On Mon, Aug 01, 2005 at 03:12:00AM +0530, Ligesh wrote:
On Sun, Jul 31, 2005 at 01:22:09PM -0700, Professional Software Engineering
wrote:
At 19:05 2005-07-31 +0530, Ligesh wrote:
One logical rule I have is to use sensible subject lines. Another is to
not use replies to other messages (including list-s*bscription welcome
messages) to springboard a new message to the list because I'm too lazy to
type the list address and a proper subject on my posts. Besides having
subject lines which are nonsensical to the content of the message, the
"References:" and "In-Reply-To:" headers are inserted by modern mailers to
manage threads, and you end up having a thread relationship with an
unaffiliated topic.
I am sorry, you are blabbering about something you have no clue about. What
does 'In-Reply-To' has to do with munging 'Reply-To'? At least, I run a full
mailing list which keeps the thread structure intact, but replaces any Reply-To
with the mailing list. Mailman has a proper configuration option itself which
allows you to replace any Reply-Tos with that of the mailing list. And your own
signature at the end says that a copy shouldn't be sent to you. Exactly!!! If
you configure mailman in the way I do, pressing reply will send a mail only to
the list, and never to the sender. See. You have no idea of what the heck you
are talking about.
But I'm sure YOUR "logic" makes sense to you. Somehow.
Of course, badly written softwares will screw up; but that can't be
helped.
Uhm, don't use badly written software?
Of course, you shouldn't use badly written software. Is that a rhetorical
question?
- A single line paragraph will work in all circumstances. (You can
configure your display software to wrap the line at whatever you wish.
And it will work very fine in PDAs, and also will look good in forums.
Not if that software expects to render the message AS SENT. There are
plenty of usenet posts and forum messages which require scrolling endlessly
to the right because they weren't wrapped by the sender.
A display software has to take care of the limitations at its end. It
shouldn't really make assumptions about the sender. If it is a single line
paragraph, you just wrap it as you wish. And Wrapping is a trivial task. I
think it is default in html to wrap and the idiotic mail archiver is forcibly
adding a nowrap or something. That is pathetic design. And now because of bad
software design you want everyone to follow some outdated convention?
FTR, the Eudora MUA has a reasonable way of formatting paragraphs and
Despite being flagged as "flowed", the message DOES CONTAIN LINEBREAKS
WITHIN THE PARAGRAPHS. IOW, the software sends it as it expects to be
viewed, but provides hints for smart agents to be able to reflow it if they
so choose.
Further, since reply attributions are marked as attributions in so many
different ways, how 'zactly is the receiving software to know how to WRAP
the continuation marker (esp. if it doesn't KNOW that the line was a
quote)? If the SENDER has broken it into widely recognized "reasonable"
line lengths and tagged the beginning of each with an attribution marker
(historically ">", but there are others), then EACH LINE OF A PARAGRAPH
will properly have an attribution marker. When you get a long paragraph
without any linebreak, I can assure you that 99% or more of email clients
and forum programs which are tacked onto the back end of conventional
I don't understand why you need multiple attribution marker per paragraph.
The purpose of attribution marker is to make it easy to distinguish your
statements from others, and all normal MUAs do this by showing them in
different colors. So whether you have a single attribution character or many,
the the MUA will show the whole paragraph in a different color. If you are in a
monchrome system, you can configure it to use underline or bold attribute or
something.
The primary function of the 'attribution' marker is distinguish your messages
from the other person, and I think this is served whether you have one or many
per paragraph.
mailing lists, will render the message without any indication of quoting
added to the wrapped lines.
- 75 char word wrap will screw up entirely in a lot of situations.
Not if the sender word wrapped WHAT THEY SENT.
What if my screen is smaller than 75 chars. What if I am viewing the mail in
vim that is split in the middle? And it looks quite ugly in forums.
80 char is simply a historical relic from the days of the dumb terminals.
I view mail in a fixed width font, because proportional width fonts lose
ASCII ART characteristics (text diagrams, following line emphasis, etc),
commonly employed by technical types who've been using the internet since
before you were born.
"Before I was born"? I think this statement should be grouped along with the
'famous' Nazi statement. That is, when someone starts talking 'before you were
born', that means he has flipped, and is in need of serious medical treatment.
I am running an fvwm with xterm -fn 10x20. with style "Style "nxterm" NoTitle,
NoHandles, BorderWidth 0"; this means that this primary xterm is without
handles or titles or borders or anything. So my X looks exactly like a dumb
terminal. My primary mailer is vim, I use emacs as my primary web browser. The
only graphical program I run is galeon 1.25 for websites that do not get
displayed properly in emacs-w3m. My total configuration files comes to more
than 35,000 lines (Without any comments). If you want to argue for being
'technical', I am sorry, you lose. Badly.
It is not only difficult to edit at the sender end, it will screw up the
display unless the screen width is more than 75 chars.
I've never had a problem editing a message.
Perhaps - and I'm going way out on a limb with my logic here - since in the
early days, internet mail was edited on computer terminals with 80 columns,
and nowadays, so many computers can display much more than that (using
graphic displays instead of strict text displays), perhaps dumbed down
devices like PDAs and cellphones could be the ones to add logic for
reflowing text to meet their SUBSTANDARD DISPLAYS. You can't actually surf
the REAL web on your cellphone or PDA, why should you expect email would be
the same?
Your attitude is absurd. You are treating a random number - 75 in this case -
as if it was ordained by God. Is this number found in Bible? Maybe next time
you will start claiming so. Why 75? Why should every device in the world follow
some arbitrary convention laid by the limitations of some terminal in some old
age? It is pure insanity.
Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering
Procmail disclaimer:
<http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies. I'll get my copy from the list.
Exactly. Please go configure the mailman like I had explained above. And you
can avoid such ugly/arrogant disclaimers at the end of the mail.
--
:: Ligesh :: http://ligesh.com
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