Re: [Marxism] HTML versus plain text?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect l...@panix.com writes: (God! How I wish Louis would get with the program and allow the rest of us to post HTML instead of text-only, even if he continues to insist on using emacs or whatever). Any thoughts on this from comrades? Yes. Emacs was rendering html perfectly when thunderbird was still a thunder egg. :) -- In Solidarity, Billy O'Connor Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] HTML versus plain text?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 1/21/2011 8:13 AM, Ambrose Andrews wrote: Count me as generally against. I don't see the advantage. The big advantage for me is being able to use embedded links. Hypertext links. Frankly, not being able to see the advantage of HYPERtext as opposed to PLAINtext strikes me as as extreme intellectual blindness. The difference between HYPERtext and text is simply embedded links. When links are not embedded, they tend to stop the flow of the argument. But they don't do that in HTML which means I, at least, would use them, to refer to source material, for example, even when the link is not the major or a significant point of the piece. Other advantages are more flexibility in formatting, abandoning kludges like asterisking words or phrases [*blah blah blah*] for emphasis and so on. But those are secondary or tertiary. Now, some comrades have expressed fear of security threats. This is due to the propaganda of companies engaged in what is essentially a shake-down. For example, I went to ask.com and queried how many computer viruses are there. The answer came back: According to Spybot, as of Feb. 06, 2009 there are 287,524 viruses and growing. But a spokesperson for another security company, Panda software, had told a blogger a few days earlier [the post was dated Jan 29, 2009] that Seven years ago ... there were maybe 100,000 to 300,000 viruses now there are 'millions and millions'. Yeah, sure. Let's take the 300,000 figure. That would be 12,000 a year in the 25 years since the first MS-DOS virus [(c) Brain] was spotted in the wild. Or even better, the estimate that in seven years, from 2002 to 2009, the number of viruses went from 300,000 to millions and millions which I will ultra-conservatively translate into an increase of two million. That works out to more than 1,000 additional viruses per working day over those seven years. Without even discounting vacations, sick days or three- or four-day holiday weekends. Does that correspond to anyone's experience on this list? Are you assailed by, say, .01% of these viruses, with your antivirus stopping an infection or attack every week and a half or so? Or even .001% of these viruses, which would mean an anti-virus hit three times a year? The inverse of .001% is 99.999%. Five nines --the gold standard in reliability. Judging by your antivirus, and how infrequently it reports an attack or infection, your computer EXCEEDS that. How is it possible that there are these thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of these fiendishly clever and diabolically crafted programs, and your antivirus did not have occasion to catch even a SINGLE one??? This doesn't pass the giggle test. Yes, there are some real threats. But the perception most people have of vicious credit-card stealing hackers lurking in the next link you click on is due to what is --in essence-- a protection racket. Like, how did Spybot KNOW there were 287,524 viruses? Well, cui bono? [That cui bono should have been in blue so that if you clicked on it, your browser would have opened this page: http://oaks.nvg.org/ys2ra11.html. I would have followed it immediately with the following translation, instead of this bracketed comment]. That's Latin for, who profits? [And as that last paragraph is meant to illustrate, the segment above is a good example of why I want html mail: to embed links. I would have linked both the ask.com answer and the blog quoting the Panda software guy, in passing so to speak. [To go out of my way and place URLs in the middle of that text --as I did with the Latin phrase at the end-- would have overwhelmed the argument -- essentially, it would have been diversionary (as my link to a page about Latin phrases shows) [My guess is only a few people, would really follow up on the links, and probably only AFTER finishing the post, which is what I tend to do. Embedded links are the 21-st Century version of footnotes. [But I want the footnotes --the links-- to be there. You see, I'm a doubting Thomas. I want to put my fingers in the holes. link to 35-year-old Jimmy Breslin column about the execution of Gary Gilmore --if I could find it online-- would be attached to doubting Thomas. [After all, HTML means Hyper Text Markup Language (and if I'd had it, I would have bolded the H,T,M, and L in those words), and the essence of *HYPER* text, as opposed to plain text, IS THE *LINKING.* [In writing my posts, I often do many searches, look at *tons* of web pages, earlier posts, Marxists classics, speeches by Fidel, videos of Phil Ochs, Green Day and Silvio, TS Eliot poems and an episode or two of Babylon 5 or Kyle XY ... it's a really impulsive thing driven by a bunch of dithyrambic lurches.
Re: [Marxism] HTML versus plain text?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 23 January 2011 13:41, Joaquín Bustelo jbust...@bellsouth.net wrote: Other advantages are more flexibility in formatting, abandoning kludges like asterisking words or phrases [*blah blah blah*] for emphasis and so on. But those are secondary or tertiary. These secondary and tertiary ones also contain potential problems with accessibility. For me being *sometimes* confined to a terminal falls under that broad category of accessibility. Ease off on the belittling parodies of 'super geek' purity - fact is, people read this list under a range of circumstances, chosen or otherwise, it is important to be able to understand this, which may involve stepping outside one's own particular circumstances and expectations. Yes there are advantages, but there's another side to the story which may tend towards excluding some people. Personally, my health has deteriorated over the last couple of years such that looking at a standard computer screen at length makes me sick. The more I am able to control the formatting as a *reader* (not a writer) the more I am able to lessen the suffering associated with it. To the extent that formatting is imposed on me arbitrarily by the author, there are barriers in the way of me making those adjustments to my own taste, or piping the content to some other less nauseating medium. Just one consideration among many of course, and it isn't an absolute question, but a matter relative convenience and inconvenience. It does sound like Joaquín Bustelo's blog would be a worthy piece of hypertext should such a blog come into being. -AA. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] HTML versus plain text?
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Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
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On 21 January 2011 23:49, Les Schaffer schaf...@optonline.net wrote:
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Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
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On 1/21/11 7:39 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
Any thoughts on this from comrades?
Count me as generally against. I don't see the advantage.
i've been thinking for a while we could start allowing html ... if
enough people are annoyed by it, its easy to turn off again.
another issue: at the moment, we have it set up so that if a post
contains BOTH plain text and html, we forward only the plain text. i can
turn that off, but the byte count will go up by roughly double for posts
that include both ... and we may have to adjust the max size parameter
if people are going to post large emails with both plain text and html
included.
so, does byte count matter to anyone anymore??
Byte count is no big deal for me personally, but even as someone who
has never touched emacs in his life, I do still frequently find myself
confined to using a terminal, and in that context HTML-alone can be
really inconvenient. IMO comrades having to express themselves in
text is less inconvenient and is not a bad discipline. There are
other accessibility considerations which don't (yet) apply to me, but
I try to think of others, and my future self.
-AA.
--
Ambrose Andrews
LPO box 8274 ANU Acton ACT 0200 Australia
http://www.vrvl.net/~ambrose/
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Re: [Marxism] HTML versus plain text?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 21.01.2011 13:39, Louis Proyect wrote: (God! How I wish Louis would get with the program and allow the rest of us to post HTML instead of text-only, even if he continues to insist on using emacs or whatever). Any thoughts on this from comrades? I prefer plain text for email - I understand there are security issues with HTML - even if HTML is enabled I'll probably set things so that the text is displayed only as plain text. I see no particular advantage in HTML email. Einde O'Callaghan Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] HTML versus plain text?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I prefer plain text. I think it turns the focus from the presentation to the information. Mark On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 5:48 AM, Einde O'Callaghan eind...@freenet.dewrote: == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 21.01.2011 13:39, Louis Proyect wrote: (God! How I wish Louis would get with the program and allow the rest of us to post HTML instead of text-only, even if he continues to insist on using emacs or whatever). Any thoughts on this from comrades? I prefer plain text for email - I understand there are security issues with HTML - even if HTML is enabled I'll probably set things so that the text is displayed only as plain text. I see no particular advantage in HTML email. Einde O'Callaghan Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/linksgerichtet%40gmail.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] HTML versus plain text?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == what a load o' . . .hooey. seriously, there is no reason why you can't keep established rules for trimming, and thinking, while allowing it to be easier to write (and trim, and whatever else needs to be done). Why exactly does every response have to look like a blackbox manual typewriter? And, if we are interested in focusing on the information, maybe we should be telling everybody what they should write as well?As my 16 year old is wont to say, wow Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
