Perl DBI Module: SQL query where there is space in field name

[Sir Robin]

The other problem about RFCs is that they often don't mention or leave
open to interpretation many things. You say that HTML in Usenet postings
is not a standard. Well there's no standard saying that it is are not
allowed either. There's people like you who don't like it because they
stick to antiquated software that can't handle it. You say any "serious"
newsreader does not render it. I question you use of the term serious.
I'd say any serious newsreader should be capable of handling it and
doing the right thing. That could be render it to plain text (of which
there is a ton of different modules out there capable of doing the task)
or showing the plain text portion. *Your* news reading software of
choice was either asleep at the wheel or screwed up in it's job. That
says much more about your software pick than anything else. Is that a
"serious" newsreader? I think not. Hell it can't even handle HTML!

And there is no reason whatsoever why a newsreader should need to be able to
handle HTML - however as there are assholes who post these multipart messages
containing HTML part that has fancy formattings, etc. etc. but which at the
end is nothing but the duplicate of same message again but just in format that
takes multiple times the size of plain text and has no real benefits to it
whatsoever in newsgroups... yes, as there as assholes who post this kind of
messages I do see a reason why a serious newsreader needs to be able to cut
off or (like Agent that I prefer) show the HTML garbage part as attachment
that you can load & save it if there were any reason to do so - while there is
no reason to open let alone save the garbage part this way at least the
garbage will only be shown as a little box way simpler to simply ignore than
huge pile of utterly useless HTML crap.

Ah... no.

Ah... yes. As it does not give any value to the content of your message, makes
your messages multiple times larger and for some readers it shows as a huge
amount of total crap and thus causes negativity - as I can see only negative
things resulting from HTML posting I can only come to conclusion that after
this has been specifically pointed to you clearly you can be classified as a
troll.

Yes there are lots of pinheads who love wasting their time brow beating
people into their ways of thinking. If you haven't noticed most people
never heard of Usenet. Oh but I'm anti-social... Well if I'm anti-social
with nerds then so be it!

As I see no advantages whatsoever, couple negative reactions that it causes
and I cant think of how it could possibly cause any harm, problems or other
negative stuff for you to not post in plaintext only, I definately do see that
you are an anti-social prick who needs to stick to doing something the way you
first thought of beeing good because you think that changing behaviour in away
that causes no harm to you or anyone but makes some peoples have more positive
experience would be, like, changing your opinion because someone told you to.
And then you would, like, not have any control at all, people would see that
you are a weakling and would be starting to tell you how to do things and you
could not have any opinions of your own and, like, everything would suck
because you had removed HTML version of the same message in your posts.

I dont know if I should laugh or cry...

--
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**/ email: (e-mail address removed)-SPAM.org, <*> Reg. Linux user #290577 \**
*| Me, Drugs, DooM, Photos, Writings... http://soul.fiveam.org/robsku |*
**\--- GSM/SMS: +358 44 927 3992 ---/**
"Jokainen linkki, jonka päätteenä on ".org", on kelvoton tiedonlähde."
- Nikolas Mäki

 

[ambarish.mitra]

Was there an image here? Oh, yeah. That's right. There wasn't...
--
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
I can't see the point in the theater. All that sex and violence. I get
enough of that at home. Apart from the sex, of course. - Baldrick -
Sense and Senility

NOW, STOP ALL THIS NONSENSE. PLEASE.

The original mesg (posted by me) was regarding SQL query in Perl code.
Out of the 50 mesg on this topic, only 5 are relevant and the
remaining 45 (90%) are completely off-topic (to be polite) and utter
crap (to be truthful).

I started the thread, and was hoping that better sense will prevail
and the useless rambling about being polite/clever/stupid/social/anti-
social will stop. But when the mesg count reached 49, I just could not
control and started to write this off-topic mesg myself.

There are other forums for quarreling in a disgusting manner. Now, as
the one who started this rather relevant question with Perl on a Perl
newsgroup, I am just YELLING at all the pollution creating folks here
to STOP.

Advise to all (including me): If you cannot open your mind, please
keep your mouth shut too. (translated: If you cannot post any relevant
ideas on the main thread, please do not type anything).

 

[Sir Robin]

Right. But let me pose this; In the 1980's and even in the 90's, this
was the way things were done, and a lot of it was for technical reasons,
right? Do those reasons still really exist? Bandwidth is cheap, screen
resolutions large, ram plentiful, HD sizes growing like there's no
tomorrow, so why use old tech to as a reason to prevent moving forward
in a medium such as UseNet ? Any modern news reader should be able to
easily handle multipart messages and at least basic HTML without
breaking a sweat, so why stifle innovation in the name of preserving old
20+ year old paradigms?

In most scenarios (the largest beeing the majority of all usenet messages
written in US-ASCII or with extended ASCII characterset on many
non-international newsgroups) HTML provides no benefits whatsoever and annoys
people. This alone clearly leads to conclusion that using this great
"innovation" that posting HTML copy of same text already coming in plaintext
is in regular usenet messages simply and plainly bad behaviour. Now why would
you insist on behaving badly?

Is anyone still using an 80x25/50 column terminal?

Sometimes... Sometimes also using SSH client to remotely use my home computer
or some other remote server - very handy, very smooth even if having to use a
slow connection.

What real systems out
there don't have a GUI, I mean come on people, time to come out of the
past already.

Need for a GUI depends on what purpose the particular system is set up for -
and GUI or not GUI is not even the issue here... a console newsreader could be
programmed to format HTML or open the HTML part with starting console mode web
browser (Links would be the best one of those I know of and use). But that was
never anyones point here or was it?

I'm not saying we should all post in HTML, I prefer plain
myself, but we should not be so afraid of posts that contain
HTML/multiparts.

I think you have mistaken people beeing afraid here with people beeing annoyed
here. I dont think anyone is afraid of HTML usenet garbage.

--
***/--- Sir Robin (aka Jani Saksa) Bi-Sex and proud of it! ---\***
**/ email: (e-mail address removed)-SPAM.org, <*> Reg. Linux user #290577 \**
*| Me, Drugs, DooM, Photos, Writings... http://soul.fiveam.org/robsku |*
**\--- GSM/SMS: +358 44 927 3992 ---/**
"Jokainen linkki, jonka päätteenä on ".org", on kelvoton tiedonlähde."
- Nikolas Mäki

 

[Sir Robin]

It's really rather
hard to justify that time & expense when the web is sitting right next door
with all the multimedia one can handle.

And unlike usenet, web is designed from the beginning with extending to use
growing amount of different kinds of multimedia in mind.

sherm--

--
***/--- Sir Robin (aka Jani Saksa) Bi-Sex and proud of it! ---\***
**/ email: (e-mail address removed)-SPAM.org, <*> Reg. Linux user #290577 \**
*| Me, Drugs, DooM, Photos, Writings... http://soul.fiveam.org/robsku |*
**\--- GSM/SMS: +358 44 927 3992 ---/**
"Sir Robin valehtelee järjestelmällisesti" - Nikolas Mäki

 

[ambarish.mitra]

And unlike usenet, web is designed from the beginning with extending to use
growing amount of different kinds of multimedia in mind.


--
***/--- Sir Robin (aka Jani Saksa) Bi-Sex and proud of it! ---\***
**/ email: (e-mail address removed)-SPAM.org, <*> Reg. Linux user #290577 \**
*| Me, Drugs, DooM, Photos, Writings...http://soul.fiveam.org/robsku|*
**\--- GSM/SMS: +358 44 927 3992 ---/**
"Sir Robin valehtelee järjestelmällisesti" - Nikolas Mäki

STOP THIS. ENOUGH ALREADY.

In spite of telling clearly (look at my earlier post, some 1 hour ago)
that all these postings are off-topic, you are happily continuing your
errant ways and writing all junk. Note that I am not here judging the
merit of your argument. I am saying that the main question (posted by
me) was related to perl, and then suddenly ppl took it to write about
usenet postings etc etc and made this thread look like a battlefield.
Which it hardly is.

Even after clearly being told not to create more pollution, you have
not understood. Now, do one thing: Look up this entire thread and find
out words like: social, anti-social, troll, idiot. Find out yourself
what you are. Or, do you want to be told?

I am not going to write anything more on this thread, no matter what
the provocations are. I am here not to win an argument, but to learn
Perl and help others along the way.

AMEN.

 

[Peter J. Holzer]

Was there an image here? Oh, yeah. That's right. There wasn't...

No, and that's exactly the point. Your postings don't contain images,
they don't contain tables, they don't contain markup in a way which
would improve the readability of your postings (e.g., syntax
highlighting in perl snippets). So using HTML adds no value to your
postings, it only adds bulk (135 lines instead of 7 - an overhead of
1928 %) and annoys those of us who don't have a fully mime-capable
newsreader.

hp

 

[Peter J. Holzer]

NOW, STOP ALL THIS NONSENSE. PLEASE.

The original mesg (posted by me) was regarding SQL query in Perl code.
Out of the 50 mesg on this topic, only 5 are relevant and the
remaining 45 (90%) are completely off-topic (to be polite) and utter
crap (to be truthful).

You may have noticed that the subject has been changed. So it's no
longer the same topic. It's still off-topic for this newsgroup (unless
we get to MIME-handling in Perl or something like that) and should
probably be moved to a different newsgroup (news.software.readers?
news.misc?). But occassional meta-discussions about what is or isn't
acceptable in a newsgroup are IMHO necessary. And at least this
particular topic is discussed rather infrequently, unlike
"Perl vs. PERL" or similar stuff.

hp

 

[Andrew DeFaria]

NOW, STOP ALL THIS NONSENSE. PLEASE.

The original mesg (posted by me) was regarding SQL query in Perl
code.Out of the 50 mesg on this topic, only 5 are relevant and the
remaining 45 (90%) are completely off-topic (to be polite) and utter
crap (to be truthful).

Sir, yes sir. After all I didn't recognize it was *you*!!!

I started the thread, and was hoping that better sense will prevail
and the useless rambling about being
polite/clever/stupid/social/anti-social will stop. But when the mesg
count reached 49, I just could not control and started to write this
off-topic mesg myself. Wow a whole 49 messages...
There are other forums for quarreling in a disgusting manner. Now, as
the one who started this rather relevant question with Perl on a Perl
newsgroup, I am just YELLING at all the pollution creating folks here
to STOP.

Advise to all (including me): If you cannot open your mind, please
keep your mouth shut too. (translated: If you cannot post any relevant
ideas on the main thread, please do not type anything).

Yes they should all stop.

 

[Andrew DeFaria]

No, and that's exactly the point. Your postings don't contain images,
they don't contain tables, they don't contain markup in a way which
would improve the readability of your postings (e.g., syntax
highlighting in perl snippets).

They would if I needed any of those.

So using HTML adds no value to your postings, it only adds bulk (135
lines instead of 7 - an overhead of 1928 %) and annoys those of us who
don't have a fully mime-capable newsreader.

I know. Isn't it wonderful? ;-)

 

[Andrew DeFaria]

In most scenarios (the largest beeing the majority of all usenet
messages written in US-ASCII or with extended ASCII characterset on
many non-international newsgroups) HTML provides no benefits
whatsoever and annoys people.

It annoys people who use antiquated news reading software who cannot
handle it. I'm sure people still using lynx to browse the web are
annoyed with those things called images and the like..

This alone clearly leads to conclusion that using this great
"innovation" that posting HTML copy of same text already coming in
plaintext is in regular usenet messages simply and plainly bad
behaviour. Now why would you insist on behaving badly?

Strawman! It leads some people to bitch and complain that it's bad
behavior. You can't make everybody happy. Haven't you heard?

I think you have mistaken people beeing afraid here with people beeing
annoyed here. I dont think anyone is afraid of HTML usenet garbage.

There's that "beeing" again. A typo? I think not...

 

[Andrew DeFaria]

Your're responding to something I wrote yesterday. Besides which, I
don't care for your tone - who do you think you are, to tell me what
to do? Get over yourself. Yes, Sherm.... Exactly...
Welcome to usenet. Threads drift. Deal with it.
I think it's you who don't understand something here, and that is that
I don't follow your orders.

Ah... Right on Sherm! Exactly again. Now perhaps you can finally
understand...

Tell it to the hand... *plonk*

How mature! Well I guess now you'll never learn. Maybe others will but
somehow I doubt it. The funny thing is that people here who argue
vehemently against HTML are doing the same thing that Ambarish is doing
- trying to order others around. Trying to tell them how they should do
things based on their own opinions. And they are as stubborn and
intolerant as I become back to them. It pisses them off so.

Seems to me the solution is either to get better software which deals
with the quirks you don't like or to do as you are doing here Sherm and
plonk people. But bitching back and trying not bully others IS
anti-social to start with and while it may work with many pussies it
won't work with me. As you said above - deal with it!

 

[szr]

]
And there is no reason whatsoever why a newsreader should need to be
able to handle HTML

What reason is there not to, to be honest? It is one thing not to like
it, and it is completely another whether a reader should support it.
Since many other kinds of groups (which are usually non-technical) have
a following that don't look so negatively on the use of HTML posting, it
is perfectly reasonable for a reader to either support HTML or at least
be able to parse multipart posts and pull the desired section.

 

[Waylen Gumbal]

NOW, STOP ALL THIS NONSENSE. PLEASE.

My holy $deity, who the hell is forcing you to read this thread? If you
do not want to read it, then DON'T. What in the red Sam hell makes this
such a difficult concept for some people? What makes you think you have
the right to stop other people from conversing? This is like walking to
a group of people in public and telling them all to shutup. You'd likely
never do this in real life, so why attempt it here?

 

[Waylen Gumbal]

STOP THIS. ENOUGH ALREADY.

Please stop trying to boss everyone around. If you don't like the topic,
DON'T READ IT. Would you walk up to a crowd in real life and shout "SHUT
UP" ? I hope the answer is no.

 

[Waylen Gumbal]

It has been my observation for some time that people who insist on
posting in a gibberish format are very likely to post gibberish
content.

Here's the problem. You are attempting to pose a personal opinion as a
fact. Please do not mix the two. It may be a "gibberish format" to youm
but it doesn't mean it is to others. It is, in fact, a quite usuable
format to many out there, and anyone with a decent reader should be able
to configure which format they want to view by default.

 

[RedGrittyBrick]

]
And there is no reason whatsoever why a newsreader should need to be
able to handle HTML

What reason is there not to, to be honest?

Ooh, here's a few off the top of my head ...

a) There's no single thing called HTML.
HTML 3.2?
HTML 3.2 with IE5 quirks?
....
HTML 4.0?
XHTML?
CSS1?
CSS2?
HTML 5?

b) At the moment, presence of HTML is a useful indication of SPAM.

c) Widespread adoption of (some variants of) HTML might end with many
posts omitting any plain-text alternative parts. This might balkanise
newsgroups.

d) Why not some other XML application like, oh, DocBook. Or maybe some
new NewsGroup-article DTD?

e) Why not RTF, PDF or ODF?

f) What if I want to read newsgroups on my phone or PDA using a
low-speed Internet link - maybe bandwidth would be an issue for
image-rich HTML or other formats.

g) All too often I receive a word .DOC that contains just a 1 page
meeting agenda in two fonts (title & body) - It just makes an extra slow
step to fire up Word to view an attachment when the content would lose
nothing from being presented as plain text. Why encourage unecessary
complexity.

h) The same reason I don't meed a surround-sound video-telephone when
phoning a fried for advice about Java.

i) The same reasons colour newspapers never completely rerplaced black
and white newspapers I suppose.

j) The same reason Gutenberg's Bible is a superior example of
information publishing. I'm sure that neither it's aesthetics nor it's
information content would be enhanced by use of <blink> and <marquee>.

k) Do you need me to add multiple fonts, tables, bullet lists etc to the
above to make it intelligible? (If I can't write plain text clearly,
what hope do I have with multi-coloured animated ransom note typography?)

l) I'd prefer plain text markup of the sort used by GrutaTxt or ASCIIDOC
but simplified. That way I could embed tables that work well in
plain-text newsreaders but would also look pretty in any newsreader that
supported that format.

Just my GBP 0.02 worth. Your Mileage Will Vary.

 

[szr]

]
And there is no reason whatsoever why a newsreader should need to be
able to handle HTML

What reason is there not to, to be honest?

Ooh, here's a few off the top of my head ...

a) There's no single thing called HTML.
HTML 3.2?
HTML 3.2 with IE5 quirks?
...
HTML 4.0?
XHTML?
CSS1?
CSS2?
HTML 5?
True.

b) At the moment, presence of HTML is a useful indication of SPAM.

Based on what? Most spam that I see in any news group tends to be almost
always plain text (not multipart, but plain ony.) In all honesty it
seems UseNet spam is hardly ever in HTML.

c) Widespread adoption of (some variants of) HTML might end with many
posts omitting any plain-text alternative parts. This might balkanise
newsgroups.

Agreed that this would not be good.

d) Why not some other XML application like, oh, DocBook. Or maybe some
new NewsGroup-article DTD?

e) Why not RTF, PDF or ODF?

I would say probably the same reason they aren't used to create web
pages en masse either.

f) What if I want to read newsgroups on my phone or PDA using a
low-speed Internet link - maybe bandwidth would be an issue for
image-rich HTML or other formats.

Which is why it would need to be crucial to have plain text versions.
Admittedly that would only really work if there were some way a reader
could ask the /server/ for /just/ the plain version.

g) All too often I receive a word .DOC that contains just a 1 page
meeting agenda in two fonts (title & body) - It just makes an extra
slow step to fire up Word to view an attachment when the content
would lose nothing from being presented as plain text. Why encourage
unecessary complexity.
Agreed.

h) The same reason I don't meed a surround-sound video-telephone when
phoning a fried for advice about Java.

I'm going to assume you means "friend", otherwise that brings some
rather gruesome images to mind

i) The same reasons colour newspapers never completely rerplaced black
and white newspapers I suppose.

I'm not sure what you mean? Any modern news paper I've seen usually have
color images and trim on the fronts and back and white inside.

j) The same reason Gutenberg's Bible is a superior example of
information publishing. I'm sure that neither it's aesthetics nor it's
information content would be enhanced by use of <blink> and <marquee>.

k) Do you need me to add multiple fonts, tables, bullet lists etc to
the above to make it intelligible? (If I can't write plain text
clearly, what hope do I have with multi-coloured animated ransom note
typography?)

I think the arguement was using "multiple fonts, tables, bullet lists
etc" as a visual aid, but I see your point.

l) I'd prefer plain text markup of the sort used by GrutaTxt or
ASCIIDOC but simplified. That way I could embed tables that work well
in plain-text newsreaders but would also look pretty in any
newsreader that supported that format.

That would be nice, but wouldn't you have the same battle on your hands
that those pushing html currently do?

 

[RedGrittyBrick]

Newsgroup Markup?
=================

Structured Text
---------------

"l) I'd prefer plain text markup of the sort used by GrutaTxt or
ASCIIDOC but simplified. That way I could embed tables that work well
in plain-text newsreaders but would also look pretty in any
newsreader that supported that format." - RGB

"That would be nice, but wouldn't you have the same battle on your hands
that those pushing html currently do?" - szr

A battle sure, but a different one:

* Structured text mark-up is, IMO, perfectly acceptable
to existing newsreader software and users.
* I can't imagine how to get a standard agreed though.


Candidates
----------

Here's a few structured text formats in no particular order.

+----------+------------------------------------------------------+
| Grutatxt | http://www.triptico.com/software/grutatxt.html |
| | (the Grutatxt home page |
+----------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ASCIIDOC | http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/ |
+----------+------------------------------------------------------+
| STX2Any | http://www.sange.fi/~atehwa/cgi-bin/piki.cgi/stx2any |
+----------+------------------------------------------------------+

The last reference above lists lots of others in the same vein.

A problem, in my view, is that some of these depart too far from the
idea of a mark-up that looks almost exactly like plain text.


Afterword
---------

This posting is written in a form compatible with Grutatxt. In theory a
newreader could render it with the headings in various fonts and sizes,
with the bullet lists shown with proper bullet characters and with the
tables displayed in some more pleasing form..

Is there any anti-HTML-in-newsgroups reader out there who finds the
formatting and markup of this posting really objectionable?

 

[Peter J. Holzer]

]
And there is no reason whatsoever why a newsreader should need to be
able to handle HTML

What reason is there not to, to be honest?

Ooh, here's a few off the top of my head ...

a) There's no single thing called HTML.
HTML 3.2?
HTML 3.2 with IE5 quirks?
...
HTML 4.0?
XHTML?
CSS1?
CSS2?
HTML 5?

Given that HTML 4 is now over 10 years old and HTML 5 doesn't yet exist,
I don't think there's a real question about that. The level of CSS
support is more of an issue. But it's basically the same problem as in
the web - you need to produce code which can be interpreted by your
audience's software. So be conservative in what you send and liberal in
what you accept.

b) At the moment, presence of HTML is a useful indication of SPAM.

On usenet? Not really. (Or maybe all the HTML usenet spam is filtered
before it reaches my server)

c) Widespread adoption of (some variants of) HTML might end with many
posts omitting any plain-text alternative parts. This might balkanise
newsgroups.
True.


d) Why not some other XML application like, oh, DocBook. Or maybe some
new NewsGroup-article DTD?

None of them has any support in existing MUAs and NUAs. Several attempts
to define "richtext" content-types especially for mail/news have failed.
HTML otoh is widely used for email (as ugly as it may be for that
purpose).

e) Why not RTF, PDF or ODF?

See d) and g)

f) What if I want to read newsgroups on my phone or PDA using a
low-speed Internet link - maybe bandwidth would be an issue for
image-rich HTML or other formats.

Maybe. OTOH, there is little reason to assume that the average usenet
posting would be "image-rich". You could score down "large" postings and
only read them if they seem to be especially interesting.

And speaking of "phones or PDAs": These devices usually have a small
screen. HTML can be reformatted to fit on that screen. plain/text cannot
- it needs 80 characters horizontally (unless it's format=flowed, which
isn' too common, either).

g) All too often I receive a word .DOC that contains just a 1 page
meeting agenda in two fonts (title & body) - It just makes an extra slow
step to fire up Word to view an attachment when the content would lose
nothing from being presented as plain text. Why encourage unecessary
complexity.

Right. So that's why you don't want RTF, PDF or ODF. These are too
complex to be embedded into a newsreader and starting a viewer takes a
lot of time. HTML is reasonably simple, there are a lot of engines which
can be embedded into applications, and even if you invoke an external
app that's relatively quick (I use w3m to perform HTML->Text conversion
in mutt - for most HTML mails that takes only a fraction of a second on
a PC several years old).

h) The same reason I don't meed a surround-sound video-telephone when
phoning a fried for advice about Java.

I find a telephone a very frustrating device when I want to communicate
about technical matters.

i) The same reasons colour newspapers never completely rerplaced black
and white newspapers I suppose.

j) The same reason Gutenberg's Bible is a superior example of
information publishing.

Superior compared to what? Contemporary hand-written bibles?

I'm sure that neither it's aesthetics

The hand-written bibles were usually more beautiful.

nor it's information content

The information was the same (except for illustrations, I suppose).

Gutenberg's bible was *cheap*. That's what made it a superior example of
information publishing - a lot of people who would never have been able
to pay for a hand-written bible could buy a printed copy.

I don't think that argument has any relevance to this discussion.

k) Do you need me to add multiple fonts, tables, bullet lists etc to the
above to make it intelligible?

No. But then you didn't have to explain any complicated data structures
or clearly distinguish multiple data streams.

l) I'd prefer plain text markup of the sort used by GrutaTxt or ASCIIDOC
but simplified. That way I could embed tables that work well in
plain-text newsreaders but would also look pretty in any newsreader that
supported that format.

Those are nice. But they have one very large drawback: There are about
46 gazillion different such formats. That's much worse than the
differences in HTML and CSS dialects.

hp

 

[Peter J. Holzer]

Sir Robin wrote:
And there is no reason whatsoever why a newsreader should need to be
able to handle HTML

What reason is there not to, to be honest?

Ooh, here's a few off the top of my head ... [...]
f) What if I want to read newsgroups on my phone or PDA using a
low-speed Internet link - maybe bandwidth would be an issue for
image-rich HTML or other formats.

Which is why it would need to be crucial to have plain text versions.
Admittedly that would only really work if there were some way a reader
could ask the /server/ for /just/ the plain version.

Doesn't work with NNTP. But would work with IMAP, and an NNTP extension
wouldn't be that hard if there is need.

hp