Sven (pretty much, it seems) -- ...and then Sven Guckes said... % % * David T-G <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [020313 12:24]: % > % > % David - I will you as as soon as use revert to standard % > % > Did you mean to say that you'd show % > % > me how or did you mean something else? % > % yes - "show" (it was missing). % > That's not the only thing that was missing; % > what's with the "use revert"? % % indeed. *sigh* % % "David - I will [show] you as as soon as % [you] use revert to standard..."
I'd expect something like I will show you as soon as you revert to standard use rather than "as as" and "use revert". Maybe I'm just not getting it, though. Feel free to beat this horse more if you wish. % % > % "be nice to Mozilla and Outlook Express users". % > Actually, Outhouse seems to have no problem supporting % > %_ for quotes. I don't know whether I like that or not, % > given how much I love to bash it, but there it is. % % well - one more program that supports it - good! That's my general feeling, even if it *is* the antichrist of MUAs. % but for the vast majority of non-configurable agents % out there - please just use '>' or ">_" - thankyou! Nope. You're welcome anyway :-) % % > % > I'm not terribly impressed with yours. No problem, though. % > % well, at least my attribution contains the persons address % > % so you can still use this info when following up to my mail. % > Yep. One of the reasons I'm not impressed with it, actually. % % please elaborate! I don't really care to have the particular email address I used for a mailing list posting put up where folks will notice it; I use that for sorting and so I want folks replying directly to me to use my regular address, which I include in my sig. And I just don't really care to see addresses in attributions; I think it's superfluous. % % > % it is vital on mailing lists as there is no repository as there % > % is with news servers from which you could request the parent message. % > IMNSHO it's up to you to keep the parent message % > for as long as you want to be in the thread. % % how can you "keep the parent message" % when you never received it at all? Why would I have received this message, then? % you might just have joined the list - So you're saying that, for the very few messages a newbie would see without the benefit of having received the past messages you should use such an attribution. My, how forward-thinking and robust, especially from someone who uses two-digit years in his dates. % or be reading it via some archive. If it's in the archive then the parent probably is, too, no? Or are we going to take into account the single point in time when the list starts being archived, assuming that that's before the lists's first message? % % > I realize that that may not sit well with some folks, but % > I'm also the sort who would like to respond to the original % > message, rather than a quoted quoted reply, anyway. % % same here - I usually reply to people directly. % however, I do send BCCs of my reply to "P2" % (the sender of the parent message % of the message I am replying to) Why a bcc? Why not include the parent's author in the To: or Cc: lines? Just curious; I generally don't bother to include the parent author in later replies unless it's specifically requested. % when there has been a long interval % and when i know that this person might So if you know that this person might not be reading the list, you've probably seen postings from him before, right? So you have his address somewhere already anyway. % not be reading the list/newsgroup any more. % in that case I need the address of that person % and I usually take it from the attribution. Ah. Good for you. Your attribution fits your behavior. % % > % moreover, an attribution without any "words" can be used % > % on any mailinglists - independent of its language. % > I want an attribution that reflects my conversational style. ... % > but my writing style is distinctly casual. An % > introduction like my attribution fits me much better. % % I'd suggest you keep the informal attribution for private % conversation and add name+address for mailing lists. I'd suggest that I leave it as is and you mind your own business :-) % % > If I *were* to construct an attribution that had % > these sorts of things in it, I might or might not % > include the address (see above) but would include % > not only the timestamp but the Message-ID: as well; % > *that* is starting to get unambiguous enough for me. % % the MID is not supposed to be read by humans - % so you can leave this in the header. Oh, but why should the email address be read by humans? After all, people don't come up to me in conversation and say "Hi, davidtg@JPO, how have you been?" but instead "Hi, David T-G, how have you been?". % % > % > % (and learn to delete unnecessarily quoted line blocks!) ... % > expense of readability, which can be defined differently % > from person to person, but I do try to trim up the junk. % % your replies still have those quoted lines without content. % I stripped them away so you cannot see them. % but you could have done that yourself. % please do so with further replies - thankyou! Ahhh... I get it. You've removed the quoted paragraph separators, which I find valuable as they provide some context for how the conversation is flowing, as well as blank lines between my text and yours, which I find valuable for readability. Fair enough. We have different views on quoting and trimming, but at least now I understand what you meant. FWIW, I used to quote text like >>previous text >a reply my text here >>more original stuff >another reply >line more of my text with *perhaps* a line break after "my text here", but I found it too unreadable and thought others might, too. Maybe you would have liked me years ago before I started making it easier for folks to read my replies (of course, I switched to %_ at about the same time, so maybe not). % % > as the next guy, is that it doesn't sort or machine parse well. % > I should obviously make my scripts and ls wrappers smarter, right? :-) % % huh? pray tell - where do any of your programs make use % of those date strings when we use them in these messages % or on webpages? does it matter to your scripts? and % what *exactly* are you doing with that info, anyway? No, I meant that if I were to use such dates then things would get messy. Don't worry; I'm not crawling your pages (though there's lots of good stuff in there and I'd love to have the time and even automate a flag based on your handy and gracious timestamping of new material, though that gets us back, to some degree, to the original problem of scripting). % % besides, if your "ls" gets confused with % those short date form then let us know. Since ls sorts alphabetically, daily log files named like 991130, 991201, 991202, ..., 000101, 000102, ..., 020101, 020102 will not show up in that order when one does an ls. And maybe I don't want to sort by time, either, because the timestamps may not match up; maybe these aren't log files but notes I took and I later edited an old file to expound on something. I can't even pump ls through sort, with or without a -n flag, since AFAIK there is no "minus short date form" flag. You get the point, I'm sure. % % Sven [not expecting to hear any complaints % within the next 50 years..] I'd like to say the same, but somehow I doubt it... % % -- % Sven Guckes HOLY WARS of Usenet [EMAIL PROTECTED] % HOLY EDITOR: emacs|vi TEXT: text/plain|base64|quoted-printable % HOLY PAGER: less|more SHELL: sh|bash|ksh|tcsh|zsh tabstop=2|4|8 % HOLY textwidth=65|72|80 TABU: indent_string="> " sigdashes=ON Now I *like* this sig :-) I'm firmly in the vi, less, 72, text, and sh or bash camps myself, and I note that you didn't include an "I hate tabs anyway" position, and we all know where I stand on indent_string :-) :-D -- David T-G * It's easier to fight for one's principles (play) [EMAIL PROTECTED] * than to live up to them. -- fortune cookie (work) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.justpickone.org/davidtg/ Shpx gur Pbzzhavpngvbaf Qrprapl Npg!
