Re: html email

Re: html email

[Ethan Tira-Thompson]

Combining replies below:

> "Mike"? Who's "Mike"? :-)
Err, sorry I meant Matt (I have a friend with a similar user id whose  
name is Mike)

> Opinion? Um... I did mean "HTML *mail*" above, and since I don't think
> you're disagreeing with that, I apologize for the ambiguity.
I think we were on the same page.  My point is the "HTML mail is  
EVIL" comment is definitely a matter of opinion.  I happen to prefer  
messages which word wrap properly and support rich text.

For instance, take a look at what happened here:

>> For instance, you're right that it's non-homogenous.  But take  
>> that to
> its
>> conclusion: some people want to use lynx to view the web, that's fine
> and
>> there are ways to give them a usable experience (e.g. 'alt' tags for
>> images), but non-homogeneity isn't a good enough reason to deny the
> rest of
[...]
UGLY!!!!  You *prefer* that mess?  It just gets worse and worse and  
the thread bounces around.  Did you reply 'its' to my "For  
instance..." or is that just continuation with bad wrapping?  People  
have to work through the formatting instead of just reading the  
actual content.  This doesn't happen when things are <blockquote>'d  
in HTML mail.

A second point is that I generally deal with adults, not font-happy  
kids.  If someone thought it worth their time to apply some  
formatting to make something clear, I want to see it because they  
probably had a reason for doing so.

> Given that I meant /mail/, I think this is irrelevant, but on a  
> vaguely
> related note, I've seen plenty of illegible or outright unusable web
> pages
> because some jackass designer assumes that the entire world runs MSIE
> with
> default settings. In some cases, it turns out to be a nice but  
> ignorant
> designer that promptly corrects the problem :-), but it still happens.
> Thank
> Mozilla for Page Style->None.
Right, which is the author's problem.  So complain to the relative  
handful of sites that do stupid stuff like that, and appreciate the  
*vast majority* which are cleanly styled.  And as you point out (and  
agrees with the point I'm trying to make), there are well known work- 
arounds to strip the style of badly designed pages.

So to relate back to email, have the server bounce the messages that  
are *only* HTML email, and I still see no problem with passing  
messages that have both formats.  I don't think you're going to have  
a problem with people making their mailing list postings into myspace  
pages.  Only spam bots do that, and there are better ways to block  
them that would also prevent them from sending text-only ads.

> Oh? Funny, when I look at source, keywords are green, comments are  
> gray,
> normal text is cyan, etc, and everything has a dark blue  
> background. See
> what
> I mean? :-)
Is all black preferable to *neither* color scheme?  You can only read  
highlighting that uses your personal color set?
Even if you say 'yes' just to spite me, then just switch to the plain  
text if that's really what you believe.

> In a word, bandwidth.
It's a mailing list.  Doubling a few KB a day is still... just a few  
KB a *day*.  As for archiving/digests, just include the plain text  
version if the HTML is too difficult to process.  And it's not that  
hard to process -- I've seen plenty of mailing lists which allow the  
subscriber to choose their format in order to avoid these issues.   
This is the first which blocks HTML altogether, which why I find it  
strange.

> Ah, so now we're talking about Postscript mail?
enscript has HTML output -- see the -W flag.

> Never saw that; what editor do you use? Anyway, AFAIK KATE doesn't do
> this
> (and I *dare* you to call it a "lesser editor" :-)).
I'm using XCode, and FYI, Kate has an 'export to HTML' under the file  
menu which is almost as convenient (Kate is a good editor too, I've  
definitely made good use of it)
The also excellent SubEthaEdit also can copy with styles, or copy  
"into" raw XHTML, which is kind of a neat trick à la enscript. (can  
directly paste into a web page's source, don't have to rely on a GUI  
editor to convert the styled text)
But anyway, my point is that this is not hard to do.

-ethan

PS In a modern email reader, you will probably see a ` accent on the  
"à la" above.  But perhaps we shouldn't support other languages'  
characters because that would be non-homogenous in older consoles  
which don't support it, and english speakers don't like to see funny  
accents in their ASCII text.
I know I'm baiting there, but hopefully you see the relation?  Time  
marches on, and there are better ways to do things.

Re: html email

[Ethan Tira-Thompson]

Combining replies below:

> "Mike"? Who's "Mike"? :-)
Err, sorry I meant Matt (I have a friend with a similar user id whose  
name is Mike)

> Opinion? Um... I did mean "HTML *mail*" above, and since I don't think
> you're disagreeing with that, I apologize for the ambiguity.
I think we were on the same page.  My point is the "HTML mail is  
EVIL" comment is definitely a matter of opinion.  I happen to prefer  
messages which word wrap properly and support rich text.

For instance, take a look at what happened here:

>> For instance, you're right that it's non-homogenous.  But take  
>> that to
> its
>> conclusion: some people want to use lynx to view the web, that's fine
> and
>> there are ways to give them a usable experience (e.g. 'alt' tags for
>> images), but non-homogeneity isn't a good enough reason to deny the
> rest of
[...]
UGLY!!!!  You *prefer* that mess?  It just gets worse and worse and  
the thread bounces around.  Did you reply 'its' to my "For  
instance..." or is that just continuation with bad wrapping?  People  
have to work through the formatting instead of just reading the  
actual content.  This doesn't happen when things are <blockquote>'d  
in HTML mail.

A second point is that I generally deal with adults, not font-happy  
kids.  If someone thought it worth their time to apply some  
formatting to make something clear, I want to see it because they  
probably had a reason for doing so.

> Given that I meant /mail/, I think this is irrelevant, but on a  
> vaguely
> related note, I've seen plenty of illegible or outright unusable web
> pages
> because some jackass designer assumes that the entire world runs MSIE
> with
> default settings. In some cases, it turns out to be a nice but  
> ignorant
> designer that promptly corrects the problem :-), but it still happens.
> Thank
> Mozilla for Page Style->None.
Right, which is the author's problem.  So complain to the relative  
handful of sites that do stupid stuff like that, and appreciate the  
*vast majority* which are cleanly styled.  And as you point out (and  
agrees with the point I'm trying to make), there are well known work- 
arounds to strip the style of badly designed pages.

So to relate back to email, have the server bounce the messages that  
are *only* HTML email, and I still see no problem with passing  
messages that have both formats.  I don't think you're going to have  
a problem with people making their mailing list postings into myspace  
pages.  Only spam bots do that, and there are better ways to block  
them that would also prevent them from sending text-only ads.

> Oh? Funny, when I look at source, keywords are green, comments are  
> gray,
> normal text is cyan, etc, and everything has a dark blue  
> background. See
> what
> I mean? :-)
Is all black preferable to *neither* color scheme?  You can only read  
highlighting that uses your personal color set?
Even if you say 'yes' just to spite me, then just switch to the plain  
text if that's really what you believe.

> In a word, bandwidth.
It's a mailing list.  Doubling a few KB a day is still... just a few  
KB a *day*.  As for archiving/digests, just include the plain text  
version if the HTML is too difficult to process.  And it's not that  
hard to process -- I've seen plenty of mailing lists which allow the  
subscriber to choose their format in order to avoid these issues.   
This is the first which blocks HTML altogether, which why I find it  
strange.

> Ah, so now we're talking about Postscript mail?
enscript has HTML output -- see the -W flag.

> Never saw that; what editor do you use? Anyway, AFAIK KATE doesn't do
> this
> (and I *dare* you to call it a "lesser editor" :-)).
I'm using XCode, and FYI, Kate has an 'export to HTML' under the file  
menu which is almost as convenient (Kate is a good editor too, I've  
definitely made good use of it)
The also excellent SubEthaEdit also can copy with styles, or copy  
"into" raw XHTML, which is kind of a neat trick à la enscript. (can  
directly paste into a web page's source, don't have to rely on a GUI  
editor to convert the styled text)
But anyway, my point is that this is not hard to do.

-ethan

PS In a modern email reader, you will probably see a ` accent on the  
"à la" above.  But perhaps we shouldn't support other languages'  
characters because that would be non-homogenous in older consoles  
which don't support it, and english speakers don't like to see funny  
accents in their ASCII text.
I know I'm baiting there, but hopefully you see the relation?  Time  
marches on, and there are better ways to do things.

Re: html email

[mwoehlke]

Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
> Combining replies below:
> 
>> "Mike"? Who's "Mike"? :-)
> Err, sorry I meant Matt (I have a friend with a similar user id whose 
> name is Mike)
> 
>> Opinion? Um... I did mean "HTML *mail*" above, and since I don't think
>> you're disagreeing with that, I apologize for the ambiguity.
> I think we were on the same page.  My point is the "HTML mail is EVIL" 
> comment is definitely a matter of opinion.  I happen to prefer messages 
> which word wrap properly and support rich text.
> 
> For instance, take a look at what happened here:
> 
>>> For instance, you're right that it's non-homogenous.  But take that to
>>> its conclusion: some people want to use lynx to view the web, that's
>>>  fine and there are ways to give them a usable experience (e.g. 'alt'
>>> tags for images), but non-homogeneity isn't a good enough reason to
>>> deny the rest of
> [...]
> UGLY!!!!  You *prefer* that mess?  It just gets worse and worse and the 
> thread bounces around.  Did you reply 'its' to my "For instance..." or 
> is that just continuation with bad wrapping?  People have to work 
> through the formatting instead of just reading the actual content.  This 
> doesn't happen when things are <blockquote>'d in HTML mail.

It also doesn't happen with non-broken mailers (in that case, I was 
attempting to line wrap manually, which almost certainly has something 
to do with it).

>> Oh? Funny, when I look at source, keywords are green, comments are gray,
>> normal text is cyan, etc, and everything has a dark blue background. See
>> what I mean? :-)
> Is all black preferable to *neither* color scheme?  You can only read 
> highlighting that uses your personal color set?

In this case I was just trying to make a point that "standard" is a 
matter of interpretation. Hence the :-).

>> In a word, bandwidth.
> It's a mailing list.  Doubling a few KB a day is still... just a few KB 
> a *day*.

...which, if several people are using it, on several lists, adds up. Now 
add, say, 100 people per day downloading it, and now it's several mb a 
day, about 100 mb a month, and now you're talking some more significant 
numbers. If you look at somewhere like gmane.org, if 5% of posts were 
HTML, I would guess that is at LEAST gigabits per week of bandwidth. And 
it's closer to "a few kb per *post*"

> This is the 
> first which blocks HTML altogether, which why I find it strange.

As previously noted, I'm pretty sure grc.com does the same.

>> Never saw that; what editor do you use? Anyway, AFAIK KATE doesn't do
>> this (and I *dare* you to call it a "lesser editor" :-)).
> I'm using XCode, and FYI, Kate has an 'export to HTML' under the file 
> menu which is almost as convenient (Kate is a good editor too, I've 
> definitely made good use of it)

Right, but in this case I was just curious what you were using. :-)

> PS In a modern email reader, you will probably see a ` accent on the "à 
> la" above.  But perhaps we shouldn't support other languages' characters 
> because that would be non-homogenous in older consoles which don't 
> support it, and english speakers don't like to see funny accents in 
> their ASCII text.
> I know I'm baiting there, but hopefully you see the relation?  Time 
> marches on, and there are better ways to do things.

Only to the degree in which there is a relation. Alternate character 
sets are not a security risk, use minimal bandwidth, and do not allow 
you to do obnoxious things (I know we're all adults *here*, but since 
you're trying to make a general statement...). Maybe some day we will 
have a sane subset of RTF or some like that allows formatting without 
the problems inherent in HTML (wiki, perhaps? ;-)).

Although, I actually have some encoding features disabled because even 
*those* are obnoxious (although that probably means Thunderbird is buggy 
in this case; Chinese (IIRC) for instance does Bad Things to my font size).

-- 
Matthew
We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. --Badtech

Re: html email

[Ethan Tira-Thompson]

>> For instance, take a look at what happened here:
> It also doesn't happen with non-broken mailers (in that case, I was  
> attempting to line wrap manually, which almost certainly has  
> something to do with it).
There must be a lot of broken mailers out there, because I see it  
happen a *lot*.  Very annoying when I search for some error message,  
find a discussion on an archive, and can't read the quotes to follow  
the discussion because everything is crazy-indented due to the word  
wrapping at some arbitrary width while people are replying.  It's  
especially bad when code is involved, with literal '>'s in the mix.

> ...which, if several people are using it, on several lists, adds  
> up. Now add, say, 100 people per day downloading it, and now it's  
> several mb a day, about 100 mb a month, and now you're talking some  
> more significant numbers.
100mb a month still isn't significant.  That's a *trickle*.  But  
fine, if everyone was doing it, it would double the mailing list  
bandwidth usage.  Maybe there are mailing lists that exceed my  
imagination where that would be a problem.

And if it is a problem, and here's my original argument, *just strip  
the html version*.  The two alternative versions are explicitly  
intended to be alternative versions, and only one is expected to be  
displayed.  So I claim it's unexpected to bounce the message.  It  
*is* expected to have one or the other shown.  Dropping the message  
altogether is at best unexpected, at worst rude and counter  
productive, and in general, annoying.

-ethan

Re: html email

[mwoehlke]

Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>>> For instance, take a look at what happened here:
>> It also doesn't happen with non-broken mailers (in that case, I was 
>> attempting to line wrap manually, which almost certainly has something 
>> to do with it).
> There must be a lot of broken mailers out there, because I see it happen 
> a *lot*.

Oh, probably. I think one of them is named "Outlook". :-)
At any rate, I haven't noticed Thunderbird doing it.

-- 
Matthew
We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. --Badtech

RE: html email

[Charli Li]

-----Original Message-----
>From: mwoehlke
>Sent: Monday, August 28, 2006 7:12 PM
>To: The Cygwin-Talk Maiming List
>Subject: Re: html email
>
>
>Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>>>> For instance, take a look at what happened here:
>>> It also doesn't happen with non-broken mailers (in that case, I was
>>> attempting to line wrap manually, which almost certainly has something
>>> to do with it).
>> There must be a lot of broken mailers out there, because I see it happen
>> a *lot*.
>
>Oh, probably. I think one of them is named "Outlook". :-)
>At any rate, I haven't noticed Thunderbird doing it.
>

Microsoft Outlook wraps long lines by default (depends on the size of your
window) http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#WADR.
And it looks that it was wrapped even smaller after going through ezmlm.
The guy that just sent an email to the main cyg list didn't
http://cygwin.com/acronyms/PCYMTWLL!

Charli
---
Learn more before you Rushmore.

Re: html email

[mwoehlke]

Charli Li wrote:
> mwoehlke wrote:
>> Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>>>>> For instance, take a look at what happened here:
>>>> It also doesn't happen with non-broken mailers (in that case, I was
>>>> attempting to line wrap manually, which almost certainly has something
>>>> to do with it).
>>> There must be a lot of broken mailers out there, because I see it happen
>>> a *lot*.
>> Oh, probably. I think one of them is named "Outlook". :-)
>> At any rate, I haven't noticed Thunderbird doing it.
> 
> Microsoft Outlook wraps long lines by default (depends on the size of your
> window) WADR.

Yes, the *GUI* wraps long lines. We're talking a: about wrapping in the 
actual mail, and b: doing it /wrong/ for quotes. I believe Outlook is 
one of the mailers responsible for the mess Ethan pointed out a few 
lines up.

-- 
Matthew
We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. --Badtech

RE: html email

[Charli Li]

mwoehlke said:
>Charli Li wrote:
>> mwoehlke wrote:
>>> Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>>>>>> For instance, take a look at what happened here:
>>>>> It also doesn't happen with non-broken mailers (in that case, I was
>>>>> attempting to line wrap manually, which almost certainly has something
>>>>> to do with it).
>>>> There must be a lot of broken mailers out there, because I see
>it happen
>>>> a *lot*.
>>> Oh, probably. I think one of them is named "Outlook". :-)
>>> At any rate, I haven't noticed Thunderbird doing it.
>>
>> Microsoft Outlook wraps long lines by default (depends on the
>size of your
>> window) WADR.
>
>Yes, the *GUI* wraps long lines. We're talking a: about wrapping in the
>actual mail, and b: doing it /wrong/ for quotes. I believe Outlook is
>one of the mailers responsible for the mess Ethan pointed out a few
>lines up.
>

WADR, Outlook doesn't wrap, but when viewed (not gone through sourceware) it
is wrapped.  When it HAS gone through sourceware, the text is wrapped even
tighter; it looks like the line ended in the middle of the screen.  And yes,
hitting ENTER doesn't seem to solve any problems.

Also, lots of email programs quote raw email addresses by default in
replies.  The PCYMTNQREAIYR rule has been here (I'm guessing) a long time
now, and people (was including me) are still PCYMTNQREAIYRing.  It is
probably advisable to modify Thunderbird and SeaMonkey's code a little bit
so that there is no more PCYMTNQREAIYRing.

Charli
---
Learn more before you Rushmore.

RE: html email

[Dave Korn]

On 28 August 2006 23:57, Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:

> 100mb a month still isn't significant.

  You utter, total, selfish,  arrogant
<CENSORMENOWICANNOTTHINKOFANONOBSCENEWORDTODESCRIBETHISBEHAVIOUR>.

  How DARE you speak for other people?  100mb costs several hours of phone
bill.  It's NOT up to you to say what other people can or cannot afford.  Who
died and made you god?

  If I ever meet you, I'm going to steal your wallet and then say "one hundred
dollars isn't significant so why should he complain".

  <spit>

    nocheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....

Re: html email

[Ethan Tira-Thompson]

> 100mb costs several hours of phone
> bill.  It's NOT up to you to say what other people can or cannot  
> afford.  Who
> died and made you god?
Uh, dude, we're talking about the mailing list *server* here, not  
individual recipients.  Individuals would each (by definition) only  
see a tiny fraction of that, and probably wouldn't even notice the  
difference, even on a modem.

> If I ever meet you, I'm going to steal your wallet and then say  
> "one hundred
> dollars isn't significant so why should he complain"
If you want to make that one hundred from taking a fraction of a cent  
from several thousand people over the course of a month, consider me  
not caring.  Heck I even already gave my 2¢. ;)

Calm down, learn to juggle or something -- that's I did when I was  
stuck on a modem connection ;)

-ethan

Re: html email

[mwoehlke]

Charli Li wrote:
> mwoehlke said:
>> Charli Li wrote:
>>> mwoehlke wrote:
>>>> Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>>>>>>> For instance, take a look at what happened here:
>>>>>> It also doesn't happen with non-broken mailers (in that case, I was
>>>>>> attempting to line wrap manually, which almost certainly has something
>>>>>> to do with it).
>>>>> There must be a lot of broken mailers out there, because I see
>>>>> it happen a *lot*.
>>>> Oh, probably. I think one of them is named "Outlook". :-)
>>>> At any rate, I haven't noticed Thunderbird doing it.
>>> Microsoft Outlook wraps long lines by default (depends on the
>>> size of your window) WADR.
>> Yes, the *GUI* wraps long lines. We're talking a: about wrapping in the
>> actual mail, and b: doing it /wrong/ for quotes. I believe Outlook is
>> one of the mailers responsible for the mess Ethan pointed out a few
>> lines up.
> 
> WADR, Outlook doesn't wrap, but when viewed (not gone through sourceware) it
> is wrapped.

Is that not what I said? The /source/ lines are not wrapped, but the GUI 
/visually/ wraps them (as opposed to adding a horizontal scroll bar).

Oh, and what mailer are you using? It appears to be one of the broken 
ones, having butchered the quoting in your last message.

> Also, lots of email programs quote raw email addresses by default in
> replies.  The PCYMTNQREAIYR rule has been here (I'm guessing) a long time
> now, and people (was including me) are still PCYMTNQREAIYRing.  It is
> probably advisable to modify Thunderbird and SeaMonkey's code a little bit
> so that there is no more PCYMTNQREAIYRing.

Eh? AFAIK, I haven't changed Thunderbird's settings here, and if you 
look up, you'll see that the bird inserted "Charli Li wrote:". No raw 
e-mail addresses there :-). In fact, I don't even see my Outlook doing it.

-- 
Matthew
Ncurses. Blessing console programs since 1993.

RE: html email

[Dave Korn]

On 29 August 2006 03:41, Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:

>> 100mb costs several hours of phone
>> bill.  It's NOT up to you to say what other people can or cannot afford. 
>> Who died and made you god?
> Uh, dude, we're talking about the mailing list *server* here, not
> individual recipients.  

  Oops, my bad.  I should have read more carefully.  But, ... 

> Individuals would each (by definition) only
> see a tiny fraction of that, and probably wouldn't even notice the
> difference, even on a modem.

  ... If all the emails are in html, every single individual on the list will
see a >100% difference, given that html emails contain the same text as a
plain text version in one section *and* the marked-up version *and* a bunch of
extra mime headers.  That /is/ still an imposition on people using dialup.

> Calm down, learn to juggle or something -- that's I did when I was
> stuck on a modem connection ;)

  It's not for you to tell people to be patient because you want to make them
wait while you send them lots of redundant information.  This "there's always
more speed/bandwidth/storage and we don't care about those who are using
old/outdated systems" is how microsoft got themselves and all of us into the
nightmare that is bloatware!

    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....

RE: html email

[Charli Li]

mwoehlke attempts to fry all this in a puny frying pan:
>Charli Li wrote:
>> mwoehlke said:
>>> Charli Li wrote:
>>>> mwoehlke wrote:
>>>>> Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>>>>>>>> For instance, take a look at what happened here:
>>>>>>> It also doesn't happen with non-broken mailers (in that case, I was
>>>>>>> attempting to line wrap manually, which almost certainly
>has something
>>>>>>> to do with it).
>>>>>> There must be a lot of broken mailers out there, because I see
>>>>>> it happen a *lot*.
>>>>> Oh, probably. I think one of them is named "Outlook". :-)
>>>>> At any rate, I haven't noticed Thunderbird doing it.
>>>> Microsoft Outlook wraps long lines by default (depends on the
>>>> size of your window) WADR.
>>> Yes, the *GUI* wraps long lines. We're talking a: about wrapping in the
>>> actual mail, and b: doing it /wrong/ for quotes. I believe Outlook is
>>> one of the mailers responsible for the mess Ethan pointed out a few
>>> lines up.
>>
>> WADR, Outlook doesn't wrap, but when viewed (not gone through
>sourceware) it
>> is wrapped.
>
>Is that not what I said? The /source/ lines are not wrapped, but the GUI
>/visually/ wraps them (as opposed to adding a horizontal scroll bar).
>
>Oh, and what mailer are you using? It appears to be one of the broken
>ones, having butchered the quoting in your last message.
>
>> Also, lots of email programs quote raw email addresses by default in
>> replies.  The PCYMTNQREAIYR rule has been here (I'm guessing) a long time
>> now, and people (was including me) are still PCYMTNQREAIYRing.  It is
>> probably advisable to modify Thunderbird and SeaMonkey's code a
>little bit
>> so that there is no more PCYMTNQREAIYRing.
>
>Eh? AFAIK, I haven't changed Thunderbird's settings here, and if you
>look up, you'll see that the bird inserted "Charli Li wrote:". No raw
>e-mail addresses there :-). In fact, I don't even see my Outlook doing it.

OK, well maybe some other mailers (besides Outlook) violate PCYMTNQREAIYR as
well as insert blahblah wrote.  So it actually looks like this:

blahblah <raw email address> wrote:

Charli
---
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOYEAH!

RE: html email

[Dave Korn]

On 29 August 2006 17:23, Charli Li wrote:

> 
> OK, well maybe some other mailers (besides Outlook) violate PCYMTNQREAIYR as
> well as insert blahblah wrote.  So it actually looks like this:
> 
> blahblah <raw email address> wrote:
> 
> Charli

  BTW, since we're discussing raw email addresses, I have to inform you that
google's not bringing up any results for "Q889459 site:microsoft.com".

  So what is/was KBarticle889459, anyway?


    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....

Re: html email

[Cary Jamison]

mwoehlke wrote:
> Cary Jamison wrote:
>> mwoehlke wrote:
>>> Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>>>> In any case, when I copy and paste code from my editor, it can
>>>> retain the syntax coloring.  It's very straightforward.  But even
>>>> so, piping it through enscript isn't difficult either if I was on a
>>>> lesser platform.
>>> Never saw that; what editor do you use? Anyway, AFAIK KATE doesn't
>>> do this (and I *dare* you to call it/KDE a "lesser platform" :-)).
>>
>> Outlook will do that.  I was rather surprised the first time I saw
>> it. Can't remember what I was pasting from, though.  Probably
>> VisualStudio.
>
> Well, the "probably" is the interesting part. Whether or not Outlook
> can paste RTF (I already knew it can) is beside the point, the
> question was what editors ("probably Visual Studio") will put RTF on
> the clipboard? :-)

Oops, you did ask which editor he was using.  I just did a quick test of the 
various editors/ides I use that do syntax highlighting: jbuilder, 
activestate python, xemacs, visualstudio.  It seems only visualstudio 
supports this.


Cary

Re: html email

[mwoehlke]

Cary Jamison wrote:
> mwoehlke wrote:
>> Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>>> In any case, when I copy and paste code from my editor, it can retain
>>> the syntax coloring.  It's very straightforward.  But even so,
>>> piping it through enscript isn't difficult either if I was on a
>>> lesser platform.
>> Never saw that; what editor do you use? Anyway, AFAIK KATE doesn't do
>> this (and I *dare* you to call it/KDE a "lesser platform" :-)).
> 
> Outlook will do that.  I was rather surprised the first time I saw it.
> Can't remember what I was pasting from, though.  Probably VisualStudio.

Well, the "probably" is the interesting part. Whether or not Outlook can 
paste RTF (I already knew it can) is beside the point, the question was 
what editors ("probably Visual Studio") will put RTF on the clipboard? :-)

-- 
Matthew
Ncurses. Blessing console programs since 1993.

Re: html email

[Cary Jamison]

mwoehlke wrote:
> Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>> In any case, when I copy and paste code from my editor, it can retain
>> the syntax coloring.  It's very straightforward.  But even so,
>> piping it through enscript isn't difficult either if I was on a
>> lesser platform.
>
> Never saw that; what editor do you use? Anyway, AFAIK KATE doesn't do
> this (and I *dare* you to call it/KDE a "lesser platform" :-)).

Outlook will do that.  I was rather surprised the first time I saw it.

Can't remember what I was pasting from, though.  Probably VisualStudio.


Cary

Re: html email

[Sam Robb]

On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 10:43 -0500, mwoehlke wrote:
> Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 03:55:50PM -0500, mwoehlke wrote:
> >> Never saw that; what editor do you use? Anyway, AFAIK KATE doesn't do 
> >> this (and I *dare* you to call it/KDE a "lesser platform" :-)).
> > 
> > KDE is a lesser platform -
> > http://developer.kde.org/documentation/books/kde-2.0-development/ch19lev1sec2.html
> 
> Excuse me... Pun Police! Where are the Pun Police? :-)

Ask, and ye shall receive...

http://www.galactanet.com/comic/268.htm

-Samrobb

Re: html email

[mwoehlke]

Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 03:55:50PM -0500, mwoehlke wrote:
>> Never saw that; what editor do you use? Anyway, AFAIK KATE doesn't do 
>> this (and I *dare* you to call it/KDE a "lesser platform" :-)).
> 
> KDE is a lesser platform -
> http://developer.kde.org/documentation/books/kde-2.0-development/ch19lev1sec2.html

Excuse me... Pun Police! Where are the Pun Police? :-)

-- 
Matthew
Ncurses. Blessing console programs since 1993.

Re: html email

[Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 03:55:50PM -0500, mwoehlke wrote:
> Never saw that; what editor do you use? Anyway, AFAIK KATE doesn't do 
> this (and I *dare* you to call it/KDE a "lesser platform" :-)).

KDE is a lesser platform -
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/books/kde-2.0-development/ch19lev1sec2.html

Re: html email

[George]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 05:09:47PM -0400, One Angry User wrote:
> On a balmy Monday, the 28th day of August, 2006, Ethan Tira-Thompson's 
> computer deigned to emit the following stream of bytes:
> 
> > > [...]
> 
> The style that uses red comments and blue keywords doesn't need a
> standard, it needs an eye doctor.  Yuck!  Everyone knows keywords are 
> dark purple and bold and comments are blue and slanted.

> Oh, and don't forget to set the right font for the code, otherwise it 
> looks even uglier.

These kids with their fancy text editors.  Syntax hilighting is for 
sissies.  Text should be green, on a black background the way God 
intended it to look.

> [...] 
> Besides, the readability of most code I've seen would benefit much 
> more from proper indentation than from syntax highlighting...

Only if you're using tabs with 4 characters per indent.  Otherwise, it 
makes things as hard to read as email from people who insist on 
indenting every paragraph of their email messages.  Go figure.

If you want me to go on arguing, you'll have to pay for another five 
minutes. 

-- 
George

Re: html email

[mwoehlke]

One Angry User wrote:
> On a balmy Monday, the 28th day of August, 2006, Ethan Tira-Thompson's computer deigned to emit the following stream of bytes:
>>> If you plan to highlight your example code (and by what standard?),
>>> you have too much time on your hands.
>> Standard?  Keywords are blue, comments are red, that kind of thing needs
>> a standard?
> 
> The style that uses red comments and blue keywords doesn't need a
> standard, it needs an eye doctor.  Yuck!  Everyone knows keywords are dark
> purple and bold and comments are blue and slanted.

My point exactly. :-)

-- 
Matthew
We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. --Badtech

Re: html email

[Ethan Tira-Thompson]

Well, on a related note, I just got "failure notice" for that last  
message, but it appears the messages came through on after all. (I  
guess it's supposed to be @cygwin.com?  Not sure where I got  
@sourceware.org from)

Anyway, sorry for the dupe, had resent before I realized the failure  
notice was apparently incorrect.  Certainly not going to repost it a  
*third* time, so if you didn't just get a reply from me, the message  
is in the archive, so I assume it went through to everyone else as well:
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-talk/2006-q3/msg00338.html

-ethan

Begin forwarded message:
> From: MAILER-DAEMON@sourceware.org
> Date: August 28, 2006 5:30:36 PM EDT
> To: ejt@andrew.cmu.edu
> Subject: failure notice
>
> Hi. This is the qmail-send program at sourceware.org.
> I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following  
> addresses.
> This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
>
> <cygwin-talk@sourceware.org>:
> ezmlm-send: info: qp 22225
> ezmlm-reject: fatal: List address must be in To: or Cc: (#5.7.0)
>
> --- Enclosed are the original headers of the message.
>
> From: Ethan Tira-Thompson <ejt@andrew.cmu.edu>
> Date: August 28, 2006 5:30:29 PM EDT
> To: cygwin-talk@sourceware.org
> Subject: Re: html email
>
>
> (Body suppressed)
>
>

Re: html email

[One Angry User]

On a balmy Monday, the 28th day of August, 2006, Ethan Tira-Thompson's computer deigned to emit the following stream of bytes:

> > I'm not sure silently stripping the HTML part is the right idea. The
> > point is to stop people that don't know what they're doing (and thus
> > don't understand why HTML is EVIL EVIL EVIL)
>
> That's a matter of opinion.  And if you don't like HTML or consider it a
> security problem, just set your mail reader to ignore it and display the
> plain text, and those of us who want to see the full content of the
> message can see the HTML.  It's not that big a deal, I'm surprised to
> see so much religious zealotry here.
>
> All of those links you provide are arguments against HTML-only email.
> I agree that's a bad idea.  But when most mail programs send both plain
> text and HTML, the arguments are moot.  As long as the plain text
> version is there, what's the big deal?

HTML takes up about 3 times as much space...

> For instance, you're right that it's non-homogenous.  But take that to
> its conclusion: some people want to use lynx to view the web, that's
> fine and there are ways to give them a usable experience (e.g. 'alt'
> tags for images), but non-homogeneity isn't a good enough reason to deny
> the rest of us the full web page just because some people want to live
> in their console.  There's no progress in technology if everyone is held
> to the same lowest common denominator.
>
> There's a well defined way to support both plain text and rich text in
> email. I don't see why the plain text crowd has to say the rich text
> crowd can't coexist when there's a viable way to support both.
>
> > If you plan to highlight your example code (and by what standard?),
> > you have too much time on your hands.
>
> Standard?  Keywords are blue, comments are red, that kind of thing needs
> a standard?

The style that uses red comments and blue keywords doesn't need a
standard, it needs an eye doctor.  Yuck!  Everyone knows keywords are dark
purple and bold and comments are blue and slanted.

Oh, and don't forget to set the right font for the code, otherwise it
looks even uglier.

> In any case, when I copy and paste code from my editor, it can retain
> the syntax coloring.  It's very straightforward.  But even so, piping it
> through enscript isn't difficult either if I was on a lesser platform.

Ah, so now we're talking about Postscript mail?

Besides, the readability of most code I've seen would benefit much more
from proper indentation than from syntax highlighting...

OAU

Re: html email

[mwoehlke]

Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
> Resending as per Mike's PPIOSPE (not sure why the 'reply' to you went 
> private, unless your original mail was private to me?  In which case 
> PPIOSPE back-atcha :)

"Mike"? Who's "Mike"? :-)
As for your question, your question, a: because I can't set reply-to 
(AFAIK Thunderbird doesn't let you set it on individual groups, which is 
needed as I also subscribe to several non-Cygwin lists which would not 
be amused if my reply-to was a Cygwin address), and b: because I CC'd 
you, not knowing if you were watching cygwin-talk. Welcome! Watch for 
falling hippos. Anyway, yes I did send to you privately, but *also* to 
the list. :-) But no worries, you're here now.

And since you're here, I'll copy my reply (sans prior clarification) for 
anyone else's benefit.

> All of those links you provide are arguments against HTML-only email.

(Right, because I meant "HTML *mail*", as clarified above and in private 
mail :-). So I've snipped the bits that were only relevant to that slip 
on my part.)

> I agree that's a bad idea.  But when most mail programs send both plain 
> text and HTML, the arguments are moot.  As long as the plain text 
> version is there, what's the big deal?

Keep in mind that this is a *mailing list*, and there are additional 
concerns... like digests, archives, and that the list is proactively 
preventing people from abusing HTML for nefarious purposes. That, and 
you forgot the bandwidth issue.

> There's a well defined way to support both plain text and rich text in 
> email.  I don't see why the plain text crowd has to say the rich text 
> crowd can't coexist when there's a viable way to support both.

In a word, bandwidth.

>> If you plan to highlight your example code (and by what standard?), 
>> you have too much time on your hands.
> Standard?  Keywords are blue, comments are red, that kind of thing needs 
> a standard?

Oh? Funny, when I look at source, keywords are green, comments are gray, 
normal text is cyan, etc, and everything has a dark blue background. See 
what I mean? :-) There are many ways to highlight code, and not all are 
the same. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'm just pointing out that 
you and I may have different ideas on how it should be done.

> In any case, when I copy and paste code from my editor, it can retain 
> the syntax coloring.  It's very straightforward.  But even so, piping it 
> through enscript isn't difficult either if I was on a lesser platform.

Never saw that; what editor do you use? Anyway, AFAIK KATE doesn't do 
this (and I *dare* you to call it/KDE a "lesser platform" :-)).

-- 
Matthew
We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. --Badtech

Re: html email

[Christopher Faylor]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 04:51:04PM -0400, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 04:23:24PM -0400, Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>>There's a well defined way to support both plain text and rich text  
>>in email.  I don't see why the plain text crowd has to say the rich  
>>text crowd can't coexist when there's a viable way to support both.
>
>There is a meta-issue implied by discussions like these.  You've entered
>a zone where this kind of thing has been part of the culture for ten
>years.  Obviously the people who run the sourceware.org site have strong
>feelings about not allowing html mail.  What special qualifications do
>you think you bring to the table which would sway someone?  Do you have
>a lot of experience running a technical site like this one?  Are you an
>expert in MIME?
>
>FWIW, if you really want to bring about change, then the people who
>decide about these things (I'm one of a handful of people with opinions
>about this) hang out at the overseers mailing list at sourceware.org.
>
>I can, again, say with very great certainty that none of them are
>interested in changing the default for the site.

When responding to the above, please remember to remove the inexplicably
added extra mailing list address which caused me to double post.

cgf

Re: html email

[Christopher Faylor]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 04:23:24PM -0400, Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>There's a well defined way to support both plain text and rich text  
>in email.  I don't see why the plain text crowd has to say the rich  
>text crowd can't coexist when there's a viable way to support both.

There is a meta-issue implied by discussions like these.  You've entered
a zone where this kind of thing has been part of the culture for ten
years.  Obviously the people who run the sourceware.org site have strong
feelings about not allowing html mail.  What special qualifications do
you think you bring to the table which would sway someone?  Do you have
a lot of experience running a technical site like this one?  Are you an
expert in MIME?

FWIW, if you really want to bring about change, then the people who
decide about these things (I'm one of a handful of people with opinions
about this) hang out at the overseers mailing list at sourceware.org.

I can, again, say with very great certainty that none of them are
interested in changing the default for the site.

>>If you plan to highlight your example code (and by what standard?),  
>>you have too much time on your hands.
>Standard?  Keywords are blue, comments are red, that kind of thing  
>needs a standard?
>In any case, when I copy and paste code from my editor, it can retain  
>the syntax coloring.  It's very straightforward.  But even so, piping  
>it through enscript isn't difficult either if I was on a lesser  
>platform.
>
>-ethan
>
>
>

Re: html email

[Christopher Faylor]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 04:23:24PM -0400, Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>There's a well defined way to support both plain text and rich text  
>in email.  I don't see why the plain text crowd has to say the rich  
>text crowd can't coexist when there's a viable way to support both.

There is a meta-issue implied by discussions like these.  You've entered
a zone where this kind of thing has been part of the culture for ten
years.  Obviously the people who run the sourceware.org site have strong
feelings about not allowing html mail.  What special qualifications do
you think you bring to the table which would sway someone?  Do you have
a lot of experience running a technical site like this one?  Are you an
expert in MIME?

FWIW, if you really want to bring about change, then the people who
decide about these things (I'm one of a handful of people with opinions
about this) hang out at the overseers mailing list at sourceware.org.

I can, again, say with very great certainty that none of them are
interested in changing the default for the site.

>>If you plan to highlight your example code (and by what standard?),  
>>you have too much time on your hands.
>Standard?  Keywords are blue, comments are red, that kind of thing  
>needs a standard?
>In any case, when I copy and paste code from my editor, it can retain  
>the syntax coloring.  It's very straightforward.  But even so, piping  
>it through enscript isn't difficult either if I was on a lesser  
>platform.
>
>-ethan
>
>
>

Re: html email

[Ethan Tira-Thompson]

Resending as per Mike's PPIOSPE (not sure why the 'reply' to you went  
private, unless your original mail was private to me?  In which case  
PPIOSPE back-atcha :)

---------------------------

> I'm not sure silently stripping the HTML part is the right idea.  
> The point is to stop people that don't know what they're doing (and  
> thus don't understand why HTML is EVIL EVIL EVIL)
That's a matter of opinion.  And if you don't like HTML or consider  
it a security problem, just set your mail reader to ignore it and  
display the plain text, and those of us who want to see the full  
content of the message can see the HTML.  It's not that big a deal,  
I'm surprised to see so much religious zealotry here.

All of those links you provide are arguments against HTML-only  
email.  I agree that's a bad idea.  But when most mail programs send  
both plain text and HTML, the arguments are moot.  As long as the  
plain text version is there, what's the big deal?

For instance, you're right that it's non-homogenous.  But take that  
to its conclusion: some people want to use lynx to view the web,  
that's fine and there are ways to give them a usable experience (e.g.  
'alt' tags for images), but non-homogeneity isn't a good enough  
reason to deny the rest of us the full web page just because some  
people want to live in their console.  There's no progress in  
technology if everyone is held to the same lowest common denominator.

There's a well defined way to support both plain text and rich text  
in email.  I don't see why the plain text crowd has to say the rich  
text crowd can't coexist when there's a viable way to support both.

> If you plan to highlight your example code (and by what standard?),  
> you have too much time on your hands.
Standard?  Keywords are blue, comments are red, that kind of thing  
needs a standard?
In any case, when I copy and paste code from my editor, it can retain  
the syntax coloring.  It's very straightforward.  But even so, piping  
it through enscript isn't difficult either if I was on a lesser  
platform.

-ethan

Re: html email

[Christopher Faylor]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 03:02:42PM -0500, mwoehlke wrote:
>Christopher Faylor wrote:
>>On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 02:11:27PM -0500, mwoehlke wrote:
>>>Ethan Tira-Thompson wrote:
>>>>PS First attempt of this email got kicked back because it had a
>>>>text/html mime type alongside the text/plain.
>>>You mean we actually do that? Sweet!
>>
>>Yes, and as you surmised, it is a fairly good intelligence filter.
>>
>>Btw, why move this topic to the cygwin-talk list?  As much as I think
>>it's a stupid discussion, it is on-topic for the cygwin list.
>
>Because, as you pointed out, it is a stupid discussion? My own instinct 
>is to move anything that isn't Cygwin to -talk. This is about the list, 
>not Cygwin itself. But it was a border area, so if I have anything 
>purposeful to say I'll move it back.

Ok.  I just think that sometimes points need to be made in the main list
and, because you were agreeing with me, these were obviously good points!

OTOH, if there isn't much more discussion about this subject on the main
cygwin list then your instincts were spot on.

cgf