<"broken software" strawman torched>

Well, if self-indulgent fossils like you continue to insist on making
it difficult for others who just want to read the damned posts, then
your fate will be well deserved.
--
gl...@cyberhighway.net

Julian Macassey <jul...@netcom.com> spluttered indignantly:

Rats. Looks as though our secret is out. Which one of us is going
to tell Charlie?

--
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Pete Young            pyo...@srd.bt.co.uk      Phone +44 1473 640885
      "Just another crouton, floating on the bouillabaisse of life"

On Sun, 23 Mar 1997 20:29:44 +0000, char...@antipope.org (Charlie

Agent (and, by extension, FreeAgen) isn't such a crappy newsreader as
some people on alt.peeves make it out to be. I (using FA) have no
problems with orc's posts. It may be that Glen has some other problems
with his computer. I dunno.

Nice one.

cd
--
                        Long live the new flesh!

cd skogsberg              52/30 days left            c...@alfakonsult.se

In article <slrn5j7gv0.1nm.char...@antipope.demon.co.uk>,
Charlie Stross <charlie @ antipope . org> wrote:

   1036, actually.  1035 is a domain names document.

   Interesting thing about the bogus newsreader catcher.  I just had
   a runaround with a fairly clueless individual in one of the scsi
   groups who saw the header and sent me a "don't post html" note.
   So I explained that news wasn't html, and this was a way to catch
   broken newsreaders.

   He sent back a response saying no, it's html, because Content-Type:
   is a html header, and you shouldn't post html because it's icky.

   Umm, no, it's usenet news, and that has nothing to do with html;
   if your newsreader is interpreting this header as anything other
   than noise, it's broken.

   He sent back a moderately spittle-flecked post saying LOUDLY that
   "no, it's html, and my newsreader(*) is PERFECT in every way."

   [* one of the variants of Agent, no doubt]

   No, really, it's usenet news, but I would welcome any reference
   from either rfc1036 or son-of-1036 that said that content-type
   was a reserved header.

   He screamed back "I HATE HTML AND I'M GOING TO KILLFILE YOU, PLUG
   MY EARS, AND HOLD MY BREATH UNTIL YOU STOP DOING IT!!!!!!!"

   I'll bet he'll turn an appealing shade of blue before he passes
   out.

   Peeve: it would be considered mean to randomise my from address
   and put the <blink> tags in a group where I actually try to get
   useful information, so I'll need to resist the temptation to
   troll the Microsoft customers.

   !Peeve: I just checked rfc1036 again.  ``Any unrecognised headers are
   allowed and will be passed through unchanged.''  Roughly translated,
   Glen, that means you need to get a working newsreader.

                 ____
   david parsons \bi/ Don't treat news as HTML.  It's the law.
                  \/

Nope.  As I pointed out, Agent *will* display a message in "raw"
content, which, if I interpret Charlie's comments correctly, is
exactly what it's supposed to do.  FA does this, as it doesn't have
capabilities to decode much of anything.  Agent will decode MIME and
several other types of encoding, which it then represents with an
icon.  You can then choose how to deal with that particular message.

This is a handy way to ignore all the dreck being posted in text
newsgroups from people using Netscape and MSIE.  Orc deliberately
chooses to include himself in this group when he adds the "Content:
HTML" line.  Then he shouts the "broken newsreader" mantra in a futile
attempt to detract from the fact that he's the one playing games.
It's not that big a deal for me to be able to read his posts if I
choose to do so.  It's even simpler with the new version of Agent
which just came out this week.  I just don't see what he thinks he's
gaining by forcing others to have to make adjustments for his posting
style.
--
gl...@cyberhighway.net

In article <3345f674.11999...@news.cyberhighway.net>,

In a sense, what I'm going to say here has all been said before (by some
that are much more knowledgeable than I).  However, you still steadfastly
cling to the assertion that you Just Don't Get It.  Whether that's actually
true or not (who knows, maybe you like poking a stick into this particular
hornet's nest), is something probably worth addressing; but I'll let
someone else take care of that.  Follow me here...

Usenet originally started as an agreement between several individuals on
a network to pass around information in a particular way.  There were
only a couple of computers on the network way back then (early 80's), so
the standards worked themselves out pretty quickly.

This small network grew pretty quickly and somehow came to include the
DARPA network, and other networks around the world.  It grew more or
less of it's own volition, and the original cabal of people developed a
standard standard making process (the RFC or "Request for Comments"
process).  This had two benefits:  It encouraged development of new
stuff, and it made sure everyone knew how the new stuff worked so that
they could make other stuff that worked with or worked like the new
stuff.  In other words: "Compatibility is Cool".  I'll get back to that.

Usenet News evolved in such a way.  The RFC system has literally
hundreds of papers discussing the transmission, storage, and format of
Usenet News.  RFC 1036 (which has been mentioned before) discusses the
format of news messages.  All newsreaders are obliged to follow the
instructions of RFC 1036, or they risk not processing news properly.
Compatibility is Cool.

There are two types of header lines in a news message: Required and
Optional.  Required headers are such things as "From:" and "Subject:"
lines; optional headers include the "Reply-To:" and "Sender:" lines.
According to RFC 1036, newsreaders are safe to ignore optional lines
and still expect to "read" the message.  The full text of this RFC is
available here (http://www.pasteur.fr/cgi-bin/mfs/01/10xx/1036) if you
want to read it.

Ok, the problem lies in the definition of "safely".  The people who make
Netscape (and other browsers), have decided that it's ok to place the
(optional) "Content type:" header line in that section so that browsers
can see it and process HTML tags in the article accordingly.  Technically,
it is.  Usenet was designed to be easily extensible.  One might even
consider this "progress"

The argument against that is that news postings with HTML gobbledegook in
them look like so much crap to the majority of newsreaders, and that this
"Content-Type:" header seems to have been sprung on an unaware Usenet
community without regard to the established methods of standards (in fact,
there's already a standard that probably should have been followed for
this: RFC 1505.  Compatibility is Cool).

Netscape and their ilk have therefor ascribed to the hight of hubris and
rudeness by attempting to arbitrarily define standards for the Usenet
community without first consulting said community.  No, there's no cabal
here, but there _is_ an accepted way of doing things.  By doing things
otherwise, a gauntlet has been thrown.

The guerilla response is to encode things with this arbitrary format in
such a way as to render them unusable to those that follow it.  Civil
Disobedience, if you will.  If the Browser-Thumpers insist on treading on
the establishment, we will make their Followers (and, by extension, them)
pay.  We can't scream "Look at the RFC" to Netscape, because their response
would probably be "So?"  You are now caught in the middle (an unenviable
place) of a religious war.

The question remains "Is Glen's Newsreader Broken?"  Well, maybe.  By
deciding to side with the Browser-Thumpers, Forte has (in effect) sided
with the forces of chaos and anarchy.  While not technically wrong,
they're certainly not very nice.  They are of the opinion "Might makes
Right" without stopping to see if they actually are Right (or have Might).

Where does that leave you?  Well, that really depends on who you want to
read.  A.P. is rapidly developing into a browser-hostile zone, and
browser-friendly newsreaders are going to have a tough time of it.  I
suspect it won't end soon, and I suspect David won't be the only one.

The short answer?  Get a different newsreader, or learn to love WingDings.

--
   ////    Jason M. Sullivan -O  jason.m.sulli...@worldnet.att.net
  |c-oo    <A HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/splay/Jason/">Jason</A>
   \_-    "Life's a compromise... Fortunately, it's also a cereal!"

In article <3345f674.11999...@news.cyberhighway.net>,

   Eh?  I don't think I've made any attempt to hide that I'm trying
   to convince people to stop using newsreaders that treat news as
   html for the poor and downtrodden (or, as you quaintly put it,
   "play".)

   You mean plain text, following rfc1036 conventions?  I know, it's
   pretty dull when compared to the high-quality html that litters the
   net, but some of us still remember the days when content mattered.

   If I can stop people from using Netscape to post (does IE allow
   people to spew html-encoded goo to usenet?) I'll consider it a win.
   But at this point using netscape 4, in full vomit-forth-html
   multimedia splendor, is beginning to seem like an option.  Yeah, so
   nobody who doesn't use netscape will be able to read my posts, but
   enough people have enbraced stupid "extensions" to news so that I
   won't be annoyed by the other people that you Mozilla, the worst of
   all possible newsreaders.   Just what is it about the internet,
   anyway?  It's as if every stupid idea that comes along is leapt on as
   the next best thing, from converting news into a poor cousin of html
   to MIME, a wonderful way of making formerly readable text into some
   mish-mash that's painful to read unless you've got one of the slow
   decoders available to it, all the way to enthusiastic support of the
   land barons who control popular namespace and are busily showing why
   it's a really stupid idea to give capitalists a monopoly.  Having trn
   go over to the stupid side is really proof of something, though I
   can't really say what -- I can see a future where every newsreader
   first starts doing mime, then html, and then goes the way of netscape
   where, Hey!,  you might as well decode EVERYTHING as html because
   that's what people expect now.

                 ____
   david parsons \bi/ if you've got a read news as news button, why don't you
                  \/                                                   use it?

In article <5hk71k$...@pell.pell.chi.il.us>,
  o...@pell.chi.il.us (david parsons) wrote:

Yeah, I'm sure it does, although I've never tried to use it for posting.
There's an option to check for "HTML"  format for outgoing mail or news,
though.

 [...]

But do you seriously think that you'll have any effect at all on this
creeping "elegance?"  If all the Peeves regulars were to join you in your
crusade, would it make the slightest bit of difference to the rest of the
net?  I haven't noticed any influx of HTML posts  here or in similar
groups like a.f.u.  There's an increasing number of them in some of the
less disciplined groups, but that seems to indicate to me that tactics
other than what you're using woud be more effective.

Feel free to convince me otherwise, however, and I may join you.  I've
never shied from tilting at windmills.

Ironically, I'm posting this from Deja News, which tells me it's using
Mozilla to post this.

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
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