Re: Boulder Pledge

[Marcelo E. Magallon]

On Sun, Jul 06, 2003 at 05:39:24PM +0200, Martin Baehr wrote:

 > > If you're using vim for your mail (and the filetype is set to mail
 > 
 > how do i tell mutt to set the filetype to mail?

 From vim 6.2's (and earlier IIRC) filetype.vim:

au BufNewFile,BufRead 
snd.\d\+,.letter,.letter.\d\+,.followup,.article,.article.\d\+,pico.\d\+,mutt-*-\d\+,mutt\w\{6\},ae\d\+.txt,/tmp/SLRN[0-9A-Z.]\+,*.eml
 setf mail

 I'm sure you can spot the mutt patterns in there:

au BufNewFile,BufRead mutt-*-\d\+,mutt\w\{6\} setf mail

 The first one is appropiate for Debian's mutt.

-- 
Marcelo

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Nathan Poznick]

Thus spake Martin Baehr:
> how do i tell mutt to set the filetype to mail?

In my .muttrc, I use:
set editor="vim -c 'set notitle ft=mail tw=72 expandtab noautoindent'"

You could also use something like this, to automagically jump the cursor
to the line before your signature (assuming you have mutt insert one for
you):
set editor="vim -c 'set notitle ft=mail tw=72 expandtab noautoindent' +'/^-- $' 
+-"

-- 
Nathan Poznick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

"Never trust a man who can count to 1023 on his fingers."



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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Martin Baehr]

On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 01:58:42PM -0500, Nathan Poznick wrote:
> If you're using vim for your mail (and the filetype is set to mail

how do i tell mutt to set the filetype to mail?

> you can select a block of text in visual mode and do a gq, and it will
> re-wrap the text, automatically inserting/removing those
>  >'s where appropriate

i do gq} usually.
} will jump to the end of the paragraph.

that is much faster then visual mode, especially if the paragraph is
long, or you have lots of them. it only does not recognize an empty line
containing only 
> 
as the end of a paragraph.

greetings, martin.
ps: is this still ontopic for THIS list? ;-)
-- 
Pike Conference 2003 - Sep 25-27  -  http://pike.ida.liu.se/conferences/2003/
-- 
interested in doing pike programming, sTeam/caudium/pike/roxen training,  
sTeam/caudium/roxen and/or unix system administration anywhere in the world.
--
pike programmer   working in europe   open-steam.org
unix system-  bahai.or.at   iaeste.(tuwien.ac|or).at
administrator (stuts|black.linux-m68k).orgis.(schon.org|root.at)
Martin Bähr   http://www.iaeste.or.at/~mbaehr/

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Nathan Poznick]

Thus spake Tollef Fog Heen:
> in .emacs and using M-q to rewrap works nicely here.  I would imagine
> other editors can do the same.

Yep!

If you're using vim for your mail (and the filetype is set to mail, as
it should be), you can select a block of text in visual mode and do a
gq, and it will re-wrap the text, automatically inserting/removing those
 >'s where appropriate

-- 
Nathan Poznick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that
he should be able and willing to pull his weight. - Theodore Roosevelt



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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Tollef Fog Heen]

* Dave Sherohman 

| ...unless the replier goes in and manually calls fmt to re-wrap the
| text sanely (or uses 'gq' in vim), then adds a '> ' to the start of
| each line.  But that usually leads to said replier getting really
| annoyed at neverending lines in fairly short order.

(yes, I know, old mail, but I'm catching up on -curiosa. :)

(setq-default sentence-end "[.?!][]\"')}]*[ \n]+")
(setq-default paragraph-start "^[|:> \t]*$")
(setq-default paragraph-separate (default-value 'paragraph-start))
(setq adaptive-fill-regexp (substring (default-value 'paragraph-start) 1 -1))

in .emacs and using M-q to rewrap works nicely here.  I would imagine
other editors can do the same.

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are  : :' :
  `. `' 
`-  

Re: Boulder Pledge

[MJ Ray]

Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Pine [...] does not put users at the mercy of anyone who can
> inflate service and upgrade charges because it didn't cost anything to
> begin with.

Because only the University of Washington can release new versions of PINE,
they can inflate the upgrade charges to whatever they wish.  The current
cost is not relevant.  It even meets your definition of "proprietary," so
will you drop this now?

Thanks,

MJR

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Geordie Birch]

said Alexander Hvostov (on 2003-02-09),

> On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 21:31, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > >>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >
> >  > When did Pine become proprietary?
> >
> > Pine has always been non-free.
>
> I don't think we are using the same definition of 'proprietary'. I'm
> using the one from the Jargon File:
>
> In the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a
> product not conforming to open-systems standards, and thus one
> that puts the customer at the mercy of a vendor who can inflate
> service and upgrade charges after the initial sale has locked
> the customer in.
>
> Pine conforms to an awful lot of open-systems standards, makes no
> attempt to lock users in (I migrated from it to another MUA fairly
> painlessly), and does not put users at the mercy of anyone who can
> inflate service and upgrade charges because it didn't cost anything to
> begin with.
>
> Just because it's non-free doesn't mean it is 'proprietary' as per this
> definition.
>
> Alex.
>
>

It does as per this definition:


$ webster proprietary

...
2.  something that is used, produced, or marketed under exclusive legal
right of the inventor or maker;
...

Geordie.

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 21:26, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>   BTW, content type of application/texinfo is also a legel
>  content type. As is application/x-cpio, application/x-csh,
>  application/x-tar, audio/x-midi,  image/postscript, text/x-csh,
>  video/x-sgi-movie, x-conference/x-cooltalk, and text/x-patch
> 
>   By your argument, they are all legal ways to encode email.

No. By my argument, 'application/texinfo' and 'image/postscript' are
legal ways to encode email, since these are document formats. Indeed, if
you were to send me such a thing, I probably wouldn't think twice about
reading it in some appropriate viewer.

>   I think I'll start sending you the message as encoded as
>  application/x-debian-package or application/dvi, since they are all
>  equally legal.

'application/dvi' also is a document format, and
'application/x-debian-package' isn't; see above.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 21:31, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
>  > When did Pine become proprietary?
> 
>   Pine has always been non-free.

I don't think we are using the same definition of 'proprietary'. I'm
using the one from the Jargon File:

In the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a
product not conforming to open-systems standards, and thus one
that puts the customer at the mercy of a vendor who can inflate
service and upgrade charges after the initial sale has locked
the customer in.

Pine conforms to an awful lot of open-systems standards, makes no
attempt to lock users in (I migrated from it to another MUA fairly
painlessly), and does not put users at the mercy of anyone who can
inflate service and upgrade charges because it didn't cost anything to
begin with.

Just because it's non-free doesn't mean it is 'proprietary' as per this
definition.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 21:30, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>  > Indeed. I am merely questioning the wisdom of what you do with that
>  > control.
> 
>   Ah. So you are not going to tell me the wisdom of my actions?
>  And how to handle messages sent to _my_ machine?

No. I said I am _questioning_ the wisdom of your actions.

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 21:28, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>   MIME is a means of encoding all kinds of files into anformat
>  that may then be transported in an email message -- but mostly
>  material -- but, like application/x-debian-package, is not really
>  meant to be an email message.

'application/x-debian-package' is not a document format that many mail
readers can display. 'text/html' is.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Marcelo E. Magallon]

>> Matthew Wright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 > an infinitely long thread in which nobody is compared to the Nazis...

 Gosh are your infinites small.

-- 
Marcelo | REMIND ME AGAIN, he said, HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | ONES MOVE.
| -- Death on symbolic last games
|(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 >> Like it or not, I still have control over what I accept, and
 >> what I discard, from  incoming email. That may or not matter a whit
 >> to you.

 > Indeed. I am merely questioning the wisdom of what you do with that
 > control.

Ah. So you are not going to tell me the wisdom of my actions?
 And how to handle messages sent to _my_ machine?

manoj
amused
-- 
"The net result is a system that is not only binary compatible with
4.3 BSD, but is even bug for bug compatible in almost all features."
Avadit Tevanian, Jr., "Architecture-Independent Virtual Memory
Management for Parallel and Distributed Environments: The Mach
Approach"
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 > When did Pine become proprietary?

Pine has always been non-free.

manoj
-- 
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always
valuable. Thomas Jefferson
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 > On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 23:43, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 >> >>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
 >> 
 >> > On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 14:50, Nathan E Norman wrote:
 >> >> Note that the proponent of switching email to HTML is the same guy who
 >> >> last week was ranting against the "non-standard, crap DJB header" that
 >> >> is Mail-Followup-To:
 >> 
 >> > Are you suggesting that HTML is non-standard?
 >> 
 >> As an SMTP message encoding format? Yes, I think so.

 > Perhaps you mean message Content-Type, and yes, it's standard in
 > that case. 'apt-get install doc-iana' and read
 > '/usr/share/doc/doc-iana/assignments/media-types/text/html'.

BTW, content type of application/texinfo is also a legel
 content type. As is application/x-cpio, application/x-csh,
 application/x-tar, audio/x-midi,  image/postscript, text/x-csh,
 video/x-sgi-movie, x-conference/x-cooltalk, and text/x-patch

By your argument, they are all legal ways to encode email.

I think I'll start sending you the message as encoded as
 application/x-debian-package or application/dvi, since they are all
 equally legal.

manoj
 shaking his head
-- 
Don't stop to stomp ants when the elephants are stampeding.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 > MIME is standard, and HTML is a standard (specified as an RFC and in W3C
 > Recommendations) with a registered MIME type ('text/html'). How much
 > more standard can you get?

You don't get it. OK. XSLT, coff, and elf formats are also
 standards. There a re a large number of thinbgs that can be
 encapsulated as MIME, in cluding sheel sciprts, and perl programs.

You think that means I can send a perl script that ultimately
 sends UTF-8 to the parrallel port as a valid email message?

MIME used to send attached files is not the same as
 non-external-file contents of a message.

manoj
 
-- 
If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of a
circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted
instantaneously by electricity.  -- Samuel F. B. Morse
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:


 > RFCs 2045 -- 2049, and IANA's MIME type assignments at
 > 'http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/' (look for 'text/html').

MIME is a means of encoding all kinds of files into anformat
 that may then be transported in an email message -- but mostly
 material -- but, like application/x-debian-package, is not really
 meant to be an email message.

manoj
-- 
He that loses hope may part with anything.  -- Congreve
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 > Stripping out HTML markup would be a good idea for doing this.

My preferred solution is dumping all these messages.

manoj
-- 
He is now rising from affluence to poverty. Mark Twain
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 13:53, Shawn McMahon wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 01:38:22PM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> > 
> > > What does that have to do with anything?  Most folks here use Open
> > > Source/Free Software email clients, not proprietary ones such as Pine or
> > > Outlook Express.
> > 
> > When did Pine become proprietary?
> 
> Good lord, not only are you resurrecting week-dead threads, you're
> resurrecting years-dead arguments, and you're on the losing side of
> those too?
> 
> Goodbye; I'm deleting the rest of this thread unread now.  Wake me when
> the clue fairy delivers to your house.

Forget Godwin's Law; _this_ is how to end a thread. Or a part of it, at
any rate.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 11:44, Ross Burton wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 19:13, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> > MIME is standard, and HTML is a standard (specified as an RFC and in W3C
> > Recommendations) with a registered MIME type ('text/html'). How much
> > more standard can you get?
> 
> By that argument transmitting NNTP over SMTP is standard.  Standards
> have scope remember.

HTML is a document format, not a protocol. You are comparing apples and
oranges.

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 11:24, Matthew Wright wrote:
> If the latter, this thread is
> coming really close to being a counterexample to Godwin's law - ie. an
> infinitely long thread in which nobody is compared to the Nazis...

...except intentionally, and, therefore, unsuccessfully...

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Shawn McMahon]

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 01:38:22PM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> 
> > What does that have to do with anything?  Most folks here use Open
> > Source/Free Software email clients, not proprietary ones such as Pine or
> > Outlook Express.
> 
> When did Pine become proprietary?

Good lord, not only are you resurrecting week-dead threads, you're
resurrecting years-dead arguments, and you're on the losing side of
those too?

Goodbye; I'm deleting the rest of this thread unread now.  Wake me when
the clue fairy delivers to your house.



-- 
Shawn McMahon | Every time you walk out of the house
FedEx Services| with clothes on, you give up freedom
DSS-MCO Security Lead | for temporary safety.


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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Shawn McMahon]

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 01:26:27PM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> > I have; my MUA ignores ALL HTML markup.  Along with the text between the
> > tags.
> 
> Then the email appears blank?

My mistake; it also ignores the headers.  The email appears in my spam
folder, instead of my inbox, where it gets deleted pretty much summarily
unless the "from" address catches my eye during periodic manual deletion
runs.

> > Why not use text, and not create the burden of having _yet_ _another_
> > format to render?
> 
> Like it or not, HTML already exists. Like it or not, HTML is already in
> wide use. Like it or not, HTML is already widely implemented.

Like it or not, text is already standard.  Like it or not, HTML is
widely ignored.


-- 
Shawn McMahon | Every time you walk out of the house
FedEx Services| with clothes on, you give up freedom
DSS-MCO Security Lead | for temporary safety.


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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Shawn McMahon]

On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 11:10:43AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> 
> Stripping out HTML markup would be a good idea for doing this.

That's what we've been telling you all along.


-- 
Shawn McMahon | Every time you walk out of the house
FedEx Services| with clothes on, you give up freedom
DSS-MCO Security Lead | for temporary safety.


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Re: Boulder Pledge

[MJ Ray]

Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> When did Pine become proprietary?

It always was, I think: "redistribution of a modified version of Pine
requires explicit permission from the University of Washington"

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Ross Burton]

On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 19:13, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> MIME is standard, and HTML is a standard (specified as an RFC and in W3C
> Recommendations) with a registered MIME type ('text/html'). How much
> more standard can you get?

By that argument transmitting NNTP over SMTP is standard.  Standards
have scope remember.

Ross
-- 
Ross Burton mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www: http://www.burtonini.com./
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Matthew Wright]

On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 10:57:00AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 23:19, Cran Tindle-May wrote:
> > I'm not sure, but mabey nobody mentioned nazis yet?  Fear not, for
> > now that I have, this discussion can RIP :)
> 
> Actually, they did. This thread is unstoppable...

To quote the Jargon File:

"However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any
_intentional_ triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its
thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful."

Which is really too bad. This thread has lasted far, far too long!

Note that Godwin's law, according to the Jargon File, really states
that "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a
comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." Has anyone made
such a comparison yet, or have people only just mentioned Nazis (as
the grandparent of this post did)? If the latter, this thread is
coming really close to being a counterexample to Godwin's law - ie. an
infinitely long thread in which nobody is compared to the Nazis...

Matthew

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 00:21, Nathan E Norman wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 02:32:25PM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> > On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 14:50, Nathan E Norman wrote:
> > > Note that the proponent of switching email to HTML is the same guy who
> > > last week was ranting against the "non-standard, crap DJB header" that
> > > is Mail-Followup-To:
> > 
> > Are you suggesting that HTML is non-standard?
> 
> When it's transferred via SMTP, yes! (duh)

MIME is standard, and HTML is a standard (specified as an RFC and in W3C
Recommendations) with a registered MIME type ('text/html'). How much
more standard can you get?

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 23:49, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
>  > On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 08:22, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>  >> It also makes scanning incoming mail folders using less
>  >> painful, so I tend to divert HTML mail to less frequently scanned
>  >> folders. 
> 
>  > Define 'scanning'.
> 
>   In my case, scanning is using less, or grep, to scan incoming
>  email to see if there is a need to do a context switch into email
>  answering mode.

Stripping out HTML markup would be a good idea for doing this.

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 23:45, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
>  > Like it or not, HTML already exists. Like it or not, HTML is already in
>  > wide use. Like it or not, HTML is already widely implemented.
> 
>   Like it or not, I still have control over what I accept, and
>  what I discard, from  incoming email. That may or not matter a whit
>  to you.

Indeed. I am merely questioning the wisdom of what you do with that
control.

Alex.

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 23:41, Christopher Cashell wrote:
> At Fri, 07 Feb 03, Unidentified Flying Banana Alexander Hvostov, said:
> > Are you suggesting that HTML is non-standard?
> 
> Excellent, it sounds like you can help me out.  I've been looking for
> the RFC that specifies HTML as a standard for Internet Mail
> communication.

RFCs 2045 -- 2049, and IANA's MIME type assignments at
'http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/' (look for 'text/html').

Alex.

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 23:43, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
>  > On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 14:50, Nathan E Norman wrote:
>  >> Note that the proponent of switching email to HTML is the same guy who
>  >> last week was ranting against the "non-standard, crap DJB header" that
>  >> is Mail-Followup-To:
> 
>  > Are you suggesting that HTML is non-standard?
> 
>   As an SMTP message encoding format? Yes, I think so.

I dunno about you, but I don't think I've ever seen
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: html" or similar. Perhaps you mean message
Content-Type, and yes, it's standard in that case. 'apt-get install
doc-iana' and read
'/usr/share/doc/doc-iana/assignments/media-types/text/html'.

Alex.

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 23:19, Cran Tindle-May wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 11:09:49AM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > 
> > Not at all - a 350 MHz system actually. And yes I consider that old but
> > sufficient for what I use it for.
> > 
> > Gosh this discussion is boring. Why are you bringing it back to life
> > after a week?
> >
> 
> I'm not sure, but mabey nobody mentioned nazis yet?  Fear not, for
> now that I have, this discussion can RIP :)

Actually, they did. This thread is unstoppable...

Alex.

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Nathan E Norman]

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 02:32:25PM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 14:50, Nathan E Norman wrote:
> > Note that the proponent of switching email to HTML is the same guy who
> > last week was ranting against the "non-standard, crap DJB header" that
> > is Mail-Followup-To:
> 
> Are you suggesting that HTML is non-standard?

When it's transferred via SMTP, yes! (duh)

-- 
Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Unix was not designed to stop people from doing stupid things,
  because that would also stop them from doing clever things.
  -- Doug Gwyn


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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 > On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 08:22, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 >> It also makes scanning incoming mail folders using less
 >> painful, so I tend to divert HTML mail to less frequently scanned
 >> folders. 

 > Define 'scanning'.

In my case, scanning is using less, or grep, to scan incoming
 email to see if there is a need to do a context switch into email
 answering mode.

manoj
-- 
>From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the
instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new
experience in sound: Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees.  The
pin-spreading sound is normal for this type of connector.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Mike Beattie]

On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 05:19:07PM +1000, Cran Tindle-May wrote:
> I'm not sure, but mabey nobody mentioned nazis yet?  Fear not, for
> now that I have, this discussion can RIP :)

I invoke Godwins Law.

Mike.
(Someone had to say it)
-- 
Michael Beattie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Plug-and-Play is really nice, unfortunately it only works 50% of the time.
To be specific the "Plug" almost always works.--unknown source

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 > On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 14:50, Nathan E Norman wrote:
 >> Note that the proponent of switching email to HTML is the same guy who
 >> last week was ranting against the "non-standard, crap DJB header" that
 >> is Mail-Followup-To:

 > Are you suggesting that HTML is non-standard?

As an SMTP message encoding format? Yes, I think so.

manoj
-- 
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to
sell it.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 > Like it or not, HTML already exists. Like it or not, HTML is already in
 > wide use. Like it or not, HTML is already widely implemented.

Like it or not, I still have control over what I accept, and
 what I discard, from  incoming email. That may or not matter a whit
 to you.

manoj

-- 
Declared guilty... of displaying feelings of an almost human
nature. Pink Floyd, "The Wall"
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Christopher Cashell]

At Fri, 07 Feb 03, Unidentified Flying Banana Alexander Hvostov, said:
> Are you suggesting that HTML is non-standard?

Excellent, it sounds like you can help me out.  I've been looking for
the RFC that specifies HTML as a standard for Internet Mail
communication.

So far, I haven't been able to find it.  Just a bunch of pesky RFC's
about text for e-mail.

> Alex.

-- 
| Christopher
++
| A: No. |
| Q: Should I include quotations after my reply? |
++



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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Cran Tindle-May]

On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 11:09:49AM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> 
> Not at all - a 350 MHz system actually. And yes I consider that old but
> sufficient for what I use it for.
> 
> Gosh this discussion is boring. Why are you bringing it back to life
> after a week?
>

I'm not sure, but mabey nobody mentioned nazis yet?  Fear not, for
now that I have, this discussion can RIP :)

Cran

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 14:51, Thomas Ritter wrote:
> Am Freitag, 7. Februar 2003 23:16 schrieb Alexander Hvostov:
> > If your {girl,boy}friend sends you email like that, it needs repair or
> > replacement.
> >
> > > You definately wouldn't want to just ignore the image.
> >
> > Actually I would. See above.
> 
> Yes, but social maniacs like you should stop from bugging the rest of the 
> world. I for my part do not choose friends regarding technical abilities, 
> just neurotic idiots do that, this (as you write) includes you. (I assume 
> that you won't drop your life partner for one joke you don't like).

Technical abilities are not relevant. Sending me mail telling me our
relationship is over is quite relevant. I wouldn't joke about something
like that, and I don't recommend you do, either.

Anyway, if that _did_ happen (and you don't consider your
{girl,boy}friend to be a complete head case for sending you something
like that), there is always an image placeholder there. Simply fetch the
referenced image. Voila.

Alex.

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Hamish Moffatt]

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 02:31:13PM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 13:46, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > Well, mostly it is unnecessary. It also annoys me because I have to wait
> > a second or so for mutt to call lynx to render it back to plain text.
> 
> Lynx takes a 'second or so' to render HTML to plain text? What kind of
> hardware are you running it on, a PDP-11?

Not at all - a 350 MHz system actually. And yes I consider that old but
sufficient for what I use it for.

Gosh this discussion is boring. Why are you bringing it back to life
after a week?

Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Thomas Ritter]

Am Freitag, 7. Februar 2003 23:16 schrieb Alexander Hvostov:
> If your {girl,boy}friend sends you email like that, it needs repair or
> replacement.
>
> > You definately wouldn't want to just ignore the image.
>
> Actually I would. See above.

Yes, but social maniacs like you should stop from bugging the rest of the 
world. I for my part do not choose friends regarding technical abilities, 
just neurotic idiots do that, this (as you write) includes you. (I assume 
that you won't drop your life partner for one joke you don't like).

Thomas

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Patrik Martinson]

Please end this flamewar. Nobody is interested. Really.

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 11:30, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 05:05:29AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> > That's a problem with your MUA, not with HTML per se. Once widely-used
> > MUAs are sufficiently up to the task of dealing with HTML, this is
> > likely to change.
> 
> Enough with the "that's a MUA problem, not an HTML problem" mantra.
> It sounds no different to me than an MS zealot saying that inability
> to read Word documents is a MUA problem as his response to every
> argument offered for why sending Word docs is bad form.

The HTML spec for any given version is readily available, as an RFC or
W3C Recommendation. Sending Microsoft Word documents was bad form,
simply because people could not read them until recently.

> > If there are lots of images or tables involved, then yes, this will make
> > things harder. Normal text, however, is not a problem. Last time I
> > checked, most HTML email (except for stuff sent by companies, who are
> > trying to make themselves look 'professional' with their extravagant
> > HTML) consists of normal text, laid out in the same way as a plain text
> > email, but perhaps with some bulleted lists or such.
> 
> - So you're admitting that most (legitimate) HTML mail doesn't do
>   anything that plain text can't?  Then why add the overhead?

No, I'm not. Notice how I said 'perhaps with some bulleted lists or
such'. You can't do that cleanly in plain text.

> - Bulleted lists, hmm?  And here I always thought you could do them
>   just fine in plain ASCII...

Because these are unstructured, they are somewhat of a nuisance for a
human to read, and all but impossible for a computer to understand.

> > > It was impossible.  Couldn't be done.  You had to execute a
> > > program first.  That fact is no longer true.  And not only that, but
> > > it's gotten worse.  E-mail based viruses, utilizing HTML, JavaScript,
> > > VBScript, and holes in the HTML rendering engines required to view
> > > HTML
> > > e-mail have become among the fastest growing and most damaging virii.
> > 
> > Interestingly, you forget to note that only Microsoft Outlook is
> > affected by any of them. As much as you may think otherwise, this is an
> > Outlook problem, not an HTML or JavaScript problem. Otherwise, Mozilla
> > would have the same problems when viewing Web pages.
> 
> Perhaps the propagating ones are Outlook (Express)-only, but there
> are other problems.  Pretty much all of the privacy-invasion
> techniques (web bugs, etc.) are pure-HTML applications, for instance.

Web bugs are not relevant. My MUA is configured not to retreive images
from the Internet.

> > So, you'd prefer to have 16 million Tripod-originated pop-under ads
> > instead?
> 
> That's a problem with Tripod, not a problem with emailing links.

If you actually _use_ the link (i.e., click on it), it is. My point was
that, for that solution, people have to get Web hosting somewhere. More
often than not, that somewhere does nasty things like that.

Alex.

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 13:46, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 05:26:27AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> > On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 05:03, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > > Isn't the onus on you as the proponent of HTML to sell it to the rest of
> > > us? Specifically, what is the advantage of HTML for email? What can you
> > > communicate with HTML that you can't with plain text?
> > > 
> > > Plain text has served email well for a couple of decades or more and I
> > > still can't see any reason to change.
> > 
> > I'm not really trying to sell it. I'm trying to find out why other
> > people dislike it, and dispel any myths or half-truths about it.
> 
> Well, mostly it is unnecessary. It also annoys me because I have to wait
> a second or so for mutt to call lynx to render it back to plain text.

Lynx takes a 'second or so' to render HTML to plain text? What kind of
hardware are you running it on, a PDP-11?

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 14:50, Nathan E Norman wrote:
> Note that the proponent of switching email to HTML is the same guy who
> last week was ranting against the "non-standard, crap DJB header" that
> is Mail-Followup-To:

Are you suggesting that HTML is non-standard?

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 10:30, Tim van Erven wrote:
> On Mon, 03/02/2003 04:42 -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> > On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 17:06, Tim van Erven wrote:
> >> * Rendering delays.  Waiting > 1s for each mail to render is
> >>   unacceptable when you have to go through a lot of mail.
> > 
> > Configure your MUA to ignore some of the more CPU-intensive markup (eg,
> > images).
> 
> Automated filters on message contents are a very bad idea.  Stripping
> content can completely alter the message's content.  Imagine for
> instance a message reading "I'm breaking up with you." with an image
> underneath that shows a sign saying "Just kidding, silly.".

If your {girl,boy}friend sends you email like that, it needs repair or
replacement.

> You definately wouldn't want to just ignore the image.

Actually I would. See above.

> >> * Raising the minimum system requirements.  (Think: small gadgets.)
> > 
> > See above. HTML is easy to parse, and it is therefore easy to strip out
> > unnecessary stuff. The hard part is rendering some kinds of markup (like
> > images).
> 
> Time your browser rendering some websites you visit, multiply by the
> amount of mails some folks get, talk again.

With no images, frames, or scripting? A few tenths of a second. Same as
text.

If your browser is slow, then either it sucks, or you haven't configured
it to ignore CPU-intensive markup. Not that you would _want_ it to
ignore CPU-intensive markup, but you _would_ want an MUA to.

> >> But keeping things simple is the first rule of writing secure code.
> > 
> > Simplicity is not always the best way to do it. The Linux kernel is an
> > example.
> 
> Simplicity is always the best way to do it.  Additional complexity
> always needs a very good justification.

So, you're saying the Linux kernel is inherently insecure? Oh dear. Have
you sent to Bugtraq yet?

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 10:18, Tim van Erven wrote:
> On Mon, 03/02/2003 04:38 -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> > On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 16:52, Tim van Erven wrote:
> >> One reason that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that editing html (when
> >> replying) is a PITA compared to editing plain text.
> > 
> > How so?
> 
> Editing plain html is way too bothersome and there aren't even any
> browsers available that properly inplement the latest html standards,
> let alone WYSIWYG programs to edit them.

GtkHTML (used by Evolution) works fine. It generates presentational HTML
conforming with the HTML 4.0 Rec, Transitional DTD. (It could use CSS
instead, but even without it, the HTML it generates is perfectly
standards-compliant.) Editing the generated HTML (i.e., sending an HTML
email to myself and editing what I receive) is also a breeze, even if
there are tables and such.

> Allowing html means allowing all html, not just the easy bits.

Uh oh! Someone hurry and tell that to all the people writing text-only
Web browsers! They'll be shocked to hear that, I'm sure.

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 08:22, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
>  > I'm not really trying to sell it. I'm trying to find out why other
>  > people dislike it, and dispel any myths or half-truths about it.
> 
>   In my personal experience, I have observed a high degree of
>  correlation between HTML email and cluelessness and/or spam.

Well, like I believe I said earlier, most of the spam I get is plain
text. Most of the HTML I get is a newsletter or some such, and it's
usually because I asked for HTML. (If I have a choice, I generally
choose HTML.)

>   It also makes scanning incoming mail folders using less
>  painful, so I tend to divert HTML mail to less frequently scanned
>  folders. 

Define 'scanning'.

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 07:44, Thomas Ritter wrote:
> Am Montag, 3. Februar 2003 13:38 schrieben Sie:
> 
> > Good Web browsers can ignore colors and such in the HTML.
> 
> Is there any? Not Mozilla, not Netscape, not Konqueror, not Opera...

Galeon has options named "use own fonts" and "use own colors" in the
"Settings" menu. It also lets you apply a custom style sheet, if you
wish.

> > It doesn't necessarily need to remove tables and frames and images, just
> > ignore truly offending stuff like  and colors.
> 
> for me, it MUST ;) This is definitely a question of taste! In Mails, strictly 
> no frames, no tables and most importantly NO IMAGES. Have you ever been in a 
> bureau working with customers and your mail program popped up a SEX 
> commercial SPAM? Just accept that there are people who just do not want it.

That's easy to handle. I disabled image rendering in Evolution.
Actually, the situation is worse with plain text, as it is a little hard
to filter out ASCII art renditions of The Giver.

What's wrong with frames and tables, though?

> > That doesn't make it an HTML problem. There are probably legitimate uses
> > for specifying pixel sizes.
> 
> Has HTML any problems? _I_, as I said, talked about the USAGE of HTML, and 
> that IS a problem.

And you have yet to mention any usage of HTML that cannot be trivially
solved.

> > > It is no problem to write HTML so that it looks okay everywhere, but the
> > > reality shows _a lot_ of opposite examples.
> >
> > Most MUAs don't let users write raw HTML anyway, so we don't have this
> > problem in email. So much the better, for the reasons you illustrate.
> 
> No, but as you should know, not all editors write proper HTML and writing 
> proper ASCII is definitely easier ;)

It is easier to fix a few editors, than to fix endless millions of
ignorant users.

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 11:08, Thomas Ritter wrote:
> Am Montag, 3. Februar 2003 19:11 schrieb Svein Ove Aas:
> >> > Good Web browsers can ignore colors and such in the HTML.
> >>
> >> Is there any? Not Mozilla, not Netscape, not Konqueror, not Opera...
> > It's perfectly possible to make it apply a custom CSS file to all pages,
> 
> oh, yes... but have you ever actually _used_ that? This Thread started about 
> aesthetics (different meanings of correctly wrapping lines in ASCII) and HTML 
> was mentioned to raise the look. When you apply custom settings to HTML 
> pages, they get really ugly, loosing readability. Think of 
> pixel-measure-sized tables layouted with very small font sizes which get 
> totally messed up when you change the font size.

So turn the setting off. 

> When users use colours to structurize documents, it gets confusing without 
> colours.

I've never seen that one.

> When users use images as dividers, not displaying them messes up readability.

When users use images as dividers, the  tag usually includes size
parameters. If image display is disabled, the placeholder should be (and
usually is) rendered with the appropriate size.

> You _can_ actually ignore some things, but because people _will_ use those 
> things anyone caring about readability will have to be a slave of other 
> people's bad taste and live with green text on pink background and that when 
> you are in the office and open the mail program to ask someone about 
> something he wrote, the first thing he might see is the newest SPAM-devilered 
> nakedness in your inbox. This doesn't look very professional, as you might 
> agree...

Actually, come to think of it, I've never seen an HTML email I care
about (i.e., not spam) that's unreadable without images, either.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 05:58, Shawn McMahon wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 05:05:29AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> > 
> > That's changing. Even venerable Pine can read HTML.
> 
> Yes, by converting it back into text.  What exactly have you gained in
> that overhead?

Not quite. It still wraps lines according to the width of the display,
renders some text styles, and probably some other things.

> > Digests should consist of a multipart message, where each part is a
> > message/rfc822, containing one of the emails being digested. That avoids
> > this problem nicely. This has several other useful benefits, as well.
> 
> Right; and message/rfc822 parts contain text, not HTML.

Actually they contain whatever you want -- including binary formats like
images.

> > And it was a fallacy. I understand the popular mail reader Pine is
> > _full_ of remotely exploitable buffer overflows.
> 
> So is Outlook Express, and most of the other popular proprietary MUAs.

This implies that Pine is proprietary, which it is not.

> What does that have to do with anything?  Most folks here use Open
> Source/Free Software email clients, not proprietary ones such as Pine or
> Outlook Express.

When did Pine become proprietary?

What people use _here_ is not relevant. The point you made was that HTML
renderers are gold mines of potential security holes, due to their
complexity, and that, prior to the introduction of HTML mail, the
GoodTimes virus was obviously impossible, for everyone, period.

> > Interestingly, you forget to note that only Microsoft Outlook is
> > affected by any of them. As much as you may think otherwise, this is an
> 
> You're wrong.  There have been ones that affected Netscape, such as
> LoveLetter.  That one would have affected ANY Windows MUA that allowed
> use of Windows Scripting in HTML.

Point taken.

> I'm sure you'll argue now that this is a Windows problem, not an HTML
> problem

Holes in Windows Scripting are indeed Windows Scripting and/or
MUA-specific problems.

> but you're missing the point; HTML in email greatly increases
> the complexity, and complexity breeds bugs.

So do MIME and PGP; let's get rid of those while we're at it.

Seriously, though, HTML renderers do not have to be especially complex
if they don't need to handle things like forms and scripts. An SGML
parser (or XML parser, if using XHTML) is obviously necessary, but these
are libraries which can be reasonably expected to have been thoroughly
debugged.

> It doesn't greatly increase
> the communications ability of email, so it makes no sense to put it in
> there.

People send email in HTML. Unless you'd prefer to ignore them (which you
seem to, for some strange reason), you need to be able to read it. Also,
as I said before, HTML gives you support for structured lists, tables,
and images, which can be very useful under some circumstances.

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 05:45, Shawn McMahon wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 04:42:44AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> > 
> > Configure your MUA to ignore some of the more CPU-intensive markup (eg,
> > images).
> 
> I have; my MUA ignores ALL HTML markup.  Along with the text between the
> tags.

Then the email appears blank?

> > So, some sort of very lightweight wannabe HTML? Why not just strip out
> > undesired markup from HTML, and not create the burden of having _yet_
> > _another_ format to render?
> 
> Why not use text, and not create the burden of having _yet_ _another_
> format to render?

Like it or not, HTML already exists. Like it or not, HTML is already in
wide use. Like it or not, HTML is already widely implemented.

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Nathan E Norman]

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 12:03:34AM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 04:42:44AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> > On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 17:06, Tim van Erven wrote:
> > > * Rendering delays.  Waiting > 1s for each mail to render is
> > >   unacceptable when you have to go through a lot of mail.
> > 
> > Configure your MUA to ignore some of the more CPU-intensive markup (eg,
> > images).
> 
> Isn't the onus on you as the proponent of HTML to sell it to the rest of
> us? Specifically, what is the advantage of HTML for email? What can you
> communicate with HTML that you can't with plain text?

Note that the proponent of switching email to HTML is the same guy who
last week was ranting against the "non-standard, crap DJB header" that
is Mail-Followup-To:

Draw your own conclusions :-)

-- 
Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that can do binary
  arithmetic and those that can't.

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Hamish Moffatt]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 05:26:27AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 05:03, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > Isn't the onus on you as the proponent of HTML to sell it to the rest of
> > us? Specifically, what is the advantage of HTML for email? What can you
> > communicate with HTML that you can't with plain text?
> > 
> > Plain text has served email well for a couple of decades or more and I
> > still can't see any reason to change.
> 
> I'm not really trying to sell it. I'm trying to find out why other
> people dislike it, and dispel any myths or half-truths about it.

Well, mostly it is unnecessary. It also annoys me because I have to wait
a second or so for mutt to call lynx to render it back to plain text.

It's true that it helps to fuel the spam filter though.

Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Dave Sherohman]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 05:05:29AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> That's a problem with your MUA, not with HTML per se. Once widely-used
> MUAs are sufficiently up to the task of dealing with HTML, this is
> likely to change.

Enough with the "that's a MUA problem, not an HTML problem" mantra.
It sounds no different to me than an MS zealot saying that inability
to read Word documents is a MUA problem as his response to every
argument offered for why sending Word docs is bad form.

> If there are lots of images or tables involved, then yes, this will make
> things harder. Normal text, however, is not a problem. Last time I
> checked, most HTML email (except for stuff sent by companies, who are
> trying to make themselves look 'professional' with their extravagant
> HTML) consists of normal text, laid out in the same way as a plain text
> email, but perhaps with some bulleted lists or such.

- So you're admitting that most (legitimate) HTML mail doesn't do
  anything that plain text can't?  Then why add the overhead?

- Bulleted lists, hmm?  And here I always thought you could do them
  just fine in plain ASCII...

> > It was impossible.  Couldn't be done.  You had to execute a
> > program first.  That fact is no longer true.  And not only that, but
> > it's gotten worse.  E-mail based viruses, utilizing HTML, JavaScript,
> > VBScript, and holes in the HTML rendering engines required to view
> > HTML
> > e-mail have become among the fastest growing and most damaging virii.
> 
> Interestingly, you forget to note that only Microsoft Outlook is
> affected by any of them. As much as you may think otherwise, this is an
> Outlook problem, not an HTML or JavaScript problem. Otherwise, Mozilla
> would have the same problems when viewing Web pages.

Perhaps the propagating ones are Outlook (Express)-only, but there
are other problems.  Pretty much all of the privacy-invasion
techniques (web bugs, etc.) are pure-HTML applications, for instance.

> So, you'd prefer to have 16 million Tripod-originated pop-under ads
> instead?

That's a problem with Tripod, not a problem with emailing links.

-- 
The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the
White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that
we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened.
  - Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html)

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Thomas Ritter]

Am Montag, 3. Februar 2003 19:11 schrieb Svein Ove Aas:
>> > Good Web browsers can ignore colors and such in the HTML.
>>
>> Is there any? Not Mozilla, not Netscape, not Konqueror, not Opera...
> It's perfectly possible to make it apply a custom CSS file to all pages,

oh, yes... but have you ever actually _used_ that? This Thread started about 
aesthetics (different meanings of correctly wrapping lines in ASCII) and HTML 
was mentioned to raise the look. When you apply custom settings to HTML 
pages, they get really ugly, loosing readability. Think of 
pixel-measure-sized tables layouted with very small font sizes which get 
totally messed up when you change the font size.
When users use colours to structurize documents, it gets confusing without 
colours.
When users use images as dividers, not displaying them messes up readability.

You _can_ actually ignore some things, but because people _will_ use those 
things anyone caring about readability will have to be a slave of other 
people's bad taste and live with green text on pink background and that when 
you are in the office and open the mail program to ask someone about 
something he wrote, the first thing he might see is the newest SPAM-devilered 
nakedness in your inbox. This doesn't look very professional, as you might 
agree...

This is why E-Mails should be made of plain text. Not Technology, not 
security. U S E R S.

Thomas Ritter

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Tim van Erven]

On Mon, 03/02/2003 04:42 -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 17:06, Tim van Erven wrote:
>> * Rendering delays.  Waiting > 1s for each mail to render is
>>   unacceptable when you have to go through a lot of mail.
> 
> Configure your MUA to ignore some of the more CPU-intensive markup (eg,
> images).

Automated filters on message contents are a very bad idea.  Stripping
content can completely alter the message's content.  Imagine for
instance a message reading "I'm breaking up with you." with an image
underneath that shows a sign saying "Just kidding, silly.". You
definately wouldn't want to just ignore the image.  Of course this is
just one example.  A similar scenario could be constructed for every
kind of automated filter.

>> * Raising the minimum system requirements.  (Think: small gadgets.)
> 
> See above. HTML is easy to parse, and it is therefore easy to strip out
> unnecessary stuff. The hard part is rendering some kinds of markup (like
> images).

Time your browser rendering some websites you visit, multiply by the
amount of mails some folks get, talk again.

>> But keeping things simple is the first rule of writing secure code.
> 
> Simplicity is not always the best way to do it. The Linux kernel is an
> example.

Simplicity is always the best way to do it.  Additional complexity
always needs a very good justification.

-- 
Tim van Erven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  Fingerprint: F6C9 61EE 242C C012
OpenPGP Key ID: 712CB811   36D5 BBF8 6310 D557 712C B811

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Tim van Erven]

On Mon, 03/02/2003 04:38 -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 16:52, Tim van Erven wrote:
>> One reason that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that editing html (when
>> replying) is a PITA compared to editing plain text.
> 
> How so?

Editing plain html is way too bothersome and there aren't even any
browsers available that properly inplement the latest html standards,
let alone WYSIWYG programs to edit them.

Allowing html means allowing all html, not just the easy bits.  A
stripped down version of html is not html.  When inventing a protocol
for adding meta-data to e-mail it doesn't even make much sense to start
from html.

-- 
Tim van Erven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  Fingerprint: F6C9 61EE 242C C012
OpenPGP Key ID: 712CB811   36D5 BBF8 6310 D557 712C B811

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Svein Ove Aas]

From: "Thomas Ritter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 4:44 PM
Subject: Re: Boulder Pledge


> Am Montag, 3. Februar 2003 13:38 schrieben Sie:
>
> > Good Web browsers can ignore colors and such in the HTML.
>
> Is there any? Not Mozilla, not Netscape, not Konqueror, not Opera...

I don't know about the others, but Konqueror certainly can, at least 3.x or
higher.
It's perfectly possible to make it apply a custom CSS file to all pages, and
it
also has an easy way to override values like

- minimum/maximum font size
- background color
- foreground color
- fonts, etc.
- And probably quite a lot of stuff that I forgot.

without eever leaving the configuration menu.

- Svein Ove Aas


Sidenote: Yep, that's why I never use Outlook. Anyone fancy some fried PSU?

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Blars Blarson]

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>Isn't the onus on you as the proponent of HTML to sell it to the rest of
>us? Specifically, what is the advantage of HTML for email? What can you
>communicate with HTML that you can't with plain text?

HTML email has one great advantage over plain email: almost all of it
is spam, and that which isn't spam is sent by a clueless luser who
hasn't figured out how to change the settings of their brokenware.
That means it can be filtered out a the MTA stage, with a proper
return code.  (I can supply the sendmail.mc code for this.)




-- 
Blars Blarson   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.blars.org/blars.html
"Text is a way we cheat time." -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alex" == Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 > I'm not really trying to sell it. I'm trying to find out why other
 > people dislike it, and dispel any myths or half-truths about it.

In my personal experience, I have observed a high degree of
 correlation between HTML email and cluelessness and/or spam.

It also makes scanning incoming mail folders using less
 painful, so I tend to divert HTML mail to less frequently scanned
 folders. 

manoj
-- 
Marriage is an institution in which two undertake to become one, and
one undertakes to become nothing.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Thomas Ritter]

Am Montag, 3. Februar 2003 13:38 schrieben Sie:

> Good Web browsers can ignore colors and such in the HTML.

Is there any? Not Mozilla, not Netscape, not Konqueror, not Opera...

> It doesn't necessarily need to remove tables and frames and images, just
> ignore truly offending stuff like  and colors.

for me, it MUST ;) This is definitely a question of taste! In Mails, strictly 
no frames, no tables and most importantly NO IMAGES. Have you ever been in a 
bureau working with customers and your mail program popped up a SEX 
commercial SPAM? Just accept that there are people who just do not want it.

> That doesn't make it an HTML problem. There are probably legitimate uses
> for specifying pixel sizes.

Has HTML any problems? _I_, as I said, talked about the USAGE of HTML, and 
that IS a problem.

> > It is no problem to write HTML so that it looks okay everywhere, but the
> > reality shows _a lot_ of opposite examples.
>
> Most MUAs don't let users write raw HTML anyway, so we don't have this
> problem in email. So much the better, for the reasons you illustrate.

No, but as you should know, not all editors write proper HTML and writing 
proper ASCII is definitely easier ;)

To repeat it, the problems stated are not Problems with HTML, but with the 
_usage_ of HTML in E-Mails. This includes users and all of their stupid ideas 
and programmers and their stupid ideas.

Thomas Ritter

Re: Boulder Pledge

[MJ Ray]

Alexander Hvostov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...] Once widely-used MUAs are sufficiently up to the task of dealing
> with HTML, this is likely to change.
[...]
> Again, PDA MUAs will need to improve so that they actually do this;
> that will come with time.
[...]
> And you should always be able to. If you can't, bug your MUA maintainer!

Yes!  The majority of the world is wrong and the minority is correct!  We
must make all MUAs more complicated so that they can read, filter and write
HTML email and make all emails sent many times larger!  We must enhance and
enlarge all the list servers and email-based applications to handle commands
sent in HTML!  Yes!

If I answered like that, I would deserve never to program a computer again. 
Plain text emails work for nearly all messages and are the minimum required
-- optimised emails.

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Shawn McMahon]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 05:05:29AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> 
> That's changing. Even venerable Pine can read HTML.

Yes, by converting it back into text.  What exactly have you gained in
that overhead?

> Digests should consist of a multipart message, where each part is a
> message/rfc822, containing one of the emails being digested. That avoids
> this problem nicely. This has several other useful benefits, as well.

Right; and message/rfc822 parts contain text, not HTML.

> And it was a fallacy. I understand the popular mail reader Pine is
> _full_ of remotely exploitable buffer overflows.

So is Outlook Express, and most of the other popular proprietary MUAs.
What does that have to do with anything?  Most folks here use Open
Source/Free Software email clients, not proprietary ones such as Pine or
Outlook Express.

> Interestingly, you forget to note that only Microsoft Outlook is
> affected by any of them. As much as you may think otherwise, this is an

You're wrong.  There have been ones that affected Netscape, such as
LoveLetter.  That one would have affected ANY Windows MUA that allowed
use of Windows Scripting in HTML.

I'm sure you'll argue now that this is a Windows problem, not an HTML
problem, but you're missing the point; HTML in email greatly increases
the complexity, and complexity breeds bugs.  It doesn't greatly increase
the communications ability of email, so it makes no sense to put it in
there.


-- 
Shawn McMahon | Every time you walk out of the house
FedEx Services| with clothes on, you give up freedom
DSS-MCO Security Lead | for temporary safety.


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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Shawn McMahon]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 04:42:44AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> 
> Configure your MUA to ignore some of the more CPU-intensive markup (eg,
> images).

I have; my MUA ignores ALL HTML markup.  Along with the text between the
tags.

> So, some sort of very lightweight wannabe HTML? Why not just strip out
> undesired markup from HTML, and not create the burden of having _yet_
> _another_ format to render?

Why not use text, and not create the burden of having _yet_ _another_
format to render?


-- 
Shawn McMahon | Every time you walk out of the house
FedEx Services| with clothes on, you give up freedom
DSS-MCO Security Lead | for temporary safety.


pgp3P2jGCFyIc.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 05:03, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> Isn't the onus on you as the proponent of HTML to sell it to the rest of
> us? Specifically, what is the advantage of HTML for email? What can you
> communicate with HTML that you can't with plain text?
> 
> Plain text has served email well for a couple of decades or more and I
> still can't see any reason to change.

I'm not really trying to sell it. I'm trying to find out why other
people dislike it, and dispel any myths or half-truths about it.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 23:32, Christopher Cashell wrote:

> At Tue, 24 Sep 02, Unidentified Flying Banana Nick Walter, said:
> > I completely understand and agree with "Respect for open standards"
> and also
> > "No M$ Word docs in e-mail".
> 
> It's not just a matter of open standards, but access.  Every e-mail
> client in the world can handle plain text e-mail.  Many cannot view
> other formats.

That's changing. Even venerable Pine can read HTML.

> > I can't, however, quite agree with "No HTML/RTF in e-mail".  Both
> HTML
> > and (theoretically) RTF are open formats that are well supported in
> a
> > variety of O/Ss.
> 
> They are well supported within certain programs in a variety of OS's.
> That doesn't mean that every e-mail client is capable of reading them.
> Nor should it have to.

But they are approaching that anyway. See above.

> > Using these formats is not contributing to anyone's evil monopoly or
> > excluding a Linux/*BSD user from reading the document properly.
> 
> My primary e-mail client is mutt.  It's a console based program which
> works best with plain ASCII text.  It was designed to be an e-mail
> client, and nothing else, and it works amazingly well for that.  Now,
> it
> can utilize external programs to view non-text attachments, such as
> HTML
> and RTF, but doing so is slow, cumbersome, and difficult. 
> Additionally,
> trying to reply to HTML/RTF e-mail is very bothersome, particularly
> with
> accurate quoting.

That's a problem with your MUA, not with HTML per se. Once widely-used
MUAs are sufficiently up to the task of dealing with HTML, this is
likely to change.

> Many (most?) PDA e-mail programs have difficulties with HTML/RTF
> e-mail
> still, as well.

RTF, maybe. HTML, no. It is quite possible to ignore undesired markup in
HTML documents, if you can't render images and such. Again, PDA MUAs
will need to improve so that they actually do this; that will come with
time.

> Not everyone is on some sort of broadband Internet connection yet.  In
> fact, the vast majority of people aren't.  Sending an e-mail as HTML
> will generally at least double the size of the e-mail, and frequently
> more.  I've seen some HTML e-mails that were more than 5 times the
> size of their plain text equivalents.

I'm not sure if you know this or not, but because all those HTML tags
are repeated strings, Deflate works very well on them. The size
inflation is therefore not particularly important. Images, on the other
hand, are another story.

> Many people dislike HTML e-mail, even if they can read it fine. 
> Reading
> HTML means that you have to deal with color and font changes, text
> size
> changes, links, tables, etc.

If you don't like it, configure your MUA to ignore it.

> This can be distracting at the best of
> times, and downright frustrating at the worst.  Many people like to
> change the background color of their HTML e-mails, or change the text
> color.  Few of them have any experience with Human Factors or
> Interface
> Design, and most end up making their content more difficult to read.
> Lastly, HTML is much harder to translate into braille or reading
> devices, making it more difficult for those with vision impairments to
> use (I'm familiar with this one because a good friend of mine is
> legally
> blind).

If there are lots of images or tables involved, then yes, this will make
things harder. Normal text, however, is not a problem. Last time I
checked, most HTML email (except for stuff sent by companies, who are
trying to make themselves look 'professional' with their extravagant
HTML) consists of normal text, laid out in the same way as a plain text
email, but perhaps with some bulleted lists or such.

> I've set up my computer, and my e-mail client, in order to make
> reading
> e-mail as easy for me as possible.  This only works when I'm allowed
> to
> specify my own colors, fonts, and styles, though.

And you should always be able to. If you can't, bug your MUA maintainer!

> And don't forget that
> while it may look one way on your machine, it may look differently on
> mine.  When you have to deal with as much e-mail as I do daily, you do
> everything you can to simplify it.

Fine. Be my guest.

> Many people have noticed that the majority of Spam is sent as HTML
> e-mail

Not for me.

> and that the majority of HTML e-mail is Spam.

Again, not for me. Much of the spam I receive is plain text.

> For this reason,
> many mailing lists and many people filter all HTML e-mail as spam, and
> trash it.  In fact, I frequently do this myself, and I'm on numerous
> mailing lists which reject HTML e-mails.

If your spam detection heuristics rely on the email containing HTML as a
hint that it's spam, they are in dire need of revision. See above.

> As was commented in the message that started this thread, HTML e-mail
> can have extremely nasty effects for people who read mailing lists in
> Digest mode.  Digest mode is where all of the messages that are sent
> to
> a mailing list are 

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Hamish Moffatt]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 04:42:44AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 17:06, Tim van Erven wrote:
> > * Rendering delays.  Waiting > 1s for each mail to render is
> >   unacceptable when you have to go through a lot of mail.
> 
> Configure your MUA to ignore some of the more CPU-intensive markup (eg,
> images).

Isn't the onus on you as the proponent of HTML to sell it to the rest of
us? Specifically, what is the advantage of HTML for email? What can you
communicate with HTML that you can't with plain text?

Plain text has served email well for a couple of decades or more and I
still can't see any reason to change.

Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 17:06, Tim van Erven wrote:
> * Rendering delays.  Waiting > 1s for each mail to render is
>   unacceptable when you have to go through a lot of mail.

Configure your MUA to ignore some of the more CPU-intensive markup (eg,
images).

> * Raising the minimum system requirements.  (Think: small gadgets.)

See above. HTML is easy to parse, and it is therefore easy to strip out
unnecessary stuff. The hard part is rendering some kinds of markup (like
images).

> * Backwards compatibility.

By that argument, modern IBM mainframes should be able to run binaries
for the IBM 360! Oh, wait, they can...

> But keeping things simple is the first rule of writing secure code.

Simplicity is not always the best way to do it. The Linux kernel is an
example.

> Now I would like to see some sort of simple xml scheme to add meta-info
> to mails like e.g. about uri's, but html is not it.

So, some sort of very lightweight wannabe HTML? Why not just strip out
undesired markup from HTML, and not create the burden of having _yet_
_another_ format to render?

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 16:52, Tim van Erven wrote:
> One reason that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that editing html (when
> replying) is a PITA compared to editing plain text.

How so?

Alex.

-- 
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Christopher Cashell]

At Sun, 02 Feb 03, Unidentified Flying Banana Alexander Hvostov, said:
> I'm sure there are other reasons that make HTML inappropriate for email,
> at least for the time being. Anyone care to comment?

This was actually the subject of a recent thread on the mailing list for
my local Linux User Group mailing list, and I posted a lengthy
explanation of what I think is wrong with HTML e-mail.

I've included the post here to provide a nice "HTML in e-mail is a Very
Bad Thing (tm)" rant.  I'm fairly new to this mailing list, so I
apologize if this is inappropriate.

> Alex.

-- 
| Christopher
++
| A: No. |
| Q: Should I include quotations after my reply? |
++

From: Christopher Cashell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [olug] ASCII Ribbon Campaign
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 02:02:09 -0500

At Tue, 24 Sep 02, Unidentified Flying Banana Nick Walter, said:
> I'll risk being flamed till I'm crisp . . .

I'll try not to be too firey. . .

> I completely understand and agree with "Respect for open standards" and also
> "No M$ Word docs in e-mail".

It's not just a matter of open standards, but access.  Every e-mail
client in the world can handle plain text e-mail.  Many cannot view
other formats.

> I can't, however, quite agree with "No HTML/RTF in e-mail".  Both HTML
> and (theoretically) RTF are open formats that are well supported in a
> variety of O/Ss.

They are well supported within certain programs in a variety of OS's.
That doesn't mean that every e-mail client is capable of reading them.
Nor should it have to.

> Using these formats is not contributing to anyone's evil monopoly or
> excluding a Linux/*BSD user from reading the document properly.

My primary e-mail client is mutt.  It's a console based program which
works best with plain ASCII text.  It was designed to be an e-mail
client, and nothing else, and it works amazingly well for that.  Now, it
can utilize external programs to view non-text attachments, such as HTML
and RTF, but doing so is slow, cumbersome, and difficult.  Additionally,
trying to reply to HTML/RTF e-mail is very bothersome, particularly with
accurate quoting.

Many (most?) PDA e-mail programs have difficulties with HTML/RTF e-mail
still, as well.

> I myself send and receive quite a bit of HTML e-mail from the linux
> desktop I sit in front of for 8 hours a day at work, and have
> absolutely no problems reading it or sending it . . .

That's good.  I'm glad to hear it.  But don't forget that your
experience doesn't always match up to what other people are doing.  Some
people can't easily send or receive HTML e-mail.

So far, I've concentrated on the fact that some people will be unable to
read HTML/RTF e-mail.  While this is an important fact, and in my
opinion reason enough to not use HTML in e-mail, there are actually a
number of other reasons.

Not everyone is on some sort of broadband Internet connection yet.  In
fact, the vast majority of people aren't.  Sending an e-mail as HTML
will generally at least double the size of the e-mail, and frequently
more.  I've seen some HTML e-mails that were more than 5 times the size
of their plain text equivalents.  Sending an e-mail as both plain text
and HTML will more than triple the size of an e-mail.  For people with
slow connections, this can be quite an inconvenience.

Many people dislike HTML e-mail, even if they can read it fine.  Reading
HTML means that you have to deal with color and font changes, text size
changes, links, tables, etc.  This can be distracting at the best of
times, and downright frustrating at the worst.  Many people like to
change the background color of their HTML e-mails, or change the text
color.  Few of them have any experience with Human Factors or Interface
Design, and most end up making their content more difficult to read.
Lastly, HTML is much harder to translate into braille or reading
devices, making it more difficult for those with vision impairments to
use (I'm familiar with this one because a good friend of mine is legally
blind).

I've set up my computer, and my e-mail client, in order to make reading
e-mail as easy for me as possible.  This only works when I'm allowed to
specify my own colors, fonts, and styles, though.  And don't forget that
while it may look one way on your machine, it may look differently on
mine.  When you have to deal with as much e-mail as I do daily, you do
everything you can to simplify it.

Many people have noticed that the majority of Spam is sent as HTML
e-mail, and that the majority of HTML e-mail is Spam.  For this reason,
many mailing lists and many people filter all HTML e-mail as spam, and
trash it.  In fact, I frequently do this myself, and I'm on numerous
mailing lists which reject HTML e-mails.

As was commented in the message that started this thread, HTML e-mail
can have extremely nasty effects for people who 

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Thomas Ritter]

Am Montag, 3. Februar 2003 01:29 schrieb Alexander Hvostov:

Oops, this first went to Alexander's PM accidentally :(



> That is an MUA problem, not an HTML problem. There have been plenty of

Yes, this just doesn't make it better.

> security holes in MUAs not related to HTML in the past.

Indeed, but again, this doesn't make it better.

> Indeed, but that defeats the purpose of my wish that the world would
> standardize on HTML.

Yep, that's it with high wishes. But HTML is really not a good idea
everywhere, exactly because the use _can_ format his mails. Have you ever
been sent green text with pink background? Okay, that was ICQ, but from the
day I got that message on kxicq has an "ignore colors" setting ;)

If you want formatted text, attach a PDF file. I know, this isn't what you
want and as Handys show, _only_ stupid ill-colored fuzzy blinking and maybe
even beeping shit will be the result of HTML mails everywhere.

But on the other hand, if tables and frames and images and such crap would be
forbidden in such a standard, a MUA could easily parse this to text only...

By the way, the start of this discussion was text width, and this is a real
problem in HTML, as you surely have seen, as stupid users give table or page
widths in pixels so it fits their screen in their resolution. And before
Alexander complains again that this is not an HTML problem, it is.
Technologies and their users belong together and as long as users don't write
proper HTML, you won't get any benefit from using it. So, with HTML mails,
this discussion would be repeated in 2005 maybe about the maximum pixel width
of a signature, with some people crying out loud for not using percent of the
page width and others who try to fulfill their wish that E-Mails are gonna be
Flash(TM) only ;)
It is no problem to write HTML so that it looks okay everywhere, but the
reality shows _a lot_ of opposite examples.

Thomas Ritter

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Tim van Erven]

On Sun, 02/02/2003 04:29 -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 06:26, Thomas Ritter wrote:
>> Am Sonntag, 2. Februar 2003 14:45 schrieb Alexander Hvostov:
>>> I'm sure there are other reasons that make HTML inappropriate for email,
>>> at least for the time being. Anyone care to comment?

* Rendering delays.  Waiting > 1s for each mail to render is
  unacceptable when you have to go through a lot of mail.

* Raising the minimum system requirements.  (Think: small gadgets.)

* Backwards compatibility.

>> Yes, TRUST for one. There were too many HTML-Mail-related security holes in 
>> the past.
> 
> That is an MUA problem, not an HTML problem. There have been plenty of
> security holes in MUAs not related to HTML in the past.

But keeping things simple is the first rule of writing secure code.

Now I would like to see some sort of simple xml scheme to add meta-info
to mails like e.g. about uri's, but html is not it.

-- 
Tim van Erven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  Fingerprint: F6C9 61EE 242C C012
OpenPGP Key ID: 712CB811   36D5 BBF8 6310 D557 712C B811

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Tim van Erven]

On Sun, 02/02/2003 04:30 -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 10:32, bob parker wrote:
>> I have html turned off in my MUA, and instantly trash anything with any html 
>> tag in it.
>> 
>> If I was running anything like spamassassin I think I'd train it to do the 
>> same, assuming that was possible.
> 
> This doesn't say _why_ HTML is bad, though, only that (you think) it's
> bad.

One reason that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that editing html (when
replying) is a PITA compared to editing plain text.

-- 
Tim van Erven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  Fingerprint: F6C9 61EE 242C C012
OpenPGP Key ID: 712CB811   36D5 BBF8 6310 D557 712C B811

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 10:32, bob parker wrote:
> I have html turned off in my MUA, and instantly trash anything with any html 
> tag in it.
> 
> If I was running anything like spamassassin I think I'd train it to do the 
> same, assuming that was possible.

This doesn't say _why_ HTML is bad, though, only that (you think) it's
bad.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 06:26, Thomas Ritter wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 2. Februar 2003 14:45 schrieb Alexander Hvostov:
> > I'm sure there are other reasons that make HTML inappropriate for email,
> > at least for the time being. Anyone care to comment?
> 
> Yes, TRUST for one. There were too many HTML-Mail-related security holes in 
> the past.

That is an MUA problem, not an HTML problem. There have been plenty of
security holes in MUAs not related to HTML in the past.

> The second is, SPAM doesn't get too annoying without HTML view.

I disagree.

> There are Spammers already using JavaScript in mails, this is a BD idea, 
> as we see from the Microsoft Outlook Scripting Experiences (TM) called 
> Melissa etc.

Again, this is an MUA problem, not an HTML (or JavaScript) problem.

> HTML Mails with the HTML Mail in the attachment and a copy in plain text as 
> body should be okay, these should be opened in a browser window.

Indeed, but that defeats the purpose of my wish that the world would
standardize on HTML.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Shawn McMahon]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 05:32:30AM +1100, bob parker said:
> 
> I have html turned off in my MUA, and instantly trash anything with any html 
> tag in it.
> 
> If I was running anything like spamassassin I think I'd train it to do the 
> same, assuming that was possible.

It is, to a point; if they send the right headers, which believe it or
not Outlook Express does, you can flag it with the "CTYPE_JUST_HTML"
flag.

I have mine set to put the email halfway to spam, currently; I may raise
it even more.  So far imparting gentle clue to those who transress has
done the trick more often than not.


-- 
Shawn McMahon | Every time you walk out of the house
FedEx Services| with clothes on, you give up freedom
DSS-MCO Security Lead | for temporary safety.


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Re: Boulder Pledge

[bob parker]

On Mon, 3 Feb 2003 00:45, Alexander Hvostov wrote:

> Unfortunately, there are a few problems with using HTML for email. First
> of all, it consumes much more bandwidth than plain text does (although
> this is slowly becoming irrelevant). Second, many MUAs cannot read it
> (although at least rudimentary HTML support is in many MUAs these days).
>
> I'm sure there are other reasons that make HTML inappropriate for email,
> at least for the time being. Anyone care to comment?
>
> Alex.

I have html turned off in my MUA, and instantly trash anything with any html 
tag in it.

If I was running anything like spamassassin I think I'd train it to do the 
same, assuming that was possible.

Bob

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Marius Gedminas]

On Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 02:01:03AM -0600, Jordan Bettis wrote:
> > Ever noticed how many characters there are on a line of a newspaper or
> > in books?  It may nog be exactly 80, but it's close.  The reason is much
> > longer lines are harder to read.  Try putting some tekst on a page in
> > landscape; it's really annoying.
> 
> Actually, it's closer to 60 characters. That's why LaTeX wraps at
> about 60 characters by default. Typesetters decided a long time ago
> that lines shouldn't be longer than that.

I think that number (60) does not include punctuation nor whitespace.  A
space wasn't a character in traditional typesetting, was it?

> Having a limit to the number of characters per line is very important,
> unfortunately 72 is a bit too wide.

When you wrap lines at 72 columns, you get about 60 letters in a line.

> On the subject of wrapping lines, of course modern mail readers can
> wrap long
> lines. Hell, my TERMINAL can wrap long lines so I don't lose data
> off the
> edge, but that still means things end up looking like crap when it
> finally
> reaches the newline and it's not aligned with edge of the terminal.

Yep, wrapping lines at something wider than 80 columns is a crime.
Either wrap them properly, or not wrap them at all.  BTW there's a
convention of specifying Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed if you
do that.  I think there's an RFC for that, but I don't remember the
details.

Regards,
Marius Gedminas
-- 
Give a man a computer program and you give him a headache,
but teach him to program computers and you give him the power
to create headaches for others for the rest of his life...
R. B. Forest


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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Thomas Ritter]

Am Sonntag, 2. Februar 2003 14:45 schrieb Alexander Hvostov:
> I'm sure there are other reasons that make HTML inappropriate for email,
> at least for the time being. Anyone care to comment?

Yes, TRUST for one. There were too many HTML-Mail-related security holes in 
the past. The second is, SPAM doesn't get too annoying without HTML view.
There are Spammers already using JavaScript in mails, this is a BD idea, 
as we see from the Microsoft Outlook Scripting Experiences (TM) called 
Melissa etc.

HTML Mails with the HTML Mail in the attachment and a copy in plain text as 
body should be okay, these should be opened in a browser window.

Thomas Ritter

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 00:01, Jordan Bettis wrote:
> I think someone suggested that the author doesn't include any newlines
> in the paragraph so the reader's MUA can wrap lines where he
> specifies.

That would be me.

> There are two problems there. First is the previously
> mentioned problem with quoting. I've noticed that MUAs that don't
> insert newlines at the end of their lines are the same ones that
> promote horrible quoting practices (ie, composing the entire previous
> message after a -- Original Message -- line). Honestly, at that point
> the quoted text has become so useless that it might as well have just
> been excluded from the reply to save bandwidth and storage space.

That's not an effect of not wrapping lines at the sender's end; that's a
completely different (and bad, I agree) behavior of MUAs that _happen_
to not wrap lines.

> The other big problem with the no-newlines idea is that the sender
> loses the ability to apply special formatting to her message to make
> ASCII art or tables (for instance). She has no idea where the reader's
> MUA is going to wrap the lines so her neat diagrams and tables could
> end up being a bunch of incomprehensible gibberish to the reader.

She has no idea anyway, as MUAs do generally wrap lines, and
terminal/window widths vary widely. SVG solves this problem nicely for
diagrams, and HTML solves this problem nicely for tables. Use these if
you are going to do things like that.

> The best reason I can think of for wrapping at <=72 characters is that
> the standard requires it. The *only* appropriate place for this
> discussion would be in an ITEF working group for the purpose of
> updating the standard. Until RFC 278 (and all other RFCs that mention
> the 72 character limit) are obsoleted by a standard that suggests
> something different, or until we quit using plaintext messaging, then
> MUAs must wrap the text they send at 72 characters. That's all ye know
> on earth and all ye need know.

HTML again: you can wrap lines in HTML source all you want, but the
rendered output is always displayed fitted to the width of your display.
That way, you get around this limit without breaking any standards.

Unfortunately, there are a few problems with using HTML for email. First
of all, it consumes much more bandwidth than plain text does (although
this is slowly becoming irrelevant). Second, many MUAs cannot read it
(although at least rudimentary HTML support is in many MUAs these days).

I'm sure there are other reasons that make HTML inappropriate for email,
at least for the time being. Anyone care to comment?

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Jordan Bettis]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 10:22:25AM +0100, Tim van Erven wrote:
> On Mon, 27/01/2003 09:25 -0500, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> >> From: Edward Craig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >>Well, some of us still run to terminal mode, but it's all based on
> >> Hollderith cards, I tell you, all because of IBM and the IRS.
> > 
> > Well, there's also a little factor from how many characters in a readable 
> > font size fit across a standard size sheet of paper.  
> 
> Ever noticed how many characters there are on a line of a newspaper or
> in books?  It may nog be exactly 80, but it's close.  The reason is much
> longer lines are harder to read.  Try putting some tekst on a page in
> landscape; it's really annoying.

Actually, it's closer to 60 characters. That's why LaTeX wraps at
about 60 characters by default. Typesetters decided a long time ago
that lines shouldn't be longer than that.

Newspapers are even smaller (about twenty). They're typeset that way
for a reason; such short lines are very easy to read quickly because
your eyes don't have to re-focus multiple times per line.

Having a limit to the number of characters per line is very important,
unfortunately 72 is a bit too wide. That's because, of course, the
standards were written by technical people, not by typesetters. They
set the limit at that width because it would fill their 80 column
terminals nicely and still allow for some quoting, rather than at the
widest width that's easy to read. The terminals were made wider than
would be the most optimum for prose, I imagine, because 60 characters
really isn't wide enough for code or formatted data.

I think 8.5in wide paper being as wide as it is is a horrible shame as
<60 character wide text at a reasonable font size has ridiculously
wide margins. I have noticed that court opinions are written single
column and about 60 characters per line, and many textbooks have wide
pages with very wide outside margins in which they put text and notes,
but people generally just end up stretching the lines out so the page
isn't half-empty. I suspect that the paper is so wide because it was
designed for hand-written messages. When typewriters were invented,
allowing the masses to write typewritten text, everyone just kept
using the same paper on which they used to write by hand.

On the subject of wrapping lines, of course modern mail readers can
wrap long
lines. Hell, my TERMINAL can wrap long lines so I don't lose data
off the
edge, but that still means things end up looking like crap when it
finally
reaches the newline and it's not aligned with edge of the terminal.

I think someone suggested that the author doesn't include any newlines
in the paragraph so the reader's MUA can wrap lines where he
specifies.  There are two problems there. First is the previously
mentioned problem with quoting. I've noticed that MUAs that don't
insert newlines at the end of their lines are the same ones that
promote horrible quoting practices (ie, composing the entire previous
message after a -- Original Message -- line). Honestly, at that point
the quoted text has become so useless that it might as well have just
been excluded from the reply to save bandwidth and storage space.

The other big problem with the no-newlines idea is that the sender
loses the ability to apply special formatting to her message to make
ASCII art or tables (for instance). She has no idea where the reader's
MUA is going to wrap the lines so her neat diagrams and tables could
end up being a bunch of incomprehensible gibberish to the reader. You
therefore end up *losing* functionality without significant
improvement by eliminating the end-of-line newlines.

Another argument I've seen is that few use people use 80 column
terminals anymore so it's stupid to have such a restriction and end up
having all of that wasted space to the right of the text.  Granted,
most people have the *ability* to look at longer lines, but that
doesn't mean they should. I prefer to use that extra space on my
screen to tile terminals so I can look at multiple terminals at a
time. I'm currently typing this in a 80x59 emacs window with two 80x24
line aterms to the right of it. Besides that, if not at 80 characters,
where *should* it wrap? If anything, the previous discussion of line
widths and readability suggests that lines should /shorter/, not
longer.

The best reason I can think of for wrapping at <=72 characters is that
the standard requires it. The *only* appropriate place for this
discussion would be in an ITEF working group for the purpose of
updating the standard. Until RFC 278 (and all other RFCs that mention
the 72 character limit) are obsoleted by a standard that suggests
something different, or until we quit using plaintext messaging, then
MUAs must wrap the text they send at 72 characters. That's all ye know
on earth and all ye need know.

-- 
Jordan Bettis  All things that are,
[President Jimmy] Carter told Americans the truth and they hated him
for it. [T

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Stephen Kitt]

On Fri, 24 Jan 2003 23:35:27 +0100 "Marcelo E. Magallon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 11:37:55AM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>  > 497days * 24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds * 100 ticks per second = 
>  > 4294944000
> 
>  That looks phony... you have four 10 factors on the left side but only
>  three zeroes at the end of your result.

Yup, it should be

~/ echo $[497*24*3600*100]
429408

>  And besides that... why are you multiplying by 100 Hz?

The 497 days' uptime bug is caused by jiffies wrapping around, and the i386
kernel uses 100 jiffies per second.

Stephen

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Anthony DeRobertis]

On Fri, 2003-01-24 at 08:39, Alexander Hvostov wrote:

> BTW, as it turns out, Evolution has a reply to list command, and one
> that seems to work perfectly, but it's quite obscure! Other Evolution
> users take note: there is a 'Reply to List' command in the 'Actions'
> menu, and in each message's context menu.

Yep, it does. Not only is it obscure, but Evolution, unlike every other
gtk app, doesn't let you change command-key combinations on menu items,
so you can't assign it one.



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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Anthony DeRobertis]

On Sat, 2003-01-25 at 05:36, Alexander Hvostov wrote:

> Yeah, assuming uptime is measured in hundredths of a second. Is it?

Yes, the kernel keeps time in jiffies, which on i386 are hundredths of a
second. On Alpha, OTOH, ...


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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Marcelo E. Magallon]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 11:37:55AM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:

 > 497days * 24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds * 100 ticks per second = 
 > 4294944000

 That looks phony... you have four 10 factors on the left side but only
 three zeroes at the end of your result.

 And besides that... why are you multiplying by 100 Hz?

-- 
Marcelo

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Fri, 2003-01-24 at 08:37, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> 497days * 24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds * 100 ticks per second = 
> 4294944000
> 
> 2^32-1 = 
> 4294967295
> 
> Look plausible?

Yeah, assuming uptime is measured in hundredths of a second. Is it?

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Fri, 2003-01-24 at 05:51, Shawn McMahon wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 01:33:08AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> > 
> > RFC 1855 says not to let text run off the end of the line in _talk_, not
> > mail.
> 
> And it also specifies to wrap text at 65 characters in mail.
> 
> Read it again.  Section 2.1, User Guidelines.  Subsection 2.1.1,
> For mail:.  Paragraph 22:
> 
> "Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line with a
> carriage return."

I searched for the word 'wrap'. Go figure. Sorry about that.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 02:30:45AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-01-23 at 11:29, criggie wrote:
> > All we need to do now is have someone mention Nazis or Hitler, then we
> > can invoke Godwins Law  http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GodwinsLaw
> 
> You just did. This thread is not over. Next contestant, please.
> 
> > Ob-debian:
> > I killed my debian laptop after it had run for 497 days - seems that
> > kernel 2.4.3 still has the (2^32)-1 second uptime problem.
> 
> But your uptime was less than 2^26 seconds.

497days * 24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds * 100 ticks per second = 
4294944000

2^32-1 = 
4294967295

Look plausible?

Len Sorensen

Re: Boulder Pledge

[MJ Ray]

Hamish Moffatt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> And as my M-F-T says, I'm explicitly asking you not to.

M-F-T is a non-standard header supported by few clients and displayed by
even fewer.  Why don't you try a header that actually is normally
*displayed* by standards-compliant clients then?  Or even (*gasp*) put it in
your sig?  There's some lines spare there.

MJR

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Shawn McMahon]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 01:33:08AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> 
> RFC 1855 says not to let text run off the end of the line in _talk_, not
> mail.

And it also specifies to wrap text at 65 characters in mail.

Read it again.  Section 2.1, User Guidelines.  Subsection 2.1.1,
For mail:.  Paragraph 22:

"Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line with a
carriage return."


Seems rather unambiguous to me.



-- 
"Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as
the result of an unsolicited email message. Nor will I forward chain
letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers
of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online
community." - Roger Ebert, "The Boulder Pledge"


pgpUKmNt8kCwj.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Fri, 2003-01-24 at 03:47, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 03:24:10AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> > On Thu, 2003-01-23 at 03:39, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > > By the way, netiquette says you should respect Mail-Followups-To as
> > > well.
> > 
> > Considering M-F-T is another of djb's perverse, useless, and/or
> > counterproductive inventions, I find it very difficult to believe that
> > it is somehow required by netiquette to not ignore it.
> 
> Yeah OK Alex, whatever. Very mature.

I don't like his software. I feel that it is, in general, perverse,
useless, and/or counterproductive. I also feel that M-F-T falls into the
'useless' category because it is not standardized or widely implemented,
and the 'counterproductive' category because people assume that it _is_
standardized and widely implemented, resulting in arguments such as this
one.

Does my opinion make me immature?

> Here's one you can't argue with - Debian mailing list policy:
> http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/

Noted.

> For one thing, it says wrap your lines at 80 columns or less.

As you may have noticed, I do, and always have. I was debating whether
or not it's a good idea, but it was a purely academic discussion --
everyone here does anyway.

> Also, do not send carbon copies in reply to list messages unless the
> original poster explicitly requests it.

Done.

BTW, as it turns out, Evolution has a reply to list command, and one
that seems to work perfectly, but it's quite obscure! Other Evolution
users take note: there is a 'Reply to List' command in the 'Actions'
menu, and in each message's context menu.

> And as my M-F-T says, I'm explicitly asking you not to.

In a way I do not, and cannot reasonably be required to, understand.
I've gone over this already. Fortunately, I can safely ignore M-F-T
anyway; see above.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Hamish Moffatt]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 03:24:10AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-01-23 at 03:39, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > By the way, netiquette says you should respect Mail-Followups-To as
> > well.
> 
> Considering M-F-T is another of djb's perverse, useless, and/or
> counterproductive inventions, I find it very difficult to believe that
> it is somehow required by netiquette to not ignore it.

Yeah OK Alex, whatever. Very mature.

Here's one you can't argue with - Debian mailing list policy:
http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/

For one thing, it says wrap your lines at 80 columns or less.
Also, do not send carbon copies in reply to list messages unless the
original poster explicitly requests it.

And as my M-F-T says, I'm explicitly asking you not to.


Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Thu, 2003-01-23 at 03:39, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> By the way, netiquette says you should respect Mail-Followups-To as
> well.

Considering M-F-T is another of djb's perverse, useless, and/or
counterproductive inventions, I find it very difficult to believe that
it is somehow required by netiquette to not ignore it.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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D+++ G e h! !r y
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Thu, 2003-01-23 at 11:29, criggie wrote:
> All we need to do now is have someone mention Nazis or Hitler, then we
> can invoke Godwins Lawhttp://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GodwinsLaw

You just did. This thread is not over. Next contestant, please.

> Ob-debian:
> I killed my debian laptop after it had run for 497 days - seems that
> kernel 2.4.3 still has the (2^32)-1 second uptime problem.

But your uptime was less than 2^26 seconds.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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o-- K+ w--- !O M(+) V-- PS+++ PE-- Y+ PGP+(+++) t* 5-- X-- R tv b- DI
D+++ G e h! !r y
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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Thu, 2003-01-23 at 08:05, Russell Matbouli wrote:
> I'm not ruling out that I may have looked up the wrong RFC though :)

No, you looked up the right one. That's the current definition of the
Internet Message Format (the format of Internet mail).

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[Alexander Hvostov]

On Thu, 2003-01-23 at 05:30, Shawn McMahon wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 02:03:36AM -0800, Alexander Hvostov said:
> > 
> > If your mail reader can't word wrap, you need one that can. If it can,
> > then I don't see what the problem is.
> 
> Primarily, difficulty of quoting.  Not to mention RFC 1855.

RFC 1855 says not to let text run off the end of the line in _talk_, not
mail.

Alex.

-- 
PGP Public Key: http://aoi.dyndns.org/~alex/pgp-public-key

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Re: Boulder Pledge

[John Shepherd]

--- Hugh Saunders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 08:29:26AM +1300,
> criggie wrote:
> > On Thu, 23 Jan 2003 08:50:58 -0500
> > "Shawn McMahon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > All we need to do now is have someone mention
> Nazis or Hitler, then we
> > can invoke Godwins Law
> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GodwinsLaw
> 
> Miller's Paradox: As a network evolves, the
> number of Nazi comparisons
> not forestalled by citation to Godwin's Law
> converges to zero. 

I feel compelled to mention that the invocation
of Godwin's Law prior to the actual denigration
of the thread to the point that Nazi's are
referenced deserves a correlary of its own, at
least in my mindhmm, "Shepherd's
Correlary"...I like the ring of that


in peace,
John

=
"Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the
result of an unsolicited email message. Nor will I forward chain letters,
petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is
my contribution to the survival of the online community." - Roger Ebert, "The
Boulder Pledge"

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