Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
Rusi: unicode as a medium is universal in the same way that ASCII used to be Probably, you do not realize deeply how this sentence is correct. Unicode and ascii are constructed in the same way. It has not even to do with characters, but with mathematics. It is on this level the FSR fails. It is mathematically wrong by design! jmf -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Sat, 07 Dec 2013 02:16:02 -0800, wxjmfauth wrote: Rusi: unicode as a medium is universal in the same way that ASCII used to be Probably, you do not realize deeply how this sentence is correct. Unicode and ascii are constructed in the same way. It has not even to do with characters, but with mathematics. It is on this level the FSR fails. It is mathematically wrong by design! I'm reminded of that fellow, I don't remember his name, who *years* after the Wright Brothers had flown, and there were dozens of people building aeroplanes, was still trying to convince everyone that heavier-than-air flight was mathematically impossible. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 10:25 PM, Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote: On Sat, 07 Dec 2013 02:16:02 -0800, wxjmfauth wrote: Rusi: unicode as a medium is universal in the same way that ASCII used to be Probably, you do not realize deeply how this sentence is correct. Unicode and ascii are constructed in the same way. It has not even to do with characters, but with mathematics. It is on this level the FSR fails. It is mathematically wrong by design! I'm reminded of that fellow, I don't remember his name, who *years* after the Wright Brothers had flown, and there were dozens of people building aeroplanes, was still trying to convince everyone that heavier-than-air flight was mathematically impossible. Nearest I can find is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Newcomb#On_the_impossibility_of_a_flying_machine He at least accepted the Wrights' work once he found out about it. Also, he didn't make repeated usenet posts that torpedo you in the face and leave an Uh?-shaped hole. [1] I'm still not sure what jmf meant by the above. ChrisA [1] http://bofh.ntk.net/BOFH/1999/bastard99-24.php -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
In article 31f1bb84-1432-446c-a7d4-79ce16f2a...@googlegroups.com, wxjmfa...@gmail.com wrote: It is on this level the FSR fails. What is FSR? I apologize if this was explained earlier in the thread and I can't find the reference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSR#Science_and_technology was no help. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 2013-12-07 11:08, Roy Smith wrote: In article 31f1bb84-1432-446c-a7d4-79ce16f2a...@googlegroups.com, wxjmfa...@gmail.com wrote: It is on this level the FSR fails. What is FSR? I apologize if this was explained earlier in the thread and I can't find the reference. Flexible String Representation = PEP393 http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0393/ -tkc -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 07/12/2013 16:08, Roy Smith wrote: In article 31f1bb84-1432-446c-a7d4-79ce16f2a...@googlegroups.com, wxjmfa...@gmail.com wrote: It is on this level the FSR fails. What is FSR? I apologize if this was explained earlier in the thread and I can't find the reference. It's the Flexible String Representation, introduced in Python 3.3: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0393/ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Saturday, December 7, 2013 3:46:02 PM UTC+5:30, wxjm...@gmail.com wrote: Rusi: unicode as a medium is universal in the same way that ASCII used to be Probably, you do not realize deeply how this sentence is correct. Unicode and ascii are constructed in the same way. It has not even to do with characters, but with mathematics. On the contrary, I'd say we have some rather interesting 'characters' out here. It is on this level the FSR fails. It is mathematically wrong by design! Now thats an even more interesting statement. Only not sure what it means Here are some attempts It is wrong therefore unmathematical It is designed so its wrong It is mathematical so its undesigned Any Ive missed?? -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 12/7/13 11:27 AM, rusi wrote: On Saturday, December 7, 2013 3:46:02 PM UTC+5:30, wxjm...@gmail.com wrote: Rusi: unicode as a medium is universal in the same way that ASCII used to be Probably, you do not realize deeply how this sentence is correct. Unicode and ascii are constructed in the same way. It has not even to do with characters, but with mathematics. On the contrary, I'd say we have some rather interesting 'characters' out here. It is on this level the FSR fails. It is mathematically wrong by design! Now thats an even more interesting statement. Only not sure what it means Here are some attempts It is wrong therefore unmathematical It is designed so its wrong It is mathematical so its undesigned Any Ive missed?? JMF: Please stop making this claim. The last 20 times you claimed it you didn't convince anyone on this list, and I doubt you have any new information. Rusi: if you are interested in the details, search the archives. -- Ned Batchelder, http://nedbatchelder.com -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Friday, December 6, 2013 1:06:30 PM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote: Rusi wrote: On Thursday, December 5, 2013 6:28:54 AM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote: The real problem with web forums is they conflate transport and presentation into a single opaque blob, and are pretty much universally designed to be a closed system. Mail and usenet were both engineered to make a sharp division between transport and presentation, which meant it was possible to evolve each at their own pace. Mostly that meant people could go off and develop new client applications which interoperated with the existing system. But, it also meant that transport layers could be switched out (as when NNTP gradually, but inexorably, replaced UUCP as the primary usenet transport layer). There is a deep assumption hovering round-about the above -- what I will call the 'Unix assumption(s)'. It has nothing to do with Unix. The separation of transport from presentation is just as valid on Windows, Mac, etc. But before that, just a check on terminology. By 'presentation' you mean what people normally call 'mail-clients': thunderbird, mutt etc. And by 'transport' you mean sendmail, exim, qmail etc etc -- what normally are called 'mail-servers.' Right?? Yes. Assuming this is the intended meaning of the terminology (yeah its clearer terminology than the usual and yeah Im also a 'Unix-guy'), here's the 'Unix-assumption': - human communication� (is not very different from) - machine communication� (can be done by) - text� (for which) - ASCII is fine� (which is just) - bytes� (inside/between byte-memory-organized) - von Neumann computers To the extent that these assumptions are invalid, the 'opaque-blob' may well be preferable. I think you're off on the wrong track here. This has nothing to do with plain text (ascii or otherwise). It has to do with divorcing how you store and transport messages (be they plain text, HTML, or whatever) from how a user interacts with them. Evidently (and completely inadvertently) this exchange has just illustrated one of the inadmissable assumptions: unicode as a medium is universal in the same way that ASCII used to be I wrote a number of ellipsis characters ie codepoint 2026 as in: - human communication… (is not very different from) - machine communication… Somewhere between my sending and your quoting those ellipses became the replacement character FFFD - human communication� (is not very different from) - machine communication� Leaving aside whose fault this is (very likely buggy google groups), this mojibaking cannot happen if the assumption All text is ASCII were to uniformly hold. Of course with unicode also this can be made to not happen, but that is fragile and error-prone. And that is because ASCII (not extended) is ONE thing in a way that unicode is hopelessly a motley inconsistent variety. With unicode there are in-memory formats, transportation formats eg UTF-8, strange beasties like FSR (which then hopelessly and inveterately tickle our resident trolls!) multi-layer encodings (in html), BOMS and unnecessary/inconsistent BOMS (in microsoft-notepad). With ASCII, ASCII is ASCII; ie ABC is 65,66,67 whether its in-core, in-file, in-pipe or whatever. Ok there are a few wrinkles to this eg. the null-terminator in C-strings. I think this is the exception to the rule that in classic Unix, ASCII is completely inter-operable and therefore a universal data-structure for inter-process or inter-machine communication. It is this universal data structure that makes classic unix pipes and filters possible and easy (of which your separation of presentation and transportation is just one case). Give it up and the composability goes with it. Go up from the ASCII - Unicode level to the plain-text - hypertext (aka html) level and these composability problems hit with redoubled force. Take something like Wikipedia (by which, I really mean, MediaWiki, which is the underlying software package). Most people think of Wikipedia as a web site. But, there's another layer below that which lets you get access to the contents of articles, navigate all the rich connections like category trees, and all sorts of metadata like edit histories. Which means, if I wanted to (and many examples of this exist), I can write my own client which presents the same information in different ways. Not sure whats your point. Html is a universal data-structuring format -- ok for presentation, bad for data-structuring SQL databases (assuming thats the mediawiki backend) is another -- ok for data-structuring bad for presentation. Mediawiki mediates between the two formats. Beyond that I lost you... what are you trying to say?? -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 12:03 AM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: SQL databases (assuming thats the mediawiki backend) is another -- ok for data-structuring bad for presentation. No, SQL databases don't store structured text. MediaWiki just stores a single blob (not in the database sense of that word) of text. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Friday, December 6, 2013 6:49:04 PM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote: On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 12:03 AM, rusi wrote: SQL databases (assuming thats the mediawiki backend) is another -- ok for data-structuring bad for presentation. No, SQL databases don't store structured text. MediaWiki just stores a single blob (not in the database sense of that word) of text. I guess we are using 'structured' in different ways. All I am saying is that mediawiki which seems to present as html, actually stores its stuff as SQL -- nothing more or less structured than the schemas here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:MediaWiki_architecture#Database_and_text_storage -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 12:32 AM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: I guess we are using 'structured' in different ways. All I am saying is that mediawiki which seems to present as html, actually stores its stuff as SQL -- nothing more or less structured than the schemas here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:MediaWiki_architecture#Database_and_text_storage Yeah, but the structure is all about the metadata. Ultimately, there's one single text field containing the entire content as you would see it in the page editor: wiki markup in straight text. MediaWiki uses an SQL database to store that lump of text, but ultimately the relationship is between wikitext and HTML, no SQL involvement. Wiki markup is reasonable for text structuring. (Not for generic data structuring, but it's decent for text.) Same with reStructuredText, used for PEPs. An SQL database is a good way to store mappings of this key, this tuple of data and retrieve them conveniently, including (and this is the bit that's more complicated in a straight Python dictionary) using any value out of the tuple as the key, and (and this is where a dict *really* can't hack it) storing/retrieving more data than fits in memory. The two are orthogonal. Your point is better supported by wikitext than by SQL, here, except that there aren't fifty other systems that parse and display wikitext. In fact, what you're suggesting is a good argument for deprecating HTML email in favour of RST email, and using docutils to render the result either as HTML (for webmail users) or as some other format. And I wouldn't be against that :) But good luck convincing the world that Microsoft Outlook is doing the wrong thing. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Friday, December 6, 2013 7:18:19 PM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote: On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 12:32 AM, rusi wrote: I guess we are using 'structured' in different ways. All I am saying is that mediawiki which seems to present as html, actually stores its stuff as SQL -- nothing more or less structured than the schemas here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:MediaWiki_architecture#Database_and_text_storage Yeah, but the structure is all about the metadata. Ok (I'd drop the 'all') Ultimately, there's one single text field containing the entire content Right as you would see it in the page editor: wiki markup in straight text. Aha! There you are! Its 'page editor' here and not the html which 'display source' (control-u) which a browser would show. And wikimedia is the software that mediates. The usual direction (seen by users of wikipedia) is that wikimedia takes this text, along with the other unrelated (metadata?) seen around -- sidebar, tabs etc, css settings and munges it all into html The other direction (seen by editors of wikipedia) is that you edit a page and that page and history etc will show the changes, reflecting the fact that the SQL content has changed. MediaWiki uses an SQL database to store that lump of text, but ultimately the relationship is between wikitext and HTML, no SQL involvement. Dunno what you mean. Every time someone browses wikipedia, things are getting pulled out of the SQL and munged into the html (s)he sees. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 1:11 AM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: Aha! There you are! Its 'page editor' here and not the html which 'display source' (control-u) which a browser would show. And wikimedia is the software that mediates. The usual direction (seen by users of wikipedia) is that wikimedia takes this text, along with the other unrelated (metadata?) seen around -- sidebar, tabs etc, css settings and munges it all into html The other direction (seen by editors of wikipedia) is that you edit a page and that page and history etc will show the changes, reflecting the fact that the SQL content has changed. MediaWiki is fundamentally very similar to a structure that I'm trying to deploy for a community web site that I host, approximately thus: * A git repository stores a bunch of RST files * A script auto-generates index files based on the presence of certain file names, and renders via rst2html * The HTML pages are served as static content MediaWiki is like this: * Each page has a history, represented by a series of state snapshots of wikitext * On display, the wikitext is converted to HTML and served. The main difference is that MediaWiki is optimized for rapid and constant editing, where what I'm pushing for is optimized for less common edits that might span multiple files. (MW has no facility for atomically changing multiple pages, and atomically reverting those changes, and so on. Each page stands alone.) They're still broadly doing the same thing: storing marked-up text and rendering HTML. The fact that one uses an SQL database and the other uses a git repository is actually quite insignificant - it's as significant as the choice of whether to store your data on a hard disk or an SSD. The system is no different. MediaWiki uses an SQL database to store that lump of text, but ultimately the relationship is between wikitext and HTML, no SQL involvement. Dunno what you mean. Every time someone browses wikipedia, things are getting pulled out of the SQL and munged into the html (s)he sees. Yes, but that's just mechanics. The fact that the PHP scripts to operate Wikipedia are being pulled off a file system doesn't mean that MediaWiki is an ext3-to-HTML renderer. It's a wikitext-to-HTML renderer. Anyway. As I said, your point is still mostly there, as long as you use wikitext rather than SQL. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches]
On Fri, 06 Dec 2013 05:03:57 -0800, rusi wrote:
Evidently (and completely inadvertently) this exchange has just
illustrated one of the inadmissable assumptions:
unicode as a medium is universal in the same way that ASCII used to be
Ironically, your post was not Unicode.
Seriously. I am 100% serious.
Your post was sent using a legacy encoding, Windows-1252, also known as
CP-1252, which is most certainly *not* Unicode. Whatever software you
used to send the message correctly flagged it with a charset header:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
Alas, the software Roy Smith uses, MT-NewsWatcher, does not handle
encodings correctly (or at all!), it screws up the encoding then sends a
reply with no charset line at all. This is one bug that cannot be blamed
on Google Groups -- or on Unicode.
I wrote a number of ellipsis characters ie codepoint 2026 as in:
Actually you didn't. You wrote a number of ellipsis characters, hex byte
\x85 (decimal 133), in the CP1252 charset. That happens to be mapped to
code point U+2026 in Unicode, but the two are as distinct as ASCII and
EBCDIC.
Somewhere between my sending and your quoting those ellipses became the
replacement character FFFD
Yes, it appears that MT-NewsWatcher is *deeply, deeply* confused about
encodings and character sets. It doesn't just assume things are ASCII,
but makes a half-hearted attempt to be charset-aware, but badly. I can
only imagine that it was written back in the Dark Ages where there were a
lot of different charsets in use but no conventions for specifying which
charset was in use. Or perhaps the author was smoking crack while coding.
Leaving aside whose fault this is (very likely buggy google groups),
this mojibaking cannot happen if the assumption All text is ASCII were
to uniformly hold.
This is incorrect. People forget that ASCII has evolved since the first
version of the standard in 1963. There have actually been five versions
of the ASCII standard, plus one unpublished version. (And that's not
including the things which are frequently called ASCII but aren't.)
ASCII-1963 didn't even include lowercase letters. It is also missing some
graphic characters like braces, and included at least two characters no
longer used, the up-arrow and left-arrow. The control characters were
also significantly different from today.
ASCII-1965 was unpublished and unused. I don't know the details of what
it changed.
ASCII-1967 is a lot closer to the ASCII in use today. It made
considerable changes to the control characters, moving, adding, removing,
or renaming at least half a dozen control characters. It officially added
lowercase letters, braces, and some others. It replaced the up-arrow
character with the caret and the left-arrow with the underscore. It was
ambiguous, allowing variations and substitutions, e.g.:
- character 33 was permitted to be either the exclamation
mark ! or the logical OR symbol |
- consequently character 124 (vertical bar) was always
displayed as a broken bar ¦, which explains why even today
many keyboards show it that way
- character 35 was permitted to be either the number sign # or
the pound sign £
- character 94 could be either a caret ^ or a logical NOT ¬
Even the humble comma could be pressed into service as a cedilla.
ASCII-1968 didn't change any characters, but allowed the use of LF on its
own. Previously, you had to use either LF/CR or CR/LF as newline.
ASCII-1977 removed the ambiguities from the 1967 standard.
The most recent version is ASCII-1986 (also known as ANSI X3.4-1986).
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out what changes were made -- I
presume they were minor, and didn't affect the character set.
So as you can see, even with actual ASCII, you can have mojibake. It's
just not normally called that. But if you are given an arbitrary ASCII
file of unknown age, containing code 94, how can you be sure it was
intended as a caret rather than a logical NOT symbol? You can't.
Then there are at least 30 official variations of ASCII, strictly
speaking part of ISO-646. These 7-bit codes were commonly called ASCII
by their users, despite the differences, e.g. replacing the dollar sign $
with the international currency sign ¤, or replacing the left brace
{ with the letter s with caron š.
One consequence of this is that the MIME type for ASCII text is called
US ASCII, despite the redundancy, because many people expect ASCII
alone to mean whatever national variation they are used to.
But it gets worse: there are proprietary variations on ASCII which are
commonly called ASCII but aren't, including dozens of 8-bit so-called
extended ASCII character sets, which is where the problems *really*
pile up. Invariably back in the 1980s and early 1990s people used to call
these ASCII no matter that they used 8-bits and contained anything up
to 256 characters.
Just because somebody calls something ASCII,
Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches]
On Friday 06 December 2013 14:30:06 Steven D'Aprano did opine:
On Fri, 06 Dec 2013 05:03:57 -0800, rusi wrote:
Evidently (and completely inadvertently) this exchange has just
illustrated one of the inadmissable assumptions:
unicode as a medium is universal in the same way that ASCII used to
be
Ironically, your post was not Unicode.
Seriously. I am 100% serious.
Your post was sent using a legacy encoding, Windows-1252, also known as
CP-1252, which is most certainly *not* Unicode. Whatever software you
used to send the message correctly flagged it with a charset header:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
Alas, the software Roy Smith uses, MT-NewsWatcher, does not handle
encodings correctly (or at all!), it screws up the encoding then sends a
reply with no charset line at all. This is one bug that cannot be blamed
on Google Groups -- or on Unicode.
I wrote a number of ellipsis characters ie codepoint 2026 as in:
Actually you didn't. You wrote a number of ellipsis characters, hex byte
\x85 (decimal 133), in the CP1252 charset. That happens to be mapped to
code point U+2026 in Unicode, but the two are as distinct as ASCII and
EBCDIC.
Somewhere between my sending and your quoting those ellipses became
the replacement character FFFD
Yes, it appears that MT-NewsWatcher is *deeply, deeply* confused about
encodings and character sets. It doesn't just assume things are ASCII,
but makes a half-hearted attempt to be charset-aware, but badly. I can
only imagine that it was written back in the Dark Ages where there were
a lot of different charsets in use but no conventions for specifying
which charset was in use. Or perhaps the author was smoking crack while
coding.
Leaving aside whose fault this is (very likely buggy google groups),
this mojibaking cannot happen if the assumption All text is ASCII
were to uniformly hold.
This is incorrect. People forget that ASCII has evolved since the first
version of the standard in 1963. There have actually been five versions
of the ASCII standard, plus one unpublished version. (And that's not
including the things which are frequently called ASCII but aren't.)
ASCII-1963 didn't even include lowercase letters. It is also missing
some graphic characters like braces, and included at least two
characters no longer used, the up-arrow and left-arrow. The control
characters were also significantly different from today.
ASCII-1965 was unpublished and unused. I don't know the details of what
it changed.
ASCII-1967 is a lot closer to the ASCII in use today. It made
considerable changes to the control characters, moving, adding,
removing, or renaming at least half a dozen control characters. It
officially added lowercase letters, braces, and some others. It
replaced the up-arrow character with the caret and the left-arrow with
the underscore. It was ambiguous, allowing variations and
substitutions, e.g.:
- character 33 was permitted to be either the exclamation
mark ! or the logical OR symbol |
- consequently character 124 (vertical bar) was always
displayed as a broken bar آ¦, which explains why even today
many keyboards show it that way
- character 35 was permitted to be either the number sign # or
the pound sign آ£
- character 94 could be either a caret ^ or a logical NOT آ¬
Even the humble comma could be pressed into service as a cedilla.
ASCII-1968 didn't change any characters, but allowed the use of LF on
its own. Previously, you had to use either LF/CR or CR/LF as newline.
ASCII-1977 removed the ambiguities from the 1967 standard.
The most recent version is ASCII-1986 (also known as ANSI X3.4-1986).
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out what changes were made --
I presume they were minor, and didn't affect the character set.
So as you can see, even with actual ASCII, you can have mojibake. It's
just not normally called that. But if you are given an arbitrary ASCII
file of unknown age, containing code 94, how can you be sure it was
intended as a caret rather than a logical NOT symbol? You can't.
Then there are at least 30 official variations of ASCII, strictly
speaking part of ISO-646. These 7-bit codes were commonly called ASCII
by their users, despite the differences, e.g. replacing the dollar sign
$ with the international currency sign آ¤, or replacing the left brace
{ with the letter s with caron إ،.
One consequence of this is that the MIME type for ASCII text is called
US ASCII, despite the redundancy, because many people expect ASCII
alone to mean whatever national variation they are used to.
But it gets worse: there are proprietary variations on ASCII which are
commonly called ASCII but aren't, including dozens of 8-bit so-called
extended ASCII character sets, which is where the problems *really*
pile up. Invariably back in the 1980s and early 1990s people used to
call these
Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches]
Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info writes: Yes, it appears that MT-NewsWatcher is *deeply, deeply* confused about encodings and character sets. It doesn't just assume things are ASCII, but makes a half-hearted attempt to be charset-aware, but badly. I can only imagine that it was written back in the Dark Ages Indeed. The basic codebase probably goes back 20 years. I'm posting this from gmane, just so people don't think I'm a total luddite. When transmitting ASCII characters, the networking protocol could include various start and stop bits and parity codes. A single 7-bit ASCII character might be anything up to 12 bits in length on the wire. Not to mention that some really old hardware used 1.5 stop bits! -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
rusi wrote: On Friday, December 6, 2013 1:06:30 PM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote: Which means, if I wanted to (and many examples of this exist), I can write my own client which presents the same information in different ways. Not sure whats your point. The point is the existence of an alternative interface that's designed for use by other programs rather than humans. This is what web forums are missing. If it existed, one could easily create an alternative client with a newsreader-like interface. Without it, such a client would have to be a monstrosity that worked by screen-scraping the html. It's not about the format of the messages themselves -- that could be text, or html, or reST, or bbcode or whatever. It's about the *framing* of the messages, and being able to query them by their metadata. -- Greg -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches]
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote: - character 33 was permitted to be either the exclamation mark ! or the logical OR symbol | - consequently character 124 (vertical bar) was always displayed as a broken bar ¦, which explains why even today many keyboards show it that way - character 35 was permitted to be either the number sign # or the pound sign £ - character 94 could be either a caret ^ or a logical NOT ¬ Yeah, good fun stuff. I first met several of these ambiguities in the OS/2 REXX documentation, which detailed the language's operators by specifying their byte values as well as their characters - for instance, this quote from the docs (yeah, I still have it all here): Note: Depending upon your Personal System keyboard and the code page you are using, you may not have the solid vertical bar to select. For this reason, REXX also recognizes the use of the split vertical bar as a logical OR symbol. Some keyboards may have both characters. If so, they are not interchangeable; only the character that is equal to the ASCII value of 124 works as the logical OR. This type of mismatch can also cause the character on your screen to be different from the character on your keyboard. (The front material on the docs says (C) Copyright IBM Corp. 1987, 1994. All Rights Reserved.) It says ASCII value where on this list we would be more likely to call it byte value, and I'd prefer to say represented by rather than equal to, but nonetheless, this is still clearly distinguishing characters and bytes. The language spec is on characters, but ultimately the interpreter is going to be looking at bytes, so when there's a problem, it's byte 124 that's the one defined as logical OR. Oh, and note the copyright date. The byte/char distinction isn't new. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 12/6/13 8:03 AM, rusi wrote: I think you're off on the wrong track here. This has nothing to do with plain text (ascii or otherwise). It has to do with divorcing how you store and transport messages (be they plain text, HTML, or whatever) from how a user interacts with them. Evidently (and completely inadvertently) this exchange has just illustrated one of the inadmissable assumptions: unicode as a medium is universal in the same way that ASCII used to be I wrote a number of ellipsis characters ie codepoint 2026 as in: - human communication… (is not very different from) - machine communication… Somewhere between my sending and your quoting those ellipses became the replacement character FFFD - human communication� (is not very different from) - machine communication� Leaving aside whose fault this is (very likely buggy google groups), this mojibaking cannot happen if the assumption All text is ASCII were to uniformly hold. Of course with unicode also this can be made to not happen, but that is fragile and error-prone. And that is because ASCII (not extended) is ONE thing in a way that unicode is hopelessly a motley inconsistent variety. You seem to be suggesting that we should stick to ASCII. There are of course languages that need more than just the Latin alphabet. How would you suggest we support them? Or maybe I don't understand? --Ned. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches]
On Saturday, December 7, 2013 12:30:18 AM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Fri, 06 Dec 2013 05:03:57 -0800, rusi wrote:
Evidently (and completely inadvertently) this exchange has just
illustrated one of the inadmissable assumptions:
unicode as a medium is universal in the same way that ASCII used to be
Ironically, your post was not Unicode.
Seriously. I am 100% serious.
Your post was sent using a legacy encoding, Windows-1252, also known as
CP-1252, which is most certainly *not* Unicode. Whatever software you
used to send the message correctly flagged it with a charset header:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
Alas, the software Roy Smith uses, MT-NewsWatcher, does not handle
encodings correctly (or at all!), it screws up the encoding then sends a
reply with no charset line at all. This is one bug that cannot be blamed
on Google Groups -- or on Unicode.
I wrote a number of ellipsis characters ie codepoint 2026 as in:
Actually you didn't. You wrote a number of ellipsis characters, hex byte
\x85 (decimal 133), in the CP1252 charset. That happens to be mapped to
code point U+2026 in Unicode, but the two are as distinct as ASCII and
EBCDIC.
Somewhere between my sending and your quoting those ellipses became the
replacement character FFFD
Yes, it appears that MT-NewsWatcher is *deeply, deeply* confused about
encodings and character sets. It doesn't just assume things are ASCII,
but makes a half-hearted attempt to be charset-aware, but badly. I can
only imagine that it was written back in the Dark Ages where there were a
lot of different charsets in use but no conventions for specifying which
charset was in use. Or perhaps the author was smoking crack while coding.
Leaving aside whose fault this is (very likely buggy google groups),
this mojibaking cannot happen if the assumption All text is ASCII were
to uniformly hold.
This is incorrect. People forget that ASCII has evolved since the first
version of the standard in 1963. There have actually been five versions
of the ASCII standard, plus one unpublished version. (And that's not
including the things which are frequently called ASCII but aren't.)
ASCII-1963 didn't even include lowercase letters. It is also missing some
graphic characters like braces, and included at least two characters no
longer used, the up-arrow and left-arrow. The control characters were
also significantly different from today.
ASCII-1965 was unpublished and unused. I don't know the details of what
it changed.
ASCII-1967 is a lot closer to the ASCII in use today. It made
considerable changes to the control characters, moving, adding, removing,
or renaming at least half a dozen control characters. It officially added
lowercase letters, braces, and some others. It replaced the up-arrow
character with the caret and the left-arrow with the underscore. It was
ambiguous, allowing variations and substitutions, e.g.:
- character 33 was permitted to be either the exclamation
mark ! or the logical OR symbol |
- consequently character 124 (vertical bar) was always
displayed as a broken bar ¦, which explains why even today
many keyboards show it that way
- character 35 was permitted to be either the number sign # or
the pound sign £
- character 94 could be either a caret ^ or a logical NOT ¬
Even the humble comma could be pressed into service as a cedilla.
ASCII-1968 didn't change any characters, but allowed the use of LF on its
own. Previously, you had to use either LF/CR or CR/LF as newline.
ASCII-1977 removed the ambiguities from the 1967 standard.
The most recent version is ASCII-1986 (also known as ANSI X3.4-1986).
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out what changes were made -- I
presume they were minor, and didn't affect the character set.
So as you can see, even with actual ASCII, you can have mojibake. It's
just not normally called that. But if you are given an arbitrary ASCII
file of unknown age, containing code 94, how can you be sure it was
intended as a caret rather than a logical NOT symbol? You can't.
Then there are at least 30 official variations of ASCII, strictly
speaking part of ISO-646. These 7-bit codes were commonly called ASCII
by their users, despite the differences, e.g. replacing the dollar sign $
with the international currency sign ¤, or replacing the left brace
{ with the letter s with caron š.
One consequence of this is that the MIME type for ASCII text is called
US ASCII, despite the redundancy, because many people expect ASCII
alone to mean whatever national variation they are used to.
But it gets worse: there are proprietary variations on ASCII which are
commonly called ASCII but aren't, including dozens of 8-bit so-called
extended ASCII character sets, which is where the problems *really*
pile up. Invariably back in the 1980s and early 1990s people used
Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches]
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 1:33 PM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: That seems to suggest that something is not right with the python mailing list config. No?? If in doubt, blame someone else, eh? I'd first check what your browser's actually sending. Firebug will help there. See if your form fill-out is encoded as UTF-8 or CP-1252. That's the first step. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thu, 05 Dec 2013 23:13:54 -0800, rusi wrote: On Thursday, December 5, 2013 6:28:54 AM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote: The real problem with web forums is they conflate transport and presentation into a single opaque blob, and are pretty much universally designed to be a closed system. Mail and usenet were both engineered to make a sharp division between transport and presentation, which meant it was possible to evolve each at their own pace. Mostly that meant people could go off and develop new client applications which interoperated with the existing system. But, it also meant that transport layers could be switched out (as when NNTP gradually, but inexorably, replaced UUCP as the primary usenet transport layer). There is a deep assumption hovering round-about the above -- what I will call the 'Unix assumption(s)'. But before that, just a check on terminology. By 'presentation' you mean what people normally call 'mail-clients': thunderbird, mutt etc. And by 'transport' you mean sendmail, exim, qmail etc etc -- what normally are called 'mail-servers.' Right?? Presentation means how the data is presented. Transport means how the data is transported. It doesn't refer to a specific piece of software like Thunderbird, but to the logical fact that what people see (the presentation) is not identical to what gets transported from one computer to another. All programs make *some* distinction between the two. Email is encoded, wrapped with normally-hidden headers, and then sent, before being displayed at the other end sans such headers. But some programs make a nice clean distinction. If your mail client converts emails to sound for the benefit of the blind, that is easy to do because there is a clean *and public* distinction between the transport and presentation of email -- everybody can agree on how to extract the message (Hi Bob, are we still meeting up for drinks tomorrow night?) from the transportation layer (the email envelope). In contrast, that is not the case with nearly all web forums. By deliberate design, or mere ignorance and neglect, they mix up the message you care about (Hi Bob...) and the stuff you need to get that message (the HTML and Javascript code) in one big ball of mud, and don't have APIs for getting messages. Or worse, they deliberate obfuscate the content, in an attempt to lock people in to only using the specific interface they want you to use. Consider the difference between (say) Twitter, which has published standard APIs for reading and writing tweets, and StackOverflow, which as far as I can tell insists that the one and only way to read and write comments is via their website. The internal formatting of the website is not public and is subject to change without notice. (If I have unfairly maligned StackOverflow, substitute any number of dozens or hundreds of web forums.) [...] To the extent that these assumptions are invalid, the 'opaque-blob' may well be preferable. No. Nice clean interfaces separating concerns (such as transport and presentation) have little to do with ASCII text. One can define clear and open binary protocols too. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches]
On 07/12/2013 02:41, Chris Angelico wrote: On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 1:33 PM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: That seems to suggest that something is not right with the python mailing list config. No?? If in doubt, blame someone else, eh? I'd first check what your browser's actually sending. Firebug will help there. See if your form fill-out is encoded as UTF-8 or CP-1252. That's the first step. Looking back through the thread, it looks like: Roy posted a reply in us-ascii. rusi replied in windows-1252, adding the '…'. Roy replied in us-ascii, but with 'Š' in place of '…'. rusi replied in utf-8, with '�' in place of '…' -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches]
On Saturday, December 7, 2013 8:11:45 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote: On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 1:33 PM, rusi wrote: That seems to suggest that something is not right with the python mailing list config. No?? If in doubt, blame someone else, eh? I'd first check what your browser's actually sending. Firebug will help there. See if your form fill-out is encoded as UTF-8 or CP-1252. That's the first step. If you give me some tip where to look, I'll do that. But I dont see what this has to do with forms. Everything in the python archive (not just my posts) show as Win 1252 [I checked about 6] Every other page that I checked (most nothing to do with python list, GG etc) show UTF-8. [I checked about 5] None of these checkings had forms to be filled. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
In article 52a290ed$0$30003$c3e8da3$54964...@news.astraweb.com, Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote: In contrast, that is not the case with nearly all web forums. By deliberate design, or mere ignorance and neglect, they mix up the message you care about (Hi Bob...) and the stuff you need to get that message (the HTML and Javascript code) in one big ball of mud, and don't have APIs for getting messages. BTW, I was going to bring up vBulletin as an example of a typical web forum which suffers from the big ball of mud syndrome. Then I discovered that it does indeed have a reasonable looking API (http://www.vbulletin.com/vbcms/content.php/367-API-Overview). Beautiful Soup is an awesome tool. Even more awesome is when you don't have to use it :-) -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches]
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 2:16 PM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: On Saturday, December 7, 2013 8:11:45 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote: On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 1:33 PM, rusi wrote: That seems to suggest that something is not right with the python mailing list config. No?? If in doubt, blame someone else, eh? I'd first check what your browser's actually sending. Firebug will help there. See if your form fill-out is encoded as UTF-8 or CP-1252. That's the first step. If you give me some tip where to look, I'll do that. But I dont see what this has to do with forms. Page encodings specify what comes from the server to your browser. Your post went the other way. Tracing the data going back to the server would tell you how it's encoded. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Saturday, December 7, 2013 7:54:50 AM UTC+5:30, Ned Batchelder wrote: On 12/6/13 8:03 AM, rusi wrote: Leaving aside whose fault this is (very likely buggy google groups), this mojibaking cannot happen if the assumption All text is ASCII were to uniformly hold. Of course with unicode also this can be made to not happen, but that is fragile and error-prone. And that is because ASCII (not extended) is ONE thing in a way that unicode is hopelessly a motley inconsistent variety. You seem to be suggesting that we should stick to ASCII. There are of course languages that need more than just the Latin alphabet. How would you suggest we support them? Or maybe I don't understand? Heh! Yes I guess that can be read into what I was saying. Practically: I dont see that as an option or that the question of going back to ASCII even arises. I was talking more philosophically/historically. Up until the time of Unix a file for example was a structured heavy-duty concept motivated by entirely technological considerations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_set_%28IBM_mainframe%29 By simplifying that into the modern concept of file -- just a stream of bytes -- and allowing the puns: byte string = char list = text some elegant systems could be made with people having 'beautiful thoughts:' Everything that could be stored anywhere -- core or disk -- being bytes one could go to the next stage and pass around these bytes between processes. And so we get the elegant -- pipeline -- beauty of Unix scripts. Of course there was a catch (Isn't there always?): Things that did not fit in with this philosophy -- eg clicks of a mouse, bits on display -- were modelled badly or not at all. Not-at-all: CLI Badly: Monstrosity called X And this explains some of the cultural kinks of our field: Unix guys invariably think of CLIs as natural and obvious whereas GUIs are just wasteful eye-candy. [Yours truly is one of those old geezers who does not know how to write a GUI to save his life. Almost normal in the Unix world except that he's not proud of it] Windows/Mac people do not suffer these delusions but then they dont think of programming as natural or obvious at all. Ive often been amused at windows folk: They dont think of Word as a program. Rather docs are things that magically open when clicked :-) Brings me to the point I was trying to make (got side-tracked by the failure of a character to roundtrip between me and Roy -- Im none the wiser why) The ASCII = Text = Unicode (non)equation is a relatively minor point. The more central point is that humans use and need more than just words to communicate. By straitjacketing communication into the thin channel of text we are severely impoverishing ourselves. We communicate with systems with programs that are unstructured text-files even though programs are conceptually highly structured entities. Likewise we communicate with each other by this obscenely obsolete textual mode that I am using right now when rich text formats have been available for decades. Some of my more detailed writings on this: http://blog.languager.org/2013/09/poorest-computer-users-are-programmers.html http://blog.languager.org/2012/10/html-is-why-mess-in-programming-syntax.html -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thursday, December 5, 2013 6:28:54 AM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote: Rich Kulawiec wrote: Yes, I'm aware of web forums: I've used hundreds of them. They suck. They ALL suck, they just all suck differently. I could spend the next several thousand lines explaining why, but instead I'll just abbreviate: they don't handle threading, they don't let me use my editor of choice, they don't let me build my own archive that I can search MY way including when I'm offline, they are brittle and highly vulnerable to abuse and security breaches, they encourage worst practices in writing style (including top-posting and full-quoting), they translate poorly to other formats, they are difficult to archive, they're even more difficult to migrate (whereas Unix mbox format files from 30 years ago are still perfectly usable today), they aren't standardized, they aren't easily scalable, they're overly complex, they don't support proper quoting, they don't support proper attribution, they can't be easily forwarded, they...oh, it just goes on. The real problem with web forums is they conflate transport and presentation into a single opaque blob, and are pretty much universally designed to be a closed system. Mail and usenet were both engineered to make a sharp division between transport and presentation, which meant it was possible to evolve each at their own pace. Mostly that meant people could go off and develop new client applications which interoperated with the existing system. But, it also meant that transport layers could be switched out (as when NNTP gradually, but inexorably, replaced UUCP as the primary usenet transport layer). There is a deep assumption hovering round-about the above -- what I will call the 'Unix assumption(s)'. But before that, just a check on terminology. By 'presentation' you mean what people normally call 'mail-clients': thunderbird, mutt etc. And by 'transport' you mean sendmail, exim, qmail etc etc -- what normally are called 'mail-servers.' Right?? Assuming this is the intended meaning of the terminology (yeah its clearer terminology than the usual and yeah Im also a 'Unix-guy'), here's the 'Unix-assumption': - human communication… (is not very different from) - machine communication… (can be done by) - text… (for which) - ASCII is fine… (which is just) - bytes… (inside/between byte-memory-organized) - von Neumann computers To the extent that these assumptions are invalid, the 'opaque-blob' may well be preferable. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
In article 51007240-6bc9-4f0b-9937-4883bcc0c...@googlegroups.com, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, December 5, 2013 6:28:54 AM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote: The real problem with web forums is they conflate transport and presentation into a single opaque blob, and are pretty much universally designed to be a closed system. Mail and usenet were both engineered to make a sharp division between transport and presentation, which meant it was possible to evolve each at their own pace. Mostly that meant people could go off and develop new client applications which interoperated with the existing system. But, it also meant that transport layers could be switched out (as when NNTP gradually, but inexorably, replaced UUCP as the primary usenet transport layer). There is a deep assumption hovering round-about the above -- what I will call the 'Unix assumption(s)'. It has nothing to do with Unix. The separation of transport from presentation is just as valid on Windows, Mac, etc. But before that, just a check on terminology. By 'presentation' you mean what people normally call 'mail-clients': thunderbird, mutt etc. And by 'transport' you mean sendmail, exim, qmail etc etc -- what normally are called 'mail-servers.' Right?? Yes. Assuming this is the intended meaning of the terminology (yeah its clearer terminology than the usual and yeah Im also a 'Unix-guy'), here's the 'Unix-assumption': - human communication (is not very different from) - machine communication (can be done by) - text (for which) - ASCII is fine (which is just) - bytes (inside/between byte-memory-organized) - von Neumann computers To the extent that these assumptions are invalid, the 'opaque-blob' may well be preferable. I think you're off on the wrong track here. This has nothing to do with plain text (ascii or otherwise). It has to do with divorcing how you store and transport messages (be they plain text, HTML, or whatever) from how a user interacts with them. Take something like Wikipedia (by which, I really mean, MediaWiki, which is the underlying software package). Most people think of Wikipedia as a web site. But, there's another layer below that which lets you get access to the contents of articles, navigate all the rich connections like category trees, and all sorts of metadata like edit histories. Which means, if I wanted to (and many examples of this exist), I can write my own client which presents the same information in different ways. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thursday, December 5, 2013 4:17:11 AM UTC+5:30, Cameron Simpson wrote: On 03Dec2013 17:39, rusi wrote: On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 6:10:05 AM UTC+5:30, Cameron Simpson wrote: My first act on joining any mailing list is to download the entire archive into my local mail store. I have a script for this, for mailman at least. and you happen to own 1 thingys that have general computing functionality -- phones, laptops, desktops, etc -- do you sync all your mailing-lists with all of them? No. I'm using a laptops my primary host, and it has the mailing lists (and all my email). It is usually on and fetches and files my email; it also forwards _specific_ stuff to a separate mail account accessed by my phone. I used to use a home server, but the remote access, while fairly transparent (script to ssh then run mutt), was irritating. And when I didn't have remote access, very very irritating. So I'm choosing the better environment with my email local to the laptop and a select copy of important things (work and friends) copied to an account for my phone. [...] And inspite of all that it still sometimes happens that one has to work on a 'machine' that is not one's own. What then? Fingers crossed the important stuff gets to my phone. If urgent I can reply from that, and I'm somewhat up to date on what I care about. The phone also has (disabled) access to my primary mail spool for circumstances when the laptop is offline. When online, the laptop empties that spool ad forwards particulars. When offline, I can consult what's queuing up. The unfortunate and inexorable conclusion is that when the (wo)man - computer relation goes from 1-1 to 1-many, data and functionality will move away from 'own-machine' to the cloud. Will the data be subject to privacy-abuse and worse? Sure Will the functionality be as good as something one can fine-tune on one's own computer? heck no! I'm striving to resist that for now. Privacy. Security. Dependence on others' hardware and (not mine = wrong!) technical choices of software. Thanks Cameron. I am not sure how to parse the last sentence but on the whole thanks for a fair balanced and honest review. I think I have similar sentiments, viz. I am not one to gush about the latest gizmodic blissiness, however whenever Ive resisted and been a late adopter -- color monitor, laptop, cellphone, credit card etc etc -- in the end Ive had to move with the time and not been better-off for my earlier resistance. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On 2013-12-04, alex23 wuwe...@gmail.com wrote: On 3/12/2013 5:13 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: You poor fools you, this is what happens when you give control of the tools you use to a (near) monopolist whose incentives are not your incentives. To paraphrase Franklin: those who would give up control to purchase convenience deserve neither. A lesson hard learned :( But Franklin's quote doesn't apply when free alternatives exist. I can use a non-open email system until I don't want to any more, and switch out when it no longer please me. The cost of switching isn't zero, but it's much easier than emmigrating from a police state. Moreover, I'll always feel that I deserve more than I actually do deserve. -- Neil Cerutti -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
(comments from a lurker on python-list) - Google groups is a disaster. It's extremely poorly-run, and is in fact a disservice to Usenet -- which is alive and well, tyvm, and still used by many of the most senior and experienced people on the Internet. (While some newsgroups are languishing and some have almost no traffic, others are thriving. As it should be.) I could catalog the litany of egregious mistakes that Google has made, but what's the point? They're clearly uninterested in fixing them. Their only interest is in slapping the Google label on Usenet -- which is far more important in the evolution of the Internet than Google will ever be -- so that they can use it as a marketing vehicle. Worse, Google has completely failed to control outbound abuse from Google groups, which is why many consider it a best practice to simply drop all Usenet traffic originating there. - That said, there is value in bidirectionally gatewaying mailing lists with corresponding Usenet newsgroups. Usenet's propagation properties often make it the medium of choice for many people, particularly those in areas with slow, expensive, erratic, etc. connectivity. Conversely, delivery of Usenet traffic via email is a better solution for others. Software like Mailman facilitates this fairly well, even given the impedance mismatch between SMTP and NNTP. - Mailing lists/Usenet newsgroups remain, as they've been for a very long time, the solutions of choice for online discussions. Yes, I'm aware of web forums: I've used hundreds of them. They suck. They ALL suck, they just all suck differently. I could spend the next several thousand lines explaining why, but instead I'll just abbreviate: they don't handle threading, they don't let me use my editor of choice, they don't let me build my own archive that I can search MY way including when I'm offline, they are brittle and highly vulnerable to abuse and security breaches, they encourage worst practices in writing style (including top-posting and full-quoting), they translate poorly to other formats, they are difficult to archive, they're even more difficult to migrate (whereas Unix mbox format files from 30 years ago are still perfectly usable today), they aren't standardized, they aren't easily scalable, they're overly complex, they don't support proper quoting, they don't support proper attribution, they can't be easily forwarded, they...oh, it just goes on. My point being that there's a reason that the IETF and the W3C and NANOG and lots of other groups that could use anything they want use mailing lists: they work. - That said, they work *if configured properly*, which unfortunately these days includes a hefty dose of anti-abuse controls. This list (for the most part) isn't particularly targeted, but it is occasionally and in the spirit of trying to help out, I can assist with that. (I think it's fair to say I have a little bit of email expertise.) If any of the list's owners are reading this and want help, please let me know. - They also work well *if used properly*, which means that participants should use proper email/news etiquette: line wrap, sane quoting style, reasonable editing of followups, preservation of threads, all that stuff. The more people do more of that, the smoother things work. On the other hand, if nobody does that, the result is impaired communication and quite often, a chorus of mailing lists suck even though the problem is not the mailing lists: it's the bad habits of the users on them. (And of course changing mediums won't fix that.) - To bring this back around to one of the starting points for this discussion: I think the current setup is functioning well, even given the sporadic stresses placed on it. I think it would be best to invest effort in maintaining/improving it as it stands (which is why I volunteered to do so, see above) rather than migrating to something else. ---rsk -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On 04/12/2013 14:34, Neil Cerutti wrote: On 2013-12-04, alex23 wuwe...@gmail.com wrote: On 3/12/2013 5:13 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: You poor fools you, this is what happens when you give control of the tools you use to a (near) monopolist whose incentives are not your incentives. To paraphrase Franklin: those who would give up control to purchase convenience deserve neither. A lesson hard learned :( But Franklin's quote doesn't apply when free alternatives exist. Free at the point of delivery, someone, somewhere, has given blood, toil, tears and sweat. -- My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask what you can do for our language. Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 1:52 AM, Rich Kulawiec r...@gsp.org wrote: Mailing lists/Usenet newsgroups remain, as they've been for a very long time, the solutions of choice for online discussions. Yes, I'm aware of web forums: I've used hundreds of them. They suck. They ALL suck, they just all suck differently. I absolutely agree. And Mailman lists are both easy and powerful - I've deployed a number of them and subscribed to many MANY more - and play nicely with other internet standards. Instead of having to remember to check umpteen web-based forums, I just check my emails, which I do constantly anyway. Adding another mailing list costs me nothing; adding another forum costs me quite a bit of time. Ultimately it comes down to this: It would take an enormous amount of effort for something else to replicate the power of SMTP and/or NNTP, ergo nothing has achieved that. The open standards mean there are myriad clients available, and no new protocol or system can ever hope to compete with that. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 2013-12-04, Cameron Simpson c...@zip.com.au wrote: On 30Nov2013 14:25, pec...@pascolo.net pec...@pascolo.net wrote: Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com writes: [NNTP] clients provide full-fledged editors and conversely full-fledged editors provide NNTP clients GNU Emacs is a LISP operating system disguised as a word processor. - Doug Mohney, in comp.arch Unix: A set of device drivers used to support the the Emacs operating system. - Don't remember who, where, or when -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! I feel like a wet at parking meter on Darvon! gmail.com -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 04/12/2013 15:50, Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-12-04, Cameron Simpson c...@zip.com.au wrote: On 30Nov2013 14:25, pec...@pascolo.net pec...@pascolo.net wrote: Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com writes: [NNTP] clients provide full-fledged editors and conversely full-fledged editors provide NNTP clients GNU Emacs is a LISP operating system disguised as a word processor. - Doug Mohney, in comp.arch Unix: A set of device drivers used to support the the Emacs operating system. - Don't remember who, where, or when It's a funny thing the computing world, with some people deriving operating systems from raincoats, and others editing code with a domestic household cleaner, what next, I ask myself? -- My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask what you can do for our language. Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 12/4/13 11:07 AM, Mark Lawrence wrote: On 04/12/2013 15:50, Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-12-04, Cameron Simpson c...@zip.com.au wrote: On 30Nov2013 14:25, pec...@pascolo.net pec...@pascolo.net wrote: Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com writes: [NNTP] clients provide full-fledged editors and conversely full-fledged editors provide NNTP clients GNU Emacs is a LISP operating system disguised as a word processor. - Doug Mohney, in comp.arch Unix: A set of device drivers used to support the the Emacs operating system. - Don't remember who, where, or when It's a funny thing the computing world, with some people deriving operating systems from raincoats, and others editing code with a domestic household cleaner, what next, I ask myself? Computing with vacuum cleaners is on the decline at least: http://www.vax.co.uk/vacuum-cleaners --Ned. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Dec 4, 2013, at 6:52 AM, Rich Kulawiec r...@gsp.org wrote: Yes, I'm aware of web forums: I've used hundreds of them. They suck. They ALL suck, they just all suck differently. I could spend the next several thousand lines explaining why, but instead I'll just abbreviate: they don't handle threading, they don't let me use my editor of choice, they don't let me build my own archive that I can search MY way including when I'm offline, they are brittle and highly vulnerable to abuse and security breaches, they encourage worst practices in writing style (including top-posting and full-quoting), they translate poorly to other formats, they are difficult to archive, they're even more difficult to migrate (whereas Unix mbox format files from 30 years ago are still perfectly usable today), they aren't standardized, they aren't easily scalable, they're overly complex, they don't support proper quoting, they don't support proper attribution, they can't be easily forwarded, they...oh, it just goes on. My point being that there's a reason that the IETF and the W3C and NANOG and lots of other groups that could use anything they want use mailing lists: they work. One of the best rants I’ve ever read. Full mental harmonic resonance while I read this. Hope you don’t mind, but I think I’ll be plagiarizing your comments in the future. Maybe I’ll post it on a couple of the web forums I currently have the luxury of regularly hating. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 04/12/2013 16:21, Ned Batchelder wrote: On 12/4/13 11:07 AM, Mark Lawrence wrote: On 04/12/2013 15:50, Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-12-04, Cameron Simpson c...@zip.com.au wrote: On 30Nov2013 14:25, pec...@pascolo.net pec...@pascolo.net wrote: Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com writes: [NNTP] clients provide full-fledged editors and conversely full-fledged editors provide NNTP clients GNU Emacs is a LISP operating system disguised as a word processor. - Doug Mohney, in comp.arch Unix: A set of device drivers used to support the the Emacs operating system. - Don't remember who, where, or when It's a funny thing the computing world, with some people deriving operating systems from raincoats, and others editing code with a domestic household cleaner, what next, I ask myself? Computing with vacuum cleaners is on the decline at least: http://www.vax.co.uk/vacuum-cleaners --Ned. Well it shouldn't be. It's a well known fact that VMS stands for Very Much Safer. I'd compare it to inferior products, but not even the threat of The Comfy Chair will make me type the names. -- My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask what you can do for our language. Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 03Dec2013 17:39, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 6:10:05 AM UTC+5:30, Cameron Simpson wrote: My first act on joining any mailing list is to download the entire archive into my local mail store. I have a script for this, for mailman at least. and you happen to own 1 thingys that have general computing functionality -- phones, laptops, desktops, etc -- do you sync all your mailing-lists with all of them? No. I'm using a laptops my primary host, and it has the mailing lists (and all my email). It is usually on and fetches and files my email; it also forwards _specific_ stuff to a separate mail account accessed by my phone. I used to use a home server, but the remote access, while fairly transparent (script to ssh then run mutt), was irritating. And when I didn't have remote access, very very irritating. So I'm choosing the better environment with my email local to the laptop and a select copy of important things (work and friends) copied to an account for my phone. [...] And inspite of all that it still sometimes happens that one has to work on a 'machine' that is not one's own. What then? Fingers crossed the important stuff gets to my phone. If urgent I can reply from that, and I'm somewhat up to date on what I care about. The phone also has (disabled) access to my primary mail spool for circumstances when the laptop is offline. When online, the laptop empties that spool ad forwards particulars. When offline, I can consult what's queuing up. The unfortunate and inexorable conclusion is that when the (wo)man - computer relation goes from 1-1 to 1-many, data and functionality will move away from 'own-machine' to the cloud. Will the data be subject to privacy-abuse and worse? Sure Will the functionality be as good as something one can fine-tune on one's own computer? heck no! I'm striving to resist that for now. Privacy. Security. Dependence on others' hardware and (not mine = wrong!) technical choices of software. Cheers, -- Cameron Simpson c...@zip.com.au All it takes is working on someone elses program to understand why they call it code. - Henry O. Farad l...@netcom.com -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
In article mailman.3565.1386170444.18130.python-l...@python.org, Rich Kulawiec r...@gsp.org wrote: Yes, I'm aware of web forums: I've used hundreds of them. They suck. They ALL suck, they just all suck differently. I could spend the next several thousand lines explaining why, but instead I'll just abbreviate: they don't handle threading, they don't let me use my editor of choice, they don't let me build my own archive that I can search MY way including when I'm offline, they are brittle and highly vulnerable to abuse and security breaches, they encourage worst practices in writing style (including top-posting and full-quoting), they translate poorly to other formats, they are difficult to archive, they're even more difficult to migrate (whereas Unix mbox format files from 30 years ago are still perfectly usable today), they aren't standardized, they aren't easily scalable, they're overly complex, they don't support proper quoting, they don't support proper attribution, they can't be easily forwarded, they...oh, it just goes on. The real problem with web forums is they conflate transport and presentation into a single opaque blob, and are pretty much universally designed to be a closed system. Mail and usenet were both engineered to make a sharp division between transport and presentation, which meant it was possible to evolve each at their own pace. Mostly that meant people could go off and develop new client applications which interoperated with the existing system. But, it also meant that transport layers could be switched out (as when NNTP gradually, but inexorably, replaced UUCP as the primary usenet transport layer). -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On 03/12/2013 01:17, Michael Torrie wrote: And the list goes on. The love of money... -- My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask what you can do for our language. Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On 3/12/2013 5:13 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: You poor fools you, this is what happens when you give control of the tools you use to a (near) monopolist whose incentives are not your incentives. To paraphrase Franklin: those who would give up control to purchase convenience deserve neither. A lesson hard learned :( -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 28Nov2013 19:46, Arif Khokar akhokar1...@wvu.edu wrote: The problem with just using email is that it's a bit more difficult to browse archived posts to this group. After I subscribed to this group (comp.lang.python) using my news client, I could immediately browse posts made as far back as April. I vastly prefer email. My first act on joining any mailing list is to download the entire archive into my local mail store. I have a script for this, for mailman at least. Example: get-mailman-archive http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pythonmac-sig/ python-mac.mbox I then suck the whole thing into the folder to which future list posts will get filed. That way I have the whole archive, and it is local, and I can examine it with whatever tools take my fancy (mairix, mutt, grep, etc). Most mailman lists make their archives readily available. This cannot be said for the travesty that is Google Groups, and in fact almost any other list/group/forum run with other software. Really, most mailing list archives are easily small enough to do this routinely. Happy to assist anyone with scripts etc. Cheers, -- Cameron Simpson c...@zip.com.au Carpe Daemon - Seize the Background Process - Paul Tomblin ab...@freenet2.carleton.ca -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 30Nov2013 14:25, pec...@pascolo.net pec...@pascolo.net wrote: Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com writes: [NNTP] clients provide full-fledged editors and conversely full-fledged editors provide NNTP clients GNU Emacs is a LISP operating system disguised as a word processor. - Doug Mohney, in comp.arch Sorry, could not resist. I am, of course, a vi user. Cheers, -- Cameron Simpson c...@zip.com.au [...] look at yourself and, while you're at it, drag your eyes over some of your mates who also ride bikes. They are doers, are they not, and what of the rest of the population, that tragic ants nest of ever so busy bodies who scurry from nest to work and back to the nest again at night, to recharge themselves for another day of spirit-crushing toil? They are the watchers. - Sanford, REVS, 23dec93 -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 6:10:05 AM UTC+5:30, Cameron Simpson wrote: Dennis Lee Bieber writes: [NNTP] clients provide full-fledged editors and conversely full-fledged editors provide NNTP clients GNU Emacs is a LISP operating system disguised as a word processor. - Doug Mohney, in comp.arch In a similar vein, most phones nowadays are just computers with a pocket-size form-factor and some wireless networking. So when you say… My first act on joining any mailing list is to download the entire archive into my local mail store. I have a script for this, for mailman at least. and you happen to own 1 thingys that have general computing functionality -- phones, laptops, desktops, etc -- do you sync all your mailing-lists with all of them? I know friends who have installed a home-data-store… [Ive been resisting getting something like a NAS because each new thingabob I own is one more thing to maintain. I also know from past experience that such luddite battles are in the end always lost -- Im no technophile but I expect to live and die a techie] And inspite of all that it still sometimes happens that one has to work on a 'machine' that is not one's own. What then? The unfortunate and inexorable conclusion is that when the (wo)man - computer relation goes from 1-1 to 1-many, data and functionality will move away from 'own-machine' to the cloud. Will the data be subject to privacy-abuse and worse? Sure Will the functionality be as good as something one can fine-tune on one's own computer? heck no! But in the end, uniform access will trump all that -- compare the number of vi+emacs+eclipse users with google-doc users… So to come back full-circle: Earlier (your quote paraphrased) Emacs is a full-blown OS -- only lacks a good editor. Now: replace 'emacs' with 'firefox'. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 12:39 PM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: The unfortunate and inexorable conclusion is that when the (wo)man - computer relation goes from 1-1 to 1-many, data and functionality will move away from 'own-machine' to the cloud. Will the data be subject to privacy-abuse and worse? Sure Will the functionality be as good as something one can fine-tune on one's own computer? heck no! The solution often is to run your own central server and have all devices connect to that. You get full control and still allow any device to access the same content. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 2013-11-28, Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote: In article RCJlu.5$rx5.0@fx05.am4, Alister alister.w...@ntlworld.com wrote: Perhaps the best option is for everybody to bombard Google with bug reports (preferably typed with extra long lines double spaced as that is clearly what they are used to we would not want to upset them would we? ) It's pretty clear Google doesn't care about Google Groups. Or, at least, they don't care that it interacts badly with newsgroups, and in particular with bidirectional newsgroup/mailing-list gateways. The purpose of Google Groups is to generate traffic to their site, which it does just fine. Making it behave better with newsgroups won't change that, so there's no incentive for them to do so. The current situation does force a lot of technology-focused people, progammers in particular, into a low opinion of Google. The crappy usenet portal is poor marketing. I wish they'd never bought dejanews. -- Neil Cerutti -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
In article mailman.3461.1385989809.18130.python-l...@python.org, Neil Cerutti ne...@norwich.edu wrote: On 2013-11-28, Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote: In article RCJlu.5$rx5.0@fx05.am4, Alister alister.w...@ntlworld.com wrote: Perhaps the best option is for everybody to bombard Google with bug reports (preferably typed with extra long lines double spaced as that is clearly what they are used to we would not want to upset them would we? ) It's pretty clear Google doesn't care about Google Groups. Or, at least, they don't care that it interacts badly with newsgroups, and in particular with bidirectional newsgroup/mailing-list gateways. The purpose of Google Groups is to generate traffic to their site, which it does just fine. Making it behave better with newsgroups won't change that, so there's no incentive for them to do so. The current situation does force a lot of technology-focused people, progammers in particular, into a low opinion of Google. The crappy usenet portal is poor marketing. If you think, The set of people who are still trying to use usenet groups for anything serious is a lot of people, you don't understand the scale on which Google operates. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 2013-12-02, Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote: In article mailman.3461.1385989809.18130.python-l...@python.org, Neil Cerutti ne...@norwich.edu wrote: On 2013-11-28, Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote: In article RCJlu.5$rx5.0@fx05.am4, Alister alister.w...@ntlworld.com wrote: Perhaps the best option is for everybody to bombard Google with bug reports (preferably typed with extra long lines double spaced as that is clearly what they are used to we would not want to upset them would we? ) It's pretty clear Google doesn't care about Google Groups. Or, at least, they don't care that it interacts badly with newsgroups, and in particular with bidirectional newsgroup/mailing-list gateways. The purpose of Google Groups is to generate traffic to their site, which it does just fine. Making it behave better with newsgroups won't change that, so there's no incentive for them to do so. The current situation does force a lot of technology-focused people, progammers in particular, into a low opinion of Google. The crappy usenet portal is poor marketing. If you think, The set of people who are still trying to use usenet groups for anything serious is a lot of people, you don't understand the scale on which Google operates. It's probably hard to even visualize. -- Neil Cerutti -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Monday, December 2, 2013 7:34:33 PM UTC+5:30, Neil Cerutti wrote: On 2013-12-02, Roy Smith wrote: The current situation does force a lot of technology-focused people, progammers in particular, into a low opinion of Google. The crappy usenet portal is poor marketing. If you think, The set of people who are still trying to use usenet groups for anything serious is a lot of people, you don't understand the scale on which Google operates. It's probably hard to even visualize. I was dreaming about in an alternate surreal world… And now you guys have crashed me back to planet-earth-2013 !MEAN! -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 02/12/2013 17:11, rusi wrote: On Monday, December 2, 2013 7:34:33 PM UTC+5:30, Neil Cerutti wrote: On 2013-12-02, Roy Smith wrote: The current situation does force a lot of technology-focused people, progammers in particular, into a low opinion of Google. The crappy usenet portal is poor marketing. If you think, The set of people who are still trying to use usenet groups for anything serious is a lot of people, you don't understand the scale on which Google operates. It's probably hard to even visualize. I was dreaming about in an alternate surreal world… And now you guys have crashed me back to planet-earth-2013 !MEAN! ¿As this is an international group why not ¡MEAN!? :) Quickly runs off to hide... -- Python is the second best programming language in the world. But the best has yet to be invented. Christian Tismer Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:48 AM, Mark Lawrence breamore...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: ¿As this is an international group why not ¡MEAN!? :) ¿Does punctuation nest to any level when you ask, ¿Shouldn't it be ¡MEAN!?? ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 02/12/2013 17:54, Chris Angelico wrote: On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:48 AM, Mark Lawrence breamore...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: ¿As this is an international group why not ¡MEAN!? :) ¿Does punctuation nest to any level when you ask, ¿Shouldn't it be ¡MEAN!?? ChrisA Yes. -- Python is the second best programming language in the world. But the best has yet to be invented. Christian Tismer Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On 12/02/2013 06:03 AM, Neil Cerutti wrote: I wish they'd never bought dejanews. I wish Google hadn't bought a lot of things. Seems like they bye up a lot of cool, nerd-centric apps and companies and then turned them into apps that do less and do it poorly, but in a slick way that appeals to the unwashed masses. And add social to it. Great for their bottom line, but horrible for those of us that actually use things as tools. Besides the dejanews thing, another one is Google Voice. Used to be a great tool but now they are trying to integrate it with Google Hangouts, reduce its functionality, reduce interoperability, and otherwise ruin it. I fear next year is the last year for Google Voice in any usable form for me. Might just have to bite the bullet and set up my own PBX and pay for a voip provider and port my google voice number over to it. I'd hate to lose the number; I've used it since Grand Central times. And Gmail is also becoming less useful to me. I don't want to use hangouts; xmpp and google talk worked just fine. But alas that's disappearing. And the list goes on. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
In article mailman.3495.1386033531.18130.python-l...@python.org, Michael Torrie torr...@gmail.com wrote: I wish Google hadn't bought a lot of things. Seems like they bye up a lot of cool, nerd-centric apps and companies and then turned them into apps that do less and do it poorly, but in a slick way that appeals to the unwashed masses. And add social to it. Great for their bottom line, but horrible for those of us that actually use things as tools. And this is surprising, why? -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On Tuesday, December 3, 2013 7:13:03 AM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote: Michael Torrie wrote: I wish Google hadn't bought a lot of things. Seems like they bye up a lot of cool, nerd-centric apps and companies and then turned them into apps that do less and do it poorly, but in a slick way that appeals to the unwashed masses. And add social to it. Great for their bottom line, but horrible for those of us that actually use things as tools. And this is surprising, why? Something floating around here (was it Ben Finney's footer??) went something like: We must expect it; else we would be surprised Put differently: One evidence of being awake (and not in dreamland) is surprise A directly related piece by Nicholas Carr http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/ Relevant at a deeper level is his IT doesn't matter http://www.roughtype.com/?p=644 We software professionals cannot agree with this and keep our self-respect/sanity/identity. However its true; so denial remains the only option. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On 12/02/2013 06:43 PM, Roy Smith wrote: In article mailman.3495.1386033531.18130.python-l...@python.org, Michael Torrie torr...@gmail.com wrote: I wish Google hadn't bought a lot of things. Seems like they bye up a lot of cool, nerd-centric apps and companies and then turned them into apps that do less and do it poorly, but in a slick way that appeals to the unwashed masses. And add social to it. Great for their bottom line, but horrible for those of us that actually use things as tools. And this is surprising, why? Well back when Google was a young hip company they billed themselves as a bunch of nerds making stuff for nerds. But yes we should have seen this coming. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On Tuesday, December 3, 2013 8:39:02 AM UTC+5:30, Michael Torrie wrote: On 12/02/2013 06:43 PM, Roy Smith wrote: And this is surprising, why? Well back when Google was a young hip company they billed themselves as a bunch of nerds making stuff for nerds. But yes we should have seen this coming. So were Bill Gates and Jobs -- nerdy youths. We tend to not think them so because they are an earlier generation. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On 2013-12-03, Michael Torrie torr...@gmail.com wrote: On 12/02/2013 06:03 AM, Neil Cerutti wrote: I wish they'd never bought dejanews. I wish Google hadn't bought a lot of things. Seems like they bye up a lot of cool, nerd-centric apps and companies and then turned them into apps that do less and do it poorly, Or they just shut them down. I still wish SageTv was in business. My SageTv stuff is still running fine, but I don't know what I'm going to do when it dies. I guess I'll have to go back to Mytv and the associated huge, loud, noisy front-end boxes. That said, I'm still pretty happy with Gmail (I use it mostly via mutt/IMAP rather than the WebUI), and it sure beats the e-mail service I paid for in the past [it's certainly _way_ better than the Outlook server they run at work]. The Google search engine still works fine for me, and my Nexus Galaxy phone has been great. -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On 3/12/2013 11:17 AM, Michael Torrie wrote: And Gmail is also becoming less useful to me. I don't want to use hangouts; xmpp and google talk worked just fine. But alas that's disappearing. I really hate Hangouts. If I wanted to use Skype I would be using Skype. I'm also still unable to understand why Google scrapped Reader and kept Groups, although I suspect it's because the latter will eventually integrate more closely with Plus Hangouts. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On Tue, 03 Dec 2013 16:30:05 +1000, alex23 wrote: On 3/12/2013 11:17 AM, Michael Torrie wrote: And Gmail is also becoming less useful to me. I don't want to use hangouts; xmpp and google talk worked just fine. But alas that's disappearing. I really hate Hangouts. If I wanted to use Skype I would be using Skype. I'm also still unable to understand why Google scrapped Reader and kept Groups, although I suspect it's because the latter will eventually integrate more closely with Plus Hangouts. Not aimed specifically at either Michael or Alex, but a general observation aimed at you all. You poor fools you, this is what happens when you give control of the tools you use to a (near) monopolist whose incentives are not your incentives. I mean, Microsoft was bad enough, but they could never reach through the aether into your computer and remove software they no longer wanted you to use. The worst that could happen was that they would stop supporting it and you'd be stuck with old obsolete hardware running old obsolete software that nevertheless did exactly what you want. Google, on the other hand, can and will take away software that you use. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches
On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 3:27 PM, Grant Edwards invalid@invalid.invalid wrote: That said, I'm still pretty happy with Gmail (I use it mostly via mutt/IMAP rather than the WebUI), and it sure beats the e-mail service I paid for in the past [it's certainly _way_ better than the Outlook server they run at work]. The Google search engine still works fine for me, and my Nexus Galaxy phone has been great. Things Google does well are those that take advantage of the corpus of searchable data - like Translate. I wouldn't bother with any other online translation tool than Google Translate. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com writes: [NNTP] clients provide full-fledged editors and conversely full-fledged editors provide NNTP clients -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 28/11/2013 16:29, Zero Piraeus wrote: : On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 08:40:47AM -0700, Michael Torrie wrote: My opinion is that the Python list should dump the Usenet tie-in and just go straight e-mail. +1 Hell yes. I'd happily use semaphore but given time you're bound to find someone who could screw that up. So I'll stick with Thunderbird and gmane, reading some 40-ish Python lists and blogs. Well, I think they're blogs :) -- Python is the second best programming language in the world. But the best has yet to be invented. Christian Tismer Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 29/11/2013 00:46, Arif Khokar wrote: On 11/28/2013 1:50 PM, Michael Torrie wrote: On 11/28/2013 11:37 AM, rusi wrote: 2. All kinds of people hop onto the list. In addition to genuine ones there are spammers, trolls, dicks, nuts, philosophers, help-vampires etc etc. What they have in common is usenet. Ditching usenet would solve both problems. The problem could also be solved through client side filtering (i. e., killfiles). I usually killfile posters who crosspost to unrelated groups (which filters 99% of the spam that comes through). I'm sure that the usenet/email gateway could be configured to filter such posts on the server side so those who read this list via email won't have those problems. Read through gmane, it's effectively spam free. -- Python is the second best programming language in the world. But the best has yet to be invented. Christian Tismer Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 2013-11-28, Zero Piraeus z...@etiol.net wrote: : On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 08:40:47AM -0700, Michael Torrie wrote: My opinion is that the Python list should dump the Usenet tie-in and just go straight e-mail. +1 Hell yes. I'd have to reluctantly agree. I've been using Usenet for 25 years, and I still read this as comp.lang.python, but this is practically the only Usenet group left that I follow. There are a number of mailing lists I follow via gmane's NNTP server, and I can certainly do the same for this one. I've been filtering out all postings from GG for years, so it doesn't really matter to me, but apparently there are a lot of people with defective mail/news clients for whom that's apparently not possible? [Otherwise, I don't understand what all the complaining is about.] -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 2013-11-29, Arif Khokar akhokar1...@wvu.edu wrote: On 11/28/2013 1:50 PM, Michael Torrie wrote: On 11/28/2013 11:37 AM, rusi wrote: 2. All kinds of people hop onto the list. In addition to genuine ones there are spammers, trolls, dicks, nuts, philosophers, help-vampires etc etc. What they have in common is usenet. Ditching usenet would solve both problems. The problem could also be solved through client side filtering (i. e., killfiles). I usually killfile posters who crosspost to unrelated groups (which filters 99% of the spam that comes through). I'm sure that the usenet/email gateway could be configured to filter such posts on the server side so those who read this list via email won't have those problems. The problem with just using email is that it's a bit more difficult to browse archived posts to this group. After I subscribed to this group (comp.lang.python) using my news client, I could immediately browse posts made as far back as April. You're assuming that Usenet === NNTP. You can point your news client at gmane.org's NNTP server and get all the benefits of news for regular mailing lists. -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Managing Google Groups headaches
This silly google-groups does not reflect changed subject lines!! That means that GG users who may want to read this may not see it. So reposting as a new thread: -- Here's what I do to manage the GG-headaches: 1. Firefox needs to have the Its all text addon installed https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/ 2. Set the editor in Its all text to emacs [You can use anything… including pure python… more on that below] 3. Put the following into your emacs init - ;; Clean up Google Groups extra newlines containing only (defun clean-gg () (interactive) (replace-regexp ^ *\n *\n *$ -=\=- nil 0 (point-max)) (flush-lines *$ 0 (point-max)) (replace-regexp -=\=- nil 0 (point-max)) ; (save-buffers-kill-terminal t) ) (global-set-key (kbd f9) 'clean-gg) ;(push 'clean-gg find-file-hook) Now firefox will show a small new edit edit button in the text window. Clicking that puts you into emacs with the text of the message. F9 will cleanup the double-spaces. Depending on whether you are comfortable with emacs or not you can do either of: 1. Continue editing in emacs. M-q and/or auto-fill-mode will clean up long-line paras Save-quit will put you back into firefox with cleaned up text 2. Not comfortable with emacs? Just F9 and save-quit will get you back to emacs with cleaned up double-spaced text. The long lines problem remains in this case. Dont like emacs? 1. If you know how to write similar code for vi (or whatever) you are set. 2. You can also setup emacs to cleanup and close immediately 3. You can also setup your 'editor' to be a pure python script [Ive not got round to doing it because I'm not sure how to catch-report errors in a proper cross-platform way.] 4. If you are a javascript/greasemonkey expert I guess you can convert the emacs-code to JS/GM code and that would be a zero-click solution. Usually use emacs? (ie have it running usually) You may prefer emacsclient to emacs for the editor. It will be more instantaneous. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 12:52 AM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: Here's what I do to manage the GG-headaches: Useful tips, I am sure, but they solve the problem only for you. Everyone who reads python-list/c.l.p will have to implement equivalent patches. Every archive of the newsgroup or mailing list suffers from the same problems, too, and it's not going to be easy to solve that for people. The true solution is either to fix Google Groups or to not use it. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thursday, November 28, 2013 7:28:14 PM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 12:52 AM, rusi wrote: Here's what I do to manage the GG-headaches: Useful tips, I am sure, but they solve the problem only for you. Everyone who reads python-list/c.l.p will have to implement equivalent patches. Every archive of the newsgroup or mailing list suffers from the same problems, too, and it's not going to be easy to solve that for people. The problems with GG as I understand are 1. Double spacing 2. Long lines As far as I can see both are cured with the method outlined. If its not for others and only for me, I'd like to know. That 2 is a problem was only brought to my notice recently. And so my fix for it is recent. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 1:17 AM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: The problems with GG as I understand are 1. Double spacing 2. Long lines As far as I can see both are cured with the method outlined. If its not for others and only for me, I'd like to know. That 2 is a problem was only brought to my notice recently. And so my fix for it is recent. Yes. Those are the problems. Are you suggesting this as a way to post via GG without it being a nuisance, or to read news without seeing those problems? If the former, it is surely far FAR easier to just read and write mail on python-list, or use Thunderbird, or somesuch, than to go through these hoops just to be able to keep using buggy software. People won't do it. And if the latter, well, that's my point about it solving things only for you. In fact, either way, it solves things only for you. The problem is that there are a huge number of users who are not you. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thursday, November 28, 2013 7:55:52 PM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 1:17 AM, rusi wrote: The problems with GG as I understand are 1. Double spacing 2. Long lines As far as I can see both are cured with the method outlined. If its not for others and only for me, I'd like to know. That 2 is a problem was only brought to my notice recently. And so my fix for it is recent. Yes. Those are the problems. Are you suggesting this as a way to post via GG without it being a nuisance, or to read news without seeing those problems? The former. If the former, it is surely far FAR easier to just read and write mail on python-list, or use Thunderbird, or somesuch, than to go through these hoops just to be able to keep using buggy software. Its a one time setup -- as is thunderbird. Its really quite unclear to me why GG is a problem if all the problems of GG are obviated. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:04 AM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: Its really quite unclear to me why GG is a problem if all the problems of GG are obviated. Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 11/28/2013 08:08 AM, Chris Angelico wrote: Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. My opinion is that the Python list should dump the Usenet tie-in and just go straight e-mail. Python is the only list I'm on that has a usenet gateway. I used to love usenet back in the day, but in the present internet climate makes it unworkable, though I concede that e-mail is reaching the end of its usefulness as well. I wouldn't oppose a dual e-mail list and web-based forum system, provided the forum system supported threaded conversations in a clean and useful way (maybe like google wave used to). -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 02:08:17 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:04 AM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: Its really quite unclear to me why GG is a problem if all the problems of GG are obviated. Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. ChrisA Whilst I agree with Chris A's main points I would at least say thankyou for :- A) finding a solution that works for you. B) Posting it so that others can try it to see if it works for them. Perhaps the best option is for everybody to bombard Google with bug reports (preferably typed with extra long lines double spaced as that is clearly what they are used to we would not want to upset them would we? ) -- It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it. -- Henry Allen -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 02:08:17 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:04 AM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: Its really quite unclear to me why GG is a problem if all the problems of GG are obviated. Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. ChrisA Whilst I agree with Chris A's main points I would at least say thankyou for :- A) finding a solution that works for you. B) Posting it so that others can try it to see if it works for them. Perhaps the best option is for everybody to bombard Google with bug reports (preferably typed with extra long lines double spaced as that is clearly what they are used to we would not want to upset them would we? ) -- It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it. -- Henry Allen -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 02:08:17 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:04 AM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: Its really quite unclear to me why GG is a problem if all the problems of GG are obviated. Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. ChrisA Whilst I agree with Chris A's main points I would at least say thankyou for :- A) finding a solution that works for you. B) Posting it so that others can try it to see if it works for them. Perhaps the best option is for everybody to bombard Google with bug reports (preferably typed with extra long lines double spaced as that is clearly what they are used to we would not want to upset them would we? ) -- It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it. -- Henry Allen -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 02:08:17 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:04 AM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: Its really quite unclear to me why GG is a problem if all the problems of GG are obviated. Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. ChrisA Whilst I agree with Chris A's main points I would at least say thankyou for :- A) finding a solution that works for you. B) Posting it so that others can try it to see if it works for them. Perhaps the best option is for everybody to bombard Google with bug reports (preferably typed with extra long lines double spaced as that is clearly what they are used to we would not want to upset them would we? ) -- It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it. -- Henry Allen -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
Sent from my iPhone On Nov 28, 2013, at 7:40, Michael Torrie torr...@gmail.com wrote: On 11/28/2013 08:08 AM, Chris Angelico wrote: Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. My opinion is that the Python list should dump the Usenet tie-in and just go straight e-mail. Python is the only list I'm on that has a usenet gateway. I used to love usenet back in the day, but in the present internet climate makes it unworkable, though I concede that e-mail is reaching the end of its usefulness as well. I wouldn't oppose a dual e-mail list and web-based forum system, provided the forum system supported threaded conversations in a clean and useful way (maybe like google wave used to). -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list Here! Here! Well said and amen. My thoughts exactly. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thursday, November 28, 2013 9:20:39 PM UTC+5:30, Alister wrote: On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 02:08:17 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:04 AM, rusi wrote: Its really quite unclear to me why GG is a problem if all the problems of GG are obviated. Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. ChrisA Whilst I agree with Chris A's main points I would at least say thankyou for :- Well thanks for the thanks :-) A) finding a solution that works for you. B) Posting it so that others can try it to see if it works for them. Perhaps the best option is for everybody to bombard Google with bug reports (preferably typed with extra long lines double spaced as that is clearly what they are used to we would not want to upset them would we? ) If that has even a small likelihood of succeeding I heartily support it. My impression is its been done with no result -- Usenet is too fringe and obsolete a technology for Google to bother. On a different note your message has arrived 4 times. What client did you use? -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thu, 28 Nov 2013 08:22:27 -0800, rusi wrote: On Thursday, November 28, 2013 9:20:39 PM UTC+5:30, Alister wrote: On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 02:08:17 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:04 AM, rusi wrote: Its really quite unclear to me why GG is a problem if all the problems of GG are obviated. Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. ChrisA Whilst I agree with Chris A's main points I would at least say thankyou for :- Well thanks for the thanks :-) A) finding a solution that works for you. B) Posting it so that others can try it to see if it works for them. Perhaps the best option is for everybody to bombard Google with bug reports (preferably typed with extra long lines double spaced as that is clearly what they are used to we would not want to upset them would we? ) If that has even a small likelihood of succeeding I heartily support it. My impression is its been done with no result -- Usenet is too fringe and obsolete a technology for Google to bother. On a different note your message has arrived 4 times. What client did you use? I thought I had resolved that last week (using Pan under linux) -- A bureaucrat's idea of cleaning up his files is to make a copy of everything before he destroys it. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
In article RCJlu.5$rx5.0@fx05.am4, Alister alister.w...@ntlworld.com wrote: Perhaps the best option is for everybody to bombard Google with bug reports (preferably typed with extra long lines double spaced as that is clearly what they are used to we would not want to upset them would we? ) It's pretty clear Google doesn't care about Google Groups. Or, at least, they don't care that it interacts badly with newsgroups, and in particular with bidirectional newsgroup/mailing-list gateways. The purpose of Google Groups is to generate traffic to their site, which it does just fine. Making it behave better with newsgroups won't change that, so there's no incentive for them to do so. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 11/28/13 11:23 AM, Travis Griggs wrote: Sent from my iPhone On Nov 28, 2013, at 7:40, Michael Torrie torr...@gmail.com wrote: On 11/28/2013 08:08 AM, Chris Angelico wrote: Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. My opinion is that the Python list should dump the Usenet tie-in and just go straight e-mail. Python is the only list I'm on that has a usenet gateway. I used to love usenet back in the day, but in the present internet climate makes it unworkable, though I concede that e-mail is reaching the end of its usefulness as well. I wouldn't oppose a dual e-mail list and web-based forum system, provided the forum system supported threaded conversations in a clean and useful way (maybe like google wave used to). -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list Here! Here! Well said and amen. My thoughts exactly. Funny, I thought the sentiment of many here was, let's just keep this as a newsgroup, why do we need the mailing list also? but I'll admit to being confused about what people have been proposing for alternate topologies. --Ned. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 3:43 AM, Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote: The purpose of Google Groups is to generate traffic to their site, which it does just fine. Making it behave better with newsgroups won't change that, so there's no incentive for them to do so. Which is why the solution is to tell people to get off it. So long as people still use it, Google has no incentive to make it better. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
Here's a 1-click pure python solution. As I said I dont know how to manage errors! 1. Put it in a file say cleangg.py and make it executable 2. Install it as the 'editor' for the Its all text firefox addon 3. Click the edit and you should get a cleaned out post -- #!/usr/bin/env python3 from sys import argv import re from re import sub def clean(s): s1 = sub(^ *\n *$, ¶, s, flags=re.M) s2 = sub(^ *\n, ,s1, flags=re.M) s3 = sub(¶\n,\n, s2, flags=re.M) return s3 def main(): print (argv[1] %s % argv[1]) with open(argv[1]) as f: s = f.read() with open(argv[1], w) as f: f.write(clean(s)) main() -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 11/28/2013 10:23 AM, Ned Batchelder wrote: Funny, I thought the sentiment of many here was, let's just keep this as a newsgroup, why do we need the mailing list also? but I'll admit to being confused about what people have been proposing for alternate topologies. That may well be the majority sentiment here. I only state my opinion. Seems like 90% of the problems on this list come from the unchecked usenet side of things. Such as trolls or spam. For example a certain iron-skulled person who posted his whining rants and threats from half a dozen different addresses to the annoyance of all. Despite many calls to banish him from the list for his blatant disregard for list etiquette, with usenet it's just not possible. Although I'm sure some would argue that's a good thing to be unable to kick offenders off the list. I've used mailing lists for many years and they seem to be a good compromise between an open community and a controlled forum. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thursday, November 28, 2013 11:59:13 PM UTC+5:30, Michael Torrie wrote: On 11/28/2013 10:23 AM, Ned Batchelder wrote: Funny, I thought the sentiment of many here was, let's just keep this as a newsgroup, why do we need the mailing list also? but I'll admit to being confused about what people have been proposing for alternate topologies. That may well be the majority sentiment here. I only state my opinion. Seems like 90% of the problems on this list come from the unchecked usenet side of things. Such as trolls or spam. For example a certain iron-skulled person who posted his whining rants and threats from half a dozen different addresses to the annoyance of all. Despite many calls to banish him from the list for his blatant disregard for list etiquette, with usenet it's just not possible. Although I'm sure some would argue that's a good thing to be unable to kick offenders off the list. Do you realize that that person was not using GG? IOW we are unfortunately conflating two completely unrelated things: 1. GG has some technical problems which are fairly easy to solve 2. All kinds of people hop onto the list. In addition to genuine ones there are spammers, trolls, dicks, nuts, philosophers, help-vampires etc etc. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Friday, November 29, 2013 12:07:29 AM UTC+5:30, rusi wrote: On Thursday, November 28, 2013 11:59:13 PM UTC+5:30, Michael Torrie wrote: On 11/28/2013 10:23 AM, Ned Batchelder wrote: Funny, I thought the sentiment of many here was, let's just keep this as a newsgroup, why do we need the mailing list also? but I'll admit to being confused about what people have been proposing for alternate topologies. That may well be the majority sentiment here. I only state my opinion. Seems like 90% of the problems on this list come from the unchecked usenet side of things. Such as trolls or spam. For example a certain iron-skulled person who posted his whining rants and threats from half a dozen different addresses to the annoyance of all. Despite many calls to banish him from the list for his blatant disregard for list etiquette, with usenet it's just not possible. Although I'm sure some would argue that's a good thing to be unable to kick offenders off the list. Do you realize that that person was not using GG? IOW we are unfortunately conflating two completely unrelated things: 1. GG has some technical problems which are fairly easy to solve 2. All kinds of people hop onto the list. In addition to genuine ones there are spammers, trolls, dicks, nuts, philosophers, help-vampires etc etc. To add to that: 1. In this thread itself there is a quadruple-post 2. In an adjacent thread there is the mess due to html mail 3. Sometime ago there was a long argument around the old and unsettled: Reply vs Reply-all debate All these are due to NON use of GG. Does that mean everyone should use GG? Heck no! Just this: Technology will occasionally have problems and these can usually be solved technically. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thu, 28 Nov 2013 11:00:22 -0800, rusi wrote: On Friday, November 29, 2013 12:07:29 AM UTC+5:30, rusi wrote: On Thursday, November 28, 2013 11:59:13 PM UTC+5:30, Michael Torrie wrote: On 11/28/2013 10:23 AM, Ned Batchelder wrote: Funny, I thought the sentiment of many here was, let's just keep this as a newsgroup, why do we need the mailing list also? but I'll admit to being confused about what people have been proposing for alternate topologies. That may well be the majority sentiment here. I only state my opinion. Seems like 90% of the problems on this list come from the unchecked usenet side of things. Such as trolls or spam. For example a certain iron-skulled person who posted his whining rants and threats from half a dozen different addresses to the annoyance of all. Despite many calls to banish him from the list for his blatant disregard for list etiquette, with usenet it's just not possible. Although I'm sure some would argue that's a good thing to be unable to kick offenders off the list. Do you realize that that person was not using GG? IOW we are unfortunately conflating two completely unrelated things: 1. GG has some technical problems which are fairly easy to solve 2. All kinds of people hop onto the list. In addition to genuine ones there are spammers, trolls, dicks, nuts, philosophers, help-vampires etc etc. To add to that: 1. In this thread itself there is a quadruple-post 2. In an adjacent thread there is the mess due to html mail 3. Sometime ago there was a long argument around the old and unsettled: Reply vs Reply-all debate All these are due to NON use of GG. Does that mean everyone should use GG? Heck no! Just this: Technology will occasionally have problems and these can usually be solved technically. All true, but the fact remains that the vast majority of GG posters can't be bothered to do the necessary, or are too stupid, or simply don't care. You are the exception which proves the rule. I'm with Chris Angelico on this one. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 11/28/2013 11:37 AM, rusi wrote: Do you realize that that person was not using GG? I do but he was using usenet. IOW we are unfortunately conflating two completely unrelated things: 1. GG has some technical problems which are fairly easy to solve 2. All kinds of people hop onto the list. In addition to genuine ones there are spammers, trolls, dicks, nuts, philosophers, help-vampires etc etc. What they have in common is usenet. Ditching usenet would solve both problems. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
My point was that the list problems in general seem to be related to usenet. GG formatting, spam, trolls. I guess I should have changed the subject line. Ditching usenet solves the GG problem and a number of other problems as well. IOW we are unfortunately conflating two completely unrelated things: 1. GG has some technical problems which are fairly easy to solve 2. All kinds of people hop onto the list. In addition to genuine ones there are spammers, trolls, dicks, nuts, philosophers, help-vampires etc etc. To add to that: 1. In this thread itself there is a quadruple-post Again, sure this was not due to GG, but it was due to a usenet client. So again, while usenet isn't the problem per se here, moving away from usenet would have prevented that particular problem. 2. In an adjacent thread there is the mess due to html mail Guess I never see this since I use thunderbird and I can configure it to always show plain text. 3. Sometime ago there was a long argument around the old and unsettled: Reply vs Reply-all debate I think the debate was not that but rather should the list messages default to reply to list or reply to sender. And I haven't seen that argument in many years now. Certainly not in the context of usenet vs e-mail, which I was addressing. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On Thu, 28 Nov 2013 11:50:47 -0700, Michael Torrie wrote: On 11/28/2013 11:37 AM, rusi wrote: Do you realize that that person was not using GG? I do but he was using usenet. IOW we are unfortunately conflating two completely unrelated things: 1. GG has some technical problems which are fairly easy to solve 2. All kinds of people hop onto the list. In addition to genuine ones there are spammers, trolls, dicks, nuts, philosophers, help-vampires etc etc. What they have in common is usenet. Ditching usenet would solve both problems. Sledgehammer to crack a nut IMO. It's only Alister who appears to suffer from these multiple post problems. And Pan is not the culprit - I'm using Pan on both Linux and FreeBSD without issues, as doubtless are many others. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 08:40:47AM -0700, Michael Torrie wrote: My opinion is that the Python list should dump the Usenet tie-in and just go straight e-mail. +1 Hell yes. -- Zero Piraeus: coram publico http://etiol.net/pubkey.asc -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 11/28/2013 10:40 AM, Michael Torrie wrote: On 11/28/2013 08:08 AM, Chris Angelico wrote: Which is easier, fiddling around with your setup so you can post reasonably on Google Groups, or just getting a better client? With your setup, you have to drop out to another editor and press F9 for it to work. With pretty much any other newsreader on the planet, this works straight off, no setup necessary. I'm still going to advise people to stop using buggy rubbish. My opinion is that the Python list should dump the Usenet tie-in I am beginning to think this also. and just go straight e-mail. email + gmane newsgroup mirror Python is the only list I'm on that has a usenet gateway. 1000 of techical mlists have a gmane mirror. There are over 200 just for Python. -- Terry Jan Reedy -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 11/28/2013 1:29 PM, Michael Torrie wrote: Seems like 90% of the problems on this list come from the unchecked usenet side of things. Such as trolls or spam. ... Despite many calls to banish [such] ... with usenet it's just not possible. The usenet gateway has been changed recently to no longer pass everything to python-list (and on to gmane) without question. If you want the benefit of such moderation as there is, use either of those two. -- Terry Jan Reedy -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
On 11/28/2013 1:50 PM, Michael Torrie wrote: On 11/28/2013 11:37 AM, rusi wrote: 2. All kinds of people hop onto the list. In addition to genuine ones there are spammers, trolls, dicks, nuts, philosophers, help-vampires etc etc. What they have in common is usenet. Ditching usenet would solve both problems. The problem could also be solved through client side filtering (i. e., killfiles). I usually killfile posters who crosspost to unrelated groups (which filters 99% of the spam that comes through). I'm sure that the usenet/email gateway could be configured to filter such posts on the server side so those who read this list via email won't have those problems. The problem with just using email is that it's a bit more difficult to browse archived posts to this group. After I subscribed to this group (comp.lang.python) using my news client, I could immediately browse posts made as far back as April. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
