Asking if elements in struct arre zero

[Arthur J. O'Dwyer]

I hope the number is large enough to allow for good client programs to
be developed to handle such a thing well. I do not yet believe they
exist (hint:'good' is a relative term and I have high standards), but
they are getting close.


Which places great importance on writing good client programs for
USENET.

s/client programs/users/

Unless you're proposing an *amazing* leap forward in natural-language
parsing within the above "numbered" years, the responsibility for
courteous HTML use remains on the user's shoulders, not on his
software.

<h1><font="comic sans" size="72"><blink>I could write like this
all the time... how would your clever little HTML newsreader like
that, hmm?</blink></font></h1>

Plain text does a great job of transmitting information from place
to place and person to person. Re an earlier argument possibly by
someone else: No, I have no books on my shelf written in monospace,
but nor do I own any books with colored text, bold text interspersed
with regular, "smilies," or -- god forbid -- blinking text. Like
someone else also said: Text formatting is fine, but HTML sucks at
text formatting.

Why?

I can see no reason to believe that this task would be any more
difficult then it is now. You would still essentially create a new
message, type it in and post it. The extra features would be there for
you to use or not.

It would probably be inconvenient to use the new features in
most newsreaders, especially the old standards with the three-letter
names. Me, I use Pine over SSH. I don't have a toolbar to click on
the "B" for bold or whatever, and HTML-formatted text looks really
ugly in a *nix text window. Think Lynx, but with trolls.

-Arthur

 

[Programmer Dude]

Yes, yes, I understand.

I read the words. My response was not intended to directly refute
what you wrote; I was commenting further on it.

Okay, cool.

What I dispute is the relevance of that fact to Usenet.

And you may have a good point.

Agreed. When they published K&R, it was well worth it to go to the
effort of formatting it in a variable-width font, as is done for
most books. It might have been easier and cheaper to use a plain
typewriter font; I'm glad they went to the extra effort to make it
more readable.

I worked in the graphic arts area and my dad is into book publishing
(we published a few "vanity books" when he had he graphic arts biz).

There is no extra effort. For *many* years now, typesetting has been
computer controlled (for a long time with dedicated machines, but
increasingly with PC software). The kerning and justification needs
are all handled by computer. The "inputter" just types. (Although
I suspect these days, most authors present the data electronically,
so no additional typing--just dump into a layout program.)

When I post to Usenet, it's not worth my time to do that kind of
formatting.

If you want to present just text (no emphasis), you'd just type.
But advanced features would be there if desired.

If HTML postings were generally supported, I suppose I could go to
the effort of specifying that I want this paragraph to be in a
variable-width font, and use <pre>...</pre> for code samples, and
actual *boldface* and _underlining_ where it's appropriate,...

The existing tools are already more sophisticated than that. The
emphasis bits... just highlight and Ctrl-B (bold) or Ctrl-U
(underline) or Ctrl-I (italic). Way I'd probably design a system,
you'd specify the default font. If you included source code, you
would highlight and press ... well, whatever key you like.

At no time should anyone have to input the actual tags (unless
they WANTED to for advanced features or fine control).

Quite frankly, it's not worth the effort.

As you state it, I agree completely. But if it were no different
than you do today?

If you want to use a newsreader that lets you read it in your
favorite font, feel free; I'm not interested in adding extraneous
formatting information.

Agreed on all counts. If you don't want to be *bold* or /italic/
or _underlined_, don't be! Myself, I LIKE the power of expressive
text.

Just about every single technical manual, book, or magazine I've
ever read was produced by professionals. Just about every Usenet
posting I've ever read was not. Look at how much trouble we have
with posters not following the simple plain text standards we have
now.

Yes, I have to confess, that is a very good point.

[shrug] Perhaps it's just part of a growth process. I am pretty
sure it's inevitable.

Usenet works just fine as it is.

[grin] For *some* definition of "works".

Two reasons: the ancient standard works, and the alleged new
standard doesn't seem to exist.

Yet, as you say above, we still have problems with people who don't
edit or who commit the Top Post Sin or whatever. I'm not sure that
mis-use of something by the ignorant indicates avoidance (should we
ban C because people write bad C?).

MAYBE, if I'm right that it's inevitable, it's smart to get in on
the ground floor in *creating* the standard.

 

[Les Cargill]

It depends on your definition of text-formatting. If you define it
as "page layout" I agree it was never intended as such. If you
define it as "text attributes" then it clearly WAS originally
intended as such (hence those depreciated tags).

I see two big advantages to HTML over plain text: The ability to
provide more natural emphasis (that is, true italics and bold
rather than the crude ASCII versions of such). And the big one:
the ability to wrap to fit the user's window width (and I mean
"window", not "Window").

Formatting with hard returns to 78, 77, 75, 72m 68 or 65 is a start,
but wouldn't it be nice to be able to tuck a small window somewhere
on your screen (say at 40 cols) and STILL have the text read nice?

So far, I see advantages and no disadvantages....

The maxim for Internet transmission used to be "be liberal in what
you accept, conservative in what you send".

The existing system known as Usenet ranges to serve people from those
using HTML emabled readers to those using Tin. The Tin folks
will not understand HTML very easily.

Pure, text editor ASCII text is a least common denominator, a
simplifier discipline on the medium which costs nothing and
*really* restricts nobody. If you want HTML, put it on a
webpage and refer to it in Usenet posts.

Especially since HTML itself is now an evolving standard,
it should be clear that pure ASCII text has advantages over
any sort of interpreted formatting.

Besides, it's more or less implied by the early Usenet RFCs. In
c.l.c terms, text other than ASCII text will induce undefined
behavior. If you wanna chat, chat by all means, but let's at least
make an attempt to maintain *some* measure of distinction between
that and Usenet.

 

[Programmer Dude]

Proportional fonts printed at high resolutions (several thousand
dpi) have been found to be easier to read when printed on paper.

(And, obviously, when printed in non-digital mediums such as
printing presses.)

Proportional fonts (mis)displayed on low-resolution, typically 75
and up to perhaps 100 dpi, computer screens have not been shown to
be easier to read. As I understand it, studies conflict, but still
lean towards "fixed-width fonts are easier to read".

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. I was aware there it had
been shown that sans-serif fonts (usually considered fatiguing
for lengthy text) are better on PC screens, because the serifs
turn out to be visual clutter at low rez (which suggests the odd
idea that a sans-serif, monospace font would be ideal...I just
don't think I *know* of one!)

Even on web sites, I find the variable-width fonts rather klunky.

I just copy/pasted this message into Word and looked at it with
Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New and (my personal source code
choice) Lucida Console. All 10 point.

The Times Roman looked the best to me, the Courier the worst.

Personal perception, obviously, but I question the idea that
monospace is easier. As you say, the test results vary.

Maybe I'll try reading amUSENET in some variable pitch font for
a while and see what I think....

Indeed. I suspect far too many would look like, well, "Wired"
magazine...

Perhaps that will serve the same filtering purpose as top posting
and over-quoting do now.

 

[Programmer Dude]

Keith is right: plain ASCII text is one of the easiest media to
format readably. It's not that plain text is easier to read than
proportionally formatted text; it's that one can more easily (to
use a resident Brit's phrase) make a pig's breakfast of
proportionally formatted stuff.

Well, two points. My personal experience is that plain ASCII text
is harder to format the way I want it (which I'd like to think is
easily readable). I spend more time than I'd like dealing with
line endings and ASCII emphasis.

I compare my amUSENET writings to the writing I do incompany for
tech docs or (RTF-based) email, and I get WAY more bang for my
buck with more powerful text features.

Indented paragraphs alone are worth their weight in gold, not to
mention auto-wrapping paragraphs and automatic justification.
Having the ability to do bullet lists would be nice, too!

Second point is that I'm not sure I want to live in a world
governed by the lowest common denominator. In fact, I KNOW I
don't.

For paper stuff, typewriting or even text editing is often cheaper
than word processing, too, as Keith points out. That's one reason
why those monographs were fixed-pitch -- cost.

Come again? It costs no more to use a variable-pitch font than it
does to use a fixed-pitch one. These days (and for quite some time
now), it's just typing. The software does the rest.

(Another reason, I suppose, would be the substance-over-aesthetics
attitude Keith described.)

I favor substance+aesthetics. Must be my art background talking.

I completely agree. Your newsreader, that lets you read HTML
mail -- does it let you compose HTML mail, too? Easily?

Trivially so. In fact, I had to turn it off.

But is it really *easier* to hit Ctrl-B instead of Shift-8 when
I mean *bold*, or Ctrl-U instead of Shift[-]?

Definitely (IMO, obviously). Control+alpha is much easier to me
than Shift+symbol. More importantly, it looks a million times
better. Maybe even a billion times! (-:

And if the editor were to really give you control of the process,
the composition of HTML messages could easily take much longer
than the composition of messages free from <meta> tags, hyperlinks,
and what-have-you.

Formatting a message carefully takes some time, period. If I just
want to type without any special formatting, then it hardly matters
what the editor outputs. But if I have something I can make more
clear using formatted text, that sounds like a win.

***HEAR HEAR!***

(See, couldn't that have been a hell of a lot more annoying
in HTML?)

Not really (to me). (I'm not easily annoyed by text.)

Nor do I really want to give spammers the ability to count hits
on Usenet postings, like HTML mail has given them the ability to
count hits on private email.

?? How do they do that? (Are you talking using images?)

I suspect that HTML will never make it into Usenet. Those
interested in making their correspondences look pretty are
usually simply not interested in public discourse.

[shrug] Time will tell!

 

[Programmer Dude]

Yes it is. How many illegible html pages have you seen because
some imbecile carefully selected colors and whatnot that have no
contrast to you.

And you claim they would have been readable if only they'd used
a monospace font?

Also fancy background patterns that take all year to render.

Monospace fixes this, too?

Also little bitty fonts that require a Hubble scope to see.

What about little bitty monospace fonts?

Some of them even pack the html up as 6 bit encoded, making
things unsearchable and hard to filter.

You mean that Base64 stuff? Monospace can't fix that, either.

To make things readable simply use proper paragraphing, spelling,
punctuation, limit line length to about 65 chars, and use text.

Which is decimated in a 60-column window. HTML would wrap nicely.

 

[Guest]

Unless you're proposing an *amazing* leap forward in natural-language
parsing within the above "numbered" years,
huh?

the responsibility for courteous HTML use remains on the user's
shoulders, not on his software.

Appears to be FUD.

A good client program would hide the HTML from the user, allowing the
user to only worry about how it looks and then transmit standard
compliant HTML.

Plain text does a great job of transmitting information from place
to place and person to person.

I agree. So, what do you think HTML is?

Re an earlier argument possibly by
someone else: No, I have no books on my shelf written in monospace,
but nor do I own any books with colored text, bold text interspersed
with regular, "smilies," or -- god forbid -- blinking text.

A client program could easily take such things out, if you didn't not
want to see them. The client program is what blinks the text, shows the
smily, etc. and could simply provide a preference to not show such
things to those who didn't want to see them.

This just seem like more FUD.

Like someone else also said: Text formatting is fine, but HTML sucks at
text formatting.

CSS is excellent at text formatting and, these days, it quite
intertwined with HTML such that one can almost assume the inclusion of
CSS with the mere mention of HTML...and, in this discussion, with me,
one should.

 

[Keith Thompson]

?? How do they do that? (Are you talking using images?)

Yes, they're called "web bugs". An e-mail message contains an IMG tag
with a URL specifying the location of the image. When you view the
message, your client downloads the image file so it can show it to
you. Voila, the server hosting the image sees an http connection from
your IP address, confirming that you've read the message. The images
are typically a single pixel matching the background color. They can
even customize the URL for each message so they can tell which copy of
the message was viewed.

<http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Marketing/web_bug.html>

 

[Ben Pfaff]

I compare my amUSENET writings to the writing I do incompany for
tech docs or (RTF-based) email, and I get WAY more bang for my
buck with more powerful text features.

Indented paragraphs alone are worth their weight in gold, not to
mention auto-wrapping paragraphs and automatic justification.
Having the ability to do bullet lists would be nice, too!

All of these are possible in plain text. My newsreader makes
them easy, too.

 

[CBFalconer]

And you claim they would have been readable if only they'd used
a monospace font?


Monospace fixes this, too?


What about little bitty monospace fonts?


You mean that Base64 stuff? Monospace can't fix that, either.


Which is decimated in a 60-column window. HTML would wrap nicely.

Fonts, colors, sizes etc. are none of the senders business. By
using plain text and limiting lines to 65 chars I can display it
in sizes, colors, fonts, etc. that SUIT ME when reading (which I
won't if it is in html).

 

[Richard Heathfield]

You and your "calling me on it."

You know what, Richard: put me in your killfile and *leave* me there
this time. I think we'll both be happier.

Let's just remember that this is all about your silly statement about buggy
whips. If you want to make silly statements and then not have to face any
criticisms of those statements, the correct procedure is for /you/ to put
/Usenet/ in your killfile, a strategy for which Alan Connor seems to be
setting a precedent with impressive alacrity.

I thought you were bright enough to accept justified criticism. Please don't
prove me wrong.

 

[Richard Bos]

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. I was aware there it had
been shown that sans-serif fonts (usually considered fatiguing
for lengthy text) are better on PC screens, because the serifs
turn out to be visual clutter at low rez (which suggests the odd
idea that a sans-serif, monospace font would be ideal...I just
don't think I *know* of one!)

You've never used a _real_ terminal? *Blink* Even most MS-DOS computers
originally had sans-serif monospaced fonts.

Richard

 

[Alan Balmer]

It depends on your definition of text-formatting. If you define it
as "page layout" I agree it was never intended as such. If you
define it as "text attributes" then it clearly WAS originally
intended as such (hence those depreciated tags).

Those are tags whose value has declined?

 

[Patrick Foley]

Yet, as you say above, we still have problems with people who don't
edit or who commit the Top Post Sin or whatever. I'm not sure that
mis-use of something by the ignorant indicates avoidance (should we
ban C because people write bad C?).

MAYBE, if I'm right that it's inevitable, it's smart to get in on
the ground floor in *creating* the standard.

I just googled and I find that Brad Templeton & I (and others, of
course) were having exactly this same argument in
news.software.readers in January of 1997. I am unaware of any
rich-text or markup standard for news postings having appeared in the
intervening years. If there is a proposal, it has obviously not been
adopted.

That suggests to me that the inevitability of this can certainly be
doubted, from which I take a modicum of comfort. You, Chris, might
consider why it hasn't happened if people have been talking about it
for so long. (If you need an analogy -- and maybe more than an
analogy -- think "interactive TV".)

Pat

followups not set since the thread seems to be dying anyway...

 

[Guest]

Yes, they're called "web bugs".

So, why would you allow your client application to make a connection
back to somewhere as it was attempting to render the page?

Why would you even use a client application that wouldn't allow you to
disable such things?



--

 

[Programmer Dude on site]

Fonts, colors, sizes etc. are none of the senders business.

As a writer and an artist, I disagree 1000%! Those attributes
are a part of my creative expressive toolkit (for in the hands
of a knowledgable user, they can add a great deal to the
information content).

By using plain text and limiting lines to 65 chars I can
display it in sizes, colors, fonts, etc. that SUIT ME when
reading (which I won't if it is in html).

Actually, you can tell your renderer to ignore some or all
the HTML tags. You can define substitute fonts and even specify
a line length. (One nice thing about HTML is the <p> idea. That
allows all users to view decent paragraphs in THEIR prefered line
length, be it 40 cols or 120.)

I still see advantages and no disadvantages. You can disable as
much of the HTML as you like. Or not.

Seems win-win to me.

 

[Keith Thompson]

"Arthur J. O'Dwyer" wrote: [...]
Nor do I really want to give spammers the ability to count hits
on Usenet postings, like HTML mail has given them the ability to
count hits on private email.

?? How do they do that? (Are you talking using images?)

Yes, they're called "web bugs".

So, why would you allow your client application to make a connection
back to somewhere as it was attempting to render the page?

Why would you even use a client application that wouldn't allow you to
disable such things?

Well, I don't (the client I currently use doesn't even render fonts or
images), but that wasn't your point.

I might use a client that's sensible about such things (though it's
not clear how to distinguish between a web bug and an ordinary image),
but a lot of people would inevitably use clients that emphasize
convenience over security.

 

[Guest]

:
[...]
Nor do I really want to give spammers the ability to count hits
on Usenet postings, like HTML mail has given them the ability to
count hits on private email.

?? How do they do that? (Are you talking using images?)

Yes, they're called "web bugs".

So, why would you allow your client application to make a connection
back to somewhere as it was attempting to render the page?

Why would you even use a client application that wouldn't allow you to
disable such things?

Well, I don't (the client I currently use doesn't even render fonts or
images), but that wasn't your point.

I might use a client that's sensible about such things
Cool.

(though it's not clear how to distinguish between a web bug and
an ordinary image),

True.

It is quite likely that I would simply disable the automatic grabbing of
any extra content that someone wanted to include and only obtain the
content of those messages that I believed to be trustworthy.

but a lot of people would inevitably use clients that emphasize
convenience over security.

As should be their choice.

But, there should be no reason that a well designed client could not
provide both.


--

 

[Programmer Dude on site]

Let's just remember that this is all about your silly statement about
buggy whips.

No Richard, this is about yet another unwarranted attack from you. An
attack which adds little or nothing to the discussion. Absolutely
nothing in this sub moves the discussion anywhere. Compare that to the
posts of your fellow clc-ers.

If you want to make silly statements and then not have to face any
criticisms of those statements,...

What criticism? A criticism necessarily defines why the Wrong Thing
is Wrong. You didn't make a criticism, you made an attack. And, as
in the last few times, you are again, Just Plain Wrong.

But let's look at the issue. First up, the Buggy Whip metaphor.

Buggy Whips. Common, default tool of their day. Very useful and of
good design. Have fallen out of use due to changes in technology,
but are still used today by some (and they work as well as they always
did). Nothing *wrong* with a buggy whip, it's just been superceeded.

TTY Text (i.e. 80 colums, straight text). Common, default tool of
its day. Very useful and of good design. Has fallen out of use due
to changes in technology, but still used today by some (and it works
as well as it always did). Nothing *wrong* with TTY, it's just been
superceeded.

Seems a good and accurate comparison. Certainly good enough to make
a metaphor.

Next up, "Your desire to remain in the era of buggy whips not
withstanding".

Note the other poster's sentence to which this was a reply:

}} Not for most Usenet readers, and certainly not for most readers
}} comp.lang.c.

So, the OP presumes to speak on behalf of most of amUSENET and most
readers in comp.lang.c (and MAY even speak correctly). The reply:

} Your desire to remain in the era of buggy whips not withstanding,
} the *fact* of the matter is that formatted text is *easier* to
} read. This--hopefully--is not in dispute.

Can you see that the "Your" above binds to "most ... readers"?

Further, can you or anyone *deny* that comp.lang.c strongly
militates the TTY Text standard? Can you see that that is a
*desire* to remain in the era of that standard? Can you now
see, through the metaphor, that I simply spoke the absolute
honest truth? Can you see the absolute *lack* of slur.

I thought you were bright enough to accept justified criticism.

Justified, always. Unwarranted attacks, never. An you should know
me well enough to know I do not take kindly to unwarranted attacks.

 

[CBFalconer]

"Arthur J. O'Dwyer" wrote: [...]
Nor do I really want to give spammers the ability to count
hits on Usenet postings, like HTML mail has given them the
ability to count hits on private email.

?? How do they do that? (Are you talking using images?)

Yes, they're called "web bugs".

So, why would you allow your client application to make a
connection back to somewhere as it was attempting to render the
page?

Why would you even use a client application that wouldn't allow
you to disable such things?

In case you hadn't noticed, most text editors/viewers don't have
such dangerous abilities, thus there is no need to disable them in
the first place.