll repeat the question: what do attachments have to do with HTML emails?

His reply wasn't exactly clear, but I that he means that wen you use HTM
mail, you don't have to attach the photo with the email. You can also
use the HTML to refer to an image somewhere on a webserver.

Doesn't seem such a good idea to me, since the possibility of external
images gives spammers the possibility to track who opens their mails.

-- 
If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood
on the shoulders of giants.  -- Isaac Newton

Roel Schroeven

On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, Roedy Green wrote:

> Normally you send photos to grandma with captions under each photo.
> That is far more convenient for the technopeasant receiver than
> dealing with multiple attachments.

And even more convenient is "Hey grandma, check out the latest
photos on my web site: www.example.com/rich/photos".

> People keep thinking of email as a techie preserve.

Worse, people keep misusing email.

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

Tim Tyler wrote:
> Javascript can be turned off in *mail readers* - by their manufacturers.

Yes, mail readers, browsers, combined mail reading and Web browsing
"suites", or whatever combination of functions you care to consider. In
any case, in the not-exactly-unknown mail reader I use, I can't seem to
find a setting that will turn JavaScript on. Meanwhile, HTML mail is
flagged and presented as plain text with a prominent warning about
viewing the message as HTML - an acceptable tradeoff which only
slightly delays the viewing of the very few legitimate messages I get
sent in that format.

Of course, the most excitable manufacturers of mail readers with
respect to enabling a "rich experience" are those pitching "enterprise
functionality", although a full treatment of their mistakes (amplifying
my previous rant) would take this discussion even further away from the
tenuous connection it has with Python, related discussions on type
safety, private/protected/public, using Python in Mozilla, and the
disappearance of the Bastion module notwithstanding.

Paul

On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, Roedy Green wrote:

> This is pulling a King Canute.  There is not even a mechanism in email
> protocols to warn your correspondents of your demand.  I have been

Yes there is: the message my server sends someone sending me HTML
says so quite plainly.  That Outhouse (and presumably other WIndoze
email clients) choses to not display the real message and put up
some other generic, "user friendly" (but totally techie useless)
message besides the point.

> There is nothing wrong with formatted text. You are confusing
> formatted text with spam.
>
> You think you hated formatted text, but you really hate spam.

Please don't presume to think for me.  I've been using email and
the Internet for over 10 years, and I think I can differentiate
between spam and formatted text.  I hate spam, that's a given.
But I hate spam that's in plain text as well as formatted text.

I hate HTML email for several reasons, including:

	1. it's wasteful of bandwidth

	2. it enourages people to put form over content

	3. it doesn't display properly on my email client of choice,
	   which, BTW, I've been using in various versions for 10+
	   years.

There are probably others, but you get my drift.  You'll also notice
that I deliberately didn't list the security issues.  HTML is for
web sites, not email.

> If your lover sent you a message with photo, and even musical
> accompaniment, I doubt you would feel offended.  It is the CONTENT
> bugging you, not the HTML.

No it isn't.  And my wife knows better than to do that.  When she
sends me virtual boquets, she does so in the correctmanner: she
sends me a plain text link to a web site that does all the fancy
stuff, including background music.  That is how it should be.

> You imagine that the two are inexplicably linked. That is just because

No I don't.

> Eudora warns you of deceptive links in HTML. There are many more such

I am fortuanate enough to not use Windoze.

> unfair to blame formatting for the foolish practice off allowing
> untrusted code to run without even an ok.  They have nothing to do
> with each other.

Agreed.  But as I said above, I have many other issues with HTML emails,
over and above the security concerns.

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 16:14:32 GMT, Roel Schroeven
<rschroev_nospam_ml@fastmail.fm> wrote or quoted :

>His reply wasn't exactly clear, but I that he means that wen you use HTM
>mail, you don't have to attach the photo with the email. You can also
>use the HTML to refer to an image somewhere on a webserver.
 There is that and also the use of HTML formatting, embedded images,
captioning, rows, borders to make the message look more like a page
from a photo album.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 20:54:32 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
<steve@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :

>Only if your photos are so obscure and confusing that they need captions.

That is a hair shirt approach.  What if someone is sending photos of
their new house? What if I am sending diagrams to help someone repair
their computer? It is ridiculous to tie people's arms behind their
backs.  What you do instead is work to prevent abuse.  Captions in and
of themselves are not dangerous things.

-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 16:16:57 GMT, Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com>
wrote or quoted :

>And even more convenient is "Hey grandma, check out the latest
>photos on my web site: www.example.com/rich/photos".

that is what my sister does.  And there is now a service that will do
that  See http://storymill.com/tidepool/

I find it amusing that people who complain about me giving links in my
posts rather that expounding inline are willing to insist others do
their emails via  links where you need to fire up a separate browser
to see the images. 

The other problem is maintaining a website is probably a skillset
Grandma is not willing to acquire. Even image inserting into emails is
pushing it. Further the website  is yet an additional monthly expense
that could be avoided by using HTML in emails.

You might say what about those free 10 mb websites?  That's not very
many images with today's megapixel digital cameras.

I think we computer folk owe the public an email system that works and
that is easy to use. It should at LEAST work better than the snail
mail system. The essential problem is it was designed overnight as a
proof of concept and has not been designed to deal with the problem of
spam or tracking conversational threads. Enclosures were a kludge.
Mail should be 8-bit binary transport with a system something like the
US post uses for large parcels. They don't show up directly in your in
mail box.  You have to ok their delivery.

The biggest disincentive to spam would be to make sender pay a fee to
the receiver or to backbone maintenance.  For most people it would all
balance out.  Spammers would have to become more selective in their
targets. If they were sufficiently selective, they would not be a
nuisance. They could even be helpful sometimes.

I wrote an essay years ago on how such an email system might work.  At
this point I think the most likely evolution is via Instant messaging
acquiring all the abilities of regular email. Instant mail interfaces
were designed to be computer friendly and extendable, so even though
there are a great many of them, people have written software that can
interface to many of them such as Trillian or Jabber.

see http://mindprod.com/projects/mailreadernewsreader.html
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

> My grandma doesn't put captions in her photo album,
> and she doesn't need captions on her photos in email.

She doesn't need captions in the album because she will explain the
pictures, at length, every single one of them, to anyone who comes
within grabbing distance.

> "Here's Johnny with the dog. Here is Johnny with the
> dog again. This one is Johnny on his own. Here is the
> dog. Oh look, it is Johnny with the dog again --  ...

If your photos are so banal then only people who would recognise the
people would care about them.

Captions are for people who won't recognise the subject of the photo.
When you send a photo of a house to Granma is she supposed to just
_know_ that it your new house, or the one across the road, or the one
that burnt down last week ?

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 05:55:01 -0400, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

>Virus writers will love the ability to
>change peoples address books remotely.

Since this is just a broad brush view, I find it odd you can predict
just what bugs there will be in the early implementations.

You sound almost as if you were the author of the current system and
feel personally attacked by others looking for ways to improve it.

In my scheme, every message is digitally signed, even a change of
address message. 

Surely for a virus to send out a digitally signed change of address
message is more difficult than sending out an unsigned one, which they
can do today.

You have two problems you want to avoid:

1. the practical problem:  failure to inform your correspondents, not
just your address list, of your new address (at least the ones you
don't consider spam or pests).

2. the potential problem:  rogue software sending out fake change of
address notices.

In my scheme, The receiver of the change of address  message ignores
it unless it is properly signed.  Surely that is a more secure system
than we have today and that handles (1) without effort.  At worst, a
very clever virus could change the one address book entry, the one for
this computer, in other's machines.   It could not generally corrupt
other machines.

-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Sun, 9 Oct 2005 13:44:42 GMT, Tim Tyler <tim@tt1lock.org>  wrote or
quoted :

>``Like ICQ, someone cannot send you mail without your prior permission. 
>  They can't send you mail because they don't have your public key to
>  encrypt the mail.''
>
>...is pretty confusing - because "public key" is a term with a technical
>meaning in cryptography - and a public key really *is* public.

What I envisioned was you would give a "public" key to someone you
wanted to converse with you.  He would encrypt all mail with that.  He
could give that key to someone else, who could then impersonate him.

Most likely that second person would be his laptop. 

Let's say he posted the key in the New York Times, then anyone could
impersonate him.  You would the deactivate him, just as if he were a
spammer.  You might or might not give him a new key when he begged for
permission to communicate.

In my opinion, the weakest link in my scheme is the initial beg for
permission to send.  Here a stranger has to, in one line, tell you who
he is and why he wants to talk to you. This is much like a spam title
that tries to trick you into reading the body of the message.  You
still need spam list to help filter these types out.

My scheme should work fine if you are not someone like me who gets a
lot of legit mail from strangers.

Perhaps you could slow them down with some randomly chosen questions
to prove they know something about you.  Companies could do the same
thing.

You can inconvenience the sender to a fair degree since most people
don't often write strangers with the expectation of a personal
correspondence.




-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 05:55:01 -0400, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

>Actually, you present a design that forces a solution that makes them
>do what you want down their throats, never mind what they want, or
>what they've been doing. It shows an amazing ignorance about the
>internet and how people behave on it. Like most antispam proposals, it
>won't actually stop spam, just force spammers to concentrate on
>different channels. You seem to have randomly broken quoting for
>people who download mail and read it offline, and for any medium
>that's unreliable or doesn't reliably deliver messages "in order" -
>which includes mail and news.  Virus writers will love the ability to
>change peoples address books remotely. The problem of differing
>character sets is technically solved. Practically, the solution
>doesn't work because people implementing the software ignore the
>standards. What's your server going to do when it gets messages with
>characters in them that aren't valid in the charset that it's declared
>as being? Better yet, what's it going to do when the characters are
>valid, but the declared charset isn't the one the author actually
>used? You implementation sketch only covers the client talking to the
>first server (in that it requires the client to encrypt a challange
>phrase with the private key belonging the email id, which is
>presumably what 2822 uses for the envelope sender). Most mail on the
>internet goes through at least two servers, and news is much
>worse. For instance, your messages apparently passed through 10
>servers getting to me. You really have to deal with store and forward,
>or convince a large number of corporations that potentially hostile
>users should be allowed to talk directly to their mail servers, which
>isn't very likely. Kudos for recognizing that spam needs to be dealt
>with by people with guns, but you lose half of them for making ISPS
>liable for it.
>
>I also read the comment about wanting an automated "Ask them to run my
>browser in my favorite configuration", which is equally naive. A lot
>of sites have such cruft on them already. I find them funny - I surf
>the web on three different platforms, none of them Windows. Any
>pointer to download a new browser or plugin for Windows just impresses
>me with the authors lack of skills. The only browser I know of that
>runs on all three platforms is Opera, and it's something radically
>different on one of the three. Even should you get the platform right,
>almost nobody is going to bother upgrading following the download
>links. The very small percentage of users who are real geeks will
>silently thank you for the notice, and update their software. Most
>users will ignore it so long as the page isn't obviously broken. For
>those for whom it's broken, all but small percentage will simply find
>some other site to visit. I'd suggest that anyone thinking about writing

Your post brings up a meta-issue.  How long should posts be?
I note several schools of thought.

There is the initial post, sort of a mini lecture on something
covering perhaps 7 major points.

Then you can have the theatre-critic style response where each person
in turn goes through the 7 points saying when they think.

Then they repeat the 7 points each commenting on what each of the
others had to say on the seven points. etc.

Then there is the conversational style where you discuss one major
point at a time, perhaps with several threads, one for each point.
These threads meander or split off themselves.

My preference is to think of a post, other than perhaps the initial
essay post, as like a paragraph.  It should stick to one main idea. 

Seems to me google will have an easier time classifying posts if they
don't cover too much ground.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
> >His reply wasn't exactly clear, but I that he means that wen you use HTM
> >mail, you don't have to attach the photo with the email. You can also
> >use the HTML to refer to an image somewhere on a webserver.
>  There is that and also the use of HTML formatting, embedded images,
> captioning, rows, borders to make the message look more like a page
> from a photo album.

That's the worst of all.  I certainly don't want my mail reader
opening network connections to arbitrary places when I read my mail.
I have no willingness at all to reveal my mail reading habits or IP
address to everyone who sends me email.  If someone wants a return
receipt, they can use snail mail and fill out a form at the post
office for it.

"Roedy Green" <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote in 
message news:gm0jk1dp8pj2jmdlkcnc8uutbrabg643q0@4ax.com...
>
> Your post brings up a meta-issue.  How long should posts be?
> I note several schools of thought.
>

Your post brings up a usenetiquette issue. Why do you think that 
perl/python/java/c people are interested in your personal discussions of 
email?

Matt 

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 08:49:32 +1000
Steven D'Aprano <steve@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote:

> On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:28:31 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:
> 
> > What if I am sending diagrams to help someone repair
> > their computer? It is ridiculous to tie people's arms behind their
> > backs.  What you do instead is work to prevent abuse.  Captions in
> > and of themselves are not dangerous things.
> 
> I didn't say they were. Obviously you haven't been reading my emails,
> just reacting against them mindlessly. I use a mail client that gives
> me the choice of displaying or not displaying HTML emails. If there
> is no alternative to HTML, then I may _choose_ to render the HTML.

Norm Reitzel said it all a while ago:

"I don't understand that attitude.  Don't we want email that has dancing
 bears, cute little videos, musical tunes, animated waving hands, sixty
 fonts, and looks like it's been done with crayolas? Good grief, man,
 think like a three year old!" 

-- 
Stefaan
-- 
As complexity rises, precise statements lose meaning,
and meaningful statements lose precision. -- Lotfi Zadeh 

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:28:31 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:

> On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 20:54:32 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :
> 
>>Only if your photos are so obscure and confusing that they need captions.
> 
> That is a hair shirt approach.  What if someone is sending photos of
> their new house? 

Oh gosh, pictures of a new house. Why didn't you say so??? If you're
sending pictures named "my_new_house1.jpg" etc then OF COURSE they have
to be imbedded in a HTML email, otherwise how could anyone know what they
were?


> What if I am sending diagrams to help someone repair
> their computer? It is ridiculous to tie people's arms behind their
> backs.  What you do instead is work to prevent abuse.  Captions in and
> of themselves are not dangerous things.

I didn't say they were. Obviously you haven't been reading my emails,
just reacting against them mindlessly. I use a mail client that gives
me the choice of displaying or not displaying HTML emails. If there is no
alternative to HTML, then I may _choose_ to render the HTML.

But there is always an alternative. You can always send me a Word
document, a PDF, an Powerpoint presentation showing the steps one per
page, why the possibilities are endless.

You could even send me a URL to a webpage.


-- 
Steven.

>>And how do you fix the problem of unsolicited USENET articles?
>>(*ALL* of them are unsolicited to someone).  Or unsolicited
>>email?  
>
>Read my essay.
>http://mindprod.com/projects.html/mailreadernewsreader.html
>
>I talk around those problems.
>
>It requires a fresh start.

This URL does not work.  However, from some of the other replies,
it seems that your suggestion involved identification of the sender
with digital signatures.

I think one necessary function of email and USENET is that it should
allow you to SAFELY communicate with strangers or, worse, people
you know but do not trust at all, and who are known to be malicious,
if you wish to do so, especially since meeting in person might
invoke the use of weapons of mass destruction (like, for example,
me and my hypothetical ex-wife).  

For example, George W. Bush ought to be able to exchange email with
Osama Bin Laden without risking revealing nuclear launch codes.
Hitler and Winston Churchill should have been able to exchange email
(had it been available during World War II) without revealing state
secrets accidentally.  I ought to be able to exchange email with
my boss without his being able to track if/when I read it.  I ought
to be able to communicate with the Direct Marketing Association to
get them to take my name off a mailing list without risking spyware
installation or revealing my credit card numbers.  Union leaders and
management should be able to negotiate by email without unwittingly
leaking information.

HTML is *mostly* dangerous.  (links.  Javascript.  references to
other files on the user's computer.  Forms.)  It's a lot more than
text formatting.  I suggest that if you want a text formatting
language, start with *TROFF* and take out the parts that refer to
other files.  As far as I know, troff doesn't have any networking
references in it.  Lots of people probably hate troff, but it's a
better start than HTML.

						Gordon L. Burditt

Tim Tyler <tim@tt1lock.org> writes:
> In comp.lang.java.programmer Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote or quoted:
>> The technial problems have been solved for over a decade. NeXT shipped
>> systems that used text/richtext, which has none of the problems that
>> HTML has.  The problems are *social* - you've got to arrange for
>> people to use mail/news readers that understand a rich text format
>> that isn't a vector for viruses.
> It's not HTML that has problems, it's Microsoft's crappy software.

HTML is a problem on *other* peoples crappy software as well. It
wasn't designed to carry code content, but has been hacked up to do
that.

> Writing virus-free HTML renderers is not hard - but of course
> Microsoft can still screw it up.

Sure - just disable all the features that make people want to use HTML
instead of something else.

> Don't blame HTML for viruses - *every* document format Microsoft has
> anything to do with becomes a vector for viruses.

Which would mean that every open format that MS has had anything to do
with comes a vector for viruses. Somehow, I'm not buying it.

And HTML has more problems than just viruses - web bugs, for one. But
MIME's support for external bodies gives you that anyway.

       <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Tim Tyler <tim@tt1lock.org> writes:
> In comp.lang.java.programmer Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote or quoted:
>> Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
>> > Read my essay.
>> > http://mindprod.com/projects.html/mailreadernewsreader.html
>> >
>> > I talk around those problems.
>> 
>> Actually, you present a design that forces a solution that makes them
>> do what you want down their throats, never mind what they want, or
>> what they've been doing. It shows an amazing ignorance about the
>> internet and how people behave on it. Like most antispam proposals, it
>> won't actually stop spam, just force spammers to concentrate on
>> different channels. You seem to have randomly broken quoting for
>> people who download mail and read it offline, and for any medium
>> that's unreliable or doesn't reliably deliver messages "in order" -
>> which includes mail and news.  Virus writers will love the ability to
>> change peoples address books remotely.
>
> Since - in Roedy's essay - messages are digitally signed, authority
> to advise about any email address updates would presumably be confined
> to those people with access to the sender's private key.

It's not confined to just people - software can do this as well. In
particular, you should expect that the users mail agent will have to
have access to the key, so it can automatically send out the change of
address notice when the user changes their address (it actually needs
it to send any mail). Viruses regularly make users mail agents do
thing. "Change my address" becomes much more entertaining when that
triggers sending out change of addresses notices to everyone in the
address book. More likely, though, there'll be an API for getting the
key so that users can change mail agents without invalidating the
public key that everyone they correspond with has for them, and the
virus will just use that API.

This is also why his plan doesn't stop spam. Most spam comes from
zombies already. This will just cause them to masquerade as the owner
of the owned machine rather than somebody the author has a beef with.

      <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 20:01:28 +0000, Roedy Green wrote:

> You might say what about those free 10 mb websites?  That's not very
> many images with today's megapixel digital cameras.

My system admins have a number of names for people who try to send
multi-megabyte files by email. The names start with "accursed of God"
and rapidly get worse. Email is not designed to cope with such large file
sizes, and if you are running virus scanners and spam filters -- and you
should be -- performance rapidly goes downhill from there.

> I think we computer folk owe the public 

We don't owe the public *anything* if they don't pay for it. We might
*choose* to build it for free, but that's our choice, not a duty.

[snip]
> I wrote an essay years ago on how such an email system might work.

Ah, I see. Another pie-in-the-sky replacement for email. Well, good luck
with it. I wish you every success, but don't ask me to buy shares in your
startup.


-- 
Steven.

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
> Perhaps you could slow them down with some randomly chosen questions
> to prove they know something about you.  Companies could do the same
> thing.

Challenge-response system are old hat. I use one, and it reduces my
spam by three orders of magnitude. Most of what's left is spam that
went to a list that I've subscribed to whose mail circumvents the
anti-spam feature, and nigerian scam type things, which violates one
of the assumptions that such systems make about spam.

The downside is that I have no idea how many people try to contact me
out of the blue, or from an address other than the one I sent mail to,
but don't bother to answer the response. 

> You can inconvenience the sender to a fair degree since most people
> don't often write strangers with the expectation of a personal
> correspondence.

Right. Nobody sends email to addresses that come off business cards,
or off a web site, or ....

   <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
> On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:33:13 GMT, Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com>
> wrote or quoted :
>
>> What the hell has that got to do with HTML email?  Sending photos
>> is an example of what attachments are for.
>
> Normally you send photos to grandma with captions under each photo.
> That is far more convenient for the technopeasant receiver than
> dealing with multiple attachments.

I'd like to agree, but I haven't received *ANY* properly formatted,
captioned and readable list of photos in an HTML email message in a
long while.  What I usually get it an email message with a completely
irrelevant subject -- usually a reply to a random thread that happened
to include my email address in the recipient list -- with a message
body as useless as:

                        Here's a photo collection

or even more useless, or empty.

This and other things, that show the original poster of the particular
HTML email message has _no_ intention to spend just *one* minute to
properly write a readable, useful email message, tend to be the main
reasons why I block all HTML email messages from non-work-related
email addresses, save them in a special folder and look at them only
when I really feel like spending some time to weed through the junk.

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
> On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 05:55:01 -0400, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote
> or quoted :
>>Virus writers will love the ability to
>>change peoples address books remotely.
> Since this is just a broad brush view, I find it odd you can predict
> just what bugs there will be in the early implementations.

I'm not predicting bugs in the implementations. I'm predicting how
people are going to abuse *features* of the implementations.

> You sound almost as if you were the author of the current system and
> feel personally attacked by others looking for ways to improve it.

Nah, I've just know people who spend a lot of time - and money -
dealing with spam, and we've discussed these issues at great
length. You haven't proposed anything that hasn't been proposed
before, and rejected for various reasons.

> In my scheme, every message is digitally signed, even a change of
> address message. 

Yup, I assumed that.

> Surely for a virus to send out a digitally signed change of address
> message is more difficult than sending out an unsigned one, which they
> can do today.

Maybe yes, maybe no. They can use existing APIs to send mail now. If
there's an API to sign a message - and there just about has to be,
otherwise changing mail readers will require sending out a change of
address form to change the public key - what prevents the virus from
simply using that to send out an encrpyted message? Yes, it's more
difficult, just like it's more difficult to send out mail with an
attachment than one that's just plain text. But the difference is just
more work, not something fundamentally different.

> You have two problems you want to avoid:
>
> 1. the practical problem:  failure to inform your correspondents, not
> just your address list, of your new address (at least the ones you
> don't consider spam or pests).
>
> 2. the potential problem:  rogue software sending out fake change of
> address notices.
>
> In my scheme, The receiver of the change of address  message ignores
> it unless it is properly signed.  Surely that is a more secure system
> than we have today and that handles (1) without effort.  At worst, a
> very clever virus could change the one address book entry, the one for
> this computer, in other's machines.   It could not generally corrupt
> other machines.

Depends on how convenient you make things. The problems aren't
technical, they're social. For instance, people will want their
address book to automatically send out change of address notices to
every non-pest if their address is changed. A virus can exploit this
by changing the address in the address book. No need for it to send
out mail - the users mail agent does it all for them. Fixing this
requires convincing the users that they should do a lot of work to
achieve point 1 - which sort of defeats your purpose.

Personally, I don't believe that you'll convince people to take do
more work to get more security. So you've got to convince all the
authors who deploy mail readers - and/or key security systems - to not
allow that. Since such a feature will be requested by users, and will
make their software more popular, that's not going to be easy either.

To be really secure, you store the private key encrypted, and ask the
user for a passphrase to decrypt it every time you want to sign a
message. So you make your interface do that, and it asks the user for
a key every time a message is signed. For true security, you have to
include the recipient address in the signatture, otherwise you're
liable to replay attacks sent different addresses, so changing your
address will involve providing your pass phrase once for everyone you
notify. Someone else will decide that's to inconvenient, and provide
an interface that stores the passphrase to reuse for some
user-specified length of time. Existing systems do this, and get lots
of use even thought they are less secure than doing it right. Then
you'll get a interface that ask for the key once a session. Then
you'll get one that asks once, and just keeps it forever. We've seen
this happen with access to web site passwords.

Guess which one users are going to prefer. Guess which one makes it
simple for viruses to hijack they system to send out mail that "you"
have signed.

      <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:

> On 8 Oct 2005 23:39:27 GMT, John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote or
> quoted :
> 
>>Yeah, yeah, and 640K is enough for everybody. Same song, different tune.
> 
> For how long.  Surely attachments are a stop gap. Can you imagine
> people sharing images that way 100 years from now?

No, but I agree with you :-) I am not using HTML myself in email, but I 
will when it makes things easier.

> Why should we wait for the future?  The problems blocking easy to use
> photo sharing are not technological but social.

Yup, agreed. Like I already wrote, if I route all HTML email to /dev/null 
I'll lose some customers, and some friends :-)

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
                                        I ploink googlegroups.com :-)
                        

Rich Teer wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, Roedy Green wrote:
> 
>>Normally you send photos to grandma with captions under each photo.
>>That is far more convenient for the technopeasant receiver than
>>dealing with multiple attachments.
> 
> And even more convenient is "Hey grandma, check out the latest
> photos on my web site: www.example.com/rich/photos".

In principle you're right but you forgot:
"And hey grandma, use this account name and this password for accessing
this web page."

Ciao, Michael.

In comp.lang.perl.misc John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote:
> Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:
 
>> On 8 Oct 2005 23:39:27 GMT, John Bokma <john@castleamber.com> wrote or
>> quoted :

>>>Yeah, yeah, and 640K is enough for everybody. Same song, different tune.

>> For how long.  Surely attachments are a stop gap. Can you imagine
>> people sharing images that way 100 years from now?
 
> No, but I agree with you :-) I am not using HTML myself in email, but I 
> will when it makes things easier.
 
>> Why should we wait for the future?  The problems blocking easy to use
>> photo sharing are not technological but social.
 
> Yup, agreed. Like I already wrote, if I route all HTML email to /dev/null 
> I'll lose some customers, and some friends :-)

What I find is that when I see emails which are obviously spam, I
simply do not read them and delete them immediately. But then I
use Pine rather than a web browser... and while some forms of HTML
may be rendered, nothing is automatically pulled down.

Axel

 

In comp.lang.perl.misc Tim Tyler <tim@tt1lock.org> wrote:
> In comp.lang.java.programmer Steven D'Aprano <steve@removethiscyber.com.au> wrote or quoted:
>> Only if your photos are so obscure and confusing that they need captions.
 
>> "Here's Johnny with the dog. Here is Johnny with the dog again. This one
>> is Johnny on his own. Here is the dog. Oh look, it is Johnny with the dog
>> again -- that's the dog on the left, in case it isn't clear. Just for a
>> change, this is Johnny wearing a hat. It is blue with a feather in it,
>> in case you couldn't tell from, oh I don't know, looking at the actual
>> picture."
 
> What have you got against captions?
 
> Giving photos captions is a *very* common practice.

Why not just put them on a web page? It is then possible to include
thumbnails so the recipient can chose to see which ones he cares to
look at in detail.

It also allows the web address to be sent to several people
without wasting bandwith.

Axel

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 21:36:47 -0600, rumours say that Mahesh Padmanabhan
<sutram@gmail.com> might have written:

>In article <1127299284.748225.68560@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> wrote:
>
><snip lot of drivel>

>While I don't like to feed the trolls, I do find his posts amusing. He 
>is like a spoilt child seeking attention.

s/is like/is/
-- 
TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best.
"Dear Paul,
please stop spamming us."
The Corinthians

request for Google groups enhancement:

Report Abuse button should have 4 choices:
- Spam
- Illegal Content
- Xah
- other
;-}

Christos Georgiou wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 21:36:47 -0600, rumours say that Mahesh Padmanabhan
> <sutram@gmail.com> might have written:
>
> >In article <1127299284.748225.68560@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> > "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> wrote:
> >
> ><snip lot of drivel>
>
> >While I don't like to feed the trolls, I do find his posts amusing. He
> >is like a spoilt child seeking attention.
>
> s/is like/is/
> --
> TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best.
> "Dear Paul,
> please stop spamming us."
> The Corinthians

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 20:43:12 GMT, Roedy Green
<my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:

>On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:57:13 -0000, gordonb.u09l7@burditt.org (Gordon
>Burditt) wrote or quoted :
>
>>HTML enables a heck of a lot of problems:  "web bugs" in email,
>>links to fake sites that appear as real ones in what shows up
>>on the screen, Javascript viruses, denial-of-service attacks
>>(pages that open two windows when you close one), etc.
>>
>>>That is like hating all choirs because televangelists use them.
>>
>>I liken it more to hating all viruses because some of them 
>>install keyloggers.
>
> I take it then you avoid browsers or use Lynx?  No you FIX the
>problems rather than wear a hair shirt. Same for email. Why should
>rich expressions only be permitted to those with websites.  
>
>Some people use email PRIMARILY for sharing photos.

And they don't know about attachments?
-- 
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 00:03:05 +0200, Lasse V�gs�ther Karlsen
<lasse@vkarlsen.no> wrote:

>In any case, html email is here to stay. Or perhaps I should remove html 
>and say "richly formatted", whatever that might mean in the future.
>
>But trying to keep your email world into a pure text-based 
>no-formatting-whatsoever world, that's a fantasy bubble that is bound to 
>burst, sooner rather than later.
>
>Deal with it.

And you're calling other people control freaks! 

Sorry to burst *your* bubble, but no one has to "deal with it." For
centuries, intelligent people have managed to convey information using
plain text, and they'll manage for the foreseeable future.

I'm surprised that you can bring yourself to write articles in such a
humble venue as Usenet.
-- 
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> But there is always an alternative. You can always send me a Word
> document, a PDF, an Powerpoint presentation showing the steps one per
> page, why the possibilities are endless.

Why saddle you with a proprietory format (M$ Office), when StarOffice
and OpenOffice do the job just as well, for much cheaper (and are cross
platform too)?!

> You could even send me a URL to a webpage.

Indeed!

-- 
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

Tim Tyler <tim@tt1lock.org> writes:
> The "user mode" uses style sheets you specify.
>
> There's a whole bunch of built-in ones - and you can cascade them:

Yup, saw those.

> ``There is also the inclusion of 12 packaged user style sheets and an easy 
>   menu application interface (View > Style). These sheets can be cascaded 
>   together, with or without the page's styles.

How do you set things to cascade those with the page's styles? I
couldn't see anything obvious in the UI, and the Opera help pages
didn't provide much help either.

       Thanks,
       <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:07:42 -0400, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

>
>HTML is a problem on *other* peoples crappy software as well. It
>wasn't designed to carry code content, but has been hacked up to do
>that.

It seems to me it goes without saying that you cannot trust code from
strangers, especially anonymous strangers.  You simply don't run code
sent in email except from highly trusted individuals.  If you do, that
is YOUR fault for being such a silly ass not the mail system's ability
to deliver code.  It is as stupid as running code that came as an
attachment.

One of the ideas I play with in my essay  is that you could insist
your correspondents have digital id certificate signed by Thawte or
other CA attesting to their identity, thus giving you legal recourse
against them if they send you spam, Trojans etc.

This would slow them down with requests for permission to send. they
could send only one per certificate.  The  cost and hassle of getting
the certificate could deter tem, and uniquely identify them for
blocking and public black lists.
..




-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

In comp.lang.perl.misc Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:
>>HTML is a problem on *other* peoples crappy software as well. It
>>wasn't designed to carry code content, but has been hacked up to do
>>that.
 
> It seems to me it goes without saying that you cannot trust code from
> strangers, especially anonymous strangers.  You simply don't run code
> sent in email except from highly trusted individuals.  If you do, that
> is YOUR fault for being such a silly ass not the mail system's ability
> to deliver code.  It is as stupid as running code that came as an
> attachment.
 
> One of the ideas I play with in my essay  is that you could insist
> your correspondents have digital id certificate signed by Thawte or
> other CA attesting to their identity, thus giving you legal recourse
> against them if they send you spam, Trojans etc.
 
> This would slow them down with requests for permission to send. they
> could send only one per certificate.  The  cost and hassle of getting
> the certificate could deter tem, and uniquely identify them for
> blocking and public black lists.

Plus being a total pain for legitimate correspondents and also expensive.

I don't know how much spam other people receive but on one account I
hardly receive any as I reserve it for friends and business. On another
I had about 40 spam messages which took all of ten seconds to delete.
Hardly a serious matter.

Axel

> 
> 
> 
> 

axel@white-eagle.invalid.uk writes:
> I don't know how much spam other people receive but on one account I
> hardly receive any as I reserve it for friends and business. On another
> I had about 40 spam messages which took all of ten seconds to delete.
> Hardly a serious matter.

You don't have a spam problem. I get a few thousand spams a day -
which get filtered down to a handful. I don't have a spam problem.

Jeff Poskanzer, now *he* has a spam problem. He gets a few million
spams a day: <URL: http://www.acme.com/mail_filtering/ >.

For anyone who runs an ISP, spam is chewing up an ever-growing
percentage of their bandwidth, and a significant fraction of their
staff time. They have a spam problem.

But me and you, we don't have a spam problem. At most it's an
annoyance.

        <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 14:27:30 +0000, axel wrote:

> I don't know how much spam other people receive but on one account I
> hardly receive any as I reserve it for friends and business. On another
> I had about 40 spam messages which took all of ten seconds to delete.
> Hardly a serious matter.

Can I remind you that spam is approximately 70% of all email traffic these
days? Most of that is blocked by the ISPs, but even so you are obviously
one of the lucky few.

My home address, which I cunningly will not give you, used to get about
fifty spams a day until I changed ISPs and email addresses. That would
quadruple for a week or so whenever one of my Windows-using friends would
get infected by a virus. My current home address only gets about one a
month, which is what I consider acceptable.

My work email address, on the other hand, is another story. We run a two
layer defence: blocking blacklisted addresses at our mail server, and spam
assassin at the individual user level. Even with that, I get about 100
spams a day delivered into my inbox, although many of those are addressed
to generic email addresses which are automatically forwarded to me.

Four years ago, one of our sys admins accidentally turned off the
blacklisting at the mail server. In the ten minutes it took to get it
turned back on, the CEO of our company received eight hundred spams.

-- 
Steven.

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 14:27:30 GMT, axel@white-eagle.invalid.uk wrote or
quoted :

>> This would slow them down with requests for permission to send. they
>> could send only one per certificate.  The  cost and hassle of getting
>> the certificate could deter tem, and uniquely identify them for
>> blocking and public black lists.
>
>Plus being a total pain for legitimate correspondents and also expensive.

First understand that you only have to get permission to send once.
That carries on until revoked.  Permission gives me an encryption key
and permission to send mail to you.

Also I envision by the time this comes into being most people will be
24-7 attached. 

So let's say I decide to send an email to Donald Knuth.  I compose my
one line introduction. I compose my email and walk away.  Without
further hassle on my part, either my mail will be delivered, or will
be rejected or it will sit in limbo until Dr. Knuth gets time to
decide.  If he rejects my plea, my mail will never arrive at his site.

Presumably Dr. Knuth would configure his software to accept only pleas
from people with digital ids, and further to accept at most one plea
from them and to remember his no for at least a year.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> wrote:
 
> So let's say I decide to send an email to Donald Knuth.

:-)

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
                                        I ploink googlegroups.com :-)
                        

Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@munged.invalid> writes:
> So let's say I decide to send an email to Donald Knuth.

Good luck.  Prof. Knuth stopped reading email years before there was a
big spam problem.  He uses his own version of hashcash to cut down on
unimportant mail: if you want to write to him, you have to send him
snail mail, which means buying and using an actual postage stamp.

I do something like that, sort of.  I no longer publish an email
address, including on business cards and so forth.  I have a contact
url that I give out instead, which keeps me off mailing lists.