~fake.address@nspm.com (SA) wrote in
<bp9jf2$ncj$1@ngspool-d02.news.aol.com>:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>>The information Allen wanted to post could have been could have[/color][/color]
> been conveyed without requiring a 1544-line post.<<
>
>My point (which you seemed to have missed) was BFD........why
>waste our collective band width in commenting at all on Allen's
>post in the first place?
>
>I'm 99.9% sure Allen was aware that he was posting in HTML (DF:
>"Allen were you aware?....") and that it would add overhead to the
>post. The table and footnotes were nicely presented;[/color]
No, they were raw HTML in my newsreader, which does not render
HTML, as any RFC-compliant newsreader will not.
HTML does not belong in Usenet posts, period.
[color=blue]
> . . . worked great
>and communicated EXACTLY what the original requester wanted, or is
>that not the point of this newsgroup? Seems the original poster
>got the information he wanted too since he didn't request a
>non-html version of the info be reposted.[/color]
What I saw was a text version followed by the HTML code for a
duplicate of precisely the same information.
This is one of the problems with HTML posting, duplication of
information. The other problems are that there are no accepted
standards for how to do it so the creators of newsreaders are just
guessing as to what to do with it.
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>>There's no justification for posting HTML on Usenet.<<[/color][/color]
>
>Oh bullshit, you take this all too seriously; there's HTML
>everywhere these days. . . .[/color]
I don't see it in this newsgroup, nor in any newsgroup I read.
[color=blue]
> . . . So maybe it wasn't plain text, who gives a
>shit, cetainly not the guy who wanted the info (oh forgot about
>him). HTML is the tool to use when you need layout with text to
>effectively communicate information. . .[/color]
No, HTML is what you use when you're creating data to be rendered
by a browser.
That does not apply to Usenet.
[color=blue]
> . . . An equally effective layout
>would have been a pain in the arse to present well in the line
>length limits of plain text format without wrapping.[/color]
I was perfectly able to understand the text version of the post.
[color=blue]
>So why do you deem it necessary to comment solely on the format of
>the help Allen provided; for some polemical vision about the
>"purity" of Usenet? For download speed? (74 kb on dial up may take
>a second or two but it is not that big.) Give Allen and the rest
>of us a break.....[/color]
The HTML was entirely unnecessary and innapropriate. It was also
enormously huge, for no actual benefit.
[color=blue]
>Your post clarified nothing, provided no new or additional
>information useful to the original poster and didn't contribute at
>all to the thread; hence my point about being inane.[/color]
I asked Allen if he knew that he'd posted HTML. Allen has chosen
not to answer.
Get a clue, Steve: Microsoft did not invent the Internet and does
not control standards. Usenet existed long before Microsoft created
Outlook Express, and there are standards that are supposed to be
followed for Usenet postings. HTML is not part of those standards,
regardless of what Microsoft chooses to put in its poor newsreader.
Secondly, there was no actual benefit to the thousand or so lines
of HTML in that post. None. The information was there in the text
part, and perfectly understandable.
My assumption was that Allen had posted HTML by mistake and would
like to know about it. I probably should have emailed him
privately, yes. Had I done so, your totally unnecessary whining
about my post would have been avoided.
--
David W. Fenton
http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net
http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc 
