Hi, On Fri, Apr 06, at 02:49 Gerard Beekmans wrote: > Wrapping at 72 characters. > I'm in violation of our established netiquettes by writing this email.
I'm running mutt here, a quite recent version, and didn't had problem to read your paragraphs. This is not a reading problem. Today mailers have not have this problem. The actual problem is coming when you want to answer in a particular point in paragraphs like yours, which is just a single long line. This particular line (with the quoted texts) was 554 characters long. That makes difficult to break this line in parts. Even if you set your editor in wrapping mode. There is punishment for the writer here. For instance to break the following quoted text i had to do a lot of 'x's in my vim. I can not use (for instance) 'dd' in specific parts of your paragraphs (which then is a matter of a second for vim users). > I use Zimbra as my mail server Every one is using what's best for him. I never heard about this before. > I can't for the life of me figure out how to make it webmail client wrap text > at 72 characters. A quick Google search led nowhere There are other (usage mostly) solutions if your softawe doesn't allow it. Like to break your single line paragraph in much smaller lines which can be controlable by the other email clients and the powerful modern editors. There is a penalty for people that want to answer in your email. > and I don't feel like expending that much time and effort on something > that might not really be needed anymore. Please do not expand your time. But why this particular software has this behavior? We are in the 21st century. Those problems has been solved quite a long time ago. This is an outdated software. Why the carriage return doesn't start a new line in the same paragraph? This software is archaic and needs development. It should be reported upstream. > Top posting is something I fully agree with, in principle, but it's quite > hard these days with the proliferation of smart phones. Everybody that top post to a mailing list from a dumb phone, should warn the users of the mailing list, that is in top post mode. So the readers do not have to punish themselves, to scroll down till the end of the email just to check if there is a answer somewhere between the lines. > And I really would hate to be "forced" to try and figure out how to wrap at 72 > characters on a small phone screen. It'll just have to wrap the way it is > going > to. There isn't much control there. This particular paragraph was 727 characters long. It was hard to me to quote this particular part of your paragraph. You started LFS because you wanted control. Why mailers like this after so many years of evolution doesn't provide the necessary tools to give the control to the user. This software can be safely considered as outdated or its developers doesn't care about their users in reality. Those of you that use this software, should report this missing basic functionality to their bug tracker. I do not know nothing about this particular software but it looks broken. > Nobody likes horizontal scrolling. Exactly! The above quoted text it was the last part of a line with 479 character long. I had to press [x] 479 - length of the qouted text times (there is no other way) except if i use vim patterns or complex text object motions in normal mode. There is a penalty here for me that i want to answer to you. This is not right. We shouldn't penaltize the others. This is a principle. LFS is about principles, not about rules. > Virtually any email client can process HTML today. That's true. All the recent mailers provide mechanisms to read HTML emails. But why software like this one, doesn't give the choise and the freedom to his user to choose the appropriate format. It is 2018. They should be know how to deal with plain text. It is not hard. > Programs can wrap text properly by themselves. I would go as far as making > this > statement: if somebody uses software that is so antiquated it can't deal with > today's standard formatting and generally accepted practices, maybe it's time > to > upgrade to better software, instead of requiring the world at large to > downgrade > to now-obsolete practices/standards. It is exactly the other way around. There is no problem to text mailers to do all these things you describe. It is this software that has the problem, not to the powefull mail clients like mutt which provides, for every little everything, to its user, configuration capabilities. > Maybe that's a little harsh but judging by some of the comments I have seen > here > on this very list over the last few weeks, I honestly wonder if that isn't > what > people expect. Personally i do not give a dime what is everyone's software. I do use what i want to use and i do not say to the other what to use. It is not our buisness. Again personally, I'm expecting conformation with established standards or at the very least, to not make the life difficult to sensible mailers, to answer in mails like this one. Please use whatever software you like as long it is following common sense. And this software looks that is not one of them. It's probably a childish software. I trully sympathize you that you have to use such a low quality software. > Counter-arguments will undoubtedly be along the lines of "just because the > whole world does something dumb doesn't mean we all have to give in to it". We don't care about what others do. This is LFS and these are technical lists. People here are supposedly respect the established standards. And I trully believe that anyway we are in a continously re-evaluation mode, otherwise our mission is complete here and we have to find some better things to do with our lifes, like to help our 15 years old children to open some new roads to the mountains for a more fascinating bicycling experience. > That may be true from a purist point of view but we shouldn't plan that > particular flag here. I hate flags. We are always in an evaluation mode. We are not saying no to the evolution. It is exact the opposite. But the new technologies should make sense. And this software does not make sense. There are other clients. Don't have to be mutt. Thunderbird is just fine i believe. I do not use it though but i can bet that doesn't make hard the life of its user. > We're working on LFS. Let's pick the battles we can actually win. We already won that battle from a long time now. And not only us. All the mailing lists work this way, because makes communication easy for both the readers and the writers. These are technical lists and there are countless like this one, all around the open source universe. That is the way that are working and i do not see any sign - nowhere - of changing established standards that makes the communication easy. > If you write HTML emails you can actually format lengthier emails to actually > be readable with headers and pre-formatted font where it makes sense. These are technical lists. People sometimes send inlined diffs or code or comments on code that sometimes needs copy/paste. They feel better when the text is not formated. Please send in html as long there is a text version of the very same body. It is 2018. Those problems has been solved for decades now. Some software like this one is archaic or its developers doesn't care about providing a sensible way to communicate in UNIX technical mailing lists. We are not running a office here. > Reading a large amount of monotone text isn't particularly pleasant (like this > very email itself). This is personal opinion of yours. For instance, at my 52, this monotone text is the best option for my eyes. I know that i have to buy glasses but it's not the point here, so don't take it as an argument. > I think it's time to re-evaluate some of these old stances > and relax on them somewhat. There are not old stances. Its about established gained conciense. Primitive ways like this one are always modern because is based on conciense. Software like this one doesn't comform to sensible standards. It should be regarded as broken unless its user can handle it with a way. Personally I do not give a dime what kind of software every one use, as long it makes the two-way communication easy and productive. Top posts are make sense only if it's just a single fast comment. But even in that case the sender should provide a notice, to the list subscribers, that is just this single line so they do not have to scroll all the way down to the end. HTML emails are acceptable as long it is a multipart message, with a text unformated version. Modern email clients like mutt, can deal just fine with multiparts messages, because are developed by sensible people with the help of a sensible community that cares about common sense. Long lines messages should be avoidable, because it makes your life hard when you want to answer and communicate. Long messages without proper triming are UNACCEPTABLE, both because its a waste of bytes and time (because you have to scroll down the lines without a reason) and secondly because they don't use the power of proper quoting. Do not wait for this, a change to this stance. I will be very very brutal here. It's not only my way here, is the LFS way here, it is the UNIX established way here and this is not going to change forever. Because we should (first) make the life easy to those of whom we are waiting to show interest in our email and secondly we should get advantage of proper quoting. It seems that some people doesn't yet realize this power. Again, I will be very very brutal here. It's not about overzealously, its about productivity and expectations that makes sense. That's my realization. > There is being expended a lot of effort by replying to posts to ask people to > not top post and trim their posts. It took me quite of an effort to quote just this part of your paragraph which it was a single line that consisted of 611 characters. This software you use doesn't make my life easier to communicate with you. > The end result is just more spam to the list about things that aren't > relevant to any LFS discussions at hand. It's actually the other way around. Because LFS is about disciplines and cooperation. Triming and proper quoting helps a lot in the later, while the former is the basis to become a proud administrator (which will be the subject of one of next emails). > Trimming posts should be done to ensure emails don't get needlessly long. Ok thanks for the confirmation. > Yet, ironically, those "please trim" replies just do exactly the opposite. If you speak about this: http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/blfs-support/2018-April/080025.html please see also the subject, but do not have to do, i will do it for you. ____________________________________________________ Subject: [solved] btrfs-progs-4.15.1 compiling error ____________________________________________________ what do you see there? I will tell that for you. It says [solved]. That by itself is a very very good reason and it posted by purpose. (plus it was a funtrimmed message. Untrimed messages are unacceptable in the LFS mailing list). > It defeats the purpose and this whole thing is starting to become overly > zealous > in my opinion. And there is a very good reason for this overly zealously. Because mails like this one is unacceptable. http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/blfs-support/2018-April/080024.html Someone has to do something about this. If noone will do then we lost the battle. My opinion on this, the same thing you call it overly zealously, i name it responsibility and respect about you, that you initiator ot this project. I'm going to tell to the people to do the exact same things that make all these years and with much more higher tense. I hope i made the arguments very crystal clear. If not and I've failed to capture this common sense, then I trully sorry and is my duty to try some more and which I will do. > Gerard Best, Αγαθοκλής -- http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
