"HTML" Posting Tags, was Top-posting shenanigans from Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner on 2005-02-25 (2005-February)

From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_conman.org>
Date: Fri Feb 25 14:20:09 2005

It was thus said that the Great dvcorbin_at_optonline.net once stated:
>
> While HTML may not be the "best", plain ASCII text IS very limiting. If
> there is a suggestion for another format that is as widely readable [i.e.
> people have readers installed] I would like to hear about it....

 I searched my email archive and yes, I found my response to this topic six
years ago when it came up. And for one section, everybody should have TeX,
right? uudecode? And we understand Morse code too, right?

Subject: Re: Message formats
To: classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 22:25:51 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <4.1.19990106165949.009afd70_at_mailhost.hq.freegate.com> from "Chuck McManis" at Jan 6, 99 05:10:57 pm
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 9632
Status: RO

It was thus said that the Great Chuck McManis once stated:
>
> And while we're at it, why don't we complain about a single '.' on a line,
> or starting
> a line with "From" :-)

 You can thank Eric Allman for those blunders. RFC822 specifically state
that the SMTP server is to NOT modify the email as it goes through (as long
as it conforms to the standard US 7-bit ASCII character set. Anything
outside of the 7-bit ASCII character set is implementation dependant and
anything goes). But in order to remain compatible with existing Unix
software, lines starting with 'From ' had to be ``quoted'' else mail reading
agents would get horribly confused (why they stored email in a single file
is anybody's guess. I assume because early Unix systems couldn't deal with
dozens or hundreds of files in a directory).

 And the single `.' on a line itself is quoted because that's how you
signal END OF DATA in the SMTP protocol (although there are provisions given
in RFC822 to handle this situation correctly). Again, because of Eric
Allman, who probably (IMHO) felt it would take too many processing cycles to
actually *check* for those conditions, did otherwise. I'm guessing.

 This is on topic, because sendmail (may it rot in Hell) is 16 years old,
and thus falls under the charter of this mailing list. Oh, and ASCII is
definitely more than 10 years old.

> Ok, ok, so if you're using your Classic computers to read mail then I guess
> we should also switch to ALL UPPER CASE SO THAT TELETYPE OWNERS WON'T FEEL
> LEFT OUT.
>
> Sheesh. Plain text really sucks. Y'all prefer that someone type _like this_
> to indicate a piece of underlined text? or my habit *bolding* with
> asterisks? This message "encoded" with HTML is roughly 5% larger than it is
> in plain text. Wow, now that's a waste of resources.

Sheeshyourself!Haveyouseenthecodeproducedbythesesocalled"modern"editors?
Tosayit'sbadisanunderstatment(andsomecompanieslikeMicrosoft)usenon-standardcharactersto
boot!
TrycountingtheoverheadofHTMLtheseeditorsspitout.I'msureit'sover5%.





> Sure, sure, some of you actually enjoy typing in ASCII art to illustrate
> something, I don't. Stick in a darn diagram.

/PieDict 24 dict def PieDict begin /DrawSlice { /grayshade exch def
/endangle exch def /startangle exch def /thelable exch def newpath 0 0
moveto 0 0 radius startangle endangle arc closepath 1.415 setmiterlimit
gsave grayshade setgray fill grestore stroke gsave startangle endangle add 2
div rotate radius 0 translate newpath 0 0 moveto labelps .8 mul 0 lineto
stroke labelps 0 translate 0 0 transform grestore itransform /y exch def /x
exch def x y moveto x 0 lt { thelabel stringwidth pop neg 0 rmoveto } if y 0
lt { 0 labelps neg rmoveto } if thelabel show } def
/findgray { /i exch def /n exch def i 2 mod 0 eq { i 2 div n 2 div round add
n div } { i 1 add 2 div n div } ifelse } def end
/DrawPieChart { PieDict begin /radius exch def /ycenter exch def /xcenter
exch def /lableps exch def /titleps exch def /title exch def gsave xcenter
ycenter translate /Helvetica findfont titleps scalefont setfont title
stringwidth pop 2 div neg radius neg titleps 3 mul sub moveto title show
/Helvetica findfont labelps scalefont setfont /numslices PieArray length def
/slicecnt 0 def /curangle 0 def PieArray { /slicearray exch def slicearray
aload pop /percent exch def /label exch def /perangle percent 360 mul def
/slicecnt slicecnt 1 add def label curangle curangle perangle add numslices
slicecnt findgray DrawSlice /curangle curangle perangle add def } forall
grestore end } def
(Darn Diagram) 24 12 [[(Is) .12][(this) .30][(good) .26][(enough) .16][(for)
.04][(you?) .12]] 306 396 140 DrawPieChart showpage
% this should fall again under the charter, as PostScript is older than
% ten years (I think).

> Do you have a telephone in your house or a telegraph (and if you have a
> telegraph do you force everyone to "call you" on it rather than the telephone?)

--- -. .-.. -.-- ..-. --- .-. - .... --- ... . - .... .- -
-.. --- -. .----. - .... .- ...- .
- . .-.. . --. .-. .- .--. .... .- -. -.. - .... . -.
--- -. .-.. -.-- ..-. --- .-. - .... .
.- -. -. --- -.-- .- -. -.-. . ..-. .- -.-. - --- .-.

.---- ---.. ....- ....- .-.-.- .. - .... .. -. -.- -- --- .-. ... .
..-. .. - ... ..- -. -.. . .-.
- .... . -.-. .... .- .-. - . .-. .-.-.-

> Here is my advice, you (the folks whining that they can only read plain
> text messages) have got between 6 and 18 months before you will be deleting
> everything because its encoded in some more descriptive form. If you can't
> figure out a way to read that kind of mail by then you will see less and
> less of the internet mail traffic (this list excepted of course.) Then your
> kids will come in one day, after you've not read their mail because it was
> not plain text, and shake their heads exactly as I did when I could not
> convince my father to replace his "trusty" black and white TV until we were
> waaaay into the color generation.

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end

 -spc (The technology used to generate this post is 10 years old
 or older ... )
Received on Fri Feb 25 2005 - 14:20:09 GMT

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