Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Tollef Fog Heen]

* Manoj Srivastava 

|   You missed the point by a lot. OK, here it is all speeled out:

No, I didn't.  I told you that gnus has a way around it.  Which isn't
perfect, but quite good.  And of course it's a hack and a workaround -
I am not saying that setting reply-to on a mailing list is the correct
thing to do.

|  a) I have a reply-to header to allow people to actually respond to
| me, rather than the strange lab set up my laptop happens to be a
| part of

|  b) some idiot destroys the reply-to header by scribbling all over it,
| so my hand crafted reply to information is now lost.
| 
|   Pray tell, how is your Gnus going to recreate that information
|  that was lost?

It can't.  As I wrote, it's quite good, but not able to guess about
information.  However, it should probably look at the X-Reply-To
header, if present (which at least Mailman renames the reply-to header
if it does reply-to munging).

|   You may also consider 
|  a) looking at the X-Mailer header in in this and other messages from
| me, and
|  b) Look at the maintainer field of the Gnus package.

Yes, and?  Of course, I appreciate your work on the gnus package.
Gnus is wonderful, but even though you probably know a lot about gnus,
not everybody else had the knowledge that the One True Mail&Newsreader
had this ability to work around even insane borkenness.

But please, let's stop before this evolves even deeper into a flame
war (or even worse - a religious war about MUAs).

-- 

Tollef Fog Heen
Unix _IS_ user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are.

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Florian Hinzmann]

On 03-Jan-2001 Philip Brown wrote:

>> "Reply-to" is meant to send a message back to the person who wrote the
>> first one, not to someone they wrote the message to.
> 
> reply-to is meant to direct where you should send "replies to".

Reply-To is meant to direct where you should send "replies to"
if you want to send a private mail to the originator of the mail.


> And in the case of the debian mailing lists, you should "reply to" the
> list.

If you want to send to the list you should "reply to" the list only.
If you want to send a mail the the originator of a mail you are 
allowed to do that. And you may need to honour the Reply-To-Header to 
reach him.


  greetings
 Florian



-- 
  Florian Hinzmann  private: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
 Debian: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP-Key fingerprint: DD 61 74 34 04 FB 8A BD  43 54 83 38 0C 82 EF B1

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[John Goerzen]

It is "unstable".  Get over it.

 *PLONK*

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Sven Burgener]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 07:02:47PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote:
> i would recommend the use of either testing or unstable or stable
> depending upon the particular requirements of the situation.
> 
> stable is good when you don't need or want any change at all.
> 
> testing is good when you want/need to be mostly up-to-date with the
> latest versions but don't have the time to deal with packaging errors.
> 
> unstable is good when you want/need to be up-to-date and have both the
> time and the skill to deal with any problems that may arise.

Sure.

> however that won't be much use if nobody uses 'unstable' as
> unstable packages won't get installed and tested, so bug reports won't
> be filed, so unstable packages will move into testing without actually
> having been tested by anyone.

Quite true. Developers should at least be running unstable...

Sven

BTW: why is your Mail-Follow-Up-To broken? It should point to the list
 only.  Use 'subscribe ' if you're using mutt.
 My mutt intended to CC: you...

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Tollef" == Tollef Fog Heen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Tollef> * Manoj Srivastava 
 >> How do you suggest I reply to sender if someone scribbles all
 >> over the reply-to header that the sender has set (in case the from
 >> header is invalid)? 

 Tollef> you use gnus, gnus is able to do this in a sane manner.

 Tollef> from 'info gnus', under Group Parameters

 Tollef> `broken-reply-to'
 Tollef>  Elements like `(broken-reply-to . t)' signals that `Reply-To'
 Tollef>  headers in this group are to be ignored.  This can be useful if
 Tollef>  you're reading a mailing list group where the listserv has 
inserted
 Tollef>  `Reply-To' headers that point back to the listserv itself.  This 
is
 Tollef>  broken behavior.  So there!

You missed the point by a lot. OK, here it is all speeled out:
 a) I have a reply-to header to allow people to actually respond to
me, rather than the strange lab set up my laptop happens to be a
part of
 b) some idiot destroys the reply-to header by scribbling all over it,
so my hand crafted reply to information is now lost.

Pray tell, how is your Gnus going to recreate that information
 that was lost?

You may also consider 
 a) looking at the X-Mailer header in in this and other messages from
me, and
 b) Look at the maintainer field of the Gnus package.
 
manoj
-- 
 Davis's Dictum: Problems that go away by themselves, come back by
 themselves.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Steve Greenland]

On 04-Jan-01, 15:24 (CST), John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
> On 4 Jan 2001, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> 
> MS>   He may have, as I do, intend to reply to the list, so everyone
> MS> can see the conversation. (Quite properly, my MUA ignored the reply
> MS> to on a list reply; had I cared to respond to you personally, the
> MS> reply-to header would have been respected).
> 
> Yeah, but he was making the point that the reply-to header broke things
> like listreplies.  They still seem to work

Manoj was correct about my intent. The point I was making was
that munging "Reply-To:" to point to the list breaks *personal*
replies. Sorry that wasn't clear.

Steve
-- 
Steve Greenland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
(Please do not CC me on mail sent to this list; I subscribe to and read
every list I post to.)

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Tollef Fog Heen]

* David Greene 

| On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:
| 
| > The problem is L4M3RZ using that broken piece of non-free shit PINE, which
| > doesn't appear to respect *any* conventions of netiquette.
| 
| Is there a free mailer to replace "that broken piece of non-free shit
| PINE" that supports IMAP?

mew, spruce, gnus, wl, wanderlust2, postilion, balsa, tkrat, at least.

-- 

Tollef Fog Heen
Unix _IS_ user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are.

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Tollef Fog Heen]

* Manoj Srivastava 

|   How do you suggest I reply to sender if someone scribbles all
|  over the reply-to header that the sender has set (in case the from
|  header is invalid)? 

you use gnus, gnus is able to do this in a sane manner.

from 'info gnus', under Group Parameters

`broken-reply-to'
 Elements like `(broken-reply-to . t)' signals that `Reply-To'
 headers in this group are to be ignored.  This can be useful if
 you're reading a mailing list group where the listserv has inserted
 `Reply-To' headers that point back to the listserv itself.  This is
 broken behavior.  So there!

-- 

Tollef Fog Heen
Unix _IS_ user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are.

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[D-Man]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 03:12:56PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, D-Man wrote:
> 
> >On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:53:04PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> >> mutt allegedly shares code with pine...
>^^
> >> 
> >
> >That would be very strange since mutt's author was a part of the elm
> >group.  Wouldn't mutt then have started with the elm code base?  (or
> >at least part of it)
> 
> You're a day late and a dollar short.  Please note that you didn't have to
> COPY my genotype to SHARE 99% of it  

The other messages hadn't arrived when I sent mine.

BTW, You also ignored my headers by sending me 2 copies of the mail,
 however, unlike some people I can deal with it

-D

Re: mailing-list mgmt (was: Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long))

[Tal Danzig]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 04:22:17PM -0800, Joey Hess wrote:
> The purpose of this mailing list is to facilitate communication between
> developers working on Debian.
> 
> As such, most of this thread is offtopic. Please take it elsewhere.
> 

Agreed.  I've been waiting for someone to say this.

- Tal

> -- 
> see shy jo
> 
> 
> -- 
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 

-- 
/--\  /--\
| Tal Danzig  [EMAIL PROTECTED] |--| Linux by Libranet|
|  |--| The TOP Desktop  |
|  |--|  http://www.libranet.com |
\--/  \--/

Re: mailing-list mgmt (was: Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long))

[Joey Hess]

Philip Brown wrote:
> The primary purpose of mailing lists like debian-devel, is for discussion
> ON THE LIST.

The purpose of this mailing list is to facilitate communication between
developers working on Debian.

As such, most of this thread is offtopic. Please take it elsewhere.

-- 
see shy jo

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Craig Sanders]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 10:43:05AM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> [ Craig Sanders writes ]
> > On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:26:25AM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> > > And in the case of the debian mailing lists, you should "reply to" the
> > > list.
> > some replies should go to the list, and some replies should be private.
> > it's up to the person writing the reply to make that decision, not the
> > list software.
> 
> But the primary point of a mailing list is for discussion ON THE LIST.
> Do you want to disagree with that?

yes, of course i will disagree with that because it's wrong.

there are as many primary purposes of mailing lists as there are mailing
lists.

> So headers should be optimized for group discussion.
> Replying to individuals is a secondary function.

that's for the person writing the reply to decide, not you and not the
list operator.

> >setting reply-to back to the list just makes it difficult (or in
> >some cases impossible) to reply privately. ...  however reply-to
> >munging by list software does have the serious disadvantage of
> >replacing any Reply-To header created by the original author of a
> >message.
>
> So what, if the mailing software rewrites From: to have any reply-to
> information from the original sender? Then the information is still
> available.

so your proposed solution to the evils of header munging is to do more
header munging in an attempt to correct the problem?  what a great idea!

there are better solutions, including the Mail-Followup-To header which
has been documented and in use for years. all decent MUAs should have
implemented it by now. if they haven't then they are inadequate.

> > the Reply-To header exists for the *person* who originally sent the
> > message to be able to direct replies to their preferred destination. it
> > is not there so that mailing lists can screw with it.
> 
> So your argument is
>  "A mailing list is not a person, so it can't use reply-to:".
> Bad argument.

no, my argument is that if a list sets the reply-to header then it makes it
difficult (or impossible in some cases) to reply privately to the author of
a message, so it should not do it.

not munging the Reply-To header also follows the principle of doing
least harm. if a reply is accidentally sent privately, no harm is done -
just forward the message to the list if it matters.  OTOH if a private
reply is accidentally sent to the list (which happens all too often when
Reply-To points back to the list) then harm is done with no possibility
of undoing it because confidential or embarrasing material is now posted
(and probably archived) publicly.

setting Reply-To back to the list is brain-damaged and moronic behaviour
on the part of the list operator.

> [http://faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html]
> 
> rfc822, section 4.4.3, EXPLICITLY MENTIONS 
> "text message teleconferencing" groups 
>   (eg mailing lists) as potential users of the reply-to header,
> expressly for the purpose of having "reply" direct email to the list

yes, and the people who wrote that (and many others) have since
realised and stated that it is broken and causes many more problems
than it solves. that's why there are other documents recommending the
Followup-To and Mail-Followup-To and other headers.

this has been discussed many times over many years.  you're not adding
anything new to the discussion.


> And finally, example A.3.3 EXPLICITLY shows that "reply-to" is NOT
> exclusively for "who wrote the message". It is for "Where do you want
> replies to normally go to"

what's your point?

it is for the person who wrote the message to direct where replies are
to go.


craig

--
craig sanders

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[John Galt]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, D-Man wrote:

D>On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:53:04PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
D>> mutt allegedly shares code with pine...
   ^^
D>> 
D>
D>That would be very strange since mutt's author was a part of the elm
D>group.  Wouldn't mutt then have started with the elm code base?  (or
D>at least part of it)

You're a day late and a dollar short.  Please note that you didn't have to
COPY my genotype to SHARE 99% of it  

D>> -- 
D>> Pardon me, but you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a
D>> damn.
D>
D>Oh, yeah, you got that part right.

Jeez!  OH NO!  I've been signature flamed<> email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
D>> 
D>
D>-D
D>
D>
D>

-- 
Pardon me, but you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a
damn.
email [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[D-Man]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:53:04PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> mutt allegedly shares code with pine...
> 

That would be very strange since mutt's author was a part of the elm
group.  Wouldn't mutt then have started with the elm code base?  (or
at least part of it)

> -- 
> Pardon me, but you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a
> damn.

Oh, yeah, you got that part right.

> email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 

-D

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Ethan" == Ethan Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Ethan> On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 03:34:26AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 >> You prove my point. Resorting to invective is the last refuge
 >> of the incompetent. This is your second demonstration of incompetence
 >> in a public forum in 24 hours; and I suspect your drop in the
 >> estimation of the readers of this mailing list is far worse than any
 >> response in kind I could indulge in.

 Ethan> if only we could all be as perfect as you.

Considering that I am far from a paragon of virtue, calling me
 perfect (even as a pejorative) does indicate you have a ways to go ..

 Ethan> I has simply made the statement that Gnus users were commonly
 Ethan> ignoring M-F-To

Either
 a) your memory is playing tricks with you
 b) english is not your first language,
 c) you have a problem with embelishing the truth. 

This is what you did say:
==
 Ethan> pine is a lost cause anyway.  i was thinking of GNUs which seems to be
 Ethan> the other big offender of ignorage of M-F-To.  (i am not sure if it
 Ethan> respects Mail-Copies-To: never i just started adding that.)  
==

Had you stated that it was a user issue I would not have
 responded (you may well be correct there).

Incidentally, Gnus was one of the earliest adopters of MCT, if
 not the originator (my recollection of the mailing list traffic is
 faulty here)

 Ethan> and rather then kindly point out that old versions did but the
 Ethan> current one no longer has this problem like another poster did

Another poster? I don't seem to have a copy of this message. I
 would be interested in knowing when they thik Gnus started supporting
 MFT and MCT. 

Indeed, discussion on the Gnus list about MFT predates the
 drums proposal, having started on Thu, Nov 27, 1997. On 10 Feb 1998
 Lars said he thought it was a good idea. So Gnus started supporting
 it about the time the draft standard appeared -- so I would be
 interested in knowing what previous version of gnus that postdates
 the draft standard that did _not_ support MFT.

 Ethan> you had to be insulting and condescending.  well i returned
 Ethan> the favor.

While being a pompous ass, I also try and research blanket
 statements (other big offender) in an attempt at accuracy and
 correctness. And I try not to resort to invective.  

manoj
-- 
 A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends,
 who demanded, "Was she not chaste?  Was she not fair?  Was she not
 fruitful?" holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new
 and well made. Yet, added he, none of you can tell where it pinches
 me. Plutarch
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[John Galt]

On 4 Jan 2001, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

MS>>>"John" == John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
MS>
MS> SG> Wrong. This would break my MUA so that "reply" no longer sends mail back
MS> SG> to the originator, as it is supposed to do.
MS>
MS> John> Well, you replied to the list alone despite my reply-to, so I guess 
your
MS> John> actions don't match your words...  
MS>
MS> He may have, as I do, intend to reply to the list, so everyone
MS> can see the conversation. (Quite properly, my MUA ignored the reply
MS> to on a list reply; had I cared to respond to you personally, the
MS> reply-to header would have been respected).

Yeah, but he was making the point that the reply-to header broke things
like listreplies.  They still seem to work

MS> manoj
MS>

-- 
Pardon me, but you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a
damn.
email [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Richard Klinda]

>>>>> "Br" == Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:


  >> Let's find out.  Miles, Branden, what MUA's do you use?=20

  Br> How about reading my headers, which is all I asked for in the first
  Br> place?

You shouldn't forget people who reads this list as digest, we see only the
following headers:

,
| X-From-Line: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  Thu Jan  4 01:58:07 2001
| Date: Wed Jan  3 23:24:16 2001 +0100
| From: Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
| Subject: Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)
| Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1;
| protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="rqzD5py0kzyFAOWN"
| Content-Disposition: inline
| Lines: 40
`

-- 
ignotus
Real programmers don't comment their code.
It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"John" == John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 SG> Wrong. This would break my MUA so that "reply" no longer sends mail back
 SG> to the originator, as it is supposed to do.

 John> Well, you replied to the list alone despite my reply-to, so I guess your
 John> actions don't match your words...  

He may have, as I do, intend to reply to the list, so everyone
 can see the conversation. (Quite properly, my MUA ignored the reply
 to on a list reply; had I cared to respond to you personally, the
 reply-to header would have been respected).

manoj
-- 
 Whenever one word or letter can change the entire meaning of a
 sentence, the probability of an error being made will be in direct
 proportion to the embarrassment it will cause.  -- Bob Considine
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C

Re: mailing-list mgmt (was: Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long))

[Philip Brown]

[ Thomas 'Mike' Michlmayr writes ]
> On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 10:43:05 -0800,
> Philip Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > So headers should be optimized for group discussion.
> > Replying to individuals is a secondary function.
> 
> not at all. replying to individuals is an essentail function that is no
> less important than replying to the list. just because your MUA can't make
> the distinction without major help does not mean that everybody else with
> a capable MUA has to suffer.

You are distorting facts.
You are not talking about "capable MUA"s, you are talking about 
"MUAs which happen to share the features I like".
Features which are not official standards like rfc822 is.


> > And finally, [rfc822] example A.3.3 EXPLICITLY shows that "reply-to" is
> > NOT exclusively for "who wrote the message". It is for
> > "Where do you want replies to normally go to"
> 
> my ML-software do not have a builtin AI to determine where replies of a
> specific recipient should normally go.

Very funny. But not relevant.

The primary purpose of mailing lists like debian-devel, is for discussion
ON THE LIST. This is implicitly a part of the debian
Developer's Reference, about "Dont Cc people on the mailing list unless
they specifically ask for one".
It also explicitly says, "Anyone who posts to a mailing list should read it
to see the responses."
[http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/developers-reference/ch-servers.html#s-mailing-lists]

Therefore, replies, aka "responses" to email on debian-devel should
"normally go" to the list.

mutt's history (was: Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long))

[Thomas 'Mike' Michlmayr]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 11:49:45 -0700,
John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[...]
> Let's see:  Pine Is Nearly (no-longer lately...) Elm, you say that mutt
> actually derives from elm, yet they don't share code.  Um, yeah, sure,
> whatever.  BTW from the LG article about mutt...

AFAICT mutt does not share code with pine.

[...]
> Presumably, the Mutt team at least looked at Pine's implementation if for
> no other reason than to see what to avoid.

initial versions of mutt used the c-client library, that pine is also based
on. but once michael elkins (at that time the sole author) realized that
a number of mutt's goals [0] could not be achived with c-client, that part
of mutt was rewritten. since c-client is gone, no code of pine that i know
of is in mutt. all that must have happened in early 1996.

now, features is a different discussion. when i proposed the variable
keybinding feature to michael, i think i got the idea from pine. or at least
i wanted to accomodate some of our pine l^Husers who would refuse mutt with
its default keybindings. but the code is certainly michael's, based on my
prototype.


[0] most notably the PGP/MIME support. c-client and/or IMAP does evil things
to those mime-parts.

-- 
Thomas 'Mike' Michlmayr  | ignorami: n: The BOFH art of folding problem 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> |   lusers into representational shapes.



pgpGGc2uoUR9r.pgp
Description: PGP signature

mailing-list mgmt (was: Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long))

[Thomas 'Mike' Michlmayr]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 10:43:05 -0800,
Philip Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[...]
> But the primary point of a mailing list is for discussion ON THE LIST.
> Do you want to disagree with that?

partially. there are enough announce-only and moderated MLs.

> So headers should be optimized for group discussion.
> Replying to individuals is a secondary function.

not at all. replying to individuals is an essentail function that is no
less important than replying to the list. just because your MUA can't make
the distinction without major help does not mean that everybody else with
a capable MUA has to suffer.

and reply-to's on MLs are evil anyway:
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

[...]
> So what, if the mailing software rewrites From: to have any reply-to
> information from the original sender? Then the information is still
> available.

i'm still of the opinion that ML-software should have as minimal an impact
on mails as possible. munging From: or other headers is not what i consider
as minimal.

[...]
> And finally, example A.3.3 EXPLICITLY shows that "reply-to" is
> NOT exclusively for "who wrote the message". It is for
> "Where do you want replies to normally go to"

my ML-software do not have a builtin AI to determine where replies of a
specific recipient should normally go.

-- 
Thomas 'Mike' Michlmayr  | ignorami: n: The BOFH art of folding problem 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> |   lusers into representational shapes.



pgp7diJiLi44L.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[John Galt]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Steve Greenland wrote:

SG>On 03-Jan-01, 22:53 (CST), John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
SG>> On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:
SG>> 
SG>> > I didn't say there was.  Does "Mail-Copies-To:" begin with an X?
SG>> 
SG>> RFC 822 this time:
SG>> 
SG>> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html
SG>> 
SG>> and Mail-Copies-To: fails to rear it's ugly head, so really should be
SG>> under user-defined fields, which are supposed to be X-
SG>
SG>Uh, there have been headers added since 822.
SG>
SG>> > 
SG>> > Why should I, when it would be no different from my From: header?
SG>> 
SG>> It would be in your case: 
SG>> 
SG>> Reply-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
SG>> 
SG>> would avoid the unnecessary CCs, which is what I assume you want to do.  
SG>
SG>Wrong. This would break my MUA so that "reply" no longer sends mail back
SG>to the originator, as it is supposed to do.

Well, you replied to the list alone despite my reply-to, so I guess your
actions don't match your words...  

SG>
SG>> The difference between pine and mutt is that you KNOW the overflows in
SG>> pinemutt allegedly shares code with pine...
SG>
SG>Extremely unlikely, as it originated from elm.

Let's see:  Pine Is Nearly (no-longer lately...) Elm, you say that mutt
actually derives from elm, yet they don't share code.  Um, yeah, sure,
whatever.  BTW from the LG article about mutt...

http://www.ssc.com/lg/issue14/mutt.html

   Michael Elkins is a programmer who at one time was involved in the
   development of the venerable mail-client, Elm. He had some ideas which
   he would have liked to include in Elm but for whatever reasons the
   other Elm developers weren't receptive. So he struck out on his own,
   creating a text-mode mailer which incorporates features from a variety
   of other programs. These include other mailers such as Elm and Pine,
  
   as well as John Davis's Slrn newsreader. As an indication of the
   program's hybrid nature he has named it Mutt. Although the mailer
   began as an amalgamation of features from other programs, it has begun
   to assume an identity of its own.

Presumably, the Mutt team at least looked at Pine's implementation if for
no other reason than to see what to avoid.

SG>Steve
SG>

-- 
Pardon me, but you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a
damn.
email [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Philip Brown]

[ Craig Sanders writes ]
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:26:25AM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> > And in the case of the debian mailing lists, you should "reply to" the
> > list.
> 
> bullshit.
> 
> some replies should go to the list, and some replies should be private.
> it's up to the person writing the reply to make that decision, not the
> list software.

But the primary point of a mailing list is for discussion ON THE LIST.
Do you want to disagree with that?
So headers should be optimized for group discussion.
Replying to individuals is a secondary function.


> setting reply-to back to the list just makes it difficult (or in
> some cases impossible) to reply privately. ...
> however reply-to munging by list software does have the
> serious disadvantage of replacing any Reply-To header created by the
> original author of a message.

So what, if the mailing software rewrites From: to have any reply-to
information from the original sender? Then the information is still
available.


> the Reply-To header exists for the *person* who originally sent the
> message to be able to direct replies to their preferred destination. it
> is not there so that mailing lists can screw with it.

So your argument is
 "A mailing list is not a person, so it can't use reply-to:".
Bad argument.

[http://faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html]

rfc822, section 4.4.3, EXPLICITLY MENTIONS 
"text message teleconferencing" groups 
  (eg mailing lists) as potential users of the reply-to header,
expressly for the purpose of having "reply" direct email to the list

And finally, example A.3.3 EXPLICITLY shows that "reply-to" is
NOT exclusively for "who wrote the message". It is for
"Where do you want replies to normally go to"

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Daniel Burrows]

  (Not Cced :) )

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 02:15:42PM -0500, D-Man <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was heard 
to say:
> What if I set my Reply-To header to be the address I was sending To?
> How would you reply to me?  ;-)

  To make a totally pointless observation: mutt lets you override Reply-To
when you use the standard "reply" function.

  Daniel

-- 
/- Daniel Burrows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -\
| "But what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a crude |
|  form of natural selection.  One day, a tortoise will learn to fly."|
|   -- Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_  |
\--- (if (not (understand-this)) (go-to http://www.schemers.org)) /

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 11:45:50AM -0500, David Greene wrote:

> On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:
> 
> > The problem is L4M3RZ using that broken piece of non-free shit PINE, which
> > doesn't appear to respect *any* conventions of netiquette.
> 
> Is there a free mailer to replace "that broken piece of non-free shit
> PINE" that supports IMAP?

Package: mutt
Priority: standard
Section: mail
[...]
Description: Text-based mailreader supporting MIME, GPG, PGP and threading.
 Mutt is a sophisticated text-based Mail User Agent. Some highlights:
[...]
  o Advanced IMAP client supporting Kerberos authentication (and in some
situations SSL encryption).
  o POP3 support.
[...]

-- 
 - mdz

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho]

On 20010103T212649-0600, Adam Heath wrote:
> Perl is a required package, there is no need to list the dependency.

That it is required is not relevant. That it is a virtual essential
package is.

-- 
%%% Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho % [EMAIL PROTECTED] % http://www.iki.fi/gaia/ %%%

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Wichert Akkerman]

Previously Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote:
> Pine also originated from elm, so theoretically it's possible (although
> I think both are complete rewrites).

mutt is a complete rewrite and shouldn't share core with elm.

Wichert.

-- 
   
 / Generally uninteresting signature - ignore at your convenience  \
| [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://www.liacs.nl/~wichert/ |
| 1024D/2FA3BC2D 576E 100B 518D 2F16 36B0  2805 3CB8 9250 2FA3 BC2D |

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho]

On 20010104T100704-0600, Steve Greenland wrote:
> On 03-Jan-01, 22:53 (CST), John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
> > The difference between pine and mutt is that you KNOW the overflows in
> > pinemutt allegedly shares code with pine...
> 
> Extremely unlikely, as it originated from elm.

Pine also originated from elm, so theoretically it's possible (although
I think both are complete rewrites).

-- 
%%% Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho % [EMAIL PROTECTED] % http://www.iki.fi/gaia/ %%%

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Tal Danzig]

On Wed, 3 Jan 2001 18:59:47 -0800, Joey Hess wrote:

>   
>   Please bear in mind that many of us have been running unstable since
>   before Debian was released (at all), and fondly remember many fun little
>   incidents like ld.so completly breaking. Tends to put minor breakage in
>   perspective.

Or the time that makedev wiped out my entire /dev directory. :)


-- 
/--\  /--\
| Tal Danzig  [EMAIL PROTECTED] |--| Linux by Libranet|
| Homepage:|--| The TOP Desktop  |
| http://awpti.org/~tal|--|  http://www.libranet.com |
\--/  \--/

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[David Greene]

On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:

> The problem is L4M3RZ using that broken piece of non-free shit PINE, which
> doesn't appear to respect *any* conventions of netiquette.

Is there a free mailer to replace "that broken piece of non-free shit
PINE" that supports IMAP?

 -Dave

-- 

"Some little people have music in them, but Fats, he was all music,
 and you know how big he was."  --  James P. Johnson

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Steve Greenland]

On 03-Jan-01, 22:53 (CST), John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
> On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:
> 
> > I didn't say there was.  Does "Mail-Copies-To:" begin with an X?
> 
> RFC 822 this time:
> 
> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html
> 
> and Mail-Copies-To: fails to rear it's ugly head, so really should be
> under user-defined fields, which are supposed to be X-

Uh, there have been headers added since 822.

> > 
> > Why should I, when it would be no different from my From: header?
> 
> It would be in your case: 
> 
> Reply-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> 
> would avoid the unnecessary CCs, which is what I assume you want to do.  

Wrong. This would break my MUA so that "reply" no longer sends mail back
to the originator, as it is supposed to do.

> The difference between pine and mutt is that you KNOW the overflows in
> pinemutt allegedly shares code with pine...

Extremely unlikely, as it originated from elm.

Steve
-- 
Steve Greenland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
(Please do not CC me on mail sent to this list; I subscribe to and read
every list I post to.)

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Mark Brown]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 07:27:57AM -0800, Jim Lynch wrote:

> But in truth, you should be -filing- bugs against things you find
> wrong, for the following reason: not all developers read debian-devel,
> so your concerns, as important as they may be, may or may not reach
> the responsible parties, and without a subject line more suggestive of

Or may see it but not remember about it when they update their package.

It's not like we have a bug tracking system purely for ornamentation -
it's there to help us track bugs.  Given a well defined mechanism for
bringing problems to people's attention it seems silly not to use it.

-- 
Mark Brown  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]   (Trying to avoid grumpiness)
http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/
EUFShttp://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Jim Lynch]

A hobby server? OK; sorry: I saw "server" and read that as "important
server". 

But in truth, you should be -filing- bugs against things you find
wrong, for the following reason: not all developers read debian-devel,
so your concerns, as important as they may be, may or may not reach
the responsible parties, and without a subject line more suggestive of
each problem (as in the subject line of this note), you can't
guarantee the right person will actually read the note. This erupted
into a mild flamewar (well, two if you count the one about the email
header issues wrt who to reply to), which some people will ignore, and
again this adds to the probability of the appropriate person reading
the note.

But, and yet again, you can't do much complaining about the dist in its
unstable form for the simple reason that you aren't seeing what it will
be like when it is stable. There will always be situations in unstable 
debian (like it or not) under which two packages that are supposed to
cooperate are out of sync, version-wise. In stable, that -shouldn't-
happen. If it does, it's a bug.

Perhaps the best thing to do when you find a version skew between two
packages, is to contact both maintainers, and ask them together what 
the situation is. Perhaps one has a package stashed somewhere that would
solve one or more of your problems; perhaps the two maints are unaware
of each other, and your note could then serve to encourage them to
begin working together on a solution. The usual thing that happens a
lot, is both packages were uploaded, but one didn't make it that day;
looking in incoming might reveal what you're looking for.

-Jim

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Jim Lynch]

> 
> Date:Thu, 04 Jan 2001 11:06:43 +1100
> To:  Jim Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> cc:  Erik Hollensbe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, debian-devel@lists.debian.org,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From:Craig Sanders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)
> 
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 06:16:17AM -0800, Jim Lynch wrote:
> > If you want to advocate the use of unstable software, please be my
> > guest... but not on #debian. it changes daily, and can potentially
> > break every day, potentially disasterously. So -no-. It's NOT
> > appropriate to tell people to run servers on unstable software.
> 
> if i ever happen to be on #debian and someone has a problem where the
> best solution is to upgrade to unstable (either a full dist-upgrade or
> just selected packages) then i certainly will recommend exactly that.

So long as you warn the person about (1) general unstability and (2)
unstability produced by upgrading, no problem. Fail to do that (I don't
think you will) and you represent a problem. I will act in some way if
I see it.

> it is *always* appropriate to provide a good solution to a problem -
> whether it accords with your opinion or not.

That's fairly general, enough to be overbroad and out of this context
and in some other; in that other, broader context, of course I agree.

-Jim

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Erik Hollensbe]

THANK YOU. Finally, an answer that I can use.

I will look into contributing towards this package.

-- 
Erik Hollensbe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Programmer, Powells Internet Division
"I respect a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he is wrong."
- Malcolm X

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Matt Zimmerman wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 01, 2001 at 11:06:18PM -0800, Erik Hollensbe wrote:
>
> > apt-get and it's kin need more simple getopt-style flags that allow
> > overriding of certain things, mainly conflicts. Also, an option to
> > actually view what's being upgraded before you download 250 packages that
> > are only going to break your system would be nice as well.
>
> I assume you already are using apt-get's -u/--show-upgraded flag.  Beyond 
> that,
> check out apt-listchanges, in the package of the same name.  Currently, you
> need to download the .deb's first, but even if there is a breakage, you would
> have ended up downloading them eventually anyway.  Eventually, apt-listchanges
> will be able to show changelogs before downloading any packages.
>
>

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Mark Brown]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 08:44:49PM -0500, Adam McKenna wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 08:41:06PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:

> > If I'm already replying to a list, I'm not going to waste bandwidth by
> > mailing you personally as well.

> So what you're saying is that you're purposely ignoring people's
> Mail-Followup-To when it suits you, while insisting that others abide by 
> yours?  That sounds kind of ridiculous to me.

OTOH, the behaviour in the absence of any Mail-Followup-To: should be to
reply to either the list or the sender but not both.

-- 
Mark Brown  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]   (Trying to avoid grumpiness)
http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/
EUFShttp://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Ethan Benson]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 03:34:26AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

>   You prove my point. Resorting to invective is the last refuge
>  of the incompetent. This is your second demonstration of incompetence
>  in a public forum in 24 hours; and I suspect your drop in the
>  estimation of the readers of this mailing list is far worse than any
>  response in kind I could indulge in.

if only we could all be as perfect as you.   I has simply made the
statement that Gnus users were commonly ignoring M-F-To and rather
then kindly point out that old versions did but the current one no
longer has this problem like another poster did you had to be
insulting and condescending.  well i returned the favor.

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/


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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Ethan" == Ethan Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Ethan> On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 02:48:46AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 >> That just demonstrates you have no idea what you are talking about.

 Ethan> oh please.  someone already pointed out to me that older
 Ethan> versions of Gnus ignored M-F-To but the current one does not.

Considering the mail-followup-to stuff was only introduced in
 a failed standards attempt in 1998, it is not surprising that
 versions of Gnus before that (not having the gift of prescience) did
 not honour that. 

 Ethan> go fuck off.

You prove my point. Resorting to invective is the last refuge
 of the incompetent. This is your second demonstration of incompetence
 in a public forum in 24 hours; and I suspect your drop in the
 estimation of the readers of this mailing list is far worse than any
 response in kind I could indulge in.

manoj
-- 
 There are times when truth is stranger than fiction and lunch time is
 one of them.
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: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Jan 01, 2001 at 11:06:18PM -0800, Erik Hollensbe wrote:

> apt-get and it's kin need more simple getopt-style flags that allow
> overriding of certain things, mainly conflicts. Also, an option to
> actually view what's being upgraded before you download 250 packages that
> are only going to break your system would be nice as well.

I assume you already are using apt-get's -u/--show-upgraded flag.  Beyond that,
check out apt-listchanges, in the package of the same name.  Currently, you
need to download the .deb's first, but even if there is a breakage, you would
have ended up downloading them eventually anyway.  Eventually, apt-listchanges
will be able to show changelogs before downloading any packages.

-- 
 - mdz

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Peter Makholm]

John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

PLEASE DON'T CC ME. I'M ON THE LIST

> FYI 28 (aka RFC 1855) is the standard.

Strictly speaking it's is only a standard if it is on the Standard
Track and RFC1855 isn't. It is only an informational RFC.

PLEASE DON'T CC ME. I'M ON THE LIST

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Ethan Benson]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 02:48:46AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

>   That just demonstrates you have no idea what you are talking about.

oh please.  someone already pointed out to me that older versions of
Gnus ignored M-F-To but the current one does not.

go fuck off.

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/


pgpBNlHDjb9vb.pgp
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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[John Galt]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Craig Sanders wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:11:50PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> > On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > > Mail-Followup-To is the correct header to use.
> > 
> > Mail-Followup-To isn't even a registered header!  The closest thing to a
> > registry that RFC822 implies is in the hands of SRI International is
> 
> the thing about internet standards such as the RFCs is that they tell
> you what you *must* do, and what you *must not* do. as long as you
> follow those rules faithfully you are free to implement as many other
> good ideas as you like.

True, but you aren't free to bitch at people who follow the RFC's for
their failures (Branden...).  In fact, the header Branden's bitching
about is an animal of a wholly different color: the Mail-copies-to: header

Oh, BTW, I decided in the middle of this thread to finally throw in a
reply-to header.  You managed to email both myself and the list, so the
reply-to won't prevent people from privately emailing Branden: it didn't
prevent you from CCing the list (it's Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED],
FWIW)--you see, I DO prefer CCs of list mail: it allows me to pay extra
attention to list mail directed at me.
 
> > http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/ietf/mail-headers/
> > 
> > (jpalme is as much of a member as one can be of the IETF RFC822 WG)
> > 
> > which says that a "Followup-To:" header is from RFC 1036, but RFC 1036 is
> > for USENET messages, not email.  The only thing I can think of is that
> > somebody liked the usenet idea of the followup-to: and just appended a
> > mail on it.  Just because somebody breaks the standards does NOT mean that
> > everybody should.  
> 
> well done! it only took you a few years to catch on. that header has
> been in common usage for several years.
> 
> btw, it's interesting that you mention Jacob Palme. take a look at the
> following document written by him in November 1997:
> 
> http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/98dec/I-D/draft-ietf-drums-mail-followup-to-00.txt

Curious he doesn't have in his updated RFC2097 (the URL I used)... Well, I
was looking for it, I found it (with your help).  Still, M-F-T is designed
for GROUP replies, not individual--from 2.2

The "Mail-Followup-To" header can be inserted by the sender of a
message to indicate suggestions on where replies, intended for the
group of people who are discussing the issue of the previous message,
are to be sent. Here are some ways of constructing this header:

Individual replies are still covered by the Reply-to: header, which is the
second away in alphabetical order from 98Dec proceedings (Chris Newman
at Innosoft wrote it):

http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/98dec/I-D/draft-ietf-drums-replyto-meaning-00.txt

---paste---
2. Reply-To Current Practice

 The Reply-To header is currently used for the following purposes:
---...---

 (2) The author/sender can recommend an address or addresses to use
 instead of the "from" address for replies.

 (3) The author/sender can post to multiple mailing lists and
 suggest group replies go to only one of them.

 (4) When the author/sender is subscribed to a mailing list, he can
 suggest that he doesn't want two copies of group replies to
 messages he posts to the list.

 (5) A mailing list can suggest that the list is a discussion list
 and replies should be sent just to the list by default.
---end paste---

I believe that there is some bit of what this thread first started about
within those 4 items...

> Network Working Group   Jacob Palme
> Internet Draft Stockholm University/KTH
> draft-ietf-drums-mail-followup-to-00.txt
> Expires: May 1998 November 1997
> 
> 
> > > > The difference between pine and mutt is that you KNOW the
> > > > overflows in pine
> > >
> > > incorrect, again. the difference between mutt and pine is that
> > > mutt is a decent piece of free software that works and follows the
> > > relevant standards, while pine is a broken piece of non-free shit
> > > which doesn't.
> >
> > Horsefeathers!  The Mail-followup-to: header is NOT a part of the
> > relevant standards!
> 
> that wasn't what i said, and i in no way meant to imply that failure to
> implement an optional but well-documented and well-known header is what
> makes pine broken. pine is broken in numerous other ways.
>
> craig
> 
> --
> craig sanders
> 

-- 
Pardon me, but you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a
damn.
email [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Ethan" == Ethan Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Ethan> pine is a lost cause anyway.  i was thinking of GNUs which
 Ethan> seems to be the other big offender of ignorage of M-F-To.  (i
 Ethan> am not sure if it respects Mail-Copies-To: never i just
 Ethan> started adding that.)

That just demonstrates you have no idea what you are talking about.

manoj

-- 
 Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether
 machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about
 as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim. Dijkstra
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Craig Sanders]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:23:23PM -0900, Ethan Benson wrote:
> btw is it Mail-Copies-To: never or Mail-Copies-To: nobody ?  i have
> seen both which is correct?  (assuming any MUA actually pays any
> attention to this header anyway)

'nobody' is correct.

'never' is deprecated but still observed by many MUAs.

from the draft of Mail-Copies-To posted to the usenet-format list on 6
Nov 2000 (Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>):


6.  Optional Headers

6.1.  Mail-Copies-To

   The Mail-Copies-To header indicates whether or not the poster wishes
   to have followups to an article emailed in addition to being posted
   to Netnews and, if so, establishes the address to which they should
   be sent.

   The content syntax makes use of syntax defined in [MESSFOR], but
   subject to the revised definition of local-part given in section 5.2.

  Mail-Copies-To-content= copy-addr / "nobody" / "poster"
  copy-addr = mailbox

   The keyword "nobody" indicates that the author does not wish copies
   of any followup postings to be emailed.

   The keyword "poster" indicates that the author wishes a copy of any
   followup postings to be emailed to him.

   Otherwise, this header contains a copy-addr to which the author
   wishes a copy of any followup postings to be sent.

NOTE: Some existing practice uses the keyword "never" in place
of "nobody" and "always" in place of "poster". These usages are
deprecated, but followup agents MAY observe them.



craig

--
craig sanders

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Craig Sanders]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:15:23PM +0100, Sven Burgener wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 05:23:55PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > the new 'testing' distribution (sid) should be even better - nearly
> > all the benefits of 'unstable' but tested to at least install properly
> > without error.
> 
> Wrong: unstable->sid; testing->woody.

yes, my mistake.  i don't know why i called it sid when i know it isn't.  a
brainfart.

my comments about the usefulness of the 'testing' distribution still
apply.

> Personally, I would recommend the use of 'testing' in a production
> environment, but not unstable. One doesn't always have the time to
> fix problems related to the distribution itself whilst working in a
> production environment.

i would recommend the use of either testing or unstable or stable
depending upon the particular requirements of the situation.

stable is good when you don't need or want any change at all.

testing is good when you want/need to be mostly up-to-date with the
latest versions but don't have the time to deal with packaging errors.

unstable is good when you want/need to be up-to-date and have both the
time and the skill to deal with any problems that may arise.



most people with a decent net connection will probably settle for using
'testing'however that won't be much use if nobody uses 'unstable' as
unstable packages won't get installed and tested, so bug reports won't
be filed, so unstable packages will move into testing without actually
having been tested by anyone.


craig

--
craig sanders

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Craig Sanders]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:11:50PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > Mail-Followup-To is the correct header to use.
> 
> Mail-Followup-To isn't even a registered header!  The closest thing to a
> registry that RFC822 implies is in the hands of SRI International is

the thing about internet standards such as the RFCs is that they tell
you what you *must* do, and what you *must not* do. as long as you
follow those rules faithfully you are free to implement as many other
good ideas as you like.

> http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/ietf/mail-headers/
> 
> (jpalme is as much of a member as one can be of the IETF RFC822 WG)
> 
> which says that a "Followup-To:" header is from RFC 1036, but RFC 1036 is
> for USENET messages, not email.  The only thing I can think of is that
> somebody liked the usenet idea of the followup-to: and just appended a
> mail on it.  Just because somebody breaks the standards does NOT mean that
> everybody should.  

well done! it only took you a few years to catch on. that header has
been in common usage for several years.

btw, it's interesting that you mention Jacob Palme. take a look at the
following document written by him in November 1997:

http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/98dec/I-D/draft-ietf-drums-mail-followup-to-00.txt

Network Working Group   Jacob Palme
Internet Draft Stockholm University/KTH
draft-ietf-drums-mail-followup-to-00.txt
Expires: May 1998 November 1997


> > > The difference between pine and mutt is that you KNOW the
> > > overflows in pine
> >
> > incorrect, again. the difference between mutt and pine is that
> > mutt is a decent piece of free software that works and follows the
> > relevant standards, while pine is a broken piece of non-free shit
> > which doesn't.
>
> Horsefeathers!  The Mail-followup-to: header is NOT a part of the
> relevant standards!

that wasn't what i said, and i in no way meant to imply that failure to
implement an optional but well-documented and well-known header is what
makes pine broken. pine is broken in numerous other ways.

craig

--
craig sanders

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Adi Stav]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:07:27PM -0900, Ethan Benson wrote:
> in that case there would be something funny going on, here is my
> theory:
> 
> you post to list, you M-F-To: is set to only the list
> 
> someone (Mr-Broken) with broken mailer uses reply-to-all which CCs you
> anyway ignoring M-F-To.
> 
> mutt user uses list-reply to Mr-Broken's post, mutt sees you were CCed
> and assumes you should be included since there is no M-F-To header.
> mutt then sets the M-F-To header to include you for the benifit of
> later list-replies.  

How about having the mailing list software add M-F-To headers to mails
that do not have it and do not have Reply-To, filling it with the
mailing list only? Might help at least some of the cases.



- Adi Stav

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Ben Gertzfield]

> "Ethan" == Ethan Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Ethan> pine is a lost cause anyway.  i was thinking of GNUs which
Ethan> seems to be the other big offender of ignorage of M-F-To.
Ethan> (i am not sure if it respects Mail-Copies-To: never i just
Ethan> started adding that.)

Gnus definitely respects M-F-To.  I'm using it now, and it confirmed
that I wanted to obey M-F-To when I followed-up to your message.

Ben

-- 
Brought to you by the letters J and Q and the number 7.
"If you turn both processors off, you will have to reboot."
Debian GNU/Linux maintainer of Gimp and GTK+ -- http://www.debian.org/

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Adam McKenna]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:23:23PM -0900, Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 01:18:40AM -0500, Adam McKenna wrote:
> > > if this is the case the solution is fixing broken mailers, many of
> > > them are Free software so why have patches to support M-F-To not been
> > > made?
> > 
> > I'd like to see someone convince that M-F-To fix Pine.  But I doubt you'll
> > have an easy time getting Crispin to apply a patch.  He won't even 
> > implement 
> > maildir, for christ sake, and patches for that have been around for over 2
> > years now.
> 
> pine is a lost cause anyway.  i was thinking of GNUs which seems to be
> the other big offender of ignorage of M-F-To.  (i am not sure if it
> respects Mail-Copies-To: never i just started adding that.)  

Actually, I'm pretty sure that Gnus respects M-F-To.  The biggest offenders
in that arena seem to be PINE and the GUI MUA's.

> btw is it Mail-Copies-To: never or Mail-Copies-To: nobody ?  i have
> seen both which is correct?  (assuming any MUA actually pays any
> attention to this header anyway)

Don't know, I don't use it.

--Adam

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Ethan Benson]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 01:18:40AM -0500, Adam McKenna wrote:
> > if this is the case the solution is fixing broken mailers, many of
> > them are Free software so why have patches to support M-F-To not been
> > made?
> 
> I'd like to see someone convince that M-F-To fix Pine.  But I doubt you'll
> have an easy time getting Crispin to apply a patch.  He won't even implement 
> maildir, for christ sake, and patches for that have been around for over 2
> years now.

pine is a lost cause anyway.  i was thinking of GNUs which seems to be
the other big offender of ignorage of M-F-To.  (i am not sure if it
respects Mail-Copies-To: never i just started adding that.)  

btw is it Mail-Copies-To: never or Mail-Copies-To: nobody ?  i have
seen both which is correct?  (assuming any MUA actually pays any
attention to this header anyway)

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/


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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Adam McKenna]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:07:27PM -0900, Ethan Benson wrote:
> > have been added to Mail-Followup-To by other Mutt users, and I don't use 
> > the 
> > lists command at all.
> 
> in that case there would be something funny going on, here is my
> theory:
> 
> you post to list, you M-F-To: is set to only the list
> 
> someone (Mr-Broken) with broken mailer uses reply-to-all which CCs you
> anyway ignoring M-F-To.
> 
> mutt user uses list-reply to Mr-Broken's post, mutt sees you were CCed
> and assumes you should be included since there is no M-F-To header.
> mutt then sets the M-F-To header to include you for the benifit of
> later list-replies.  

Sounds like a reasonable scenario.

> if this is the case the solution is fixing broken mailers, many of
> them are Free software so why have patches to support M-F-To not been
> made?

I'd like to see someone convince that M-F-To fix Pine.  But I doubt you'll
have an easy time getting Crispin to apply a patch.  He won't even implement 
maildir, for christ sake, and patches for that have been around for over 2
years now.

--Adam

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[John Galt]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Craig Sanders wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:53:04PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> > > > In fact, the only thing the RFC says to do is to honor Reply-To: 
> > > > headers,
> > > > which I might note you didn't include in your message.
> > > 
> > > Why should I, when it would be no different from my From: header?
> > 
> > It would be in your case: 
> > 
> > Reply-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> 
> no, that would make it difficult for people to reply privately to him.
> 
> Mail-Followup-To is the correct header to use.

Mail-Followup-To isn't even a registered header!  The closest thing to a
registry that RFC822 implies is in the hands of SRI International is

http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/ietf/mail-headers/

(jpalme is as much of a member as one can be of the IETF RFC822 WG)

which says that a "Followup-To:" header is from RFC 1036, but RFC 1036 is
for USENET messages, not email.  The only thing I can think of is that
somebody liked the usenet idea of the followup-to: and just appended a
mail on it.  Just because somebody breaks the standards does NOT mean that
everybody should.  

> > The difference between pine and mutt is that you KNOW the overflows in
> > pine
> 
> incorrect, again. the difference between mutt and pine is that mutt is
> a decent piece of free software that works and follows the relevant
> standards, while pine is a broken piece of non-free shit which doesn't.

Horsefeathers!  The Mail-followup-to: header is NOT a part of the relevant
standards!  

> > mutt allegedly shares code with pine...
> 
> since the source-code of both programs is readily available it should be
> easy enough to check this allegation.
> 
> 
> craig
> 
> --
> craig sanders
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Pardon me, but you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a
damn.
email [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Ethan Benson]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 12:41:24AM -0500, Adam McKenna wrote:
> > as for including other's in the Mail-Followup-To mutt only does this
> > if those users had used `lists' instead of `subscribe' indicating they
> > WANT to be CCed.  
> 
> There must be a bug in it somewhere, then, because I often see people getting
> added to Mail-Followup-To that shouldn't be there.  In fact, I personally 
> have been added to Mail-Followup-To by other Mutt users, and I don't use the 
> lists command at all.

in that case there would be something funny going on, here is my
theory:

you post to list, you M-F-To: is set to only the list

someone (Mr-Broken) with broken mailer uses reply-to-all which CCs you
anyway ignoring M-F-To.

mutt user uses list-reply to Mr-Broken's post, mutt sees you were CCed
and assumes you should be included since there is no M-F-To header.
mutt then sets the M-F-To header to include you for the benifit of
later list-replies.  

if this is the case the solution is fixing broken mailers, many of
them are Free software so why have patches to support M-F-To not been
made?

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/


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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Craig Sanders]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:53:04PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> > > In fact, the only thing the RFC says to do is to honor Reply-To: headers,
> > > which I might note you didn't include in your message.
> > 
> > Why should I, when it would be no different from my From: header?
> 
> It would be in your case: 
> 
> Reply-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

no, that would make it difficult for people to reply privately to him.

Mail-Followup-To is the correct header to use.

> The difference between pine and mutt is that you KNOW the overflows in
> pine

incorrect, again. the difference between mutt and pine is that mutt is
a decent piece of free software that works and follows the relevant
standards, while pine is a broken piece of non-free shit which doesn't.

> mutt allegedly shares code with pine...

since the source-code of both programs is readily available it should be
easy enough to check this allegation.


craig

--
craig sanders

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Adam McKenna]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 08:36:54PM -0900, Ethan Benson wrote:
> > listed in Mail-Followup-To.  The thing that bugs me about this is that mutt
> > often adds other list-readers' e-mail addresses to Mail-Followup-To, 
> > effectively rendering this feature useless.
> 
> try reading the FM.  in mutt 1.2 and later (also some 1.1 versions)
> the lists command causes both your address and the lists address to
> the Mail-Followup-To.  the subscribe command on the other hand ONLY
> includes the list's address and NOT your own. 

I did read the FM and I'm well aware of the difference between the lists
command and the subscribe command.  That's not what I'm talking about.

> as for including other's in the Mail-Followup-To mutt only does this
> if those users had used `lists' instead of `subscribe' indicating they
> WANT to be CCed.  

There must be a bug in it somewhere, then, because I often see people getting
added to Mail-Followup-To that shouldn't be there.  In fact, I personally 
have been added to Mail-Followup-To by other Mutt users, and I don't use the 
lists command at all.

--Adam

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Ethan Benson]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 02:26:33PM -0500, Adam McKenna wrote:

> Not exactly.  List-reply sends a reply to the list and any other people
> listed in Mail-Followup-To.  The thing that bugs me about this is that mutt
> often adds other list-readers' e-mail addresses to Mail-Followup-To, 
> effectively rendering this feature useless.

try reading the FM.  in mutt 1.2 and later (also some 1.1 versions)
the lists command causes both your address and the lists address to
the Mail-Followup-To.  the subscribe command on the other hand ONLY
includes the list's address and NOT your own. 

as for including other's in the Mail-Followup-To mutt only does this
if those users had used `lists' instead of `subscribe' indicating they
WANT to be CCed.  

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/


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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Craig Sanders]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:26:25AM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> [ D-Man writes ]
> > Try mutt and its "L" command.  The "L" command means "list-reply", aka
> > only send a message to the list, not to all recepients.  It also sets
> > a header flag so that other well-behaved MUA's don't send you an extra
> > copy of their replies since you will get it on the list anyway.
> 
> guess what?
> not everyone uses mutt.
> not everyone should.

mutt's not the only decent MUA around. there are other which work
properly.

> > "Reply-to" is meant to send a message back to the person who wrote
> > the first one, not to someone they wrote the message to.
>
> reply-to is meant to direct where you should send "replies to".
>
> And in the case of the debian mailing lists, you should "reply to" the
> list.

bullshit.

some replies should go to the list, and some replies should be private.
it's up to the person writing the reply to make that decision, not the
list software.

setting reply-to back to the list just makes it difficult (or in
some cases impossible) to reply privately. it provides no benefit
that can not be better achieved by either a) using a decent mailer,
or b) having a bit of a clue and editing the To, and Cc: headers
appropriately. however reply-to munging by list software does have the
serious disadvantage of replacing any Reply-To header created by the
original author of a message.

the Reply-To header exists for the *person* who originally sent the
message to be able to direct replies to their preferred destination. it
is not there so that mailing lists can screw with it.

craig

--
craig sanders

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[John Galt]

On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 04:56:38PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> > FYI 28 (aka RFC 1855) is the standard.
> > 
> > There is nothing about honoring X headers at all.
> 
> I didn't say there was.  Does "Mail-Copies-To:" begin with an X?

RFC 822 this time:

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html

and Mail-Copies-To: fails to rear it's ugly head, so really should be
under user-defined fields, which are supposed to be X-

4.7.5.  USER-DEFINED-FIELD

 Individual users of network mail are free to  define  and
use  additional  header  fields.   Such fields must have names
which are not already used in the current specification or  in
any definitions of extension-fields, and the overall syntax of
these user-defined-fields must conform to this specification's
rules   for   delimiting  and  folding  fields.   Due  to  the
extension-field  publishing  process,  the  name  of  a  user-
defined-field may be pre-empted

Note:  The prefatory string "X-" will never  be  used  in  the
   names  of Extension-fields.  This provides user-defined
   fields with a protected set of names.
 

> > In fact, the only thing the RFC says to do is to honor Reply-To: headers,
> > which I might note you didn't include in your message.
> 
> Why should I, when it would be no different from my From: header?

It would be in your case: 

Reply-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

would avoid the unnecessary CCs, which is what I assume you want to do.  

> > Basically, you're on the wrong side of RFC 1855 on this issue and all the
> > bitching in the world isn't going to change it.  If I'm wrong, prove it:
> > I've provided my proof in the form of RFC 1855.  
> 
> Yes, you obviously attached quite a bit of RFC reading material to your
> message.

Would you have preferred me to attach the entirety of 3.1, 3.1.1 and
3.1.2?  Six screensful of information in lynx?  Any way you slice it, it's
that much more than you provided...

How about a URL

http://faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html

> Now, let's examine the headers of YOUR message...
> 
> From: John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

Actually, that's on your side--the To header left here empty, since it had

To: Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

and I simply removed it (cut) as per your wishes...  Had you properly set
a Reply-to: header, none of this would've happened.
 
> Well, that's clever.  Are you messages so important that you (or your MUA)
> feels they should be read twice?  (Fortunately, I think either an RFC or
> the mailing list software squelches the duplicate.)
> 
> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>  
> 
> Oh well, at least the clue ratio of your MUA is homologous to your own,
> thus preserving notions of symmetry in the universe.

The difference between pine and mutt is that you KNOW the overflows in
pinemutt allegedly shares code with pine...

> 

-- 
Pardon me, but you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a
damn.
email [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Peter Palfrader]

On Wed, 03 Jan 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:

> I'd sooner killfile you than respect a lame Mail-Followup-To like this:

So you
 o expect people to honor your Mail-Followup-To header, yet
 o ignore mine on purpose.

Yes, please killfile me so I don't have to deal with your replies.


> The problem is L4M3RZ using that broken piece of non-free shit PINE, which
> doesn't appear to respect *any* conventions of netiquette.

It's you who does not respect the netiquette.

Peter


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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Adam Heath]

On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Joey Hess wrote:

> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~>dpkg -p  dpkg |grep Depends   
> Pre-Depends: libc6 (>= 2.1.97), libncurses5, libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2

Perl is a required package, there is no need to list the dependency.

BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK
Version: 3.12
GCS d- s: a-- c+++ UL P+ L !E W+ M o+ K- W--- !O M- !V PS--
PE++ Y+ PGP++ t* 5++ X+ tv b+ D++ G e h*! !r z?
-END GEEK CODE BLOCK-
BEGIN PGP INFO
Adam Heath <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Finger Print | KeyID
67 01 42 93 CA 37 FB 1E63 C9 80 1D 08 CF 84 0A | DE656B05 PGP
AD46 C888 F587 F8A3 A6DA  3261 8A2C 7DC2 8BD4 A489 | 8BD4A489 GPG
-END PGP INFO-

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Sam TH]

On Tue, Jan 02, 2001 at 02:47:55AM -0600, Adam Heath wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Jan 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:
> 
> >  You know, kinda like the way I went nuclear on Wichert when he broke 
> > vim.
> 
> Just use abiword, who's maintainer never updates it(hi gecko).
> 

In gecko's defense, he has updated it in the last month or so.  
   
sam th   
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
GnuPG Key:  
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/key


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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Joey Hess]

Erik Hollensbe wrote:
> And I would have never written the mail in the first place if I had felt
> that it was my system config that was causing the problem. I have been
> running almost vanilla unstable to the T since potato was unstable on this
> system, and *NEVER* had install issues like this on it. 

Please bear in mind that many of us have been running unstable since
before Debian was released (at all), and fondly remember many fun little
incidents like ld.so completly breaking. Tends to put minor breakage in
perspective.

> The breaking of man and groff are inexcusable at best

I still haven't seen a bug report about it.

> and with dpkg's dependency on perl,

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~>dpkg -p  dpkg |grep Depends   
Pre-Depends: libc6 (>= 2.1.97), libncurses5, libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2

> perl should be coming with those modules as well as dpkg, with dpkg
> providing upgrades.



> My general point (which most of you missed), was that I was using
> unstable. Not woody, not sid, unstable.

sid == unstable

> I ran the dist-upgrade shortly
> after finding out about the testing<->unstable merge

testing != unstable

> However, I can't even reconfigure, simply because the important packages
> never made it to the configure stage. This system is nigh unto hosed until
> I'm able to manually unpack the right packages with the proper perl
> modules and copy them to the proper spots, to fullfill these dependencies
> manually. Package management should have guarded against this, or at least
> provided me with an out (or at worst, checked itself and warned me).

I'm willing to bet that if you would bother to do what everyone told you
to do and file a bug with the actual text of the problem you are
experiencing, that you would get a solution in short order. 

Since you instead continue to piss and moan and display your lack of
clue, enjoy your broken Debian system. It might stay broken for a good
long time.

-- 
see shy jo

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Joey Hess]

Erik wrote:
> This worries me a little.  With testing now in, it seems that packages will
> only get 1% of the testing they used to before going into a "semi-stable" set
> of packages.  Personaly i think that if your competent enough to fix your own
> system, you should consider following sid to help in the testing.  So many 
> people
> are using testing instead of sid i'm just a little afraid its not going to get
> much testing at all.

Testing is a little too new for 99% of unstable users to have migrated
to using it, or to have any real idea how many people will or have.

FWIW, I have not yet seen a machine running testing. Of the 9 or so
machines I maintain (5 stable, 4 unstable), I expect to move 3 to testing
(all three are currently running stable).

If too many people use testing, it will be just like a delayed version of
unstable with no benefits, so some people will migrate back to unstable. 
Which will make testing useful.. The two forces will probably reach an 
equilibrium eventually.

The interesting thing, I think, is that we will probably see somewhat of
an exodus from stable to testing (in my small example, over half my
stable boxes converted, hard to tell what size in general, but probably
significant).

-- 
see shy jo

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Branden Robinson]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 04:56:38PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> FYI 28 (aka RFC 1855) is the standard.
> 
> There is nothing about honoring X headers at all.

I didn't say there was.  Does "Mail-Copies-To:" begin with an X?

> In fact, the only thing the RFC says to do is to honor Reply-To: headers,
> which I might note you didn't include in your message.

Why should I, when it would be no different from my From: header?

> Basically, you're on the wrong side of RFC 1855 on this issue and all the
> bitching in the world isn't going to change it.  If I'm wrong, prove it:
> I've provided my proof in the form of RFC 1855.  

Yes, you obviously attached quite a bit of RFC reading material to your
message.

Now, let's examine the headers of YOUR message...

From: John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

Well, that's clever.  Are you messages so important that you (or your MUA)
feels they should be read twice?  (Fortunately, I think either an RFC or
the mailing list software squelches the duplicate.)

Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 

Oh well, at least the clue ratio of your MUA is homologous to your own,
thus preserving notions of symmetry in the universe.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson |The only way to get rid of a temptation
Debian GNU/Linux|is to yield to it.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  |-- Oscar Wilde
http://www.debian.org/~branden/ |


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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Branden Robinson]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:19:32PM +, Oliver Elphick wrote:
> Branden Robinson wrote:
>   >How about reading my headers, which is all I asked for in the first place?
> 
> exmh, at least, does not show Branden's X-no-cc: header; you have to scroll
> up to see it.

I was referring to the header that identifies my MUA, since that was the
question to which I was responding.

Which message headers are visible my default can and should be a matter of
personal preference; however, not knowing that there are message headers
that your MUA may not show you by default, and not knowing how to view all
of them, are points of ignorance about which people may deservably be
LARTed.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson |It was a typical net.exercise -- a
Debian GNU/Linux|screaming mob pounding on a greasy spot
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  |on the pavement, where used to lie the
http://www.debian.org/~branden/ |carcass of a dead horse.


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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Adam McKenna]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 08:41:06PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:38:13PM +0100, Peter Palfrader wrote:
> > and respect my Mail-Followup-To header next time.
> 
> I'd sooner killfile you than respect a lame Mail-Followup-To like this:
> 
> Mail-Followup-To: Peter Palfrader <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> 
> If I'm already replying to a list, I'm not going to waste bandwidth by
> mailing you personally as well.

So what you're saying is that you're purposely ignoring people's
Mail-Followup-To when it suits you, while insisting that others abide by 
yours?  That sounds kind of ridiculous to me.

--Adam

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Branden Robinson]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:38:13PM +0100, Peter Palfrader wrote:
> and respect my Mail-Followup-To header next time.

I'd sooner killfile you than respect a lame Mail-Followup-To like this:

Mail-Followup-To: Peter Palfrader <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
debian-devel@lists.debian.org

If I'm already replying to a list, I'm not going to waste bandwidth by
mailing you personally as well.

(BTW, mutt does the "correct" thing when I (L)ist reply; it sets the To:
line of my reply to debian-devel and puts you in the Cc line.  But I still
think it is a symptom of mental illness to *request* redundant messages in
your inbox this way.)

The problem is L4M3RZ using that broken piece of non-free shit PINE, which
doesn't appear to respect *any* conventions of netiquette.

Oh, well, there's one OTHER problem: that broken piece of shit L4M3R Eray.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson |
Debian GNU/Linux| // // //  / /
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  | EI 'AANIIGOO 'AHOOT'E
http://www.debian.org/~branden/ |


pgpfY4TZj511c.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Philip" == Philip Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:


 Philip> Maybe the fact is that there IS NO "best" mailreader for everyone, and
 Philip> mailing lists should do their best to accommodate as many as possible.

There may not be a *best* newsreader (I realize that there are
 unbelievers out there that know not of the one true MUA), but there
 are those which are broken, and those that are not. 

Accomodating reply to sender/reply to all/ reply to list
 should be a minimum functianlity for any MUA.

manoj
-- 
 To err is human; to admit it, a blunder.
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: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Erik Hollensbe]

The reason that I haven't responded to this yet is simply because I knew
it would go way off course onto a thread like this.

Personally, anything I would put into 'production' would have all of it's
servers running from-source compiled versions of the daemons it serves.
Nothing against any of you debian contributors, but there is too much at
risk, stable or unstable, from using a self-upgrading packaging format. I
could go on with more reasons, but it'd be pointless. The server in
question is a hobby server, that I run at home and TO TEST unstable.

Unstable, while being unstable, should still install. I think of
'unstable' as 'untested packages', not 'untested package management'.
Frankly anyone who can't dpkg -r/dpkg -i before they commit a package is
someone that I would not want workign with me, much less handling my
systems. Whether or not this is a free system is beyond the point.
Packaging on a preset system is not rocket science, it's just a glorious
mishmash of perl scripts and shell scripts.

And I would have never written the mail in the first place if I had felt
that it was my system config that was causing the problem. I have been
running almost vanilla unstable to the T since potato was unstable on this
system, and *NEVER* had install issues like this on it. The breaking of
man and groff are inexcusable at best, and with dpkg's dependency on perl,
perl should be coming with those modules as well as dpkg, with dpkg
providing upgrades.

Regardless, I do appreciate those that took the time to actually help
solve my issues, but, none of them worked, of course, because apt and dpkg
depend on perl modules, those of which did not get installed. As any perl
hacker would know, no module == no execution. Tonight I'm going to try
and track the packages that contain this information, and install them as
needed.

My general point (which most of you missed), was that I was using
unstable. Not woody, not sid, unstable. I ran the dist-upgrade shortly
after finding out about the testing<->unstable merge, so I was somewhat
prepared for the worst, but nothing like this. I was also rather irate
about the fact that a single failed package install causes the apt-get
process to halt completely -- it should only avoid interdependent packages
with the broken ones. Last I checked there were very few things that
depend on man/manpages to run. (man and groff being the only things that
come to mind)

However, I can't even reconfigure, simply because the important packages
never made it to the configure stage. This system is nigh unto hosed until
I'm able to manually unpack the right packages with the proper perl
modules and copy them to the proper spots, to fullfill these dependencies
manually. Package management should have guarded against this, or at least
provided me with an out (or at worst, checked itself and warned me).

I have, in other less major cases had to run apt-get sometimes up to
4 times to finish the install process because of a single broken
package that keeps appearing in random spots in the list -- this is
something I should never have to do. I should be able to run it once,
have it install all POSSIBLE packages, and then have it report a list of
packages which were unavailable to install. IIRC, This was the way that
older versions of apt worked, but I may be incorrect.

I'm sorry to sound so arrogant when it comes to this, but I just can't
believe there aren't mroe safeguards built into the package system that
prevent stuff like this from happening.


-- 
Erik Hollensbe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Programmer, Powells Internet Division
"I respect a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he is wrong."
- Malcolm X

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Craig Sanders wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 06:16:17AM -0800, Jim Lynch wrote:
> > If you want to advocate the use of unstable software, please be my
> > guest... but not on #debian. it changes daily, and can potentially
> > break every day, potentially disasterously. So -no-. It's NOT
> > appropriate to tell people to run servers on unstable software.
>
> if i ever happen to be on #debian and someone has a problem where the
> best solution is to upgrade to unstable (either a full dist-upgrade or
> just selected packages) then i certainly will recommend exactly that.
>
> it is *always* appropriate to provide a good solution to a problem -
> whether it accords with your opinion or not.
>
>
> > On the other hand... if you want to -pay- me to take the support load
> > for a limited period of time, I'll open the door, for a limited period
> > of time. I'm a volunteer there, you already know what a volunteer is
> > if you have anything at all to do with debian.
>
> there's no need to be so pompous and pretentious. you're just another
> volunteer, not the Thought Police.
>
> craig
>
> --
> craig sanders
>
>
>

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Philip Brown]

[ D-Man writes ]
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 02:30:39PM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> > Funny, you just did exactly that. If your mailreader was better, you would
> > have a better functioning group-reply.
> 
> Umm, no I wasn't complaining about my mailreader, but one that I don't
> use now.  I solved the problem by getting a better one.
> ...
> No matter how easy it is to see the headers, you can't easily tell the
> MUA that you want to insert a particular address unless you have first
> added it to your address book.

Unless of course, you are using a "beter mailreader", that doesnt requires
you to add addresses to an "address book" before sending someone email.

Why follow your own advice, and get yet another "better mailreader", hmmm?

Maybe the fact is that there IS NO "best" mailreader for everyone, and
mailing lists should do their best to accommodate as many as possible.

Which is why other mailing lists use reply-to.

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[John Galt]

Why the hell should we go on #debian on OPN when you so much as admitted
that the ops on it have some kind of power trip: devoicing instead of
rebutting when they have an issue with what's said?  If I help somebody, I
really don't want to have to stay politically correct: getting the problem
solved is much more important than keeping somebody's ego stroked.  It
sounds like ATM I could not in good conscience recommend that a newbie get
help on OPN, because it sounds like the people who are genuinely trying to
help are also the ones that cannot speak.  

On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Jim Lynch wrote:

> > 
> > Date:03 Jan 2001 15:23:09 +0100
> > To:  debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> > From:Peter Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Subject: Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)
> > 
> > Jim Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > 
> > > If you want to advocate the use of unstable software, please be my 
> > > guest...
> > > but not on #debian. it changes daily, and can potentially break every
> > 
> > Again, what is you right too say so other than it is you oppinion?
> 
> It's more than opinion, it's fact for reasons already stated; It's not 
> smart to run debian dists that are not released/stable on mission-critical 
> servers. It sometimes causes those servers to break, sometimes in nasty 
> ways. I've seen it happen over and over again. People sometimes get fired
> from their jobs over this. ("Sometimes" is good news: in many instances,
> debian performs extremely well in mission-critical situations, most of the
> time when the packages all fit together and do not change.)
> 
> When machines break for whatever reason, sometimes people come to 
> #debian for help. It's unhelpful to encourage people to break their
> mission-critical servers... If Eric wants to do it himself, fine.
> If he wants to say he did it, fine too, if he warns about instability
> (which his original letter shows he had plenty of.) He said he helps
> on the channel, and that's fine. But it's not fine to be unhelpful
> when others have to try to help undo the damage it causes.
> 
> I'm not even saying he did; I'm just letting him know, so that if
> he does tell someone who is (say) new, who has a job tending a mission-
> critical server that they should run unstable on it, then gets quieted 
> by me on channel, he'll know why :) But, as I use the quieting as an
> opportunity to have a short, private discussion of the matter usually
> followed by an unquieting, it's not a big problem.
> 
> (these are fairly narrow circumstances; I may widen them somewhat
> depending on the situation.)
> 
> Of course, not many developers like coming to #debian due to its 
> present noisiness and relative newbishness, or maybe for other
> reasons; there used to be more (heck, it used to be all-developer,
> before the channel was known.) But I'm presently one of the channel
> operators, so I make decisions, and I act.
> 
> If you want to discuss rights of myself and others to act, please
> come to the channel and help out for about a year. Then discuss;
> you'll know what's up then. As for myself, I've been around #debian
> since very close to its inception; possibly as long as 6 years ago.
> 
> -Jim
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Pardon me, but you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a
damn.
email [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Craig Sanders]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 06:16:17AM -0800, Jim Lynch wrote:
> If you want to advocate the use of unstable software, please be my
> guest... but not on #debian. it changes daily, and can potentially
> break every day, potentially disasterously. So -no-. It's NOT
> appropriate to tell people to run servers on unstable software.

if i ever happen to be on #debian and someone has a problem where the
best solution is to upgrade to unstable (either a full dist-upgrade or
just selected packages) then i certainly will recommend exactly that.

it is *always* appropriate to provide a good solution to a problem -
whether it accords with your opinion or not.


> On the other hand... if you want to -pay- me to take the support load
> for a limited period of time, I'll open the door, for a limited period
> of time. I'm a volunteer there, you already know what a volunteer is
> if you have anything at all to do with debian.

there's no need to be so pompous and pretentious. you're just another
volunteer, not the Thought Police.

craig

--
craig sanders

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[John Galt]

FYI 28 (aka RFC 1855) is the standard.

There is nothing about honoring X headers at all.  In fact, the only thing
the RFC says to do is to honor Reply-To: headers, which I might note you
didn't include in your message.  Basically, you're on the wrong side of
RFC 1855 on this issue and all the bitching in the world isn't going to
change it.  If I'm wrong, prove it: I've provided my proof in the form of
RFC 1855.  

On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 02, 2001 at 10:57:35PM -0800, Chris Lawrence wrote:
> > I suspect most people's MUA's don't display non-standard headers by default 
> 
> But there is also this, which *is* standard[1], and which I also have:
> 
> Mail-Copies-To: never
> 
> So not only are people stupid, but their MUA's are as well.
> 
> [1] at least as much of a standard as there appears to be for this
> 
> 

-- 
Pardon me, but you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a
damn.
email [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Philip" == Philip Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Philip> guess what?

 Philip> not everyone uses mutt.

 Philip> not everyone should.

Yes. Everyone knows that Gnus is the one true mail user agent.

 >> "Reply-to" is meant to send a message back to the person who wrote the
 >> first one, not to someone they wrote the message to.

 Philip> reply-to is meant to direct where you should send "replies to".

Please quote the RFC you are referring to. I hold that section
 4.4.3 of RFC 822 is fairly clear about what the field is intended to
 do.

==
RFC 822: STANDARD FOR THE FORMAT OF ARPA INTERNET TEXT MESSAGES

 4.3.1.  RETURN-PATH

This field  is  added  by  the  final  transport  system  that
delivers  the message to its recipient.  The field is intended
to contain definitive information about the address and  route
back to the message's originator.

Note:  The "Reply-To" field is added  by  the  originator  and
   serves  to  direct  replies,  whereas the "Return-Path"
   field is used to identify a path back to  the  origina-
   tor.

 4.4.  ORIGINATOR FIELDS

  The standard allows only a subset of the combinations possi-
 ble  with the From, Sender, Reply-To, Resent-From, Resent-Sender,
 and Resent-Reply-To fields.  The limitation is intentional.

 4.4.3.  REPLY-TO / RESENT-REPLY-TO

This field provides a general  mechanism  for  indicating  any
mailbox(es)  to which responses are to be sent.  Three typical
uses for this feature can  be  distinguished.   In  the  first
case,  the  author(s) may not have regular machine-based mail-
boxes and therefore wish(es) to indicate an alternate  machine
address.   In  the  second case, an author may wish additional
persons to be made aware of, or responsible for,  replies.   A
somewhat  different  use  may be of some help to "text message
teleconferencing" groups equipped with automatic  distribution
services:   include the address of that service in the "Reply-
To" field of all messages  submitted  to  the  teleconference;
then  participants  can  "reply"  to conference submissions to
guarantee the correct distribution of any submission of  their
own.

Note:  The "Return-Path" field is added by the mail  transport
   service,  at the time of final deliver.  It is intended
   to identify a path back to the orginator  of  the  mes-
   sage.   The  "Reply-To"  field  is added by the message
   originator and is intended to direct replies.

--
RFC: 1036  Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages


2.1.1.  From

The "From" line contains the electronic mailing address of the
person who sent the message, in the Internet syntax. 



2.2.1.  Reply-To

This line has the same format as "From".  If present, mailed replies
to the author should be sent to the name given here.  Otherwise,
replies are mailed to the name on the "From" line. (This does not
prevent additional copies from being sent to recipients named by the
replier, or on "To" or "Cc" lines.)  The full name may be optionally
given, in parentheses, as in the "From" line.
==


 Philip> And in the case of the debian mailing lists, you should "reply to" the
 Philip> list.

Not on the internet Iam used to. Out here, we follow
 standards, see, and there is this thing called rfc 822 ...


manoj
-- 
 Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
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: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Philip" == Philip Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Philip> As opposed to the current scheme, which also requires
 Philip> "annoying manual editing of addresses" to reply to the list,

Why would you need to do that? Doesn't your MUA have a wide
 reply setting? 

 Philip> if your mailreader does the reasonable thing and assumes you
 Philip> want to reply to the original sender of the message, in liu
 Philip> of a reply-to header.

If I hit the reply key, I would indeed want to reply to the
 sender, rather than the whole list. Why is that not a reasonable
 thing to do?

How do you suggest I reply to sender if someone scribbles all
 over the reply-to header that the sender has set (in case the from
 header is invalid)? 

manoj
 who had to edit no headers in order to send this message
-- 
 If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
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: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Oliver Elphick]

Branden Robinson wrote:
  >How about reading my headers, which is all I asked for in the first place?

exmh, at least, does not show Branden's X-no-cc: header; you have to scroll
up to see it.  With 400+ messages per day, I'm not likely to scrutinise
headers closely.  Furthermore, I make a distinction in my own mind between
replying to the list in general and replying to a particular poster (with a
copy to the list for interest).  If I want to be sure that person will see
the mail, I may well address it to him directly, in the hope that he will
pay it more attention than he would a message not addressed to him.

I know some people get very annoyed about receiving duplicates, but there
seem to be few MUAs which will easily distinguish between someone posting
on a list and someone mailing directly.  Unfortunately, the people who 
complain about the MUAs are not the ones using them.  This means that the
onus is perforce on those who don't want duplicates to eliminate them
before reading.

The manpage procmailex gives a recipe for using procmail and formail
to eliminate duplicate mails or to divert them into a duplicates folder.

-- 
Oliver Elphick[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Isle of Wight  http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
PGP: 1024R/32B8FAA1: 97 EA 1D 47 72 3F 28 47  6B 7E 39 CC 56 E4 C1 47
GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839  932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C
 
 "I love them that love me; and those that seek me early
  shall find me."Proverbs 8:17 

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[D-Man]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 02:30:39PM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> [ D-Man writes ]
> > 

> 
> 
> > You are free to use whatever MUA you want, but don't complain to the
> > rest of us if it is broken. 
> 
> Funny, you just did exactly that. If your mailreader was better, you would
> have a better functioning group-reply.

Umm, no I wasn't complaining about my mailreader, but one that I don't
use now.  I solved the problem by getting a better one.

> Similarly, if your mailreader was better, it would be easier for you
> to look at headers, and cut-n-paste the address of the person you want to
> privately reply.
> 

No matter how easy it is to see the headers, you can't easily tell the
MUA that you want to insert a particular address unless you have first
added it to your address book.


-D

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Moshe Zadka]

On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Riku Voipio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Which reminds me, why doesn't this list just set:
> 
>  reply-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> 
> Which most MUA's respect. Even this mail was one y
> from going only to liw :)

Because fiddling with the reply-to is a horrible horrible thing to
do? Because most MUAs don't have an easy way to reply to original
From: if there's a valid Reply-To?

It's the wrong solution, it's evil, and it causes lots of problems.
-- 
Moshe Zadka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
This is a signature anti-virus. 
Please stop the spread of signature viruses!

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Peter Palfrader]

Hi Branden!

On Wed, 03 Jan 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 02:35:26PM +0100, Peter Palfrader wrote:
> > On Wed, 03 Jan 2001, Colin Watson wrote:
> > 
> > >   From: Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > >   Mail-Followup-To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> > 
> > ARGL, /me should really get glasses or whatever.
> > Any reason you ignored my MailFup2 header?
> 
> What are you talking about?  Who are you talking to?  *I* certainly didn't
> mail you privately.

Read

<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

again and respect my Mail-Followup-To header next time.

thank you
yours,
peter

-- 
PGP signed and encrypted messages preferred.
http://www.palfrader.org/

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[D-Man]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 05:24:16PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 05:04:07PM -0500, D-Man wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 12:57:56PM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> > > > For instance, if I followup to any of Branden Robinson's posts, they go
> > > > to the list only.
> > > 
> > > that is because both you and he are using "special" software.
> > 
> > Let's find out.  Miles, Branden, what MUA's do you use? 
> 
> How about reading my headers, which is all I asked for in the first place?
> 

2 problems with that :

First, I didn't have any message from you,  I just recently joined the
list,

Second, I just learned something else about headers -- you don't have
any X-Mailer header, which is what I was looking for (didn't find it
in Miles' mail either).  Apparently User-Agent is the new header for
putting the MUA's name.

(I now show the User-Agent header so I will know next time :-))

-D

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Philip Brown]

[ D-Man writes ]
> 
> A different list that I am on does the Reply-To munging.  This means
> that if I hit group-reply (when I use an MUA that doesn't understand
> lists) the list will get 2 copies : 1 in the To and 1 in the CC field.
> Is this really what you want?  Getting double mail on the list?


There are (at least) two things wrong with that scenario:

1. the mailing list software is setting Reply-To: identically to
   the From: header, when it didn't need to.
   If it ommited the redundant Reply-To: header, you wouldn't have seen
   a problem.

2. The mail program should have been smart enough to figure out
  "Hey, the Cc is a duplicate, I dont need it"



>  If I
> try to send a private off-list reply to someone, I can't.  If I hit
> reply, it goes to the list.  Sure I can type their address in the to
> field, but then I have to open a new window, open the mail, find the
> address in the headers, etc, etc.

Exactly. You CAN do it. This "can't" is rubbish.



> You are free to use whatever MUA you want, but don't complain to the
> rest of us if it is broken. 

Funny, you just did exactly that. If your mailreader was better, you would
have a better functioning group-reply.
Similarly, if your mailreader was better, it would be easier for you
to look at headers, and cut-n-paste the address of the person you want to
privately reply.

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Branden Robinson]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 05:04:07PM -0500, D-Man wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 12:57:56PM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> > > For instance, if I followup to any of Branden Robinson's posts, they go
> > > to the list only.
> > 
> > that is because both you and he are using "special" software.
> 
> Let's find out.  Miles, Branden, what MUA's do you use? 

How about reading my headers, which is all I asked for in the first place?

-- 
G. Branden Robinson |
Debian GNU/Linux| The software said it required Windows
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  | 3.1 or better, so I installed Linux.
http://www.debian.org/~branden/ |


pgp0AHyJ8MWeV.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Branden Robinson]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 02:35:26PM +0100, Peter Palfrader wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Jan 2001, Colin Watson wrote:
> 
> >   From: Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >   Mail-Followup-To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> 
> ARGL, /me should really get glasses or whatever.
> Any reason you ignored my MailFup2 header?

What are you talking about?  Who are you talking to?  *I* certainly didn't
mail you privately.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson |   If you have the slightest bit of
Debian GNU/Linux|   intellectual integrity you cannot
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  |   support the government.
http://www.debian.org/~branden/ |   -- anonymous


pgpgsj7i7PyrO.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[D-Man]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 12:11:21PM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> > By making Reply-To: point to the list, you make these two different
> > commands do the same thing, thus depriving the user of the choice.
> 
> There is NO "depriving of choice".
> If the recipient user wants to send to the original sender, there is
> nothing stopping them.

A different list that I am on does the Reply-To munging.  This means
that if I hit group-reply (when I use an MUA that doesn't understand
lists) the list will get 2 copies : 1 in the To and 1 in the CC field.
Is this really what you want?  Getting double mail on the list?  If I
try to send a private off-list reply to someone, I can't.  If I hit
reply, it goes to the list.  Sure I can type their address in the to
field, but then I have to open a new window, open the mail, find the
address in the headers, etc, etc.

You are free to use whatever MUA you want, but don't complain to the
rest of us if it is broken. 

-D

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Sven Burgener]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 05:23:55PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote:
> 
> the new 'testing' distribution (sid) should be even better - nearly
> all the benefits of 'unstable' but tested to at least install properly
> without error.

Wrong: unstable->sid; testing->woody.

sid/unstable will never become 'testing' or 'frozen' or even 'stable'.

Personally, I would recommend the use of 'testing' in a production
environment, but not unstable. One doesn't always have the time to fix
problems related to the distribution itself whilst working in a
production environment.

Sven
-- 
# debian/rules

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[D-Man]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 12:57:56PM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> > For instance, if I followup to any of Branden Robinson's posts, they go
> > to the list only.
> 
> that is because both you and he are using "special" software.

Let's find out.  Miles, Branden, what MUA's do you use? 

I happen to use mutt and it will send to the list only if I tell it to
regardless of who sent it.  I also have the choice of repyling only to
you or to reply to everyone in the Reply-To and CC headers.  All with
a single press of a key ('r' 'g' or 'L').

If you don't want to be CC'd when people reply to the list, set the
Mail-Followup-To header properly.

Have a nice day,
-D

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Steve Greenland]

On 03-Jan-01, 13:26 (CST), Philip Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
> 
> reply-to is meant to direct where you should send "replies to".
> 
> And in the case of the debian mailing lists, you should "reply to" the
> list.

No, you shouldn't.

(And there lies the crux of the issue. One side things a little extra
effort to send a message to several hundred (thousand?) people is a
good thing. The other thinks that any possible words they utter deserve
viewing by those same hundreds (thousands?) of people. One can probably
discern from my description which side I'm on. :-))

Steve
-- 
Steve Greenland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
(Please do not CC me on mail sent to this list; I subscribe to and read
every list I post to.)

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Philip Brown]

[ Miles Bader writes ]
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Philip Brown) writes:
> > I guess YOUR mailreader is "too old or disfunctional to be worth
> > discussing"
> > 
> > I did not request you to Cc me.
> > But you replied to the list AND me.
> 
> Because that is the most useful action for mail followups in the absence
> of other information.  If you (or the mailling list software) had added
> appropriate headers, my followup would have gone to the list only.
> 
> For instance, if I followup to any of Branden Robinson's posts, they go
> to the list only.

that is because both you and he are using "special" software.

That's akin to someone saying "Well, when I send email to my friend Bob,
 HE never complains about ms-tnef stuff. So what if we're both using 
 MS Exchange? You're perfectly free to start using MS Exchange too..."

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Philip Brown]

[ Nathan E Norman writes ]
>...
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 12:11:21PM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> > I guess YOUR mailreader is "too old or disfunctional to be worth
> > discussing"
> > > I did not request you to Cc me.
> > But you replied to the list AND me.
> ...
> 
> Since you've set the "Reply-To:" header, wouldn't the reasonable person
> expect that you'd like a reply as well as the list?

Oops. I'd forgotten about that :-)

But that's because my ISP wont let non-root folks set the From: header
when calling sendmail through a command-line mailer.
So IF someone wants to email me directly, I want them to use that address.
But I do NOT want people to Cc me on mailing lists.


> 
> Phil, you miss the point.  Please note that you set your "Reply-To:"
> header.  Now please imagine a scenario where you can't control your
> "From:" address (you're at work possibly?): it's set to
> "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"  and you definitely DO NOT want replies to come
> to your work address (perhaps there's a fascist regime or something).
> So, you set your "Reply-To:" header to your favorite account:
> "[EMAIL PROTECTED]".  Cool - now when people reply they'll be sending
> to the right address!  Oh, but wait, that damn list you're subscribed
> to rewrites the "Reply-To:" header for its own purposes!  Now you're
> going to get a bunch of email going exactly where you don't want it:
> you've been deprived of your right to set an email header.

This case can be solved fairly easily by the mailing list software using
the simplified reply precedence order itself, and doing a little header
rewriting.
-> If only From: is present, leave it alone, and just add Reply-To
-> If Reply-To: is present, rewrite From:, AND add Reply-To


For example:

[original message to list]
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[mailing list resends out as]
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Reply-to: debian-devel

It shouldn't be a problem that the "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" address goes away,
because after all, if joe wanted that address to really be used, he
wouldn't have set the reply-to in the first place.

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Miles Bader]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Philip Brown) writes:
> I guess YOUR mailreader is "too old or disfunctional to be worth
> discussing"
> 
> I did not request you to Cc me.
> But you replied to the list AND me.

Because that is the most useful action for mail followups in the absence
of other information.  If you (or the mailling list software) had added
appropriate headers, my followup would have gone to the list only.

For instance, if I followup to any of Branden Robinson's posts, they go
to the list only.

> The issue is how to simplify a default action of 
> "reply to the list, and ONLY the list"

And the answer is to add headers that make (reasonable) MUAs do
followups to the list only, *without* disabling the correct operation of
a `reply to sender' command.

-Miles
-- 
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra.  Suddenly it flips over,
pinning you underneath.  At night the ice weasels come.  --Nietzsche

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Nathan E Norman]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 12:11:21PM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> [ Miles Bader writes ]
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Philip Brown) writes:
> > > As opposed to the current scheme, which also requires "annoying manual
> > > editing of addresses" to reply to the list, if your mailreader does the
> > > reasonable thing and assumes you want to reply to the original sender of
> > > the message, in liu of a reply-to header.
> > 
> > Only if you're using a MUA too old or disfunctional to be worth discussing.
> > 
> > All reasonable mail readers support at least `reply to sender' and
> > `followup'/`wide-reply' commands, and the latter should do what you want.
> 
> I guess YOUR mailreader is "too old or disfunctional to be worth
> discussing"
> > I did not request you to Cc me.
> But you replied to the list AND me.

Some headers from your mail:
: To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
: Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 12:11:21 -0800 (PST)   
: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Philip Brown)
: Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Since you've set the "Reply-To:" header, wouldn't the reasonable person
expect that you'd like a reply as well as the list?  If that's not
what you want, then set headers like "Mail-Copies-To: never" or
"Mail-Followup-To:" with the appropriate address(es).

Since this doesn't seem to be what you want I've omitted the Cc: in
this case.

> The issue is how to simplify a default action of 
> "reply to the list, and ONLY the list"

We've already got that, thanks.
 
> Presumably your own mailreader does not have a single key for
> "reply to debian-devel, not to original sender" function, which is why you
> chose the alternative of "reply to all".
> Which is NOT desirable.
> 
> > By making Reply-To: point to the list, you make these two different
> > commands do the same thing, thus depriving the user of the choice.
> 
> There is NO "depriving of choice".

Phil, you miss the point.  Please note that you set your "Reply-To:"
header.  Now please imagine a scenario where you can't control your
"From:" address (you're at work possibly?): it's set to
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]"  and you definitely DO NOT want replies to come
to your work address (perhaps there's a fascist regime or something).
So, you set your "Reply-To:" header to your favorite account:
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]".  Cool - now when people reply they'll be sending
to the right address!  Oh, but wait, that damn list you're subscribed
to rewrites the "Reply-To:" header for its own purposes!  Now you're
going to get a bunch of email going exactly where you don't want it:
you've been deprived of your right to set an email header.

This has been discussed a million times.  The debian- lists will not
start setting "Reply-To:" just because you say they should.  If you
don't like that, that's life I guess.  I personally hate subscribing
to lists which do set "Reply-To:" but that doesn't give me the right
to bitch about it for days on end wasting everyone's time.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Nathan Norman - Staff Engineer | A good plan today is better
Micromuse Inc. | than a perfect plan tomorrow.
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]   |   -- Patton


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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Philip Brown]

[ Miles Bader writes ]
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Philip Brown) writes:
> > As opposed to the current scheme, which also requires "annoying manual
> > editing of addresses" to reply to the list, if your mailreader does the
> > reasonable thing and assumes you want to reply to the original sender of
> > the message, in liu of a reply-to header.
> 
> Only if you're using a MUA too old or disfunctional to be worth discussing.
> 
> All reasonable mail readers support at least `reply to sender' and
> `followup'/`wide-reply' commands, and the latter should do what you want.

I guess YOUR mailreader is "too old or disfunctional to be worth
discussing"

I did not request you to Cc me.
But you replied to the list AND me.

The issue is how to simplify a default action of 
"reply to the list, and ONLY the list"

Presumably your own mailreader does not have a single key for
"reply to debian-devel, not to original sender" function, which is why you
chose the alternative of "reply to all".
Which is NOT desirable.


> By making Reply-To: point to the list, you make these two different
> commands do the same thing, thus depriving the user of the choice.

There is NO "depriving of choice".
If the recipient user wants to send to the original sender, there is
nothing stopping them.
Hopefully, everyone on debian-devel is fully capable of a little typing, in
the rare case that an individual reply is warranted. But 99% of replies
should be to the list.
Therefore, we should optimize for that case.

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Miles Bader]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Philip Brown) writes:
> As opposed to the current scheme, which also requires "annoying manual
> editing of addresses" to reply to the list, if your mailreader does the
> reasonable thing and assumes you want to reply to the original sender of
> the message, in liu of a reply-to header.

Only if you're using a MUA too old or disfunctional to be worth discussing.

All reasonable mail readers support at least `reply to sender' and
`followup'/`wide-reply' commands, and the latter should do what you want.

By making Reply-To: point to the list, you make these two different
commands do the same thing, thus depriving the user of the choice.

-Miles
-- 
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra.  Suddenly it flips over,
pinning you underneath.  At night the ice weasels come.  --Nietzsche

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Philip Brown]

[ Miles Bader writes ]
> Riku Voipio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Which reminds me, why doesn't this list just set:
> >  reply-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> 
> Because it's completely wrong.
> 
> Doing so takes the choice of who to reply to (the sender or the list)
> out of the hands of the reader [at least without annoying manual editing
> of addresses].

As opposed to the current scheme, which also requires "annoying manual
editing of addresses" to reply to the list, if your mailreader does the
reasonable thing and assumes you want to reply to the original sender of
the message, in liu of a reply-to header.

A comparison:

Your message came to me with the following headers of interest:


Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: Miles Bader <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Miles Bader <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Resent-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Resent-Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Resent-From: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
X-Loop: debian-devel@lists.debian.org


Whereas another mailing list I'm on, that does it more reasonably, has
the discussed

From: User Name <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

I think there are also ways to make the default reply go to the list, but
allow "reply to all" to send to the list AND the original sender, but i
dont remember the structure offhand.

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Adam McKenna]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 02:15:42PM -0500, D-Man wrote:
> Try mutt and its "L" command.  The "L" command means "list-reply", aka
> only send a message to the list, not to all recepients.  It also sets
> a header flag so that other well-behaved MUA's don't send you an extra
> copy of their replies since you will get it on the list anyway.

Not exactly.  List-reply sends a reply to the list and any other people
listed in Mail-Followup-To.  The thing that bugs me about this is that mutt
often adds other list-readers' e-mail addresses to Mail-Followup-To, 
effectively rendering this feature useless.

I don't personally believe that munging reply-to is a good idea on a list
this large.  In general it causes more problems than it solves.

--Adam

-- 
Adam McKenna <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | "No matter how much it changes, 
http://flounder.net/publickey.html   |  technology's just a bunch of wires 
GPG: 17A4 11F7 5E7E C2E7 08AA|  connected to a bunch of other wires."
 38B0 05D0 8BF7 2C6D 110A|  Joe Rogan, _NewsRadio_
  2:23pm  up 207 days, 12:40,  8 users,  load average: 0.03, 0.17, 0.11

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Philip Brown]

[ D-Man writes ]
> ...
> Try mutt and its "L" command.  The "L" command means "list-reply", aka
> only send a message to the list, not to all recepients.  It also sets
> a header flag so that other well-behaved MUA's don't send you an extra
> copy of their replies since you will get it on the list anyway.

guess what?

not everyone uses mutt.

not everyone should.


> "Reply-to" is meant to send a message back to the person who wrote the
> first one, not to someone they wrote the message to.

reply-to is meant to direct where you should send "replies to".

And in the case of the debian mailing lists, you should "reply to" the
list.

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Mark Brown]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:08:25PM +0200, Anton Zinoviev wrote:
> On  3.I.2001 at 19:31 Peter Makholm wrote:

> With one exception:

> > Reply-To munging does not benefit the user with a reasonable mailer.
> > People want to munge Reply-To headers to make ``reply back to the
> > list'' easy. But it already is easy. Reasonable mail programs have two
> > separate ``reply'' commands: one that replies directly to the author
> > of a message, and another that replies to the author plus all of the
> > list recipients.

> This doesn't apply to the Debian mailinglists.

Why not?

-- 
Mark Brown  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]   (Trying to avoid grumpiness)
http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/
EUFShttp://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/


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Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[D-Man]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 09:08:25PM +0200, Anton Zinoviev wrote:
> > Reply-To munging does not benefit the user with a reasonable mailer.
> > People want to munge Reply-To headers to make ``reply back to the
> > list'' easy. But it already is easy. Reasonable mail programs have two
> > separate ``reply'' commands: one that replies directly to the author
> > of a message, and another that replies to the author plus all of the
> > list recipients.
> 
> This doesn't apply to the Debian mailinglists.

What is this supposed to mean?

Try mutt and its "L" command.  The "L" command means "list-reply", aka
only send a message to the list, not to all recepients.  It also sets
a header flag so that other well-behaved MUA's don't send you an extra
copy of their replies since you will get it on the list anyway.

"Reply-to" is meant to send a message back to the person who wrote the
first one, not to someone they wrote the message to.


What if I set my Reply-To header to be the address I was sending To?
How would you reply to me?  ;-)

-D

PS.  this argument is pointless, just accept the Right Way to do
things and use tools that aren't broken

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Anton Zinoviev]

On  3.I.2001 at 19:31 Peter Makholm wrote:
> Riku Voipio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > Which reminds me, why doesn't this list just set:
> > 
> >  reply-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

One and the same mail can be sent to more than one mailinglists, but the
replyes usualy should go to only one of them.

> Please read "``Reply-To'' Munging Considered Harmful"  http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html>
> 
> It should say it all.

With one exception:

> Reply-To munging does not benefit the user with a reasonable mailer.
> People want to munge Reply-To headers to make ``reply back to the
> list'' easy. But it already is easy. Reasonable mail programs have two
> separate ``reply'' commands: one that replies directly to the author
> of a message, and another that replies to the author plus all of the
> list recipients.

This doesn't apply to the Debian mailinglists.

Anton Zinoviev, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Miles Bader]

Riku Voipio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Which reminds me, why doesn't this list just set:
>  reply-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

Because it's completely wrong.

Doing so takes the choice of who to reply to (the sender or the list)
out of the hands of the reader [at least without annoying manual editing
of addresses].

-Miles
-- 
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra.  Suddenly it flips over,
pinning you underneath.  At night the ice weasels come.  --Nietzsche