Newsreader Pet Peeves
Sven Guckes
The List of Newsreader Pet Peeves
(1) Signature Dashes - "-- "
Most newsreaders allow to automatically attach a signature - but they almost
never use the "sigdashes" line ("-- " - note the space after the dashes)
to indicate the signature. And it should delete all lines after the fourth
line behind this line.
(2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
People are accustomed to their newsreader - and they seem to put up with most
of the bad features. If you knew what they are using then you would get a hint
about the contents. If they would only attach a X-Newsreader: line to warn us!
(3) Ease of posting to easy
Every good newsreader should ask every user without a setup file whether he
really wants to post - three times in a row. Every question gets a random
default answer which requires the user to read, understand, and answer
accordingly to each question.
(4) Attribution
Some newsreader allow to make attributions which almost quote the full header
of the previous post ("On %date, %from said about %subject in the groups
%newsgroups in article %articleid etc etc"). Whenever this is used please give
%us a hint about it by appending the string "[luser]" to the subject line.
(5) Empty or unchanged posts
The newsreader should *never* accept posts with an empty body or files which
have not changed since it was given to the user.
(6) Quoting - "> "
The quote prefix should be "> ". Period!
Sven
--
Sven guc...@math.fu-berlin.de
Four
lines
suffice!
Tom Christiansen
[courtesy cc of this posting sent to cited author via email]
In news.software.readers, guc...@math.fu-berlin.de gripes:
:The List of Newsreader Pet Peeves
:(1) Signature Dashes - "-- "
:(2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
:(3) Ease of posting to easy
:(4) Attribution
:(5) Empty or unchanged posts
:(6) Quoting - "> "
My goodness, is that all you can come up with? You're not verily
easily annoyed, then. :-) Here's my list, in no particular order:
Bogus, unrepliable email From: line
Lines too long, usually from dumb PCs
Duplicate postings
Asking to be emailed an answer due to pure laziness
Asking FAQs without reading the group's FAQ
Asking other people to do their work for them
Sending a CC email copy but not admitting this
Lines that are wrapped improperly
Signatures too long
Unnecessarily mimed mail
Quoted printable
Too many cross-postings
Duplicate postings
Wrong answers
Cutesy baby talk ("daddikins, i'm such a noobee, can i get some warez????")
Postings with so many orthographic errors as to be illegible
Broken references headers
Truncated subject lines
Too much quoting
Unchanged followups
Commercial advertisements in technical groups
Ling posts from people too lazy to pursue wit's soul
ALL CAPITAL SUBJECT LINES
Subjects containing three or more exclamation points!!!!!!
People who've never read the netiquette FAQ
Subjects containing three or more question marks?????????!!?!!
Subjects containing nothing but "HELP"
Posting to dead newsgroups
Subjects that read "(no subject)" or "none"
Web browsers poorly masquerading as newsreaders
Consistent misspelling's of genitive's that make's me s'hortcircuit
27 lines of PGP bull crap for one "me too"
Test postings
Sham scams, pyramid schemes
These are all so annoying that they either get mercilessly killed
before I even lay my eyes upon them, or else they get autofaqqed.
What's autofaqqing? It's a system by which you can trivially send
someone a quick little canned message. It keeps track of when someone
got such a message, and doesn't resend it to them for a month or so.
It's written in Perl (you probably want 5.002 to run it), and comes
with documentation and examples, hooks into your shell and newsreader
for application to both email message and news postings, and some three
dozen or so of my current little FAQ messages. Most of the items in
the list above are covered.
The software is available from
ftp://ftp.perl.com/perl/ext/Mail_AutoFAQ-1.001.tgz
if you'd like to use it. You just have to be nice.
The net has certainly gotten a lot worse in the last year. I attribute
it mostly to the mass-media publicity and shameless ISPs tricking the
technologically naïve masses into playing with the Internet without
properly educating them about its culture and function.
For another perspective on autofaqqing and the Fate of Usenet, see
http://www.boutell.com/boutell/usenet.html
--tom
--
Tom Christiansen Perl Consultant, Gamer, Hiker tch...@mox.perl.com
"I think contraception is disgusting --people using each other for pleasure."
--Joseph Scheidler, Director, Pro-Life Action League
Art Walker
Tom Christiansen (tch...@mox.perl.com) wrote:
: My goodness, is that all you can come up with? You're not verily
[ Excellent list clipped ]
Ever feel like it's time to just junk Usenet altogether, and re-design it
from the ground up?
Some suggestions:
1) Drop the "alt" hierarchy.
2) No binary postings (obsolete practice).
3) All newsgroups moderated.
4) Mandatory use of digital signatures (should be at least three per
article -- one from the poster, one from the news server (or ISP)
where the message was first posted, and one from the group moderator.
News servers could also check postings for valid signatures and
automatically drop ones with invalid signatures.)
5) Also consider setting up an infrastructure for "micro-payment"
systems, which could then be used to pay group moderators.
- Art
Reality is a point of view
+---- guc...@euler.math.fu-berlin.de wrote (10 May 1996 21:26:00 GMT):
| (2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
I take out that line as it duplicates information available
elsewhere in the header of the newsreading software that I use.
If the news server I used wouldn't add a bogus Org: line I would
drop that one too.
| (6) Quoting - "> "
+----
Visually noisy, especially when multiple quotes are involved.
--
Gary Johnson "There's no union called the AFL-CIA is there?"
gjoh...@season.com <a href="http://www.efm.org">Walk The Talk</a>
CAMPAIGN '96: Juck 'em if they can't fake a toke.
Sven Guckes
gjoh...@dream.season.com (Reality is a point of view):
> > (2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
> I take out that line as it duplicates information available
> elsewhere in the header of the newsreading software that I use.
Huh? If you get a X-Newsreader line then why take it out?
The point is that a news server should not accept a post without that line!
> > (6) Quoting - "> "
> Visually noisy, especially when multiple quotes are involved.
"Visually noisy"? What do you call "power quoting" then?
Example for "power quoting":
gjohnson> I take out that line as it duplicates information available
gjohnson> elsewhere in the header of the newsreader that I use.
Quoting with "> " at least preserves the quote level per line and allows
easy reformatting.
Example:
Unformatted quoted text
> > > aaaaaa aaaaaa aa aaaaaaaaaa aa aaaaaaaaa aaaaa
> > > aaaa aaaa aaaa
> > bbbbb b bbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbb b b b bbbbbbbbbbbb b
> > bbbbbbbbbbbbbb
> cccccccc ccccc cccc ccc ccccc ccccc ccccccccccc
Reformatted quoted text
> > > aaaaaa aaaaaa aa aaaaaaaaaa aa aaaaaaaaa aaaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa
> > bbbbb b bbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbb b b b bbbbbbbbbbbb b bbbbbbbbbbbbbb
> cccccccc ccccc cccc ccc ccccc ccccc ccccccccccc
I think that is pretty easy to read now.
And it should be possible for a newsreader
to assign different colours to each quote level.
Adding a surrounding border makes this practically impossible!
Example "quote by surrounding border":
+++++++++++++
+ blah blah
+ blah blah
+++++++++++++
comment
And thus endeth the lecture about quoting. ;-)
Sven
Sven Guckes
wal...@mnscorp.com (Art Walker):
> Ever feel like it's time to just Usenet altogether,
> and re-design it from the ground up? Some suggestions:
> 1) Drop the "alt" hierarchy.
Why? Usenet needs alt.flame! :-)
> 2) No binary postings (obsolete practice).
Lots of sites still don't offer ftp.
Some people rely on the "binaries" groups to get a programs.
And it won't prevent the posting of binaries as text (uucode etc).
> 3) All newsgroups moderated.
OK - your job will be to find the moderators first. ;-)
> 4) Mandatory use of digital signatures (should be at least three per
> article -- one from the poster, one from the news server (or ISP)
> where the message was first posted, and one from the group moderator.
> News servers could also check postings for valid signatures and
> automatically drop ones with invalid signatures.)
But - if users have to understand digital signatures before they post
then AOL, CompuServe, Delphi etc will lose most of their customers!
Hmm...
> 5) Also consider setting up an infrastructure for "micro-payment"
> systems, which could then be used to pay group moderators.
Forget it!
Sven
bi...@mix.com
Sven Guckes <guc...@landau.math.fu-berlin.de> writes:
> Huh? If you get a X-Newsreader line then why take it out?
> The point is that a news server should not accept a post without that line!
Here's some interesting reading for you guys from the Son-of-RFC1036.
Billy Y..
INTERNET DRAFT to be NEWS sec. -
News Article Format and Transmission
Henry Spencer
[...]
4.2.2. Undesirable Headers
A header whose content is empty is said to be an empty
header. Relayers and reading agents SHOULD not consider
presence or absence of an empty header to alter the seman-
tics of an article (although syntactic rules, such as
requirements that certain header names appear at most once
in an article, MUST still be satisfied). Posting agents
SHOULD delete empty headers from articles before posting
them.
Headers that merely state defaults explicitly (e.g., a Fol-
lowup-To header with the same content as the Newsgroups
header, or a MIME Content-Type header with contents
"text/plain; charset=us-ascii") or state information that
reading agents can typically determine easily themselves
(e.g. the length of the body in octets) are redundant, con-
veying no information whatsoever. Headers that state infor-
mation which cannot possibly be of use to a significant num-
ber of relayers, reading agents, or readers (e.g., the name
of the software package used as the posting agent) are use-
less and pointless. Posters and posting agents SHOULD avoid
including redundant or useless headers in articles.
NOTE: Information that someone, somewhere, might
someday find useful is best omitted from headers.
(There's quite enough of it in article bodies.)
Headers should contain information of known util-
ity only. This is not meant to preclude inclusion
of information primarily meant for news-software
debugging, but such information should be included
only if there is real reason, preferably based on
experience, to suspect that it may be genuinely
useful. Articles passing through gateways are the
only obvious case where inclusion of debugging
information appears clearly legitimate. (See sec-
tion 10.1.)
NOTE: A useful rule of thumb for software imple-
mentors is: "if I had to pay a dollar a day for
the transmission of this header, would I still
think it worthwhile?".
Art Walker
Sven Guckes (guc...@landau.math.fu-berlin.de) wrote:
: Lots of sites still don't offer ftp.
: Some people rely on the "binaries" groups to get a programs.
: And it won't prevent the posting of binaries as text (uucode etc).
Perhaps, but if we dropped the alt.binaries.* and alt.*.pictures.*
hierarchies, news admins all around the globe would breathe a sigh of
relief as gigabytes of disk space (not to mention network bandwidth) are
reclaimed.
: OK - your job will be to find the moderators first. ;-)
Simple enough. If the participants of a particular newsgroup can't find
someone willing to 'take responsibility' for the newsgroup, then that
could be a very good argument towards discontinuing the newsgroup.
Particularly if mechanisms are in place to compensate moderators for
their time (re my earlier suggestion of enacting a micro-payment
system).
: But - if users have to understand digital signatures before they post
: then AOL, CompuServe, Delphi etc will lose most of their customers!
: Hmm...
Why? That is something that would be handled by the news client
software. All a user would need to have is a key certificate issued by
their ISP in order to access the local news server. Of course, if some
in the US government have a say, the key certificate would be inside a
'Fortezza' token, but that's another discussion.
- Art
Jay Maynard
On 13 May 1996 04:08:24 GMT, Art Walker <wal...@mnscorp.com> wrote:
>Perhaps, but if we dropped the alt.binaries.* and alt.*.pictures.*
>hierarchies, news admins all around the globe would breathe a sigh of
>relief as gigabytes of disk space (not to mention network bandwidth) are
>reclaimed.
...and then gasp in horror as those gigabytes, and more, are soaked up by
those same binaries, distributed in every newsgroup on the net.
You *will* *never* get rid of binaries on Usenet. There's too much demand
for them.
--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
http://k5zc.hsc.uth.tmc.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity.
"Just because I'm a superhero doesn't mean
I have to smell poo gas." -- Freakazoid
Sven Guckes
wal...@mnscorp.com (Art Walker):
> > Lots of sites still don't offer ftp. Some people rely on the "binaries"
> > groups to get a programs. And it won't prevent the posting of binaries
> > as text (uucode etc).
> hierarchies, news admins all around the globe would breathe a sigh of relief
> as gigabytes of disk space (not to mention network bandwidth) are reclaimed.
*ehem* Your idea is all very well, but you obviously do not have a solution
for preventing the posting of binaries, do you?
> If the participants of a particular newsgroup can't find someone willing to
> 'take responsibility' for the newsgroup, then that could be a very good
> argument towards discontinuing the newsgroup.
"Death of Usenet predicted!"
Film at 11.
> Particularly if mechanisms are in place to compensate moderators for their
> time (re my earlier suggestion of enacting a micro-payment system).
Bill? Is that you?
> > But - if users have to understand digital signatures before they post then
> > AOL, CompuServe, Delphi etc will lose most of their customers! Hmm...
> Why? That is something that would be handled by the news client software.
> All a user would need to have is a key certificate issued by their ISP in
> order to access the local news server.
What was your AOL address again?
> Of course, if some in the US government have a say, the key certificate
> would be inside a 'Fortezza' token, but that's another discussion.
You grossly misssspelllt "Pizza token".
Sven
Reality is a point of view
+---- guc...@neumann.math.fu-berlin.de wrote (13 May 1996 10:22:10 GMT):
| *ehem* Your idea is all very well, but you obviously do not have a solution
| for preventing the posting of binaries, do you?
I hear rumors of USENET feeds via satellite. ISP's seem to like
the idea because it gets bytes off their wire. If it becomes
popular then a limited number of USENET sources will have a
financial incentive, and may find a way. Which may ring
censorship bells . . .
Wouldn't bother me much. I agree that uuencoded binaries via
USENET is inefficient. And if people can't get their nudie fix
that way then maybe they will register to vote and change laws
so they can get them by more efficient means.
Per Abrahamsen
>>>>> "SG" == guc...@euler.math.fu-berlin.de (Sven Guckes) wrote:
SG> (6) Quoting - "> "
>>>>> "GJ" == Gary Johnson <gjoh...@dream.season.com> writes:
GJ> Visually noisy, especially when multiple quotes are involved.
But parsable. The newsreader I use will attempt to parse the
citations and attribution lines, and present them in the form
specified by the user.
Per Abrahamsen
>>>>> "Billy" == billy <bi...@mix.com> writes:
Billy> Here's some interesting reading for you guys from the Son-of-RFC1036.
>>>>> "HS" == Henry Spencer wrote
HS> Headers that state infor-
HS> mation which cannot possibly be of use to a significant num-
HS> ber of relayers, reading agents, or readers (e.g., the name
HS> of the software package used as the posting agent) are use-
HS> less and pointless.
The X-Newsreader has proved such a valuable aid in tracking down bad
newsreaders since Henry Spencer wrote that RFC-to-be, that many people
who initially agreed with the sentiment now advocate X-Newsreader
themselves.
Reality is a point of view
+---- abr...@dina.kvl.dk wrote (13 May 1996 16:02:20 +0200):
> > >, | | | and name> are all parsable.
Tom Christiansen
[courtesy cc of this posting sent to cited author via email]
In news.software.readers,
gjoh...@dream.season.com (Reality is a point of view) writes:
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| +---- abr...@dina.kvl.dk wrote (13 May 1996 16:02:20 +0200): |
| | >>>>> "SG" == guc...@euler.math.fu-berlin.de (Sven Guckes) wrote: |
| | SG> (6) Quoting - "> " |
| | >>>>> "GJ" == Gary Johnson <gjoh...@dream.season.com> writes: |
| | GJ> Visually noisy, especially when multiple quotes are involved. |
| | |
| | But parsable. The newsreader I use will attempt to parse the |
| | citations and attribution lines, and present them in the form |
| | specified by the user. |
| +---- |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+------------------------------------------+
| > > >, | | | and name> are all parsable. |
+------------------------------------------+
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| Gary Johnson "There's no union called the AFL-CIA is there?" |
| gjoh...@season.com <a href="http://www.efm.org">Walk The Talk</a> |
| CAMPAIGN '96: Juck 'em if they can't fake a toke. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Surely this kind of thing is getting out of hand. :-).
--tom
--
Tom Christiansen Perl Consultant, Gamer, Hiker tch...@mox.perl.com
The secretaries don't understand me. --Rob Pike
Felix von Leitner
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On 11 May 1996 17:17:25 GMT, Art Walker <wal...@mnscorp.com> wrote:
> Ever feel like it's time to just junk Usenet altogether, and re-design it
> from the ground up?
Oh, no problem. While we are at it, we can junk the Internet altogether
and redesign it from scratch.
And why not scratch and rebuild the UNO and the Congress, too? And the
Bundesregierung, of course.
> 1) Drop the "alt" hierarchy.
Waa? No more alt.fan.warlord and alt.ascii-art? Then Sven won't
survive your re-design. Or you won't ;)
> 2) No binary postings (obsolete practice).
Argh! No more alt.binaries.*?
And what do I do with my "modern art" collection, then?
Well, that's not the point. Posting binaries is *much* better than
using FTP or the world wide web, since the mirroring infrastructure is
already there with Usenet. With FTP, the mirroring problem is not
solved yet.
> 3) All newsgroups moderated.
Oh sure, no problem, and who do you proclaim moderator? Serdar Argic?
Canter & Siegel? What do you do when they ask to be moderators? Let
them sue you? Make them moderators?
> 4) Mandatory use of digital signatures (should be at least three per
> article -- one from the poster, one from the news server (or ISP)
> where the message was first posted, and one from the group moderator.
> News servers could also check postings for valid signatures and
> automatically drop ones with invalid signatures.)
Of course, no problem. No anonymous postings anymore, I take it? Then
we can shut down the social and cultural newsgroups, and the gay and
whatever newsgroups? and alt.religion.scientology? Cool, man.
> 5) Also consider setting up an infrastructure for "micro-payment"
> systems, which could then be used to pay group moderators.
Payment? Way cool. I always wanted a better world where I pay for each
movie I see on TV, for each article I read in Usenet, for each byte I
transfer via FTP or HTTP. Brave new world.
Felix [where was that LART again?]
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Felix von Leitner
Art, before censoring^Wmoderating Usenet, you should learn how to quote
correctly. The correct quote string is "> ", not ": ".
On 13 May 1996 04:08:24 GMT, Art Walker <wal...@mnscorp.com> wrote:
> Perhaps, but if we dropped the alt.binaries.* and alt.*.pictures.*
> hierarchies, news admins all around the globe would breathe a sigh of
> relief as gigabytes of disk space (not to mention network bandwidth) are
> reclaimed.
In the contrary, people would roam the WWW to get their Doom2.
Everything would take even longer, since with News you always get things
from your local News server, with WWW you don't.
> : OK - your job will be to find the moderators first. ;-)
> Simple enough. If the participants of a particular newsgroup can't find
> someone willing to 'take responsibility' for the newsgroup, then that
> could be a very good argument towards discontinuing the newsgroup.
Harhar, very funny. "Who would like to be the moderator of
alt.religion.scientology"? A scientology spokesman? Very funny.
Someone else? He would be sued to death by scientology, since secret
scientology papers would once in a while reach him, whether he posts
them or not.
> Particularly if mechanisms are in place to compensate moderators for
> their time (re my earlier suggestion of enacting a micro-payment
> system).
Cool. Pay-Per-Byte. Pay-Per-News. Forget it.
If you want to pay for everything, then please go ahead. I don't.
Felix
Felix von Leitner
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On 11 May 1996 18:27:20 GMT, Reality is a point of view <gjoh...@dream.season.com> wrote:
> +---- guc...@euler.math.fu-berlin.de wrote (10 May 1996 21:26:00 GMT):
> | (2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
> I take out that line as it duplicates information available
> elsewhere in the header of the newsreading software that I use.
> If the news server I used wouldn't add a bogus Org: line I would
> drop that one too.
> | (6) Quoting - "> "
> +----
> Visually noisy, especially when multiple quotes are involved.
Your quoting is *really* annoying. Please use standard "> " quoting.
Then we can reformat your broken formatting. I don't want to write a
reformatting Perl script for your broken quoting. Puleeze change that.
You can't quote from someone who quotes from someone else this way
without losing information. I really hate this quoting style.
Felix [http://www.prz.tu-berlin.de/~leitner/CnH/bambi.html]
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Felix von Leitner
> Headers that merely state defaults explicitly (e.g., a Fol-
> lowup-To header with the same content as the Newsgroups
> header, or a MIME Content-Type header with contents
> "text/plain; charset=us-ascii") or state information that
> reading agents can typically determine easily themselves
> (e.g. the length of the body in octets) are redundant, con-
> veying no information whatsoever. Headers that state infor-
> mation which cannot possibly be of use to a significant num-
> ber of relayers, reading agents, or readers (e.g., the name
> of the software package used as the posting agent) are use-
> less and pointless. Posters and posting agents SHOULD avoid
> including redundant or useless headers in articles.
ARGH! Oh please no!!!
This way I can easily score away people using Mozilla to post!
Please let this header stay! Oh folks, this Henry Spencer guy really
does not know what he is talking about.
Felix
Felix von Leitner
On 14 May 1996 01:45:08 GMT, Reality is a point of view <gjoh...@dream.season.com> wrote:
_ +---- abr...@dina.kvl.dk wrote (13 May 1996 16:02:20 +0200):
/ \ | >>>>> "SG" == guc...@euler.math.fu-berlin.de (Sven Guckes) wrote:
___| |___ | SG> (6) Quoting - "> "
<___ ___> | >>>>> "GJ" == Gary Johnson <gjoh...@dream.season.com> writes:
_| | | GJ> Visually noisy, especially when multiple quotes are involved.
|__)_| |
(___| | But parsable. The newsreader I use will attempt to parse the
/(___| | citations and attribution lines, and present them in the form
/ (__| | specified by the user.
+----
Look, if we consider your power quoting acceptable, then one day someone
might want to use *other* kinds of ASCII ART in his Usenet postings.
/^\ .
/\ "V"
/__\ I O o
//..\\ I .
\].`[/ I
/l\/j\ (] . O > > >, | | | and name> are all parsable.
/. ~~ ,\/I .
\\L__j^\/I o
\/--v} I o .
| | I _________
| | I c(` ')o
| l I \. ,/
_/j L l\_! _//^---^\\_
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
... and we wouldn't want that, would we?
Felix [alt.ascii-art rulez!]
> --
~..~ \9 > Gary Johnson "There's no union called the AFL-CIA is there?"
(oo)_____/ > gjoh...@season.com <a href="http://www.efm.org">Walk The Talk</a>
WW WW > CAMPAIGN '96: Juck 'em if they can't fake a toke.
bi...@mix.com
Felix von Leitner <lei...@xorn.prz.tu-berlin.de> writes:
> Headers that state infor-
> mation which cannot possibly be of use to a significant num-
> ber of relayers, reading agents, or readers (e.g., the name
> of the software package used as the posting agent) are use-
> less and pointless.
> ARGH! Oh please no!!!
> This way I can easily score away people using Mozilla to post!
Well, I'd bet the ones you want to find will ignore the above anyway, so ...
Billy Y..
Karl_Kl...@lycos.com
lei...@xorn.prz.tu-berlin.de (Felix von Leitner) writes:
> Oh folks, this Henry Spencer guy really
> does not know what he is talking about.
Say what you like about the utility of X-Newsreader:, but to say
"Henry Spencer does not know what he is talking about" is to make as
obvious a contradiction in terms as could be created on Usenet. Henry
has the experience and (many would say) the wisdom of any 10 other
experienced Usenetters, to say nothing of the current crop of drek
making its presence freshly known.
Hint and clue: Henry is one of the 2 authors of C News, one of the
news transport packages in current use these days (INN alongside it as
the other), has served on standards boards for more years than many
newer Usenetters have been alive, worked with/for/around Usenix since
its creation, and heaven only knows what other credits could flow his
way.
Do not disparage people of whom you happen to know little, personally.
Aengus Lawlor
In article <4n0v48$q...@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>, tch...@mox.perl.com (Tom Christiansen) wrote:
>
>My goodness, is that all you can come up with? You're not verily
>easily annoyed, then. :-) Here's my list, in no particular order:
>
But there's one I don't quite understand.
>Sending a CC email copy but not admitting this
I occassionally cc: the original poster when I'm posting a follow-up, but I'm
not sure why anyone reading the newsgroup would care.
(I notice some follow-ups are in fact replies are cc:ed to the newsgroup, and
often have no relevance for the group as a whole. But if a poster asks a very
specific question, with an answer that may be of interest to a wider audience,
then it seems reasonable to post a replyfollow-up, and cc: the poster. Am
I missing some obvious point of netequette?).
>--tom
>--
>Tom Christiansen Perl Consultant, Gamer, Hiker tch...@mox.perl.com
>
Aengus
--
ala...@rohmhaas.com (preferred) | Aengus Lawlor
An bhfuil cead agam dul amok? | (who used to be ala...@dit.ie)
These are my opinions, and don't reflect the view of Rohm and Haas Company
Tom Christiansen
[courtesy cc of this posting sent to cited author via email]
In news.software.readers, ala...@RohmHaas.Com (Aengus Lawlor) writes:
:>Sending a CC email copy but not admitting this
:
:I occassionally cc: the original poster when I'm posting a follow-up, but I'm
:not sure why anyone reading the newsgroup would care.
Oh, I don't mind getting them -- and in fact, the timeliness is
appreciated. I just mind not knowing that I got them. :-)
The problem is when you get a "silent email CC" that doesn't clearly state
that it also went to the public newsgroup. It's like BCCing an entire
hugissimo mailing list without the To: recipients being aware that this
has been done. You might reply via email, not realizing it was part of a
public discussion, or think you'd been told something in confidence, etc.
--tom
--
Tom Christiansen Perl Consultant, Gamer, Hiker tch...@mox.perl.com
X-Windows: There's got to be a better way.
--Jamie Zawinski
Reality is a point of view
+---- lei...@xorn.prz.tu-berlin.de wrote (14 May 1996 15:10:45 GMT):
| Your quoting is *really* annoying. Please use standard "> " quoting.
There is a STD that covers _the_ character to use?
| Then we can reformat your broken formatting. I don't want to write a
| reformatting Perl script for your broken quoting. Puleeze change that.
Well, I consider > to be broken but I'm not foolish enough to
expect the entire planet to agree with me.
| You can't quote from someone who quotes from someone else this way
| without losing information. I really hate this quoting style.
+----
You could always use a score file, I won't mind.
+---- foo wrote
| +---- bar wrote
| | +---- baz wrote
| | | I can.
| | Easily.
| Ditto.
| | | Even in a worst case.
| | +----
| | And without space.
| +----
| Although I and | don't mix well.
+----
> foo wrote
> > bar wrote
> > > baz wrote
> > > I can.
> > Easily.
> Ditto.
> > > Even in a worst case.
> > And without space.
> Although I and | don't mix well.
> foo wrote
>> bar wrote
>>> baz wrote
>>> I can.
>> Easily.
> Ditto.
>>> Even in a worst case.
>> And without space.
> Although I and | don't mix well.
It's a free world, usually.
--
Gary Johnson "There's no union called the AFL-CIA is there?"
gjoh...@season.com <a href="http://www.efm.org">Walk The Talk</a>
Reality is a point of view
+---- abr...@dina.kvl.dk wrote (13 May 1996 23:07:18 +0200):
| >>>>> "HS" == Henry Spencer wrote
| HS> Headers that state infor-
| HS> mation which cannot possibly be of use to a significant num-
| HS> ber of relayers, reading agents, or readers (e.g., the name
| HS> of the software package used as the posting agent) are use-
| HS> less and pointless.
|
| The X-Newsreader has proved such a valuable aid in tracking down bad
| newsreaders since Henry Spencer wrote that RFC-to-be, that many people
| who initially agreed with the sentiment now advocate X-Newsreader
| themselves.
So will it be fixed before the RFC-to-be becomes and RFC or STD?
Speaking of which I'm thinking of writing a newsreader. Other
than the seal of good newsreadering and the various STD's and
RFC's are there good reference documents?
Art Walker
Felix von Leitner (lei...@xorn.prz.tu-berlin.de) wrote:
: Waa? No more alt.fan.warlord and alt.ascii-art?
Or alt.sysadmin.recovery and alt.peeves. But hey, we all make sacrifices.
: Well, that's not the point. Posting binaries is *much* better than
: using FTP or the world wide web, since the mirroring infrastructure is
: already there with Usenet. With FTP, the mirroring problem is not
: solved yet.
Assuming that most (if any) of this data is of sufficent value to
*require* mirroring.
: Oh sure, no problem, and who do you proclaim moderator? Serdar Argic?
: Canter & Siegel? What do you do when they ask to be moderators? Let
: them sue you? Make them moderators?
Absolutely.
Of course, there's no rule that says that anyone has to participate in
the particular newsgroups they moderate, either...
: Of course, no problem. No anonymous postings anymore, I take it? Then
: we can shut down the social and cultural newsgroups, and the gay and
: whatever newsgroups? and alt.religion.scientology? Cool, man.
I maintain that whatever value "anonymous remailers" provide, it is more
than outweighed by the problems caused by the abuse of same.
: Payment? Way cool. I always wanted a better world where I pay for each
: movie I see on TV, for each article I read in Usenet, for each byte I
: transfer via FTP or HTTP. Brave new world.
Ultimately, you already do, although under the current system it's done
in an indirect manner (i.e. via ISP access fees and the like). Like it
or not, as soon as it becomes practical to do so, the telecommunications
companies in the U.S. *will* adopt "measured service" billing practices.
Especially if the present it to the public as a way to make the
"Internet Hogs" pay "their fair share".
- Art
Per Persson
In article <slrn4ph8jc....@xorn.prz.tu-berlin.de>,
Felix von Leitner <lei...@prz.tu-berlin.de> wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>You can't quote from someone who quotes from someone else this way
>without losing information. I really hate this quoting style.
And I really hate people who PGP sign their posts when it doesn't
contain anything interesting to the read (whatosever).
--pp
bi...@mix.com
Per Abrahamsen <abr...@dina.kvl.dk> writes:
> The X-Newsreader has proved such a valuable aid in tracking down bad
> newsreaders
What's so hard about asking whoever what they're using??
Billy Y..
Felix von Leitner
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Don't say that you can disable the X-Newsreader within Mozilla?!
Felix
- --
If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock,
not selling advice.
--Norman Augustine
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Tim Pierce
[ Posted and mailed to tchrist@perl ]
Hard to ask them if their newsreader doesn't supply a valid e-mail
address. Besides, enough people don't answer or don't even know
(yes, really!) that it's not an effective way.
I'm starting to think about using Tom Christiansen's autofaqqer to
key on X-Newsreader subject lines, and fire off a letter to the
tech support address for that newsreader when it spots a problem.
That'll go right after cleaning the Aegean Stables on my project
list...
--
By sending unsolicited commercially-oriented e-mail to this address, the
sender agrees to pay a $100 flat fee to the recipient for proofreading
services.
Felix von Leitner
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
On 14 May 1996 20:57:04 -0400, Karl_Kl...@lycos.com <Karl_Kl...@lycos.com> wrote:
> lei...@xorn.prz.tu-berlin.de (Felix von Leitner) writes:
> > Oh folks, this Henry Spencer guy really
> > does not know what he is talking about.
> Say what you like about the utility of X-Newsreader:, but to say
> "Henry Spencer does not know what he is talking about" is to make as
> obvious a contradiction in terms as could be created on Usenet.
I meant *in this special case*! In general I wouldn't claim that Henry
Spencer does not know what he is talking about. If this was the
impression I left, I publicly apologize!
> Do not disparage people of whom you happen to know little, personally.
I know who Henry Spencer is. And if there's something I really *don't*
want to do that it is to lessen his deeds.
Felix
- --
7. As a general rule, don't solve puzzles that open portals to Hell.
--Horror Movie Survival Guide
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bi...@mix.com
Reality is a point of view <gjoh...@dream.season.com> writes:
> Speaking of which I'm thinking of writing a newsreader. Other
> than the seal of good newsreadering and the various STD's and
> RFC's are there good reference documents?
Appended is my personal favorite.
Billy Y..
>From: t...@plts.org (Tom Limoncelli)
Newsgroups: news.software.readers,news.software.b
Subject: Read This Before You Write a Newsreader, News Transport System, etc.
Date: 24 May 95 12:38:15 GMT
Organization: P.L.T.S., Bridgewater Twp, New Jersey, USA
Read This Before You Write a Newsreader, News Transport System, etc.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
By Tom Limoncelli
Version 1.12. Updated 1995-03-30
This document is not a FAQ. A FAQ implies that someone asked questions
and someone else answered said questions. That's not what this
document is about. This document is written because of all the people
that didn't ask, or didn't know to ask, and got in trouble because of
it. People constantly post to the net that they are writing some kind
of software and in the process of asking other questions they reveal
that they are doing something else that is, well, stupid. This
document attempts to point out common stupid mistakes so that you can
avoid them. Wow! How amazingly useful! Isn't that nice of Tom?
Well, actually it's a sad statement on the understanding of netnews
technology that makes these stupid mistakes so common. Very common.
Common enough to make this document useful. So, this is not a FAQ,
this is a warning.
Point #1:
"I think I'll write a newsreader!"
Stop. Stop right there. I have a suggestion that will save you a lot
of time: Go to a movie. Rent a video. Volunteer with a local
first-aid squad. Feed the homeless. Make a sandwich, walk
onto the street and when you see a homeless person say, "HERE!"
Just do anything other than write a newsreader. There are enough
already. We should have started neutering newsreader authors a long
time ago.
"...but I'm going to write one that does something nobody has done before!"
Yeah, right. Before you say that, learn all the features of nn, trn,
strn, gnus, and tin. Now tell me you've thought of something new. Can
you add this new feature to one of the old newsreaders? Yes you can.
Plus, you'll save a million sysadmins grief when they have to go and
install yet another newsreader and figure out how to build it. It's
much easier to install a updated version of an old newsreader.
"...well I could, but I really want to make my system stand-alone".
Then go stand alone in a corner until you've changed your mind. If you
don't, you'll spend all of your time writing silly parts like user
interfaces, figuring out your command structure, getting it to compile
on every kind of Unix in the world, etc. Heck, you'll waste most of
your time just writing the install script. Really! Just add your
feature to some other newsreader. All the boring parts are written
for you.
For example, a scoring system for articles could be the basis for an
entire newsreader. However, by adding this feature to trn (creating
strn), the author was able to build an entire newsreader with all those
great trn features, but concentrate on what he considered "fun" (i.e.
the scoring system).
Here's another example: TMNN was an attempt to make an entirely new
netnews system where things would be a lot more hypertext'ish. Rather
than just add these brilliant ideas to a newsreader (or to C News and
modify a newsreader to take advantage of the new data), the author
tried to re-invent the entire newstransport. The project was never
completed. I'm sure the author didn't get to spend much time on that
part that really interested him either.
Point #2:
If you are writing a newsreader or transport from scratch, here's what
I think the areas of interesting research would be:
Wait a second, you aren't sure what's a transport and what's a
newsreader? Well, that's a sure sign that you shouldn't be writing
this software just yet. Much of the work of writing any software that
interacts with netnews can be avoided if you KNOW THE CURRENT
TECHNOLOGY FIRST. Read all the RFC's (822, 977, 1036), install C News
or INN once or twice. Install tin, trn, nn, and readnews. Read the
O'Reilly book. If anything, read the 2 Usenix papers about C News
(same place you'll find the C News code), Rich's Usenix paper on INN
(stored where INN is stored), and Kurt Lidl's paper on MUSE
(distributing netnews via MBONE multicast)
ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/muse/usenix-muse.ps.gz). Heck,
they're just plain good reading for anyone that writes software.
Point #2.5:
If you are writing news software (transport or reader) for a non-Unix
system then it's still important to have experience with the Unix
systems that are available. In fact, considering the horrible I/O
throughput on most Intel-based computers, you have 2x the reason to
have studied the papers about C News and INN because they have
optimized the amount of I/O to a minimum. If you are writing a
newsreader you have 10x the reason to learn a number of Unix
newsreaders. There is over 100 years of combined software engineering
experience in those readers. Where else do you have the opportunity to
learn from that much experience? (Maybe while writing accounting
software but who would want to do that?) Also, PC news posting agents
are NOTORIOUS for not following the RFCs and making the mistakes listed
here. So, go slowly, read the resources, do your homework, get lots of
advice, and then go for it.
Point #3:
If you are writing a newsreader or transport from scratch, here's what
I think the areas of interesting research would be:
Advanced user interfaces -- I don't mean Athena Widgets vs. MOTIF vs.
OpenWindows, etc. All those damn GUI-based newsreaders add ABSOLUTELY
nothing to the state of the art... except maybe permitting the
mouse-generation to access the technically elite Usenet (which, being a
"More Power To The People"-kind-of-guy, I feel this is a good thing).
However, I think an advanced UI is something that reads news for you.
Read the Usenix papers on RightPages or Ferret. Or, how about
something that lets me post articles in a way that lets me communicate
better (for some definition of "better"). Something that
cross-references articles in a way that is more useful than currently
available.
Disconnected Mode -- Every pissant BBS user uses QWK and has all sorts
of fancy QWK newsreaders. Nobody has invented something as nice as
this for netnews. On the other hand, QWK *SUCKS*. Boy does it suck!
It is the embodiment of BAD SOFTWARE DESIGN. It is the best example of
everything wrong with the way PC software authors create systems. Then
there is SOUP, the spec is available as "soup12.zip" from all good
SimTel mirrors. I haven't read it yet, but the author tells me it is
much better that QWK. Software can be found by looking in the FAQ's
for comp.os.msdos.mail-news and alt.usenet.offline-reader. Investigate
this before you go reinventing the wheel.
Better posting -- Wanna be famous? Make a seriously amazing MIME
posting tool. You could be responsible for the next explosion of
netnews bandwith as everyone uses your MIME authoring tool to make
megabyte posts full of text, sounds, and graphics. Or, make a
idiot-proof, GUI-based, bullet-proof posting system that doesn't lock
you into just the standard headers. Want real fame? Separate the
posting mechanism from the newsreader. Define an interface between
newsreaders and newsposters and then make a couple newsposters. Try to
get every newsreader to add support to your newsposter. Then we'll
hear things like, "I use trn with FreshPost" and "Oh, I use trn too but
I use MagicPost, it has better MIME capabilities". Fame and fortune
await you!
New storage systems -- Everyone talks about storing netnews in a
compressed form, as a database, as a flat-file, on a special "netnewsfs"
filesystem, etc. etc. Nobody actually implements it. What's stopping
you? How about a storage system that makes expires happen blindingly
fast? How about a storage system that makes reading the "next article"
a fast operation (note: the next article is not numerically next if you
are using a threaded newsreader). INN has hooks for these kinds of
things and all INN utilities uses these hooks. Make the change once in
the right place and all (or most) INN code supports it. Time after time
people have suggested using an SQL database to store articles, the
history file, the kill file, the X-Files, etc. Why not actually
implement it and see if these are good ideas?
HypertextNews -- Why store quoted text? Why not just store a code
which specifies the quoted article and which lines? Newsreaders that
support it could let you click on the quoted text and view the lines
specified, the whole article, or whatever! Make a system that is also
backwards compatible or figure out how to expire such a news
database and you'll win the nobel prize!
There are plenty of ideas where those came from. Please don't just
write yet another newsreader.
Point #4:
Never re-invent the wheel. Why write a text editor when you can just
call $EDITOR? (Unless your amazing new feature is a better editor...
in which case you shouldn't be writing a newsreader, you should be
writing something that all newsreaders could be calling as $EDITOR.
Why get bogged down writting tons of NNTP code when you can link to a
pre-written client library? NNTP-t5 and INN both generate ready-to-use
client libraries that anyone can link to and they do all the work for
you. Best of all, they are similar enough that you can write your code
so that it works when linked to either. It would be nice if someone
wrote a library with all the same calls that read everything off the
disk instead of via NNTP. Then you could link a NNTP-based newsreader
to this library and turn it into a non-NNTP-based newsreader. Why not
write a new library that checks a flag and reads news via either NNTP,
the file system, on a special compressed system, or by smoke signals.
Point #5:
THINGS TO DO OR NOT TO DO:
--------------------------
DO USE "MODE READER": When you talk to an NNTP port, the first thing
you should do is send the command "mode reader". Pay attention to the
error messages. "500" means "I don't know that command" (proceed as
normal), "200" means "good". Anything else and you don't want to talk
to this server.
DO USE A PRE-WRITTEN DATABASE: Don't use your own database, use NOV.
Link to the NOV library so you don't have to implement any of it. It
does all the work for you. Kill your sysadmin if they want to install
tin's database, trn's database, nn's database, etc. (unless you get
your hard disks for free).
POSTING: DON'T VALIDATE HEADERS: When the user wants to post an
article, give them an editor with the minimum headers and accept
whatever you get back. If any changes were made, send everything
verbatim to "inews -h". "inews"'s job is to validate the headers,
insert missing ones, silently delete certain ones, etc. Don't try to
do all this work in the newsreader. Sysadmins often hack their inews
to add some special feature... don't undo their work or require them to
re-add this hack to every newsreader they install! (The NNTP POST
command is the same as piping to "inews -h" except you must include a
"From:" header).
POSTING: DON'T WORK TOO HARD #1: The "inews -h" command requires only
two valid headers: "Subject:" and "Newsgroups:". Don't send it
anything else (unless the user inserts it him/her self). For example,
why figure out how to format the date properly? The format is very
specific and if you get it wrong, the transport silently drops the
article. Why try at all when you know that "inews -h" generates a
perfect one for you? Also, if the user inserts a "Reply-To: foo@bar",
let them. Don't try to validate it, if they put in a non-functioning
address it's not your job to care.
POSTING: DON'T WORK TOO HARD #2: The NNTP "POST" command requires only
3 valid headers: "Subject:", "Newsgroups:", and "From:". It will
generate the rest if they are left out. Don't do the work yourself.
RFC977 says that you must generate all required headers, but that isn't
a good idea, as authors learned. That's why it is important to educate
yourself about the RFCs, as well as how they got implemented.
POSTING: DON'T GENERATE A PATH HEADER: Don't generate a Path:
header. Period. With networks changing so often, it is impossible to
generate one that is correct for all sites. Let "inews" or NNTP's
"POST" command generate it for you. They will generate it properly
because they were installed (and maybe modified) by someone that
understands the site's special configuration. The person that installs
the newsreader is often someone different, and is often installed by
Joe Loser that thinks netnews was invented 3 months ago when he first
discovered alt.sex.
POSTING: MORE HEADERS NOT TO GENERATE: When generating a post's
headers, don't insert the Date: header, munge the Sender:, From:
header, etc. That is inews's job. "inews"'s only purpose in life is
to take the crap that the user input, add the missing required headers,
check and fix obvious errors, and reject what it can't fix. inews will
send it to the spool or post it via NNTP. Why does everyone think they
can out-do inews by doing the work themselves?
POSTING: The importance of the Date: header: The Date: header is
critical to the news transport because this makes it possible to expire
netnews. Therefore, the Date: header has to be one of a couple very
specific formats so that transport software authors aren't chasing a
moving target. Since every site that touches an article must re-parse
this date (and it is slow to parse), C News and INN have optimized on
one particular date format. The other formats are handled in a manner
that isn't as fast. So, output Date: formats like C News does. Better
yet, if you are a posting agent DO NOT GENERATE the Date: format and
let inews (or the NNTP "POST" command) generate it for you!
DATE HEADER MANIA: The Date: header that you generate should always
use your local GMT timezone offset. However, if you want to be a
really cool newsreader author, make sure your program displays that
header in the local timezone of the person reading the message. (i.e.
convert the header to the local time when displaying it). Remember to
provide a way to see the original header (i.e. the "show all headers"
command shouldn't do the conversion).
NNTP POSTING: DON'T USE IHAVE: Use the NNTP "POST" command, not the
NNTP "IHAVE" command. If you use NNTP's "ihave" command then you have
spent about a week duplicating all the work that inews (or NNTP's "POST"
command) does, wasted another week of programming time to get
everything "just right"... and when someone installs their software on
an INN server, they'll find that it doesn't work. Duuuh!
WHEN YOUR USER IS IDLE, DON'T GENERATE TRAFFIC: If your user isn't
typing, mouse'ing, clicking, etc. your newsreader shouldn't be
generating work for the server. Imagine 5,000 users all leaving your
program running when they leave for lunch. EXCEPTION: If you are
implementing some fancy read-ahead model, but then you shouldn't be
reading too far ahead if the user seems to have walked away from their
terminal, eh?
IF YOU LOSE YOUR CONNECTION, HANDLE IT TRANSPARENTLY: Write your code
so that if your NNTP connection closes you handle it gracefully. You
shouldn't go into an infinite loop, or spin in a "open->error->open"
loop chewing up CPU time. If you can't re-open the server, tell
the user but don't core-dump.
WHEN YOUR CONNECTION IS CLOSED, RECONNECT GRACEFULLY: Write your
code so that you reconnect without the user being warned a zillion
times. Maybe put "Reconnecting to server" in a status line, but
don't require the user to click on "OK". Give the user the feeling
that they always have a connection, even when they are talking to
a server that disconnects after 30 seconds of idle time.
WHEN YOUR CONNECTION IS CLOSED, DON'T RECONNECT UNTIL YOU HAVE TO: If
your connection closed it was for a good reason. Either you closed it
because your user was idle, or the server closed it because it felt
your user was idle, or maybe the server went down. Don't reconnect
until you need to issue your next NNTP command. Example: If a server
has 400 connections when it reboots, you don't want 400 clients all
pummeling it with packets trying to start new connections while it is
trying to come up. Plus, when the service is operational again, only
those connections that are actively used should be reconnecting
anyway. If you delay reconnecting until the user needs it, the load on
the server will be smoothed out since everyone won't be connecting at
the same time.
WHEN YOUR USER IS IDLE FOR A LONG TIME, DISCONNECT: If your user is idle
for more than 5 minutes, why not close the NNTP connection? If you
followed the above advice, the reconnect will be seemless and the
users will not notice.
WHEN YOUR CLIENT IS IDLE FOR A LONG TIME, DISCONNECT: NNTP servers should
disconnect if a connection hasn't seen traffic for 5-10 minutes.
Let the newsadmin set this time limit, and let them disable
this feature if they need to. In a perfect world, all newsreaders
disconnect after 5 minutes of idle time, all servers will disconnect
after 5 minutes of idle time, and all re-connects will be transparent
to the user. However, since we don't live in a perfect world, we
have to do our best to do our share.
DISCONNECT EVERY 4 HOURS: Whether idle or or not, disconnect from the
server every 4 hours. This lets any file handle leaks on the server
get flushed out. If you followed the above advice about reconnecting,
your users won't notice.
DON'T DISCONNECT BETWEEN EVERY COMMAND: I hate to embarrass anyone but
the authors of NETSCAPE made the mistake in a beta version (the current
one is fixed) where they closed the connection after *every* *single*
*article*. You could just hear your system performance DIE as your
kernel locks out everything trying to fork() fast enough to keep up
with the NetScape users.
DON'T CONNECT IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO: nnpost (part of NN) connects to
the NNTP port, then put you in the editor. 15 minutes later, you have
completed writing your post and the server has disconnected you because
your connection was idle. Now it has to re-connect to do the actual
posting. The opposite is just as bad: "/bin/rnews -U" (part of the
INN distribution) connects to the server every time it runs, even if it
doesn't need to send anything. (This actually triggers a bug in
certain operating systems. Someone forgot to test the OS to see how it
handled a connection being created then closed, with no read()'s or
write()'s on it in between.)
DISCONNECT CORRECTLY: If you drop the NNTP connection, drop it
gracefully. Send "QUIT\r\n" on the socket, then close it. When might
you want to do this? For example, if a user cancels any kind of
operation while a transaction is in progress with the news server, you
may want to abort the news stream. Don't just disconnect the stream!
Ungraceful disconnects annoy news administrators because they show up
in logs.
IF YOUR CONNECTION CLOSES FOR GOOD, DON'T GO CRAZY: Some times a
connection dies because a machine is down or doing maintence or maybe
the permission file just changed and you no longer have permission to
talk to that server. All NNTP-based newsreaders should handle this
gracefully.
DON'T GENERATE VANITY HEADERS: Don't include a header that identifies
what newsreader the user is using. Son-of-RFC1036 explicitly states
that this is A Bad Thing. If you haven't seen this header before it
basically looks like: "X-Newsreader: this was posted by a user that
uses FooReader v33.1 which is the software that I wrote and I put this
header in because I'm boring and immature and think that I can make
myself famous by adding this header when it really just shows how
shallow I am." Well, you're not completely shallow, but you should
watch out for the neutering patrol (see Point #1 above).
TRASH CERTAIN HEADERS: News posting agents shouldn't generate
NNTP-Posting-Host: or Path: headers. News transports that receive
posts (i.e. the NNTP "POST" command or non-NNTP inews commands) should
notice attempts by users to supply their own NNTP-Posting-Host: or
Path: headers and delete them. Of course, the transport should add
replacement headers. My point is that if a user tries to supply a
NNTP-Posting-Host: or Path: header, they should be silently replaced by
the transport (or the mechanism that accepts posts).
EDUCATE YOURSELF: Reading RFC1036 and RFC977 in one sitting in a quiet
library was the best investment I ever made. Read RFC822 too, but it
might put you to sleep so read it in bed. (Certainly do not read it
while operating heavy machinery.) You learn all sorts of requirements
you may not have known of and they explain many issues. They also tell
you certain things that were tried one way but failed, and (therefore)
why it is standard practice to NOT do those things.
TIPS WHEN REPLYING AND DOING A FOLLOWUP-POST: Don't reply to the user
listed in the Path: header. The Path: header is just informational as
far as you are concerned, unless you are a news transport (C News or
INN). Don't ignore the "Reply-To:" header when doing a reply, and
don't invent some data-structure that will prevent you from using the
Reply-To: header. FIDO sites have a From: but no Reply-To: field. So,
FIDO gateway software just drops the Reply-To: header *OR* promotes the
Reply-To: header to replace the From: header "so that replies work
right". Well, Mr. Snoop-FIDO-Dog, first of all, to be gramatically
correct it's "work correctly". Secondly, you've just broken the spec.
There are other pairs of headers that work like this. For example,
Followup-To:/Newsgroups: is similar to Reply-To:/From:. However, don't
forget to implement the RFC1036 requirement that "Followup-To: poster"
(yes, the string p-o-s-t-e-r) means that if the user tries to do a
Followup, do a Reply instead. If this happens, don't forget to check
for the existence of a Reply-To: header!
DON'T CONFUSE THE HEADER AND THE BODY: Between the header and the body
of an article is one blank line. It doesn't have anything on it. No
spaces, no tabs, no nothing. After that blank line, don't fuss with
what you find. I've seen FIDO software that finds headers inside the
body and treats them like real headers. For example, such broken
software would find 3 "headers" in the above paragraph ("TIPS WHEN
REPLYING...") and try to process them.
(to be continued...)
[ A related note: The Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval attempts to
establish a standard for newsreader behavior on Usenet. For more
information on the aims and requirements of the Good Net-Keeping Seal
of Approval, see
http://www.media.mit.edu/people/rnewman/Good_Netkeeping_Seal
]
--
Tom Limoncelli -- t...@plts.org (home) -- t...@big.att.com (work)
"Would you compare your system administrator
to `Indiana Jones' or `Tank Girl'?" "Both!"
Rajappa Iyer
Tom Christiansen <tch...@mox.perl.com> writes:
I think the question was, why is the following line of interest to the
newsgroup readers? I can see the point of informing the email
recipient that this is a courtesy cc... but why inform the world that
you emailed the copy as well? Not that I have particularly strong
feelings about it. :-)
> [courtesy cc of this posting sent to cited author via email]
>In news.software.readers, ala...@RohmHaas.Com (Aengus Lawlor) writes:
>:>Sending a CC email copy but not admitting this
>:
>:I occassionally cc: the original poster when I'm posting a follow-up, but I'm
>:not sure why anyone reading the newsgroup would care.
>Oh, I don't mind getting them -- and in fact, the timeliness is
>appreciated. I just mind not knowing that I got them. :-)
>The problem is when you get a "silent email CC" that doesn't clearly state
>that it also went to the public newsgroup. It's like BCCing an entire
>hugissimo mailing list without the To: recipients being aware that this
>has been done. You might reply via email, not realizing it was part of a
>public discussion, or think you'd been told something in confidence, etc.
--
<r...@netcom.com> a.k.a. Rajappa Iyer. New York, New York.
Live hard, die young and leave a good looking corpse.
Sven Guckes
wal...@mnscorp.com (Art Walker):
> I maintain that whatever value "anonymous remailers" provide, it is more
> than outweighed by the problems caused by the abuse of same.
You are correct. But how do we know that it is really you?
Please identify yourself by always posting your bank account number and PIN.
Thank you!
> > who do you proclaim moderator? Serdar Argic? Canter & Siegel?
> Absolutely.
Clue. Obtain!
> > No more alt.fan.warlord and alt.ascii-art?
> Or alt.sysadmin.recovery and alt.peeves.
> But hey, we all make sacrifices.
We certainly do. *plonk*
Sven
Sven Guckes
bi...@mix.com (bi...@mix.com):
> > The X-Newsreader has proved such a valuable aid in tracking down bad
> > newsreaders
> What's so hard about asking whoever what they're using??
This is a job for Art "let's moderate it" Walker (wal...@mnscorp.com)!
Ask him! He should know.
Sven
William Werth
On 11 May 1996 02:47:36 GMT, Tom Christiansen <tch...@mox.perl.com> wrote:
: [courtesy cc of this posting sent to cited author via email]
: In news.software.readers, guc...@math.fu-berlin.de gripes:
: :The List of Newsreader Pet Peeves
: :(1) Signature Dashes - "-- "
: :(2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
: :(3) Ease of posting to easy
: :(4) Attribution
: :(5) Empty or unchanged posts
: :(6) Quoting - "> "
About the only one I agree with above is 5. Don't understand what is
meant by 3, why shouldn't posting be easy? If the above didn't have
attribution, most people wouldn't realize it was from a different poster
than that below, if they didn't read every message. I personally find
the X-Newsreader very helpful, when I see a problem with a message (but
then I'm also an offline reader author).
: My goodness, is that all you can come up with? You're not verily
: easily annoyed, then. :-) Here's my list, in no particular order:
: Bogus, unrepliable email From: line
: Lines too long, usually from dumb PCs
: Duplicate postings
: Asking to be emailed an answer due to pure laziness
: Asking FAQs without reading the group's FAQ
: Asking other people to do their work for them
: Sending a CC email copy but not admitting this
: Lines that are wrapped improperly
: Signatures too long
: Unnecessarily mimed mail
: Quoted printable
: Too many cross-postings
: Duplicate postings
You put in "Duplicate postings" twice :-)
: These are all so annoying that they either get mercilessly killed
: before I even lay my eyes upon them, or else they get autofaqqed.
: What's autofaqqing? It's a system by which you can trivially send
: someone a quick little canned message. It keeps track of when someone
: got such a message, and doesn't resend it to them for a month or so.
I like this idea of autofaqqing. I was tempted to add this to my
newsreader, but changed my mind after running a little experiment. I
sent a non-hostile, informative reply to 5 people replying to the "Are
you a Republican?" spam. I received 3 replies thanking me for advice,
and one hostile reply, explaining why they will cross-post if they like,
and that if they receive any more email from me, they will contact my
system administrator.
It seems that I was the only one sending these people a polite email
message. Most were receiving a lot of flames with four letter words.
These people were for the most part replying to a spam out of ignorance,
not out of any malice. This indicates that not only do many need
education on how Usenet works, but also how to respond when it doesn't
work.
--
bi...@eskimo.com : People say I'm indecisive. Am I? I don't
ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/b/billw : know.
http://www.eskimo.com/~billw/ :
Try NewsWerthy, a SOUP format :
offline mail reader for DOS :
Tim Pierce
>: In news.software.readers, guc...@math.fu-berlin.de gripes:
>: :The List of Newsreader Pet Peeves
>: :(1) Signature Dashes - "-- "
>: :(2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
>: :(3) Ease of posting to easy
>: :(4) Attribution
>: :(5) Empty or unchanged posts
>: :(6) Quoting - "> "
>
>About the only one I agree with above is 5. Don't understand what is
>meant by 3, why shouldn't posting be easy?
Posting is bad for the net, frankly. People should generally be
discouraged from posting unless they really have something to
say. I don't know if I agree with Sven's lottery idea, but news
software should discourage completely casual or uninterested
posters if at all possible. Less noise, less traffic, less
headache.
>If the above didn't have
>attribution, most people wouldn't realize it was from a different poster
>than that below, if they didn't read every message.
Oh, come on. The problem is not just attribution. It's the
massive, excessive and overly cutesy attribution lines people tend
to add. TIN users in particular seem to like changing their
attribution lines to things like "Gurgling on Ewok semen, %f
said:"
Personally, I think trn's default attribution style is perfect,
and I don't even think it should be changeable. If enough
newsreader authors cared enough to add support for References
headers, we could probably justify taking out Message-ID, too.
So why don't you agree with standardizing a quoting prefix or
signature delimiter?
Yeechang Lee
Tim Pierce <twpi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
|If enough newsreader authors cared enough to add support for
|References headers, we could probably justify taking out Message-ID,
|too.
The more I use Usenet, the more I'm in favor of autocancelling posts
made by newsreaders that don't handle references right. Bye bye, AOL!
So long, tin!
--
http://www.columbia.edu/~ylee/ _. icbm://40.83.-73.91/
__./ |
/___. |___
PERTH------>\*./
Reality is a point of view
+---- bi...@mix.com wrote (15 May 1996 19:22:01 -0700):
| Appended is my personal favorite.
Most excellent!
| >From: t...@plts.org (Tom Limoncelli)
| Read This Before You Write a Newsreader, News Transport System, etc.
| --------------------------------------------------------------------
| By Tom Limoncelli
| Version 1.12. Updated 1995-03-30
|
| Point #1:
| "I think I'll write a newsreader!"
| Stop. Stop right there.
No way man. I have a C++ vision! :) Actually I just want to
learn, and the best way to do that is to implement. I'm not
sure if I will make the public suffer a release of the source.
I also feel the need to put my money where my mouth is after
berating Netscape's newsreader. (that comment being the main
reason for posting this publicly)
| Point #2:
| If you are writing a newsreader or transport
Hey, a transport too, great idea!
| Point #4:
|
| Why get bogged down writting tons of NNTP code when you can link to a
| pre-written client library?
Because I want practice writing an industrial strength protocol
client or two. Odds are good that any transgression, if publicly
visible, will not be tolerated by the public.
| DO USE "MODE READER"
Check.
| DO USE A PRE-WRITTEN DATABASE: Don't use your own database, use NOV.
Check.
| POSTING: DON'T VALIDATE HEADERS:
Well, that falls under the industrial strength trip. I just
tried inews -D (and inews -N) as the man page suggests.
Unfortunately the version I have posts the article. So I will
probably end up reinventing that wheel.
| WHEN YOUR USER IS IDLE, DON'T GENERATE TRAFFIC: If your user isn't
| typing, mouse'ing, clicking, etc. your newsreader shouldn't be
| generating work for the server.
That is the plan. Simple feature set, optimal in every way
possible.
| DON'T GENERATE VANITY HEADERS: Don't include a header that identifies
| what newsreader the user is using. Son-of-RFC1036 explicitly states
| that this is A Bad Thing. If you haven't seen this header before it
| basically looks like: "X-Newsreader:
This one seems to be open to debate.
| TRASH CERTAIN HEADERS: News posting agents shouldn't generate
| NNTP-Posting-Host: or Path: headers.
Check. Even if it conflicts with 'don't validate'.
| TIPS WHEN REPLYING AND DOING A FOLLOWUP-POST:
+----
Cool! A most excellent document. After I wrestle [n]curses to
the ground I'll be be on a quest for the ultimate small and fast
newsreader, OO even. :)
bi...@mix.com
Yeechang Lee <yl...@simile.cc.columbia.edu> writes:
> The more I use Usenet, the more I'm in favor of autocancelling posts
> made by newsreaders that don't handle references right. Bye bye, AOL!
> So long, tin!
Yes, tin v1.2 PL2 not only completely misses continuation lines
(it reads refs in from the article file) but its built-in inews
will truncate anything beyond 512 bytes. Of course tin doesn't
use the references data for anything either...
I haven't looked at this in v1.3 yet. Tin does have a nice user
interface and deserves to live though - this isn't that hard to
fix. In fact, there's an excellent example of prefetching lines
et cetera in trn.
Billy Y..
PS - The pico editor many people seem to be using with tin only
has a 256 byte line buffer, which is another source of trouble.
John E. Davis
On 16 May 1996 10:56:01 -0700, bi...@mix.com <bi...@mix.com>
wrote:
: PS - The pico editor many people seem to be using with tin only
: has a 256 byte line buffer, which is another source of trouble.
I agree that newsreaders should do as much as possible to make sure that an
article has syntactically valid headers. However, I strongly believe that
it is ultimately up to the server to enforce the proper syntax and reject
articles that are improperly formatted. This includes any article that has
truncated references, e.g.,
References: <message-id-1> <truncated-msgid
as well as blank subjects, `from' headers that are not fully qualified,
blank messages, etc. Do any servers actually perform any of this syntax
checking?
--John
Tim Pierce
In article <slrn4pmvr9...@aluche.mit.edu>,
John E. Davis <da...@space.mit.edu> wrote:
>as well as blank subjects, `from' headers that are not fully qualified,
>blank messages, etc. Do any servers actually perform any of this syntax
>checking?
INN (1.4unoff, I think) supports at least rudimentary syntax
checking of From headers, and probably some others.
I have written a filter that can be used in C news or INN to
perform a pretty definitive check on the syntax of From and
Reply-To headers:
ftp://bio-3.bsd.uchicago.edu/pub/twp/devil.shar
Taki Kogoma
[Posted and emailed.]
ala...@RohmHaas.Com (Aengus Lawlor) appears to have submitted
message <4nb7m5$g...@bertha.ho.rohmhaas.com> to news.software.readers:
>In article <4n0v48$q...@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>, tch...@mox.perl.com (Tom Christiansen) wrote:
>
>>Sending a CC email copy but not admitting this
>
>I occassionally cc: the original poster when I'm posting a follow-up, but I'm
>not sure why anyone reading the newsgroup would care.
>
>(I notice some follow-ups are in fact replies are cc:ed to the newsgroup, and
>often have no relevance for the group as a whole. But if a poster asks a very
>specific question, with an answer that may be of interest to a wider audience,
>then it seems reasonable to post a replyfollow-up, and cc: the poster. Am
>I missing some obvious point of netequette?).
The idea of
[Posted and emailed]
notification is not for other readers of the newsgroup, but to allow
the recipient of the email to know that the message was also posted
to the newsgroup. Since email tends to be much faster than Usenet
(within 30 minutes for email as compared to upwards of 3 days on some
servers for news), the recipient can either respond (in private) via
email, or wait for the usenet article to arrive and followup (in public)
on the newsgroup(s) as appropriate.
Not letting the recipient know that the message was also posted can be
frustrating, since one treats the message was a private communication.
This creates a different dynamic than a followup to the newsgroup due
to the 'do not post private email without permission' bugaboo among
other things.
In particular, wrt FAQs that I maintain, this is annoying, since I get
the email first, respond via email, then discover a day or so later
that the message had also been posted. Had I known that the question
had been posted, I could have followed up to the newsgroup, thus
addressing anyone else with the same question at the same time.
Yes, I could be redundant and post the same followup as I sent via
email when the article arrives on my sever, but I am a cranky sonofabitch,
and don't take kindly to people making me repeat myself needlessly.
If the mail agent invoked by the newsreader automagically inserts a
'posted and emailed' note in the email copy of the article, then there
would be no need for such notices to be inserted in the article text
by the author. However, no newsreader with which I am familiar does
this. (Maybe gnus does, but I'm not an emacs fan.)
Note: The presence of a 'Newsgroups:' line in the email mesage is
*not* a sufficient means of determining whether or not email is a cc:
of a posted article; Rnmail [((s)t)rn family] includes one with *every*
email reply to usenet article.
--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk (Known to some as Taki Kogoma) qu...@unm.edu
Just an article detector on the Information Supercollider.
KC2: Boursy++++ Grubor(?) Fomin+
Russell Schulz
guc...@math.fu-berlin.de writes:
> (6) Quoting - "> "
>
> The quote prefix should be "> ". Period!
I have found that quoting with ">" when quoting a line which begins
with ">", and quoting with "> " elsewhere, is much nicer visually.
but the two sub-points
1. don't use : or | or borders or } or * or ...
2. don't use ">" (which is ugly)
are things I like, myself. I already have my quote-coloring code handle
the first case, alas.
> (2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
of course, my bias is still that it's ok for free readers, but rude
for commercial ones :-)
--
Russell...@locutus.ofB.ORG Shad 86c
Paul Mack
Respondence for Reality is a point of view <gjoh...@dream.season.com> ...
G'day Reality,
On Sat, 11 May 1996 18:27:20 GMT,
you wrote to everyone via usenet ...
> +---- guc...@euler.math.fu-berlin.de wrote (10 May 1996 21:26:00 GMT):
> | (2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
>
> I take out that line as it duplicates information available
> elsewhere in the header of the newsreading software that I use.
> If the news server I used wouldn't add a bogus Org: line I would
> drop that one too.
>
> | (6) Quoting - "> "
> +----
>
> Visually noisy, especially when multiple quotes are involved.
May I beg to differ here?
I feel the above would be clearer in the "normal" style
viz drop the " +----"s and replace the " |" with "> " or ": "
So your above would then read as:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
guc...@euler.math.fu-berlin.de wrote [on] (10 May 1996 21:26:00 GMT):
> (2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
I take out that line as it duplicates information available
elsewhere in the header of the newsreading software that I use.
If the news server I used wouldn't add a bogus Org: line I would
drop that one too.
> (6) Quoting - "> "
Visually noisy, especially when multiple quotes are involved.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Generally speaking the majority of recent software colours various
fields including text quoted with the two main "quoters".
This means that the one that works for you doesn't fare so well elsewhere.
In my case when presenting multiple quotes I alternate between normal
text and quoted text with the 2nd instance onwards being a duller shade.
This very much reduces the noise ... except on non standard quoting :-(
Regards, Paul.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> :::: Melbourne - Australia ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>> I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. <<
Paul Mack
Respondence for Sven Guckes <guc...@euler.math.fu-berlin.de> ...
G'day Sven,
On Fri, 10 May 1996 21:26:00 GMT,
in a letter addressed from Germany,
you wrote to everyone via usenet ...
> The List of Newsreader Pet Peeves
>
>
> (1) Signature Dashes - "-- "
>
> Most newsreaders allow to automatically attach a signature - but they almost
> never use the "sigdashes" line ("-- " - note the space after the dashes)
> to indicate the signature. And it should delete all lines after the fourth
> line behind this line.
This is a serious quest for my enlightenment.
Why do you require "-- "?
To save some space my editor strips trailing whitespace
so you'd only get "--" ... is that important too?
Regards, Paul.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> :::: Melbourne - Australia ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>> Man shouldn't argue on matters he can't accurately define <<
Per Abrahamsen
>>>>> "Riapov" == Reality is a point of view <gjoh...@dream.season.com> writes:
Riapov> Speaking of which I'm thinking of writing a newsreader. Other
Riapov> than the seal of good newsreadering and the various STD's and
Riapov> RFC's are there good reference documents?
Any chance that you can be convinced to help enhance one of the
existing newsreaders instead?
Anyway, some references for newsreader authors are available at
<URL:http://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/notes/notes.html>
Tom Christiansen
[courtesy cc of this posting sent to cited author via email]
In news.software.readers,
yl...@simile.cc.columbia.edu (Yeechang Lee) writes:
:Tim Pierce <twpi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
:|If enough newsreader authors cared enough to add support for
:|References headers, we could probably justify taking out Message-ID,
:|too.
:
:The more I use Usenet, the more I'm in favor of autocancelling posts
:made by newsreaders that don't handle references right. Bye bye, AOL!
:So long, tin!
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, please, yes!!!
Kill them. They aren't RFC compliant. They must die. :-)
--tom
--
Tom Christiansen Perl Consultant, Gamer, Hiker tch...@mox.perl.com
echo "ICK, NOTHING WORKED!!! You may have to diddle the includes.";;
--Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution
Jay Maynard
On 16 May 1996 21:43:43 -0600, Taki Kogoma <qu...@unm.edu> wrote:
>In particular, wrt FAQs that I maintain, this is annoying, since I get
>the email first, respond via email, then discover a day or so later
>that the message had also been posted. Had I known that the question
>had been posted, I could have followed up to the newsgroup, thus
>addressing anyone else with the same question at the same time.
Indeed. Note, however, that occasionally the posting never arrives. This has
happened to me recently, in a discussion on this group. It is my normal
practice to read email with that flag, think about it, then delete it - and
reply when the posting arrives on my system. IN this case, that fell down,
since the posting never got here. (It was about the slrn 0.8.8.1 OS/2 port;
if this was your message I'm talking about, my apologies.)
>Yes, I could be redundant and post the same followup as I sent via
>email when the article arrives on my sever, but I am a cranky sonofabitch,
>and don't take kindly to people making me repeat myself needlessly.
Not to mentiont hat I don't normally save outgoing email anyway, and so
posting the same reply ranges from difficult to impossible.
>If the mail agent invoked by the newsreader automagically inserts a
>'posted and emailed' note in the email copy of the article, then there
>would be no need for such notices to be inserted in the article text
>by the author. However, no newsreader with which I am familiar does
>this. (Maybe gnus does, but I'm not an emacs fan.)
slrn does this automagically, in the article text before presenting it for
editing.
--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
http://k5zc.hsc.uth.tmc.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity.
"Just because I'm a superhero doesn't mean
I have to smell poo gas." -- Freakazoid
Art Walker
On Thu, 16 May 1996 15:05:08 GMT, Tim Pierce <twpi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
: Posting is bad for the net, frankly. People should generally be
: discouraged from posting unless they really have something to
: say. I don't know if I agree with Sven's lottery idea, but news
: software should discourage completely casual or uninterested
: posters if at all possible. Less noise, less traffic, less
: headache.
And it's the primary reason (not, as some have suggested, some kind of
'censorship fetish') I'm fond of moderated newsgroups.
Some kind of mechanism needs to be in place to 'filter out' the casual or
uninterested postings. And while we can discuss automated mechanisms to do
so, nothing beats having a live human being do the job.
(Of course, the big problem with doing this is finding people willing to
put up with the grief involved.)
- Art
Tim Pierce
In article <3520100...@minerva.dialix.oz.au>,
Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> wrote:
>Why do you require "-- "?
>
>To save some space my editor strips trailing whitespace
>so you'd only get "--" ... is that important too?
Yes. Don't.
Bruce A. Templeton
>
>
such as fontify/colorize it, trim it down to four lines, or not show it
at all. When I was using GNUS, I liked showing it in a light color so
that I could focus my attention on the body and headers.
>To save some space my editor strips trailing whitespace
>so you'd only get "--" ... is that important too?
>
"-- " is the standard start of a .sig, and some programs wouldn't
recognize "--" as the start of a signature for doing the processing
mentioned above.
-Bruce
--
Bruce A. Templeton bru...@engr.sgi.com
Silicon Graphics Inc. (415) 933-3872
Per Abrahamsen
>>>>> "b" == billy <bi...@mix.com> writes:
b> What's so hard about asking whoever what they're using??
Try to send an email to everybody who make a duplicate posting, or
who articles contain too long lines, or who doesn't put a newline
between the end of the quoted text and the start of the answer, or who
doesn't provide an valid From: address for a month, and then ask
again.
J.B. Nicholson-Owens
On 16 May 1996 19:07:40 GMT, Reality is a point of view <gjoh...@dream.season.com> wrote:
> Cool! A most excellent document. After I wrestle [n]curses to
> the ground I'll be be on a quest for the ultimate small and fast
> newsreader, OO even. :)
I think the idea of software and idea reuse instead of reinvention is not
being taken as far as it could be. I think the world doesn't need
yet-another-newsreader (although I do think you're on the right track not
requiring a GUI). Instead of working on a newsreader, how about using an
existing RDBMS to make a better news server? One that can handle expiring
articles efficiently as new articles come in (instead of virtually taking
down the news server to run some big expire job), one that appears (to news
readers) like just another usable news server?
--
Due to local news server and feed problems, I might not see all followups.
Jay Maynard
On 18 May 1996 06:38:19 GMT, Art Walker <wal...@beeblemnscorp.com> wrote:
>Wouldn't it be a better idea to only include those headers that should be
>user-modifiable and have the newsreader insert the remaining headers
>*after* the editor exits?
Well, lessee. I can and do remove the References: header when I'm starting a
new thread, but including text from another posting. (The easiest way to get
here is to tell slrn to do a followup, and then change the Subject: line and
remove References:.)
Yeechang Lee
Jay Maynard <jmay...@admin5.hsc.uth.tmc.edu> wrote:
|Well, lessee. I can and do remove the References: header when I'm starting a
|new thread, but including text from another posting. (The easiest way to get
|here is to tell slrn to do a followup, and then change the Subject: line and
|remove References:.)
However, isn't the whole point of threading so that topics, as they
gradually change, don't get disconnected from one another despite
subject line changes?
Art Walker
On 16 May 1996 19:18:01 GMT, John E. Davis <da...@space.mit.edu> wrote:
: I agree that newsreaders should do as much as possible to make sure that an
: article has syntactically valid headers. However, I strongly believe that
: it is ultimately up to the server to enforce the proper syntax and reject
: articles that are improperly formatted. This includes any article that has
: truncated references, e.g.,
:
: References: <message-id-1> <truncated-msgid
: as well as blank subjects, `from' headers that are not fully qualified,
: blank messages, etc. Do any servers actually perform any of this syntax
: checking?
Which brings up the question: why do some headers (such as References:)
even appear in the editor text?
Wouldn't it be a better idea to only include those headers that should be
user-modifiable and have the newsreader insert the remaining headers
*after* the editor exits?
- Art
Per Abrahamsen
>>>>> "TK" == Taki Kogoma <qu...@unm.edu> writes:
TK> If the mail agent invoked by the newsreader automagically inserts a
TK> 'posted and emailed' note in the email copy of the article, then there
TK> would be no need for such notices to be inserted in the article text
TK> by the author. However, no newsreader with which I am familiar does
TK> this. (Maybe gnus does,
Of course.
TK> but I'm not an emacs fan.)
Your loss. rnr does it to, and I believe also slrn.
Reality is a point of view
+---- abr...@dina.kvl.dk wrote (16 May 1996 23:52:00 +0200):
| Any chance that you can be convinced to help enhance one of the
| existing newsreaders instead?
Do you know of any that are written in C++ and/or have good
object design? And have a polished, retentive coding style? I
am old and set in my ways. I posted the spell checking tweak to
slrn a while back. It was doable because it required a minimum
of source digging, no large scale mods, and did something
reasonably useful.
I can't think of many other enhancements that don't already
exist in at least two places. At least not any enhancements
that wouldn't involve fundamental structural changes.
| <URL:http://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/notes/notes.html>
+----
Cool, thanks!
Paul Mack
Respondence for Aengus Lawlor <ala...@rohmhaas.com> ...
G'day Aengus,
On Wed, 15 May 1996 00:14:14 GMT,
you wrote to everyone via usenet ...
> In article <4n0v48$q...@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>, tch...@mox.perl.com (Tom Christiansen) wrote:
[X]
> I occassionally cc: the original poster when I'm posting a follow-up, but I'm
> not sure why anyone reading the newsgroup would care.
>
> (I notice some follow-ups are in fact replies are cc:ed to the newsgroup, and
> often have no relevance for the group as a whole. But if a poster asks a very
> specific question, with an answer that may be of interest to a wider audience,
> then it seems reasonable to post a replyfollow-up, and cc: the poster. Am
> I missing some obvious point of netequette?).
Uh! Uh!
Generally I read mail first ...
I get a nice detailed letter from Aengus, I research some info to check
my failed memory, post the answer.
Some time later ...
Well I'll be blowed, here's the same message again in news.software.readers!
So I must try to retrieve my carefully researched article from
"somewhere in the uucp spool directory" or forward a copy of my copy!
I naturally think why didn't that *nice* Aengus tell me he was posting to
usenet too?
So it is really neat if that email contains an obvious pointer to also
being a usenet posting *PLUS* a "newsgroups:" field in the header,
*and* without a "Followup-To: poster" header ...
Then one can choose reply to either/both with no further hassles ...
Putting a newsgroups field in will not break SMTP nor rfc-822 rules.
Regards, Paul.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> :::: Melbourne - Australia ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>> Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition! <<
Paul Mack
Respondence for Per Abrahamsen <abr...@dina.kvl.dk> ...
G'day Per,
On Mon, 13 May 1996 21:07:18 GMT,
in an article addressed from Denmark,
you wrote to everyone via usenet ...
[X]
> X-Face: +kRV2]2q}lixHkE{U)mY#+6]{AH=yN~S9@IFiOa@X6?GM<U{B+4e{k79.Ya{~':DblFPCg$
> @60,BfLv2@SKZ19cMWK0/C'v;tM:|6B'R}U1rp6CL&kN({9<zF/V{:JCg27yC)9oZjeqcQawzKfiNL
> t9}`vjmK["dRQC/qGFQq"%u|Q`:6{"Rz}b(dnl_"3$Jtqimi>|8MBp/
Please! What is "X-face:"???
[X]
> Billy> Here's some interesting reading for you guys from the Son-of-RFC1036.
>
> >>>>> "HS" == Henry Spencer wrote
>
> HS> Headers that state infor-
> HS> mation which cannot possibly be of use to a significant num-
> HS> ber of relayers, reading agents, or readers (e.g., the name
> HS> of the software package used as the posting agent) are use-
> HS> less and pointless.
Regards, Paul.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> :::: Melbourne - Australia ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>> PBS Virus: Your computer stops every five minutes to ask for money. <<
Ollivier Robert
[courtesy cc of this posting sent to cited author via email]
In article <slrn4pmm5...@simile.cc.columbia.edu>,
Yeechang Lee <yl...@simile.cc.columbia.edu> wrote:
> The more I use Usenet, the more I'm in favor of autocancelling posts
> made by newsreaders that don't handle references right. Bye bye, AOL!
> So long, tin!
That's fairly easy. I've a small bot just to check every article for valid
From: lines and valid References: lines. The articles are automatically
either noted in the log or just destroyed from the local spool.
You could enable to right lines in art.c ("protected" by #if 0 by default)
but using an external program is easier to use and configure by group
and/or hierarchy:
The "-d" tells the program to actually remove the article.
## RFC-1036 compliancy checker
#
RFC-CHECKER!\
:*,!gna.*,!gnu.*,!lill.*,!fr.comp.os.linux,\
!info.*,!comp.mail.sendmail\
:Tc,WH:/usr/local/news/bin/rfc-checker -d
GNA-CHECKER!\
:gna.*,gnu.*,comp.mail.sendmail,info.*,\
fr.comp.os.linux:Tc,WH:/usr/local/news/bin/rfc-checker
Source available on demand.
The log has the following format:
Mar 4 11:01:03 sidhe rfc-checker+: <313977...@cris.com> Bad "Reply-To" header -- "192.0.2.1"
Mar 4 11:01:12 sidhe rfc-checker+: <DnpJy...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> Bad "From" header -- ""Hu, Bing Xiao" <bxhu>"
Mar 4 11:01:12 sidhe rfc-checker+: <8254128...@news.Colorado.EDU> has "Re: " but no References
--
Ollivier ROBERT -=-=- FreeBSD 2.x FAQ maintainer -=-=- rob...@freebsd.org
-=-=-=-=-=- Support The Free UNIX Systems ! FreeBSD Linux NetBSD -=-=-=-=-=-
Thomas 'Mike' Michlmayr
[ added and set Followup-To: to news.software.nntp ]
In article <slrn4pmm5...@simile.cc.columbia.edu>,
Yeechang Lee <yl...@simile.cc.columbia.edu> wrote:
>The more I use Usenet, the more I'm in favor of autocancelling posts
>made by newsreaders that don't handle references right. Bye bye, AOL!
>So long, tin!
What about enforcing (missing and mangled) References: for BIG-7 once and
forever?
phase 1: a bot that mails the author of broken articles and warns them that
their newsreader is NOT compliant to RFC1036 and that his articles
will be dropped (not propagated) after Flag-day (max of 1 mail/{week,
month} and he should either use compliant software or ask his vendor
to fix it. (this could be expanded so that author's of known news-
readers get warned too).
phase 2: a patch to inn and c-news to refuse articles with mangled or no
References-header on a follow-up which will be deployed on Flag-day.
If some major sites (mci, uunet, sprint, eunet, ...) decide to enable these
patches, we might be able to force authors of newsreaders to fix their
software.
Anyone who has some interest in this project please f'up or mail me.
--
Thomas 'Mike' Michlmayr can not assert the truth of all statements in
this article and still be consistent. <mi...@cosy.sbg.ac.at>
Paul Mack
Respondence for Taki Kogoma <qu...@unm.edu> ...
G'day Taki,
On Fri, 17 May 1996 03:43:43 GMT,
you wrote to everyone via usenet ...
[X]
> >(I notice some follow-ups are in fact replies are cc:ed to the newsgroup, and
> >often have no relevance for the group as a whole. But if a poster asks a very
> >specific question, with an answer that may be of interest to a wider audience,
> >then it seems reasonable to post a replyfollow-up, and cc: the poster. Am
> >I missing some obvious point of netequette?).
>
> The idea of
>
> [Posted and emailed]
These terms are somewhat synonymous ...
I went for a longer but IMHO a less ambiguous form of
"This letter was posted to Usenet with a copy sent via Mail," + CRLF
And then a fuller combined letter header is sent to both transports,
with only the "from_"/"path" being respectivly dropped.
Thus the "to" field is used, it's not illegal in my reading of rfc1036.
> notification is not for other readers of the newsgroup, but to allow
> the recipient of the email to know that the message was also posted
[X]
> Yes, I could be redundant and post the same followup as I sent via
> email when the article arrives on my sever, but I am a cranky sonofabitch,
> and don't take kindly to people making me repeat myself needlessly.
>
> If the mail agent invoked by the newsreader automagically inserts a
> 'posted and emailed' note in the email copy of the article, then there
> would be no need for such notices to be inserted in the article text
> by the author. However, no newsreader with which I am familiar does
> this. (Maybe gnus does, but I'm not an emacs fan.)
Some others do ... mine does ...
Some fellow said only macintosh agents can do this ... really :-)
> Note: The presence of a 'Newsgroups:' line in the email mesage is
> *not* a sufficient means of determining whether or not email is a cc:
> of a posted article; Rnmail [((s)t)rn family] includes one with *every*
> email reply to usenet article.
Wouldn't a "newsgroups" *and* a "cc" field be a pointer to that fact?
Regards, Paul.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> :::: Melbourne - Australia ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>> WITLAG (n): The delay between delivery and comprehension of a joke. <<
William Werth
: >: In news.software.readers, guc...@math.fu-berlin.de gripes:
: >: :The List of Newsreader Pet Peeves
: >: :(1) Signature Dashes - "-- "
: >: :(2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
: >: :(3) Ease of posting to easy
: >: :(4) Attribution
: >: :(5) Empty or unchanged posts
: >: :(6) Quoting - "> "
: >
: >About the only one I agree with above is 5. Don't understand what is
: >meant by 3, why shouldn't posting be easy?
: Posting is bad for the net, frankly. People should generally be
: discouraged from posting unless they really have something to
: say. I don't know if I agree with Sven's lottery idea, but news
: software should discourage completely casual or uninterested
: posters if at all possible. Less noise, less traffic, less
: headache.
I'll agree that people shouldn't post unless they have something to say
(hope this post qualifies :-), but don't think the right way is to make
it hard to post. I've gone to great lengths to make NewsWerthy as easy
to use as possible. It may be painless to post with NewsWerthy, but
ultimately it is up to the user, whether to post or not.
: Oh, come on. The problem is not just attribution. It's the
: massive, excessive and overly cutesy attribution lines people tend
: to add. TIN users in particular seem to like changing their
: attribution lines to things like "Gurgling on Ewok semen, %f
: said:"
I don't blame that on TIN, that user would probably just find some other
way to be annoying and obnoxious. Isn't blaming the newsreader, kind of
like killing the messenger of bad news? I have to admit, TIN was my
favorite newsreader before writing NewsWerthy. I copied TIN's method of
adding attibute lines almost exactly.
: So why don't you agree with standardizing a quoting prefix or
: signature delimiter?
I thought he meant he was against using > for quotes and "-- " for the
signature delimiter. I'd certainly like to see a standard for the quote
character, but it is probably too late for that. Since mine, and many
other newsreaders don't enforce any standard. I hadn't realized there
was a standard for the tear line, until just recently. Seems the RFCs I
read, didn't mention either one of these items.
--
bi...@eskimo.com : I think: Therefore, I am not entirely
ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/b/billw : sure.
http://www.eskimo.com/~billw/ :
Try NewsWerthy, a SOUP format :
offline mail reader for DOS :
Russell Schulz
gjoh...@dream.season.com (Reality is a point of view) writes:
> | POSTING: DON'T VALIDATE HEADERS:
>
> Well, that falls under the industrial strength trip.
I have always disagreed with this. as well as with:
> | DON'T GENERATE VANITY HEADERS:
as always, I think they're fine for free packages, but not commercial :-)
--
Russell...@locutus.ofB.ORG Shad 86c
Tim Pierce
In article <3520594...@minerva.dialix.oz.au>,
Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> wrote:
>Respondence for Taki Kogoma <qu...@unm.edu> ...
>
>> Note: The presence of a 'Newsgroups:' line in the email mesage is
>> *not* a sufficient means of determining whether or not email is a cc:
>> of a posted article; Rnmail [((s)t)rn family] includes one with *every*
>> email reply to usenet article.
>
>Wouldn't a "newsgroups" *and* a "cc" field be a pointer to that fact?
No.
Per Abrahamsen
>>>>> "PM" == Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> writes:
PM> Respondence for Per Abrahamsen <abr...@dina.kvl.dk> ...
PM>
PM> G'day Per,
PM>
PM> On Mon, 13 May 1996 21:07:18 GMT,
PM> in an article addressed from Denmark,
PM> you wrote to everyone via usenet ...
Going for the "ugliest attribution line" award?
PM> Please! What is "X-face:"???
See
<URL:http://www.cs.indiana.edu/ftp/faces/>
for more information about faces that you would ever want.
Russell Schulz
Per Abrahamsen <abr...@dina.kvl.dk> writes:
> "TK" == Taki Kogoma <qu...@unm.edu> writes:
>> If the mail agent invoked by the newsreader automagically inserts a
>> 'posted and emailed' note in the email copy of the article, then there
>> would be no need for such notices to be inserted in the article text
>> by the author. However, no newsreader with which I am familiar does
>> this.
>
> rnr does it [...]
but perhaps not quite the way suggested by Taki. rnr is mail agent
and news agent both, so as one routine hands off to the other
(sendnewsasmail), this second routine does the additions. if Taki
was suggesting this as a separate flag to the mail agent, I don't know
of any separate mail agents which will take that sort of parameter.
I used to only add a Comments: header, but so many agents now
seem to be written with the lazy assumption that headers should be
hidden by default, not shown, that I also added an option for this
routine (still affecting the email copy only) to modify the body.
the news copy always retains the `CC:' header, which can be `poster'
to use the best address from the From/Reply-To/body rnr found, which
is actively discouraged by some, but I feel conveys information that
is of non-zero importance.
--
Russell...@locutus.ofB.ORG Shad 86c
Felix von Leitner
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
On Tue, 21 May 1996 01:54:44 GMT, William Werth <bi...@eskimo.com> wrote:
> : headache.
Please, William, use "> " for quoting.
> I'll agree that people shouldn't post unless they have something to say
> (hope this post qualifies :-), but don't think the right way is to make
> it hard to post. I've gone to great lengths to make NewsWerthy as easy
> to use as possible. It may be painless to post with NewsWerthy, but
> ultimately it is up to the user, whether to post or not.
"Guns don't kill, people do."
Har har har.
Please make "> " the default quoting string in your NewsWerthy. Let me
guess...: NewsWerthy is for Windoze?
> I don't blame that on TIN, that user would probably just find some other
> way to be annoying and obnoxious. Isn't blaming the newsreader, kind of
> like killing the messenger of bad news? I have to admit, TIN was my
> favorite newsreader before writing NewsWerthy. I copied TIN's method of
> adding attibute lines almost exactly.
And you copied TINs default quoting style, too. Unfortunately. :(
> : So why don't you agree with standardizing a quoting prefix or
> : signature delimiter?
> I thought he meant he was against using > for quotes and "-- " for the
> signature delimiter.
No, on the contrary. "> " and "-- " are the standard. Please yield to
it. Puleeze!
Felix
- --
After a year in therapy, my psychiatrist said to me, "Maybe life isn't
for everyone."
--Larry Brown
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Felix von Leitner
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In this newsgroup, we were talking about dropping articles with broken
headers. How about auto-killing articles that have a line with "^--$"
somewhere within the last 10 lines? I *really* hate postings with
broken signatures. Slrn does not recognize these broken signatures.
And then I really want a way to auto-kill articles where the last lines
(or the last lines before the signature) are quoted. *This* really
sucks.
On Sun, 19 May 1996 22:44:18 GMT, Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> wrote:
> Respondence for Per Abrahamsen <abr...@dina.kvl.dk> ...
> G'day Per,
> On Mon, 13 May 1996 21:07:18 GMT,
> in an article addressed from Denmark,
> you wrote to everyone via usenet ...
Oh, and articles with bloated attributions (meaning more than one line)
should be auto-killed, too.
> [X]
Paul, if you want to show us that you omitted some lines, use [...] and
not [X].
> > X-Face: +kRV2]2q}lixHkE{U)mY#+6]{AH=yN~S9@IFiOa@X6?GM<U{B+4e{k79.Ya{~':DblFPCg$
> > @60,BfLv2@SKZ19cMWK0/C'v;tM:|6B'R}U1rp6CL&kN({9<zF/V{:JCg27yC)9oZjeqcQawzKfiNL
> > t9}`vjmK["dRQC/qGFQq"%u|Q`:6{"Rz}b(dnl_"3$Jtqimi>|8MBp/
> Please! What is "X-face:"???
This is the face of the poster in black-and-white and encoded to 7-bit
ASCII. Some news readers can display them.
> [X]
> > Billy> Here's some interesting reading for you guys from the Son-of-RFC1036.
> >
> > >>>>> "HS" == Henry Spencer wrote
> >
> > HS> Headers that state infor-
> > HS> mation which cannot possibly be of use to a significant num-
> > HS> ber of relayers, reading agents, or readers (e.g., the name
> > HS> of the software package used as the posting agent) are use-
> > HS> less and pointless.
Please do not quote stuff you do not answer or comment upon.
> Regards, Paul.
> ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
> :: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> :::: Melbourne - Australia ::
> ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
> >> PBS Virus: Your computer stops every five minutes to ask for money. <<
AND PLEASE START YOUR SIGNATURE WITH A LINE CONTAINING JUST "-- " !
Felix
- --
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
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Stefan Kurth
Felix von Leitner <lei...@xorn.prz.tu-berlin.de> wrote:
> AND PLEASE START YOUR SIGNATURE WITH A LINE CONTAINING JUST "-- " !
Uhm, maybe you should start doing this yourself before you yell at
others about it?
--
Stefan Kurth
Berlin, Germany
http://www.inx.de/~stk/
William Werth
On 26 May 1996 01:34:47 GMT, lei...@xorn.prz.tu-berlin.de (Felix von Leitner)
wrote:
> AND PLEASE START YOUR SIGNATURE WITH A LINE CONTAINING JUST "-- " !
> Felix
> - --
> If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
Well I've changed my quoting character to "> " to be in line with the
"standard" but seems the above message complaining about non-standard
tear-lines, also has a non-standard tearline (seems ironic to me).
Perhaps we should just face the reality that Usenet is an anarchy, and
one man's standard, seems to be another man's pet peeve ;-)
--
bi...@eskimo.com : "Two wrongs don't make a right, but three
ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/b/billw : lefts do."
William Werth
On 26 May 1996 01:40:12 GMT, lei...@xorn.prz.tu-berlin.de (Felix von Leitner)
wrote:
> Please, William, use "> " for quoting.
Ok, the next release will use "> " as the default.
> Please make "> " the default quoting string in your NewsWerthy. Let me
> guess...: NewsWerthy is for Windoze?
No, for DOS (see my sig). Maybe you didn't read my sig, or have your
reader set to ignore it.
--
bi...@eskimo.com : Careful what you say you want ...
ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/b/billw : ... you just might get it!
John E. Davis
: No, for DOS (see my sig). Maybe you didn't read my sig, or have your
Your signature starts after the line consisting of "--". Most newsreaders
look for the signature after a line that consists of "-- ". Please fix that
too. Thanks.
--
John E. Davis Center for Space Research/AXAF Science Center
617-258-8119 MIT 37-662c, Cambridge, MA 02139
http://space.mit.edu/~davis
Erland Sommarskog
Ha scritto Felix von Leitner (lei...@prz.tu-berlin.de):
>In this newsgroup, we were talking about dropping articles with broken
>headers. How about auto-killing articles that have a line with "^--$"
>somewhere within the last 10 lines? I *really* hate postings with
>broken signatures. Slrn does not recognize these broken signatures.
If you have a problem with these, maybe you should change newsreaders?
(Sorry, couldn't resist. After all my news reader, News Xpress, does not
have problems with any signatures, broken or not. (Although 1b4 had
the interesting pecularity that when replying to an article, it did
not include the signature in the editor. A nice feature, except that
some people actually put PSs after their signature(*). I don't think
this feature survived to 2b0, though.)
(*) This is possible because the newsreader includes the user's signature
in the editor. I know several news readers with this feature; I'm not
very fond of it.
>And then I really want a way to auto-kill articles where the last lines
>(or the last lines before the signature) are quoted. *This* really
>sucks.
Now, on that I whole-heartedly agree!
Now, since NewsXpress does not any lines at all before the signature,
and those that are in my signature file lacks the desired trailing
blank, I'll add one by hand just for Felix:
--
--
Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, som...@algonet.se
F=F6r =F6vrigt anser jag att QP b=F6r f=F6rst=F6ras.
B=65sid=65s, I think QP should b=65 d=65stroy=65d.
Roscinante
>No, for DOS (see my sig). Maybe you didn't read my sig, or have your
>reader set to ignore it.
>Try NewsWerthy, a SOUP format :
>offline mail reader for DOS :
How does NW compare to Yarn (faster/prettier/easier/more features/etc)?
Is NW also freeware? Can it handle Soup & QWK? (Some other prog does
that, it but is incredibly slow for SOUP, and it deletes the database
each time ya quit, OUCH!)
Sven Guckes
bi...@eskimo.com (William Werth):
> > Please, William, use "> " for quoting.
> Ok, the next release will use "> " as the default.
VERY GOOD! :-)
> > Please make "> " the default quoting string in your NewsWerthy.
> > Let me guess...: NewsWerthy is for Windoze?
> No, for DOS (see my sig).
DOS? Argh! I hope it asks lots of questions before it actually sends a post.
> Maybe you didn't read my sig, or have your reader set to ignore it.
You do not have a sig. Sorry.
Sigs start with the "sig dashes", ie "\n-- \n".
And every "true signature" applies to the "McQ rule":
"four lines at most, and at most 80 characters per line".
See the FAQ for AFW for details!
> --
> bi...@eskimo.com : Careful what you say you want ...
> ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/b/billw : ... you just might get it!
> http://www.eskimo.com/~billw/ :
> Try NewsWerthy, a SOUP format :
> offline mail reader for DOS :
Let me give you an example of how to turn this paragraph in to a sig:
(1) Turn the line "--\n" into "-- \n" (note the space).
(2) Move the info from the fifth line into the 4x80 space before.
(3) Delete all whitespace at the end of the line (saves ~200 characters!).
> --
> bi...@eskimo.com
> ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/b/billw http://www.eskimo.com/~billw/
> Try NewsWerthy, a SOUP format offline mail reader for DOS
> "Careful what you say you want - you just might get it!"
There - that's a signature! :-)
Sven
--
Sven Guckes guc...@math.fu-berlin.de Newsgroup alt.fan.warlord on WWW:
AFW Home Page: http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/afw/
AFW Best of : http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/afw/best.of/
AFW Acronyms : http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/afw/afw.acronyms.html
Sven Guckes
Russell...@locutus.ofB.ORG (Russell Schulz):
> > (2) Identification line - X-Newsreader:
> but rude for commercial ones :-)
Why "rude"? I think it is valuable information!
If you only knew how many "CrossPoint" users I have
kill^H^H^H^Hautomatically deselected with this! :-)
Sven
--
Sven Guc...@math.fu-berlin.de using SLRN 0.8.8.2 [released 9605xx]
SLRN Home Page: http://space.mit.edu/~davis/slrn.html
SLRN FAQ on WWW: http://space.mit.edu/~davis/slrn-FAQ.html
SLRN Manual on WWW: http://www.wp.com/TNTCONSULTING/slrn.html
Sven Guckes
som...@algonet.se (Erland Sommarskog):
> If you have a problem with these, maybe you should change newsreaders?
> (Sorry, couldn't resist. After all my news reader, News Xpress, does not
> have problems with any signatures, broken or not. (Although 1b4 had
> the interesting pecularity that when replying to an article, it did
> not include the signature in the editor. A nice feature, except that
> some people actually put PSs after their signature(*). I don't think
> this feature survived to 2b0, though.)
>
> (*) This is possible because the newsreader includes the user's signature
> in the editor. I know several news readers with this feature; I'm not
> very fond of it.
Writing a sentence with braces (parentheses, you know) and opening them
without closing them (don't you hate this? Then opening another and
including some footnote (*) leaving you with info about some dead product.)
(*) No, this footnote is not important. Never mind reading it.
If this wouldn't be so complex to compute then I'd put a kill on this style!
Sven
--
[*]
Content-Score: -9999
Footnotes: 1
Parentheses-Level: 2
Felix von Leitner
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
On Mon, 27 May 1996 07:12:55 GMT, William Werth <bi...@eskimo.com> wrote:
> > - --
> > If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
> Well I've changed my quoting character to "> " to be in line with the
> "standard"
Thanks!
> but seems the above message complaining about non-standard tear-lines,
> also has a non-standard tearline (seems ironic to me).
Well, that was because my PGP signing code signed the signature, too.
And PGP escapes lines that start with "-" so that a space is inserted.
I changed my PGP signing code so that the signature is not signed but
appended to the signed code.
> Perhaps we should just face the reality that Usenet is an anarchy, and
> one man's standard, seems to be another man's pet peeve ;-)
;)
Felix
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.3i
Charset: latin1
iQCVAwUBMauBgB/Da1Yoy+f1AQEHkAQAlk22EbAiWQT7/BvIvojFGvdKlYXsHr9n
9xT/V5mboaij4v+oZGpShXj4pQl6qKUZaZymhBpjqb2jrHtYiKWZ1xPP1/6cT8ey
vBM+8ZchKtJOp81iJuPQjv4utvhcrQ+SmrNxTlhXmQMleMM6TJq35W7RVDnFCKjh
R/Jdeb2vzFg=
=7MjJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
--Weisert
Paul Mack
Respondence for John E. Davis <da...@space.mit.edu> ...
G'day John,
On Mon, 27 May 1996 14:01:48 GMT,
you wrote to everyone via usenet ...
[X]
> Your signature starts after the line consisting of "--". Most newsreaders
> look for the signature after a line that consists of "-- ". Please fix that
> too. Thanks.
> --
In this case I must totally disagree about "-- " in place of "--".
I think you'll have to re-think that one as many times trailing white
space is stripped ... I do it, and will continue to, it breaks no rfc.
I've not read the rfc regarding the compulsory inclusion of "-- " and
there seems little point in signing with tear away bytes ... so I don't.
Regards, Paul.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> :::: Melbourne - Australia ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>> Wars are not fought to decide who is right - only who is stronger. <<
Per Abrahamsen
>>>>> "ES" == Erland Sommarskog <som...@algonet.se> writes:
ES> If you have a problem with these, maybe you should change newsreaders?
ES> (Sorry, couldn't resist. After all my news reader, News Xpress, does not
ES> have problems with any signatures, broken or not.
So you suggest that rather than fix the broken newsreaders (like News
Xpress), one should just drop the working newsreaders and use the
broken newsreaders instead?
Per Abrahamsen
>>>>> "WW" == William Werth <bi...@eskimo.com> writes:
WW> Well I've changed my quoting character to "> " to be in line with the
WW> "standard" but seems the above message complaining about non-standard
WW> tear-lines, also has a non-standard tearline (seems ironic to me).
Felix' signature delimiter looked correct to me, perhaps because I
use a PGP aware newsreader.
WW> Perhaps we should just face the reality that Usenet is an anarchy, and
WW> one man's standard, seems to be another man's pet peeve ;-)
Those pet peeves that are also standards should be taken seriously.
Sven Guckes
[idiot]
paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au (Paul Mack):
> > Your signature starts after the line consisting of "--". Most
> > newsreaders look for the signature after a line that consists of "-- ".
> > Please fix that too. Thanks.
> I think you'll have to re-think that one as many times trailing white
> space is stripped ... I do it, and will continue to, it breaks no rfc.
> I've not read the rfc regarding the compulsory inclusion of "-- " and
> there seems little point in signing with tear away bytes ... so I don't.
Please read alt.security.pgp and get a clue!
Note: Stripping of trailing spaces and use of "quoted unreadable" suck!
Sven
--
Sven Guckes guc...@math.fu-berlin.de Some clues about signatures:
(1) Sigs start with "sigdashes", ie "\n-- \n".
(2) Sigs contain at least the name and address of the sender.
(3) Sigs are at most four lines and at most eighty characters per line.
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> writes:
> Respondence for John E. Davis <da...@space.mit.edu> ...
>
> G'day John,
>
> On Mon, 27 May 1996 14:01:48 GMT,
> you wrote to everyone via usenet ...
A six line citation line? *boggle*
> In this case I must totally disagree about "-- " in place of "--".
> I think you'll have to re-think that one as many times trailing white
> space is stripped ... I do it, and will continue to, it breaks no rfc.
Quoth son-on-rfc1036:
If a poster or posting agent does append a signature to an
article, the signature SHOULD be preceded with a delimiter
line containing (only) two hyphens (ASCII 45) followed by
one blank (ASCII 32).
Feel free to disagree all you want.
> I've not read the rfc regarding the compulsory inclusion of "-- " and
> there seems little point in signing with tear away bytes ... so I don't.
So you don't want to waste precious bandwith by making the signature
delimiter one byte longer, but you waste 6 lines for the citation
line?
Right, dear.
> Regards, Paul.
>
> ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
> :: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> :::: Melbourne - Australia ::
> ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>
> >> Wars are not fought to decide who is right - only who is stronger. <<
So where did the "-- " go?
Well, at least this clears things up. I now know that I'll *never*
recommend FastMail to anybody. Thanks.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
la...@ifi.uio.no * Lars Ingebrigtsen
Reality is a point of view
+---- la...@ylfing.ifi.uio.no wrote (31 May 1996 02:20:18 +0000):
| A six line citation line? *boggle*
Sometimes the joy of the capability is overwhelming. It reminds
me of some advice a father of a friend gave to a friend of mine
when he acquired an automobile license.
"Just because it says 100 doesn't mean you should go that fast."
--
Gary Johnson "There's no union called the AFL-CIA is there?"
gjoh...@season.com <a href="http://www.efm.org">Walk The Talk</a>
CAMPAIGN '96: Juck 'em if they can't fake a toke.
Paul Mack
This letter was posted to Usenet with a copy sent via Mail,
G'day Gareth,
On Fri, 31 May 1996 14:54:40 +0100,
in an article addressed from the United Kingdom,
you wrote to me mail concerning ...
> In news.software.readers you wrote:
> > I've not read the rfc regarding the compulsory inclusion of "-- " and
> > there seems little point in signing with tear away bytes ... so I don't.
> >
> > Regards, Paul.
> >
> > ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
> > :: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> :::: Melbourne - Australia ::
> > ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
> >
> > >> Wars are not fought to decide who is right - only who is stronger. <<
>
> Even if you disagree with son-of-rfc1036's recommedation of "-- " it
> would be polite to use "--" (this would help those of us using
> newsreaders which can strip signatures when displaying or replying to
> articles).
It happens partly because FastMail is trying to be all things everywhere,
News/Mail/Lists/Digests with differing automatic signatures and
attributions ...
I can't really handle this one special case ... all received data is
stripped of back spaces, tabs are replaced with blanks (to allow correct
quoted spacing), and end spaces are removed (a normal trim function),
After all that some header fields are coloured and then as I wrote for
the more universal ms-dos all high ascii characters are translated from
Latin 1 to the standard code page 850 VGA characters.
Well some silly bugger got mad at this because it doesn't conform to
some rfc about PGP ... I wonder if he uses quoted printables "=" too.
and advised me to read "alt.something.pgp".
Was he joking or what, I don't need PGP and can always uuencode a PGP
treated document if the need arises ...
I don't mind the signature going to my message editor as sometimes it
includes important information for message forwarding or a footnote
follows. it's only a couple of clicks to remove it in the normal course
of quote editing.
PS: A note for Felix ...
This one begins another instance of those automatic attributions
you love to kill ... Complete with a combined mail/news header ...
Plenty of burgeoning banality there, perhaps I need add some quoted
unprintable, some pgp and perhaps a little mime with html + graphics.
Naturally I'll include a binhex and uuencoded rich text version too.
Regards, Paul.
_\/_
. / \ .
|\| (o)(o) |/|
---.OOOo--oo--oOOO.----
| Paul Mack resides in |
| Melbourne, Australia. |
------------Oooo.------
.oooO ( )
( ) ) / :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
\ ( (_/ :: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> ::
\_) :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>> As I've already told you, I never repeat myself ... <<
Bek Oberin
In article <slrn4qt038....@dream.season.com>, Reality is a point of view wrote:
> +---- la...@ylfing.ifi.uio.no wrote (31 May 1996 02:20:18 +0000):
> | A six line citation line? *boggle*
> +----
>Sometimes the joy of the capability is overwhelming.
*dryly* We could say the same thing about that horrible "fancy"
quoting which is hard to read and breaks quote-formatters, really...
gossamer
Tom Christiansen
[courtesy cc of this posting sent to cited author via email]
+
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| In article <slrn4qt038....@dream.season.com>, |
| Reality is a point of view wrote: |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| > +---- la...@ylfing.ifi.uio.no wrote (31 May 1996 02:20:18 +0000): |
| > | A six line citation line? *boggle* |
| > +---- |
| >Sometimes the joy of the capability is overwhelming. |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| *dryly* We could say the same thing about that horrible "fancy" |
| quoting which is hard to read and breaks quote-formatters, really... |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+----------+
| gossamer |
+----------+
Perchance these quote formatters try too hard. :-)
--tom
--
Tom Christiansen Perl Consultant, Gamer, Hiker tch...@mox.perl.com
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
Sven Guckes
paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au (Paul Mack):
[converting text before sending by autostripping spaces and converting tabs]
> Well some silly bugger got mad at this because it doesn't conform to some
> rfc about PGP ... I wonder if he uses quoted printables "=" too. and
> advised me to read "alt.something.pgp". Was he joking or what, I don't
> need PGP and can always uuencode a PGP treated document if the need arises...
Well, I was the one who tried to give you a clue by hinting you towards
digital signatures. Do you know what they are good for? No? Let me tell you:
Digital signatures are additional data which allow to verify that some data is
"real". They prevent that a piece of information is easily changed by
using a technique which makes it *very* hard to fake such a digital signature.
Every little change of the original text will not fit the digital signature
any more and thus allows detection of a change. And I mean *every* change -
including the removal of tariling spaces and the change of tabs to spaces.
Let me add the conclusion for you (as you might get it yourself):
If you change the information then you make every digital signature USELESS!
You thus make information USELESS (where USELESS is the operative word)!
I hope this was clear enough.
If not then please kill yourself!
It's time to create a newsgroup that propagates only digitally signed posts!
Sven
--
You can lead an australian newsreader author to
alt.security.pgp - but cannot make him think.
William Werth
On 27 May 1996 20:56:14 GMT, ro...@fbn.globalent.net (Roscinante) wrote:
> >No, for DOS (see my sig). Maybe you didn't read my sig, or have your
> >reader set to ignore it.
> >Try NewsWerthy, a SOUP format :
> >offline mail reader for DOS :
> How does NW compare to Yarn (faster/prettier/easier/more features/etc)?
> Is NW also freeware? Can it handle Soup & QWK? (Some other prog does
> that, it but is incredibly slow for SOUP, and it deletes the database
> each time ya quit, OUCH!)
NewsWerthy is shareware ($25). You could say it is prettier, since it
is more gui'ish, but still text based (makes it quicker than most
gui's). It has many of the same features as Yarn. It doesn't do QWK, but
will remind you of the old SLMR for QWK. It doesn't delete the database
each time, unless you run it in packet mode. Unlike most readers, you
can run it either a packet at a time, or with a message database.
NewsWerthy has picklists that make it easy to do searches of the
newsgroups for your favorite topics. If you use the picklist to save
your search phrases, it will default to your previous days search (this
makes it easy and quick). It has online help for most features, and a
hint for most options.
I've got a list of features on my web page, and will soon have a new
version out that allows bulk marking messages for saving and deleting.
Registering lets you use the protected mode version, but requires a '286
or better PC. I like to run it under Windows 95, so that I can do cut &
paste when creating a reply.
Reality is a point of view
[note: Cc'd]
+---- goss...@glasswings.com.au wrote (1 Jun 1996 00:47:54 GMT):
| In article <slrn4qt038....@dream.season.com>, Reality is a point of view wrote:
| > +---- la...@ylfing.ifi.uio.no wrote (31 May 1996 02:20:18 +0000):
| > | A six line citation line? *boggle*
| > +----
| >Sometimes the joy of the capability is overwhelming.
|
| *dryly* We could say the same thing about that horrible "fancy"
| quoting which is hard to read and breaks quote-formatters, really...
+----
There is a difference. One is hard on human readers, the other
on automation. I don't see why you would call | "fancy", it is
pretty simple. Maybe calling it "fancy" is a reaction to its
"better" appearance? Or maybe "fancy" means "different" in .au.
I didn't choose the quoting style I use in a random fashion. I
have put a lot of thought into it. I read a lot of USENET and
have yet to see anything better. If I do I will switch. I'm
not attached to the less than optimal. If you or anyone else
has anything substantial to say about why | is hard to read I am
willing to listen.
I see > as less than optimal. Multiple quotations are visually
aggressive. And, like () in Lisp, can lead to unwieldy symbol
counting. Why was > chosen anyway? < would show more respect
and be more accurate from a shell nerds perspective I would
think. The > style seems to be prone to attribution errors.
And there doesn't seem to be a standard usage. >>, > >, name>.
Speaking of name>, I considered it but it seems to fall down
when it comes to denoting who said what _in what order_ when
quoting more than one person. Maybe something like name>,
othername>>, yetanothername>>> would be better?
Until there is a standard method of quoting I will continue to
use what I use, if only to provide the standards body with
multiple methods to consider. If > is chosen I will use it,
though I will likely use something like
>---- someone@somplace (header date) wrote:
> >---- someon...@someplace.else (header date) wrote:
> > blah
> > blah
> > blah
> >----
> yada
> yada
> yada
>----
and not put the message id in the attribution because it
leads to wrap under heavy quoting, and is available in finer
References: lines, and is (in general) computer information, not
human information. I would munge the header date into something
smaller but the RFC's seem to be pretty uptight about date
formats.
As for automation I plan to use generalization, not character
based special casing. As a percentage I would think that most
posts don't use the same ^ pattern twice in a row, especially if
the leading character isn't alphanumeric. Recursion could be
used to handle nested quotes. Handling nested name> quotes is
likely to be a special case.
Sven Guckes
gjoh...@dream.season.com (Reality is a point of view):
> I didn't choose the quoting style I use in a random fashion.
> I have put a lot of thought into it. I read a lot of USENET
> and have yet to see anything better. If I do I will switch.
> I'm not attached to the less than optimal. If you or anyone
> else has anything substantial to say about why | is hard to
> read I am willing to listen.
Well, listen! Maybe you have not read enough posts yet.
Please try seeing the '|' on other terminals and FONTS.
With some fonts the bar looks broken, ie something like this:
|
|
Looks so much better than a ">" - doesn't it?
Furthermore, the "> " has been around for quite a while and is used with a
slew of other programs. Defining your own style simply makes it worse on
text formatters as unrecognized styles cannot be processed.
> I see > as less than optimal. Multiple quotations are visually aggressive.
> The > style seems to be prone to attribution errors.
> And there doesn't seem to be a standard usage. >>, > >, name>.
" I see | as less than optimal. Multiple quotations are visually aggressive.
The | style seems to be prone to attribution errors.
And there doesn't seem to be a standard usage. ||, | |, name|."
So why is '|' better in this respect?
> Why was > chosen anyway?
Because it points to the quoted text? Naah.
> < would show more respect and be more accurate from a shell nerds
> perspective I would think.
Do you know the percentage of people who use Email and yet never use a shell?
I don't either, but I'm pretty sure that this argument simply isn't a good
one any more.
> Speaking of name>, I considered it but it seems to fall down
> when it comes to denoting who said what _in what order_ when
> quoting more than one person. Maybe something like name>,
> othername>>, yetanothername>>> would be better?
Let me give you an example why I don't like "power quoting":
Sven> > Jonathan> Elisabeth> Alexander> Hi, folks!
Sven> > Jonathan> Elisabeth> Alexander>
Sven> > Jonathan> Elisabeth> Alexander> Howya doin?
Sven> > Jonathan> Elisabeth> Hi, Alexander!
Sven> > Jonathan> Elisabeth>
Sven> > Jonathan> Elisabeth> I'm fine, thanks!
Sven> > Jonathan> me, too!
Sven> >
Sven> > grow up folks and quit the damn power quoting!
Hi, I am Lo...@aol.com - send me email!
What is power quoting?
Sheesh!
I think this is bad enough as is, but why use excessive quoting like that?
All it needs it a simple "> " for the indent:
Quoting Sven Guckes <guc...@math.fu-berlin.de> :
> > Quoting Jonathan Ring <j...@msnetwork.com> :
> > > Quoting Elisabeth Miller <l...@netcom.com> :
> > > > Quoting Alexander Smith <al...@compuserve.com> :
> > > > > Hi, folks!
> > > > >
> > > > > Howya doin?
> > > > Hi, Alexander!
> > > >
> > > > I'm fine, thanks!
> > > me, too!
> >
> > grow up folks and quit the damn power quoting!
Hi, I am Lo...@aol.com - send me email!
What is power quoting?
So - is there any problem?
If you really think that you cannot follow this then why not split it up?
Alexander:
> Hi, folks!
>
> Howya doin?
Elisabeth:
> Hi, Alexander!
>
> I'm fine, thanks!
Jonathan:
> me, too!
Sven:
> grow up folks and quit the damn power quoting!
Hi, I am Lo...@aol.com - send me email!
What is power quoting?
Better?
> Until there is a standard method of quoting I will continue to use what I
> use, if only to provide the standards body with multiple methods to consider.
Now I know why there are book on law. Some people need them. ;-)
> If > is chosen I will use it, though I will likely use something like [...]
> and not put the message id in the attribution because it leads to wrap
> under heavy quoting, ...
Do tell! What about long names such as in
"gjoh...@dream.season.com (Reality is a point of view)" ?
Oh, boy, how I love power quoting this!
Riapov> I hate being abbreviated as "Riapov"!
;-)
> ... and is available in finer References: lines, and is (in general) computer
> information, not human information. I would munge the header date into
> something smaller but the RFC's seem to be pretty uptight about date formats.
Well, if you refer to the References line and previous posts
then why do you want to carry on the quote info to followups?
Let them look up the previous posts if someone gives wrong attribution!
> As for automation I plan to use generalization, not character based special
> casing.
"generalization"? Please elaborate!
> As a percentage I would think that most posts don't use the same ^ pattern
> twice in a row, especially if the leading character isn't alphanumeric.
> Recursion could be used to handle nested quotes.
> Handling nested name> quotes is likely to be a special case.
"most posts", "likely ... special case" - hmm ... are you going to
write code that works for "most posts", or is just "likely to work"?
I would not want anything in my newsreader that works "on some quotes".
No, Sir!
Keep it simple! Use "> " for quoting!
Sven ["Show me a program that correctly attributes all kinds of quoting and
I'll show you a human with too much time on his hands!"]
Tim Pierce
In article <3521514...@minerva.dialix.oz.au>,
Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> wrote:
>In this case I must totally disagree about "-- " in place of "--".
Well, you lose.
>I think you'll have to re-think that one as many times trailing white
>space is stripped ... I do it, and will continue to, it breaks no rfc.
You'll really have to point out the rule that says that you *may*
strip trailing whitespace from message body lines before you can
claim a right to do it. It is generally agreed that transport
systems should not fudge with or distort the body of a message,
change all characters to lowercase, convert between time zones, or
replace every occurrence of the word "avocado" with "elephant."
Even though the standards don't specifically forbid these actions,
they're clearly not permitted. You're claiming here that you're
permitted to strip whitespace because the RFC's don't prevent you
from doing it, and I don't think you're on firm ground.
--
By sending unsolicited commercially-oriented e-mail to this address, the
sender agrees to pay a $100 flat fee to the recipient for proofreading
services.
Reality is a point of view
+---- guc...@neumann.math.fu-berlin.de wrote (3 Jun 1996 14:57:30 GMT):
| Well, listen! Maybe you have not read enough posts yet.
Of yours? Impossible! Though scoring is imminent. :)
| Please try seeing the '|' on other terminals and FONTS.
| With some fonts the bar looks broken
I am aware of that, have considered it, and still prefer | to
any other available character.
| Furthermore, the "> " has been around for quite a while and is used with a
| slew of other programs. Defining your own style simply makes it worse on
| text formatters as unrecognized styles cannot be processed.
It isn't my style, I learned it from someone else. And until I
either see something better or there is a USENET standard for
quoting I am unlikely to be changing it anytime soon. If
someone does or has covered this in an RFC please let me know, I
would like to comment on it. I haven't checked STD's. If you
do please let me know what you find.
Don't worry. If I ever manage to write newsreader code worthy
of public release I will be making "> " the default, though
there will be configuration files available to anyone that takes
the time to read the docs.
| Let me give you an example why I don't like "power quoting":
| Sven> > Jonathan> Elisabeth> Alexander> Hi, folks!
The current usage seems to be more like
>>>> soandso
>>>> otherso
>>>> yetanotherso
soandso>
soandso>
soandso>
otherso>
otherso>
otherso>
yetanotherso>
yetanotherso>
yetanotherso>
otherso>
otherso>
otherso>
soandso>
soandso>
soandso>
| Now I know why there are book on law. Some people need them. ;-)
Enforcing unwritten laws is a problem too. Especially when they
are less than optimal. Net cops seem to serve some useful
purpose though, so I don't mind much.
| Do tell! What about long names such as in
| "gjoh...@dream.season.com (Reality is a point of view)" ?
I don't put user names in quotes, just their mail address and
the date.
| Riapov> I hate being abbreviated as "Riapov"!
Actually Riapov is the intended abbreviation, has been for over
a decade, and you are only the second or third person that has
noticed. Unfortunately you did it in public so now everyone
knows. At least no one has guessed the movie source of the
quotes in my .sig since "I've never been invisible before!" from
_Little Big Man_.
| Well, if you refer to the References line and previous posts
| then why do you want to carry on the quote info to followups?
| Let them look up the previous posts if someone gives wrong attribution!
Because the mail address and date of the post being replied to
is _human_ information, though the date is of debatable use.
I'm still not comfortable with its size and usefulness.
| "most posts", "likely ... special case" - hmm ... are you going to
| write code that works for "most posts", or is just "likely to work"?
| I would not want anything in my newsreader that works "on some quotes".
| No, Sir!
Likely to work. Now and in the future if quote character
fashions change. That is the intent of generalizing.
@ foo
$ bar
@ foo!
& baz
$ yeah, baz
@ foo!!!
$ plonk
@ plonk plonk
& plonk plonk
$ plonk
That would be recognized as quotes. Tables and charts are a
possible mistaken tokenity victims, especially if power quoting
special cases are implemented. Maybe.
| Sven ["Show me a program that correctly attributes all kinds of quoting and
| I'll show you a human with too much time on his hands!"]
+----
If the quoting recognition is generalized the time spent dealing
with it is less. That too is the intent of generalizing
solutions.
Kim Sung-Yeon(9321005)
Reality is a point of view
+---- gjoh...@dream.season.com wrote (4 Jun 1996 00:10:10 GMT):
| It isn't my style, I learned it from someone else. And until I
| either see something better or there is a USENET standard for
| quoting I am unlikely to be changing it anytime soon.
Just in case anyone cares, and still sees my posts, I thought
that I would mention a quoting style seen recently that I might
switch too. The .... is like ____ (instead of ----) so it is a
little lopsided, but the characters are quieter.
.... f...@bar.baz wrote (96/04/01 00:00):
: yada
: yada
: yada
....
.... f...@bar.baz wrote (96/04/01 00:00):
: in article <xyz> b...@foo.baz wrote:
: > .... b...@foo.bar wrote (96/04/01 00:00):
: > : blah
blada
: > : blah
: > : blah
: > ....
: yada
: yada
blada
: yada
....
blada
Paul Mack
Respondence with Sven Guckes <guc...@stott.math.fu-berlin.de> ...
G'day Sven,
On Sat, 01 Jun 1996 23:33:10 GMT,
you wrote to everyone via usenet ...
> paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au (Paul Mack):
> [converting text before sending by autostripping spaces and converting tabs]
> > Well some silly bugger got mad at this because it doesn't conform to some
> > rfc about PGP ... I wonder if he uses quoted printables "=" too. and
> > advised me to read "alt.something.pgp". Was he joking or what, I don't
> > need PGP and can always uuencode a PGP treated document if the need arises...
>
> Well, I was the one who tried to give you a clue by hinting you towards
> digital signatures. Do you know what they are good for? No? Let me tell you:
[X]
> Every little change of the original text will not fit the digital signature
> any more and thus allows detection of a change. And I mean *every* change -
> including the removal of tariling spaces and the change of tabs to spaces.
If this ever became a worry for me I would make sure that I stripped
trailing white space and tabulation before I signed it ...
Speaking of tabulation, so does the authors of rfc-822
3.4.2. WHITE SPACE
[abridged (last paragraph)]
Writers of mail-sending (i.e., header-generating) programs
should realize that there is no network-wide definition of the
effect of ASCII HT (horizontal-tab) characters on the appear-
ance of text at another network host; therefore, the use of
tabs in message headers, though permitted, is discouraged.
> You can lead an australian newsreader author to
> alt.security.pgp - but cannot make him think.
One can teach the german the essence of the joke
... but cannot teach him as to how it is humour!
Regards, Paul.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Paul Mack <paul...@minerva.dialix.oz.au> :::: Melbourne - Australia ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>> Filthy, stinking, rich. Two out of three ain't bad! <<