On 5/14/24 10:09, Richard wrote:

Just because something isn't an official ISO standard doesn't mean it's
not standard behavior. And how it relates to this mailing list? It's
called a setting.

No its not, its your refusal to use the down arrow in your reply editor
to put your reply after the question. It really is that simple. If your
choice of email agents cannot do that, its time to switch to an agent
that can. There are dozens of them.

Am Di., 14. Mai 2024 um 15:57 Uhr schrieb Loris Bennett <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>:

Hi Richard,

Richard <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> writes:

> "Top posting" (writing the answer above the text that's being replied
> to) is literally industry standard behavior.

Can you provide a link to the standard you are referring to?

Assuming such a standard exists, how would it apply to this newsgroup?

[snip (51 lines)]

Cheers,

Loris

--
This signature is currently under constuction.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis

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how many times has this top post crap been dug up
don't y'all have any thing better to do
i know
how about some real debian issues

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On Tue, May 14, 2024 at 05:01:31PM +0000, [email protected] wrote:

how many times has this top post crap been dug up
don't y'all have any thing better to do

It's never going to stop. We have a clash of two cultures here.

The first culture are Unix users who grew up with Internet email and
Usenet news. For people in this culture, there is a well-defined set
of "netiquette" rules -- plain text messages, inline quoting with "> "
citation characters, lines limited to ~72 characters, etc.

For users in this first group, email is often read and composed on a
terminal, or a terminal emulator. Characters are displayed in a
fixed-width font. ASCII art is possible, albeit frowned upon as
juvenile.

The second culture are Windows users who grew up with Microsoft products
in their school or workplace. In this culture, top-posting is the norm,
and inline quoting is nigh impossible. Messages are often sent in either
HTML or markdown format. Whole paragraphs are presented as single lines. Explicit line breaks are only used between paragraphs.

Users in this second group typically use Microsoft Outlook, or a
web-based mail user agent in a graphical environment. Fonts are variable-width, and any ASCII art or tables will not align properly.

Now, normally when these cultures clash, we're able to point to the
Debian netiquette guidelines, and move on.

In this particular instance, we've got a person from the second culture
who seems to have no idea that other cultures exist, or that a mailing
list might not adhere to their own expectations. This person is acting belligerantly, and will not listen to gentle reminders.

The best course of action in this case is to drop it, but pride can make
people do the wrong things sometimes.

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On 5/14/24 10:41 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:

We have a clash of two cultures here.

More than just *nix vs. M$.

In business communications by email, the norm is to quote the *entire*
thread, every time, without paring anything down, purely for the sake of
CYA. As such, top-posting is the only reasonable alternative, given that recipients would otherwise have to scroll through hundreds, perhaps
thousands of lines of quoted material to find a bottom-posted reply, or
worse, *actually read* through all that quoted material to find an inline-posted reply.

In list-server communications (and to a lesser extent, BBS posts), the
norm is to pare down quoted material to the barest minimum needed to
provide context (originally to save bandwidth and storage, both of which
are *still* finite resources), and to bottom-post or inline-post one's
replies, in order to give them a more natural flow. CYA doesn't factor
in at all.

--
JHHL

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On Tue, May 14, 2024 at 05:01:31PM +0000, [email protected] wrote:

how many times has this top post crap been dug up
don't y'all have any thing better to do
i know
how about some real debian issues

Hi,

Have a quick look at the Debian-user FAQ posted each month and the
Debian Code of Conduct.

Both of those are real Debian issues - they're part of the way that
this mailing list operates so that people can read and understand
long threads. They also allow us to maintain smaller archives
that nonetheless retain the important information.

May I suggest that you look back at about 30 years worth of the
history here?

All the very best, as ever,

Andy
([email protected])

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Greg Wooledge (12024-05-14):

Usenet news. For people in this culture, there is a well-defined set
of "netiquette" rules -- plain text messages, inline quoting with "> " citation characters, lines limited to ~72 characters, etc.

I slightly disagree with this wording: you make it sound like we follow
the rules just because they are there. Not so: we follow the rules
because they make sense, because they make conversations more fluid:

- Limiting to 72 characters was good because a lot of terminals were 80
columns, and it is still good because longer lines are hard to read
but mail software still is not smart enough to rewrap text by the mile
but not code.

- Trimmed interleaved quoting presents to the reader the exact
information they need in the order they need it to understand the
reply and what it is about.

In summary, the hackers culture expects the sender to spend a little
effort into making the mail easy to read for the recipient(s) while the
culture of the general population expects the sender to make as little
effort as possible and the recipient(s) to bear the burden that the
software in between cannot take, i.e. most of it.

And the “(s)” tells us which culture is more efficient and why.

The second culture are Windows users who grew up with Microsoft products
in their school or workplace. In this culture, top-posting is the norm,
and inline quoting is nigh impossible. Messages are often sent in either HTML or markdown format.

Messages in Markdown in the Windows world? I have never seen it.

The best course of action in this case is to drop it

Indeed. But we can still discuss cultural issues relevant to
mailing-lists around it.

Regards,

--
Nicolas George

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This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.

well, speaking personally, I can respect both sides.
I use a screen reader. Having to wade through loads of text, for a conversational flow, especially when not edited is far from productive
for me personally.
it is much better to have a top post, for me personally, because I have no issues reading below..if needful.
I can only imagine what it is like for folks on small screens, having to translate from English etc.
Do I understand the conversation idea?
absolutely.
Do I also realize that if the thread is not edited the conversation is
less fluid and more a lake of mud?

Absolutely as well.
Karen



On Tue, 14 May 2024, Nicolas George wrote:

Greg Wooledge (12024-05-14):

Usenet news. For people in this culture, there is a well-defined set
of "netiquette" rules -- plain text messages, inline quoting with "> "
citation characters, lines limited to ~72 characters, etc.

I slightly disagree with this wording: you make it sound like we follow
the rules just because they are there. Not so: we follow the rules
because they make sense, because they make conversations more fluid:

- Limiting to 72 characters was good because a lot of terminals were 80
columns, and it is still good because longer lines are hard to read
but mail software still is not smart enough to rewrap text by the mile
but not code.

- Trimmed interleaved quoting presents to the reader the exact
information they need in the order they need it to understand the
reply and what it is about.

In summary, the hackers culture expects the sender to spend a little
effort into making the mail easy to read for the recipient(s) while the culture of the general population expects the sender to make as little
effort as possible and the recipient(s) to bear the burden that the
software in between cannot take, i.e. most of it.

And the “(s)” tells us which culture is more efficient and why.

The second culture are Windows users who grew up with Microsoft products
in their school or workplace. In this culture, top-posting is the norm,
and inline quoting is nigh impossible. Messages are often sent in either
HTML or markdown format.

Messages in Markdown in the Windows world? I have never seen it.

The best course of action in this case is to drop it

Indeed. But we can still discuss cultural issues relevant to
mailing-lists around it.

Regards,

--
Nicolas George

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Greg Wooledge <[email protected]> wrote:

In this particular instance, we've got a person from the second
culture who seems to have no idea that other cultures exist, or that
a mailing list might not adhere to their own expectations. This
person is acting belligerantly, and will not listen to gentle
reminders.

There's another point that this person doesn't seem to realize, which
is that he's the one asking for help, and so he should be making
efforts to adapt to the desires of those he wishes to help him, rather
than trying to insist they adapt to his ways :(

But there's a noticeably slower response to his posts now, so maybe
he'll learn by experience.

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On Tue, May 14, 2024 at 08:16:20PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:

Messages in Markdown in the Windows world? I have never seen it.

I can't be sure where they're coming from exactly, but every once in
a while I see messages on debian-user, bug-bash or help-bash which
have extra asterisk characters scattered throughout them (usually
make the code samples break). The only sensible interpretation I can
come up with for why these asterisks were added is that they're being
placed around text that's supposed to be emphasized/italicized.

When reading the message with the idea that "this might be markdown
text" in mind, it's possible to guess, in most cases, which asterisks
should be removed to render the code samples or terminal session pastes correct.

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On Tue, 14 May 2024, Andy Smith wrote:

Hello,

On Tue, May 14, 2024 at 05:01:31PM +0000, [email protected] wrote:

don't y'all have any thing better to do

You must be new here.

sorta
i've only been using versions of linux since the early 90's :)
downloaded it from an archie server on to 2 floppies

Get used to reading with a "mark thread read" key in your MUA of
choice, is my best advice.

i've got to admit to being weak
reading the brilliant and riveting prose is addictive
and entertainment is in short supply around here
especially after the chickens go to bed

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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Hello,

On Tue, May 14, 2024 at 05:01:31PM +0000, [email protected] wrote:

don't y'all have any thing better to do

You must be new here.

Get used to reading with a "mark thread read" key in your MUA of
choice, is my best advice.

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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Cindy Sue Causey (12024-05-15):

Best as I was able to discern from the Net [0], 72 characters is the
magic number for line length because 4 extra characters are added to
both ends when e.g. git processes submissions. Makes good common sense
to me.

Git is an order of magnitude younger than the limit at 72 characters.

PS I thought it was 80. Guess it was about those extra 8 characters.

It is 80 but you anticipate that people will be adding “> ” in front of your lines.

"Pretty well agreed upon..." That's implying that unspoken list
standards are really not users "picking on each other." Listserv
standards is a concept that has evolved over decades for rational
reasons as Developer and User communications evolved.

Indeed.

It's easy to mess up badly while moving emails around

As a general rule, GUIs suck at anything but trivial tasks.

Evolution appears to do some form of maybe symlinking instead of
downloading so everything is available almost immediately seconds after
the first time Evolution is ever fired up.

The IMAP protocol is designed to let us manipulate mails directly on the
server without downloading the bulk of them. A lot of GUI MUA are still designed around the old paradigm where mails are downloaded, and turned
it into some kind of cache: it rarely works well.

Manipulate mails directly on the server. Have a backup. If your server
is often down and accessing the mails is urgent, have a local *copy* of
it.

reach back a limited time span into history before I a-sume Gmail cut
off access to touching older emails.

If you want mail that works well, start by avoiding services meant for
the lowest common denominator of the general public.

Regards,

--
Nicolas George

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On 5/15/24 10:06, Nicolas George wrote:

Cindy Sue Causey (12024-05-15):

Best as I was able to discern from the Net [0], 72 characters is the
magic number for line length because 4 extra characters are added to
both ends when e.g. git processes submissions. Makes good common sense
to me.

Git is an order of magnitude younger than the limit at 72 characters.

PS I thought it was 80. Guess it was about those extra 8 characters.

It is 80 but you anticipate that people will be adding “> ” in front of your lines.

"Pretty well agreed upon..." That's implying that unspoken list
standards are really not users "picking on each other." Listserv
standards is a concept that has evolved over decades for rational
reasons as Developer and User communications evolved.

Indeed.

It's easy to mess up badly while moving emails around

As a general rule, GUIs suck at anything but trivial tasks.

Evolution appears to do some form of maybe symlinking instead of
downloading so everything is available almost immediately seconds after
the first time Evolution is ever fired up.

The IMAP protocol is designed to let us manipulate mails directly on the server without downloading the bulk of them. A lot of GUI MUA are still designed around the old paradigm where mails are downloaded, and turned
it into some kind of cache: it rarely works well.

Manipulate mails directly on the server. Have a backup. If your server
is often down and accessing the mails is urgent, have a local *copy* of
it.

reach back a limited time span into history before I a-sume Gmail cut
off access to touching older emails.

If you want mail that works well, start by avoiding services meant for
the lowest common denominator of the general public.

Regards,

I'll add that googles gmail, written by former outlook developers is the biggest pita to ever hit the net. They break every rfc that can.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis

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Cindy Sue Causey (12024-05-15):

PS Afterthought is that email signatures are another of that widely
accepted netiquette set of standards.

You can add the “Re: ” to that list.

It is the sequence of four octets 0x52, 0x65, 0x3a, 0x20, and nothing
else.

The MUAs who write “RE: ” are wrong.

The MUAs who write “Re : ” are wrong.

The MUAs who write “AW: ” are wrong.

The MUAs who put it in base64 are wrong.

It is not a string that is designed to be internationalized, we cannot
expect every MUA to know every stupid local or vanity variant of “Re: ”.

Regards,

--
Nicolas George

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On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 09:46:08AM -0400, Cindy Sue Causey wrote:

Best as I was able to discern from the Net [0], 72 characters is the
magic number for line length because 4 extra characters are added to
both ends when e.g. git processes submissions. Makes good common sense
to me.

PS I thought it was 80. Guess it was about those extra 8 characters.

For many decades, there was an industry standard that lines of text
should be up to 80 characters wide. Punch cards were 80 characters wide,
for example. I don't know whether punch cards were the *first* place
it appeared, but they're the first I'm aware of.

A lot of the printers from the last century allowed 80 characters
per line on standard US 8.5x11 inch paper. I'm not sure if teletypes
used 80-column paper, or 133-column paper (green bar), or a mixture.

Later, we got terminals. A typical ASCII terminal (a physical one, like
a DEC VT-100) is 80x24 characters, or sometimes 80x25. The 80-character
line standard continued.

When hardware evolved and most of us started using X11 or similar GUI interfaces, terminal emulators became the norm. xterm and other software terminal emulators use an 80x24 window as the default, for compatibility
with physical terminals.

When writing code in most programming languages, there are style guides
that still suggest sticking to 80-character lines whenever possible.
It avoids line wrapping when being read in an 80-character terminal,
and besides that, really long lines of code are harder to read than
shorter lines.

When it comes to email or Usenet, though, the 72-character suggestion
is meant to allow a bit of room for quoting markup. If I write a
79-character line of text, and then you reply to it with "> " in front,
the resulting 81-character line of text either gets wrapped or truncated. Limiting yourself to 72-character lines allows a few levels of quoting
before the text becomes unreadable.

This is why the 72-character limit is just a suggestion, not a hard requirement. If you write lines that are 74 characters wide, probably
nobody's going to care. The goal is simply to make it easy to carry
on a conversation.

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Since my request started this offtopic subthread I hope I can put it to
rest.
Yes I requested to not toppost. I asked politely, and I added pertinent response on topic. I do not claim to be right or wrong about this. I prefer interleaved style for reason. Everyone on this list heard all arguments pro and con in previous discussions, and there is no need to repeat them. It is
a matter of personal choice though I have to admit I feel a bit emboldened by the posting guidelines. And in my experience a polite question goes a long
way with most civilized people. You can ignore my request, well you even
ask me to toppost. I will ignore it.
There is no need for a lecture, you have no claim to right or wrong either. Claiming a de facto industry standard (I avoided the literally sidebar
here) on majority is a questionable argument. Large numbers do not make
right. There are many examples where the majority is wrong. Well I go along with majority practice knowing they are wrong, just to make life easier.
I try not to yell at people though for choosing differently. And it is questionable to get you anywhere anytime fast. And I do not like that Gene
was called an "epitome of humanity" in a cynical way and I earned a
hypocrite long after I copped out of that discussion.


Please let this rest.

-H


--
Henning Follmann | [email protected]

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On 5/15/24 6:46 AM, Cindy Sue Causey wrote:
. . .

No its not, its your refusal to use the down arrow in your reply editor
to put your reply after the question. It really is that simple. If your choice of email agents cannot do that, its time to switch to an agent
that can. There are dozens of them.

. . .

Actually, it isn't necessarily the user's fault. Thanks to the "business standard," (and think about the initials) of top-posting over the
complete, unpared quote of the entire thread, there are an awful lot of
email readers (and especially webmail interfaces) that make it difficult
to follow any other convention, and a few that make it damn-near impossible.

Just as there are an awful lot that make it difficult or impossible to
send a plain-text email.


Incidentally, regarding the Hollerith card origins of the 80-column
standard, the very first Hollerith cards, from the 1890 U.S. Census, had
24 columns and 12 rows of round holes, and were punched with a
pantograph punch. In 1928, IBM introduced rectangular holes, in an
80-column, 10-row format, later expanded to 12 rows.

--
JHHL

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On 5/15/24 10:50, Nicolas George wrote:

Cindy Sue Causey (12024-05-15):

PS Afterthought is that email signatures are another of that widely
accepted netiquette set of standards.

You can add the “Re: ” to that list.

It is the sequence of four octets 0x52, 0x65, 0x3a, 0x20, and nothing
else.

The MUAs who write “RE: ” are wrong.

The MUAs who write “Re : ” are wrong.

The MUAs who write “AW: ” are wrong.

The MUAs who put it in base64 are wrong.

It is not a string that is designed to be internationalized, we cannot
expect every MUA to know every stupid local or vanity variant of “Re: ”.

+ 5, Excellent point Nicolas
The same can be said for sig separators. One fellow here has it as part
of his sig but his definition in his sig is incomplete.
Its actually an lf,dash,dash,space.lf ignoring the comma's I used
here..Some email agents won't use it as a sig separator w/o the full
lf's as wrapper. cr's are not valid subs for the lf's..

Regards,

Take care & stay well Nicolas.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis

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