C to Java Byte Code

[napi]

I think you would agree with me that a C compiler that directly
produces Java Byte Code to be run on any JVM is something that is
missing to software programmers so far. With such a tool one could
stay with C and still be able to produce Java byte code for
platform independent apps. Also, old programs (with some tweaking)
could be re-compiled and ported to the JVM.

We have been developing such a tool over the last 2 years and currently
beta testing it.

It's called MPC (for Multi-Platform C) and you can download the beta
version at http://www.axiomsol.com or at http://freshmeat.net

Napi

[Arthur J. O'Dwyer]

[f-ups set to c.p, where this discussion may be marginally topical]

On Mon, 1 Nov 2004, Dik T. Winter wrote:

Alfred Z. Newmane <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> writes:

Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

Dik T. Winter coughed up:
In article <Bltgd.6$304.0@trndny06> "Thomas G. Marshall" writes:
> I don't see i=i++ as ever anything useful, but 45° tangental to
> this original thread is something that bothers me. There is a
> *prevailing* notion that:
> If it ain't standard C, it ain't C
> which I think is not quite true.

Mr Dik Winter, this is the result of white spae before the quote token.
This serves as an exellent example of what can happen, and why we are
asking you to fix this :-)

My newsreader is a bit more intelligent. I have instructed it to insert
" > " before quotations. But if the quoted text already starts with a
space it will only insert " >".

How about if the quoted text starts with ">"? One of my pet peeves
is news clients that insert extra levels of spaces in quotes; a couple
of levels is okay, but the above quote would end up being

> In article <Bltgd.6$304.0@trndny06> "Thomas G. Marshall" writes:
> > I don't see i=i++ as ever anything useful, but 45° tangental to
> > this original thread is something that bothers me. There is a
> > *prevailing* notion that:
> > If it ain't standard C, it ain't C
> > which I think is not quite true.

if everyone used your newsreader's conventions without any hand-tweaking,
and that just looks ridiculous---some 1/7 of the total screen real estate
is being taken up by quote markers, which ought to be almost redundant
anyway, if quoting is done properly. (IOW, it ought to be pretty easy
to tell when the writer is "speaking" and when the previous contributors
are "speaking"; the quote markers are IMHO just there for academic reasons
(e.g., "Yes, Elmer did really write that sentence, and not another").

-Arthur,
rambling late at night

[Richard Herring]

In message <C9********************@comcast.com>, Merrill & Michele
<be********@comcast.net> writes

>E. Robert Tisdale:
>Hi Paul,
>
>Welcome back to the comp.lang.c and comp.lang.c++ newsgroups.
>I checked Google newsgroups.
>
> http://groups.google.com/
>
>You've been absent from comp.lang.c++ since October 20, 2003
>and absent from comp.lang.c since May 30,2002.
>
>No matter. Very little has changed since you've been gone. :-)

Richard Herring:
Please don't trollishly crosspost between C and C++ groups. The outcome
is rarely beneficial.

But that indeed might be in this case, as I might learn how to do so, and
this event, in turn, might allow me to teach nasa a little rocket science.
Although I saw no signs of intelligent life in usenet besides here, how is
crossposting done? MPJ

By putting something appropriate in the Newsgroups: header line.

--
Richard Herring

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Dik T. Winter coughed up:

In article <2u*************@uni-berlin.de> "Alfred Z. Newmane"
<a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> writes: > Thomas G. Marshall
wrote: > > Dik T. Winter coughed up:

> > > In article <Bltgd.6$304.0@trndny06> "Thomas G. Marshall"
> > > <tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> writes: ... > > > > I don't see i=i++ as ever anything useful, but 45°
tangental to > > > this > original thread is something that bothers
me. There is a > > > *prevailing* > notion that: > > > > If it ain't standard C, it ain't C
> > > > which I think is not quite true.

>
> Mr Dik Winter, this is the result of white spae before the quote

token. > This serves as an exellent example of what can happen, and
why we are > asking you to fix this :-)

My newsreader is a bit more intelligent. I have instructed it to
insert " > " before quotations. But if the quoted text already
starts with a
space it will only insert " >".

Well, in any case, I've asked the creator of OE_QuoteFix about this issue.
He'll contact me with /his/ take on it, probably soon.
--
Framsticks. 3D Artificial Life evolution. You can see the creatures
that evolve and how they interact, hunt, swim, etc. (Unaffiliated with
me). http://www.frams.alife.pl/

[Programmer Dude]

Floyd L. Davidson writes:

I think most folks that use Microsoft systems recommend Forte
Agent, though I haven't kept up on that for a long time. There
is a free version and a commercial (greatly enhanced) version
too. Somebody who uses an MS platform can give you better
advice on that.

I've been using the "paid-for" version of Agent for many months
now. It's okay, but it has a number of annoying things that have
over those months determined me to seek a better newsreader.

The text editor has some non-Windows weirdnesses I really dislike,
and the folders section is only one level deep--no subfolders.
(That last alone is almost enough to condemn it in my mind.)

It also suffers the unix disease of being to damn configurable.

[Programmer Dude]

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

Why should everyone change the way thing have bene done the past
decade anda half because one person decides to diverge from that
accepted norm?

Intelligence.
Creativity.
Lack of being a goddamned sheep.
Lack of being an anal controlling asshole.

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

Programmer Dude wrote:

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

Why should everyone change the way thing have bene done the past
decade anda half because one person decides to diverge from that
accepted norm?

Intelligence.
Creativity.
Lack of being a goddamned sheep.
Lack of being an anal controlling asshole.

Now this is /NOT/ what this is about. I have no problem with making
improvements any any existing thing, but making unnecissary changes to
something that has been vastly accepted for /good reason/, and not just
merely because it is an accepted norm. It's all for the sake for sane
news reading, not having to deal with malformed quoting and broken quote
casscades.

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

Programmer Dude wrote:

Floyd L. Davidson writes:

I think most folks that use Microsoft systems recommend Forte
Agent, though I haven't kept up on that for a long time. There
is a free version and a commercial (greatly enhanced) version
too. Somebody who uses an MS platform can give you better
advice on that.
I've been using the "paid-for" version of Agent for many months
now. It's okay, but it has a number of annoying things that have
over those months determined me to seek a better newsreader.

Any suggestions then?
The text editor has some non-Windows weirdnesses I really dislike,
and the folders section is only one level deep--no subfolders.
(That last alone is almost enough to condemn it in my mind.)
Agreed. If you are developing for a certain platform, you should take
note of how things like controls (buttons, menus, checkboxes, etc) and
arangements are commonly used in better programs.

One of the biggest problems I've seen in cross platform applications is
sticking to a certain model that works well on one platform but makes it
harder to use on another.

One of my core programing models is this:

"Keep things simple."

Knowing how to create applications that are both simple /and/ powerful
is a good trait to have in the programming world, but alas, bosses
aren't always as keen :(
It also suffers the unix disease of being to damn configurable.

True, that can be a pain sometimes, although I realy like Linux :-)
Actually there is sort of a drowing trend to have an "Advanced or
Simple" mode switch, though sometimes it doesn't seem to come out quite
right.

[Dik T. Winter]

In article <2u*************@uni-berlin.de> "Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> writes:
....

Now this is /NOT/ what this is about. I have no problem with making
improvements any any existing thing, but making unnecissary changes to
something that has been vastly accepted for /good reason/, and not just
merely because it is an accepted norm. It's all for the sake for sane
news reading, not having to deal with malformed quoting and broken quote
casscades.

Have you read what I wrote? I use this kind of quoting already about 17
years. Once upon a time it was propagated for good reasons, and so I
started with it in early 1987. So who is changing what? See:
<http://groups.google.nl/groups?as_umsgid=352%40zuring.mcvax.cwi.nl>
and also see that Google has no problems with it; colour-coding is OK.
Google apparently knows a bit more about quoting than other systems.
The apparent requirement that quotation marks should *not* be preceded
by a space is an arbitrary change from previous practice. (To be
entirely correct, I changed it between 11 November 1986 and 25 April
1987.)
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, [phone]
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/

[David Schwartz]

"Jerry Coffin" <jc*****@taeus.com> wrote in message
news:b2*************************@posting.google.co m...

"Thomas G. Marshall"
<tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> wrote in message
news:<Bltgd.6$304.0@trndny06>...

There is a *prevailing* notion that:

If it ain't standard C, it ain't C

This is more than a mere notion: it's a tautology, since C is defined
by the standard.

Anything not prohibited by the C standard is C. Anything not in the
standard is not the C language itself, but it does not follow that it is not
C.

To permit me an analogy, any conversation in English is English.
However, that doesn't mean that the coversation is *about* English.

To argue that anything not explicitly defined in the C standard is not C
is to argue that conversations that aren't about English aren't in English.

Of course, this has no bearing on what is or isn't topical on
comp.lang.c or comp.lang.c++ which are for dicussions of the respective
languages themselves. If we had 'lang.english' it would not follow that
because any discussion in English *is* English, it's therefore topical in
lang.english.

DS

[Richard Bos]

"Thomas G. Marshall"
<tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> wrote:

Well, let me put it a slightly different way:

1. OE is enormously common.

That is not Dik's fault.

GARN.

Richard

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Richard Bos coughed up:

"Thomas G. Marshall"
<tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> wrote:

Well, let me put it a slightly different way:

1. OE is enormously common.

That is not Dik's fault.

Thoughtless comment. I never said it was. What I said is fully orthogonal
to "who is right" here. Recap:
<full quote>

Well, let me put it a slightly different way:

1. OE is enormously common.
2. More and more OE folks are using OE_QuoteFix
3. OE_QuoteFix does not regard {space}{reply marker}
as part of a reply.

So you're going to be dedicatedly producing posts that are hard to reply to
for a rather large number of people.

</full quote>

This has nothing to do with who or which technique "is right".


--
http://www.allexperts.com is a nifty way to get an answer to just about
/anything/.

[Thomas G. Marshall]

David Schwartz coughed up:

"Jerry Coffin" <jc*****@taeus.com> wrote in message
news:b2*************************@posting.google.co m...

"Thomas G. Marshall"
<tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> wrote in
message news:<Bltgd.6$304.0@trndny06>...

There is a *prevailing* notion that:

If it ain't standard C, it ain't C

This is more than a mere notion: it's a tautology, since C is defined
by the standard.

Anything not prohibited by the C standard is C. Anything not in
the standard is not the C language itself, but it does not follow
that it is not C.

Yep, IMO as well. Basically I would go further to say that non-STD C is C
by definition. But I'm trying like crazy to not make this /sound/ like a
semantic argument.

To permit me an analogy, any conversation in English is English.
However, that doesn't mean that the coversation is *about* English.

To argue that anything not explicitly defined in the C standard
is not C is to argue that conversations that aren't about English
aren't in English.

Of course, this has no bearing on what is or isn't topical on
comp.lang.c or comp.lang.c++ which are for dicussions of the
respective languages themselves. If we had 'lang.english' it would
not follow that because any discussion in English *is* English, it's
therefore topical in lang.english.

DS

--
http://www.allexperts.com is a nifty way to get an answer to just about
/anything/.

[Programmer Dude]

Thomas G. Marshall writes:

1. OE is enormously common.
2. More and more OE folks are using OE_QuoteFix
3. OE_QuoteFix does not regard {space}{reply marker}
as part of a reply.

So you're going to be dedicatedly producing posts that are hard
to reply to for a rather large number of people.

TS. There is a common sense among the cognoscenti that folks who
use OE get exactly what they deserve.

An even more common sense is that it's absurd to modify ones own
behavior for arguably defective software used by others.

[Programmer Dude]

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

Why should everyone change the way thing have bene done the past
decade anda half because one person decides to diverge from that
accepted norm?
Intelligence.
Creativity.
Lack of being a goddamned sheep.
Lack of being an anal controlling asshole.

Now this is /NOT/ what this is about.

[shrug] Smells to me like it is.
I have no problem with making improvements any any existing thing,
but making unnecissary changes to something that has been vastly
accepted for /good reason/,...
But who's to say it's really good reason and not a self-limiting,
fear-of-change, fear-of-growth thing?

Change is good.
...and not just merely because it is an accepted norm.
But I perceive that that's a lot of the real reason behind these
sorts of threads. I've seen them often. Just suggest that it
is inevitable that amUSENET will migrate to HTML and watch the
reactions!
It's all for the sake for sane news reading, not having to deal
with malformed quoting and broken quote casscades.

I think some folks take amUSENET way too seriously. When how other
people write a post starts to actually affect you, it's time to
unplug the network cable and get outside and breath some real air.

Change is good. Variety is good.

[Crom]

Programmer Dude wrote:

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

Why should everyone change the way thing have bene done the past
decade anda half because one person decides to diverge from that
accepted norm?

Intelligence.
Creativity.
Lack of being a goddamned sheep.
Lack of being an anal controlling asshole.

Now this is /NOT/ what this is about.

[shrug] Smells to me like it is.

I have no problem with making improvements any any existing thing,
but making unnecissary changes to something that has been vastly
accepted for /good reason/,...

But who's to say it's really good reason and not a self-limiting,
fear-of-change, fear-of-growth thing?

Change is good.

...and not just merely because it is an accepted norm.

But I perceive that that's a lot of the real reason behind these
sorts of threads. I've seen them often. Just suggest that it
is inevitable that amUSENET will migrate to HTML and watch the
reactions!

It's all for the sake for sane news reading, not having to deal
with malformed quoting and broken quote casscades.

I think some folks take amUSENET way too seriously. When how other
people write a post starts to actually affect you, it's time to
unplug the network cable and get outside and breath some real air.

Change is good. Variety is good.

Even if it completely breaks existing established unwritten standards?
This isn't soem dictatorship telling you what to wear or who to vote
for, or whatever, it's about news readers and something that wasnt'
broken being fixed by morons. So for crying out loud, get off this
stupid loony fringe of yours and join reality please.

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

Programmer Dude wrote:

Thomas G. Marshall writes:

1. OE is enormously common.
2. More and more OE folks are using OE_QuoteFix
3. OE_QuoteFix does not regard {space}{reply marker}
as part of a reply.

So you're going to be dedicatedly producing posts that are hard
to reply to for a rather large number of people.

TS. There is a common sense among the cognoscenti that folks who
use OE get exactly what they deserve.

An even more common sense is that it's absurd to modify ones own
behavior for arguably defective software used by others.

Why do I get the feeling you dislike OE more for being a Microsoft
product, than for any lack of any functionality?

I've been using OE, for yeas, OE_QuoteFix is the best thing since sliced
bread for OE. Even without it, OE wasn't /never/ a horrible news reader.
Granted, not the best, but it always got the job done.

As I've mentioned before, does some jobs better than other readers, like
being able to sort "watched" threads at the top, while at the /same
time/ be able to sort by *date*, not many news readers can do this.
Hell, few readers can even sort watched threads stay at top, let alone
also sort by date. and some readers don't even have a "watch thread"
capability.

No offense to you, Programmer Dude, but I feel as though you never
really tried OE (much), if you really had given it a chance, you may or
may not be as much against it as you are now.

It's up to the eye of the beholder, but people who use and like OE are
those who have actually given it a chance and learned to utilize it's
strengths, and minimize it's weaknesses (OE_QuoteFix.)

All in all, it's not so bad a reader as many people like to /say/ it is.

(If it's really missing something, it's the ability to send control
messages other than Cancel Message's.)

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

Dik T. Winter wrote:

In article <2u*************@uni-berlin.de> "Alfred Z. Newmane"
<a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> writes: > Dik T. Winter wrote:

> > In article <wAPgd.512$fw2.217@trndny01> "Thomas G. Marshall"
> > <tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> writes:

> Dik > > T. Winter coughed up: ...

> > Refixing the bad quotes:

>
> Could you please not put any white space /before/ the quote

character > ">"

> Putting white space, like:

> > quoted text with whitespace before the quote token.

> interfears with quote level color-coders and "quoted text wrap

fixers."

But it makes quotations clearer for those not using quote level
color-codes.

Yes, but in helping some, you are making it harder for many others, why
is this so hard to understand?

I also have to disagree that you are helping all the non color coded
readers, in that after a few or so quote levels your text gets horribly
mis wrapped because of that extra space, so it, in fact, gets /harder/
to read in many cases. Even google groups captures this.

[Programmer Dude]

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

I've been using the "paid-for" version of Agent for many months
now. It's okay, but it has a number of annoying things that have
over those months determined me to seek a better newsreader.
Any suggestions then?

No yet. So far I'm only to the point of realizing I don't like
Agent very much.

The text editor has some non-Windows weirdnesses I really dislike,
and the folders section is only one level deep--no subfolders.
(That last alone is almost enough to condemn it in my mind.)

Agreed. If you are developing for a certain platform, you should take
note of how things like controls (buttons, menus, checkboxes, etc) and
arangements are commonly used in better programs.

And--as in the case of no sub-folders--the level and operation of
software in general. I mean, how lame do you have to be to fail
to recognize that, gee, sub-folders are pretty much a required
feature for organizing your email.
One of the biggest problems I've seen in cross platform applications is
sticking to a certain model that works well on one platform but makes it
harder to use on another.
Yep. Two words: Lotus Notes. In three decades I've never hated a
piece of so-called software more than I hate Lotus Notes.
One of my core programing models is this:

"Keep things simple."
Yes! And after that, "Keep them usable." I play "user" as much as
I can with my own development (and on the hobby side I *am* the
user! :-)... When any feature starts to be a pain to use, it's time
to re-factor the UI.
Knowing how to create applications that are both simple /and/ powerful
is a good trait to have in the programming world, but alas, bosses
aren't always as keen :(

We live in a world where business often adopts the attitude that
unhappy, pissed off customers are fine so long as they are so
unhappy and pissed off they go elsewhere. (And then there's
cable companies who have you by the short and curlies and clearly
could care less what you think.)

It also suffers the unix disease of being to damn configurable.

True, that can be a pain sometimes, although I realy like Linux :-)

Never used Linux, but I was a unix developer for years. Loved it.
Really loved it!

But I'm fine with Windows, too. MS makes some pretty cool software,
and unix really couldn't be a player in the world in which I work
right now.

Bottom line: I have no loyalties to any platform, hard or soft. I
just want stuff that does the job. Windows, unix (and many others)
do, and they're all fine with me! (-:

[Programmer Dude]

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

TS. There is a common sense among the cognoscenti that folks who
use OE get exactly what they deserve.

An even more common sense is that it's absurd to modify ones own
behavior for arguably defective software used by others.
Why do I get the feeling you dislike OE more for being a Microsoft
product, than for any lack of any functionality?

I don't know, since it's completely off the mark. I *like* MS
products quite a bit. I think they make some amazing stuff. OE
just isn't in that group (nor is VSS).
I've been using OE, for yeas, OE_QuoteFix is the best thing since
sliced bread for OE.
I can't imagine using a second piece of software to fix the first.
When I asked Forte about the lack of sub-folders they told me there
was a third party product that provided that functionality.

NO THANKS!!
If your software can't do the job, I'll find some that can.
Even without it, OE wasn't /never/ a horrible news reader.
Granted, not the best, but it always got the job done.
Among folks who know what they're doing, it's probably adequate.
But its defaults are dangerous and the way it deals with "file:"
is egregious.
No offense to you, Programmer Dude, but I feel as though you never
really tried OE (much),...
You are correct.
...if you really had given it a chance, you may or may not be as
much against it as you are now.
[shrug] Could be, but if third party software is required to make
it truly useful, it'd be off my list.

HOWEVER, keep in mind that ALL I SAID was that OE is widely regarded
in poor favor as a software product. And note that I didn't make any
claims for or against OE.

The real substance of my point was that broken behavior of a piece
of softare is a poor reason to modify ones own actions.
It's up to the eye of the beholder, but people who use and like OE
are those who have actually given it a chance and learned to
utilize it's strengths, and minimize it's weaknesses (OE_QuoteFix.)
Or at least don't mind having to take extra effort to make it useable.
I *do* mind that. If it's not useable out of the box, it can stay IN
the box, AFAIC.
All in all, it's not so bad a reader as many people like to /say/
it is.

"Not so bad" seems damning with faint praise.

<GODWIN>
Hitler supposedly liked dogs. Few things in life are ALL bad.
</GODWIN>

Here endith the thread. (-:

[Programmer Dude]

Crom writes:

Change is good. Variety is good.
Even if it completely breaks existing established unwritten standards?

Heh. "Unwritten standard" is an oxymoron.

And, yes. Even so.
This isn't soem dictatorship telling you what to wear or who to vote
for, or whatever, it's about news readers and something that wasnt'
broken being fixed by morons. So for crying out loud, get off this
stupid loony fringe of yours and join reality please.

Question: With such kind words, how can I deny such a request?
Answer: Pretty easily.

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

Programmer Dude wrote:

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

TS. There is a common sense among the cognoscenti that folks who
use OE get exactly what they deserve.

An even more common sense is that it's absurd to modify ones own
behavior for arguably defective software used by others.
Why do I get the feeling you dislike OE more for being a Microsoft
product, than for any lack of any functionality?

I don't know, since it's completely off the mark. I *like* MS
products quite a bit. I think they make some amazing stuff. OE
just isn't in that group (nor is VSS).

I aplogies then. I also conceeded your point about security elsethread.

I've been using OE, for yeas, OE_QuoteFix is the best thing since
sliced bread for OE.

I can't imagine using a second piece of software to fix the first.
When I asked Forte about the lack of sub-folders they told me there
was a third party product that provided that functionality.

Thats why I asked before if someone news of a good replacement that good
do color coding, sort-by-thread-watching-AND-date.

Even without it, OE wasn't /never/ a horrible news reader.
Granted, not the best, but it always got the job done.
Among folks who know what they're doing, it's probably adequate.
But its defaults are dangerous and the way it deals with "file:"
is egregious.

Very true.

No offense to you, Programmer Dude, but I feel as though you never
really tried OE (much),...

You are correct.

...if you really had given it a chance, you may or may not be as
much against it as you are now.

[shrug] Could be, but if third party software is required to make
it truly useful, it'd be off my list.

I have to agree with you here too, if you know of a godo replacement,
I'm all ears (and eyes :-)
HOWEVER, keep in mind that ALL I SAID was that OE is widely regarded
in poor favor as a software product. And note that I didn't make any
claims for or against OE.
True, I may have jumped the gun a little.
The real substance of my point was that broken behavior of a piece
of softare is a poor reason to modify ones own actions.

True, but some people had made the point that it isn't just OE that
parses quotes i nthat way.

It's up to the eye of the beholder, but people who use and like OE
are those who have actually given it a chance and learned to
utilize it's strengths, and minimize it's weaknesses (OE_QuoteFix.)

Or at least don't mind having to take extra effort to make it useable.
I *do* mind that. If it's not useable out of the box, it can stay IN
the box, AFAIC.

True, that usually constitutes a defective product.

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

Programmer Dude wrote:

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

I've been using the "paid-for" version of Agent for many months
now. It's okay, but it has a number of annoying things that have
over those months determined me to seek a better newsreader.
Any suggestions then?

No yet. So far I'm only to the point of realizing I don't like
Agent very much.

Well please feel free to share any solutions you may find. Hell, maybe
one of these days, if I actually get enoug htime, I'll write one!, lol

The text editor has some non-Windows weirdnesses I really dislike,
and the folders section is only one level deep--no subfolders.
(That last alone is almost enough to condemn it in my mind.)

Agreed. If you are developing for a certain platform, you should take
note of how things like controls (buttons, menus, checkboxes, etc)
and arangements are commonly used in better programs.

And--as in the case of no sub-folders--the level and operation of
software in general. I mean, how lame do you have to be to fail
to recognize that, gee, sub-folders are pretty much a required
feature for organizing your email.

Bingo. It's one of those vastly accepted norms that people continue to
request from such applications. It's a shame when some don't listen.

One of the biggest problems I've seen in cross platform applications
is sticking to a certain model that works well on one platform but
makes it harder to use on another.

Yep. Two words: Lotus Notes. In three decades I've never hated a
piece of so-called software more than I hate Lotus Notes.

(GAG!!!) Just the thought brings back so many horrible semi-supressed
memories!

One of my core programing models is this:

"Keep things simple."

Yes! And after that, "Keep them usable." I play "user" as much as
I can with my own development (and on the hobby side I *am* the
user! :-)... When any feature starts to be a pain to use, it's time
to re-factor the UI.

Somethings else we seem to share in common then :-)

Knowing how to create applications that are both simple /and/
powerful is a good trait to have in the programming world, but alas,
bosses aren't always as keen :(

We live in a world where business often adopts the attitude that
unhappy, pissed off customers are fine so long as they are so
unhappy and pissed off they go elsewhere.

Sad but true.
(And then there's cable companies who have you by the short and
curlies and clearly could care less what you think.)
Thats why I switched to sat-tv a couple years ago :-)

It also suffers the unix disease of being to damn configurable.

True, that can be a pain sometimes, although I realy like Linux :-)

Never used Linux, but I was a unix developer for years. Loved it.
Really loved it!

Have always loved it for what it was as well. It's a very robust and
stable platform (most of the time) IMHO. trouble is a lot of users,
especially those who were brought up /only/ knowing Windows usually get
scared away at the site of a Unix/Linux console.
But I'm fine with Windows, too. MS makes some pretty cool software,
and unix really couldn't be a player in the world in which I work
right now.

Bottom line: I have no loyalties to any platform, hard or soft. I
just want stuff that does the job. Windows, unix (and many others)
do, and they're all fine with me! (-:

Seems we actually have more in common then first meets the eye (or how
ever the saying goes.)

I do most of my dev on windows, and have always been doing unix/linux
dev more for learning/hobbie sake. I also continue ot experiment in the
Win32 realm as well ,always learning some new trick with the WinAPI and
such. :-) I personally love Borland C++ Builder 5. VS.Net has some
merits too, and I'm realatively new to it, but have picked up quite a
bit of the various aspects. I still however prefer BCB for my general
GUI needs.

Though I'm always willing to try new things.

[Programmer Dude]

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

I can't imagine using a second piece of software to fix the first.
When I asked Forte about the lack of sub-folders they told me there
was a third party product that provided that functionality.
Thats why I asked before if someone news of a good replacement that
good do color coding, sort-by-thread-watching-AND-date.

Agent--if the little things that annoy me don't annoy you so much--
isn't horrible (yes, I AM damning with faint praise, but you may
not object to its faults as much as I do). It does color code quotes
(one level--colored or not colored) and it does allow some tailoring
of what you see in a group (has watched posts, kept posts).....

No, I take it back. Agent's crap.

Consider this: in the editor, it word wraps what I type just fine,
but completely ignores quoted material. Therefore, I have to
manually re-wrap quotes to fit my line length.

Or, if you double-click a word and then attempt to drag-highlight
other words.... nothing happens. Only the double-clicked word
remains highlighted (what idiot thought of that?!?!).

Or, it's sort of a quasi-MDI application (multiple windows in a big
window), but its behavior is annoyingly non-standard. The part I
hate most is that the "main" window is a three pane deal with your
list of groups, list of articles and current article. But I want
articles in their own window, thank you, AND I want to be able to
have multiple article windows open. But all this piece of crap
will give you is one article window. You can open a second "main"
window, but who needs that?

Or, the only reasonable way to use it (due the three-pane mistake)
is with the main window maxed. Which means getting at any other
window (your outbox, for e.g.) requires going to the Window menu
and opening it there.

And why is my outbox NOT listed with my Inbox and other folders?
Since you have to explicitly go open your outbox, it was weeks before
I noticed that I had a couple messages that never made it out (due
to Agent's "send" command being ^N (send Now)...I just can't get
used to that. ^N is almost universally New.

Or how about the fact that the folder list only provides a count of
UNREAD articles. Not the total in the folder (a far more useful
number to me, although I prefer both).

It's also braindead in its handling of column widths.

I mean, what kind of bad weed were these jokers smoking? They
might be decent programmers in some fashion, but they ain't much
in the user interface design area.

No, don't buy Agent. You'd only come to regret it.
I have to agree with you here too, if you know of a godo replacement,
I'm all ears (and eyes :-)
[sigh] I really liked Netscape 3. Simple and fast. Stayed the
heck out of my way, and I like that in a piece of software (also
in other drivers :-). I learned to love Netscape 4.7 and would
have stayed with it, but my company only supports IE, so I lost
the ability to get through our corporate firewall.

I think the problem is often featureitus. The idea that an app
needs to have it all. The CuteFTP product *used*to*be* one of
the best FTP apps out there until they ruined it. Each new
"upgrade" made me like it less and less until--trying to jump
through the misbegotten registration hoops--I finally said, the
hell with it and dis-installed it permanently. (And they've
lost me as a customer forever.)

I've seen a number of really decent shareware apps go down that
road. Pity.
True, but some people had made the point that it isn't just
OE that parses quotes i nthat way.

Understood. But you're "talking" to someone who doesn't even
mind top-posting (even prefer it in some circumstances--I tend
to skip posts when all I see on the first screenful is quotes).

HOW a post is formatted is trivial and way below my radar. [shrug]

Now what was it... oh, yeah,... post ^Now

[Al MacHonahey]

"Thomas G. Marshall" <tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> wrote in message news:<hXthd.2222$fw2.156@trndny01>...

Dik T. Winter coughed up:

In article <2u*************@uni-berlin.de> "Alfred Z. Newmane"
<a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> writes: > Thomas G. Marshall
wrote: > > Dik T. Winter coughed up:

> > > In article <Bltgd.6$304.0@trndny06> "Thomas G. Marshall"
> > > <tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> writes:

... > > > > I don't see i=i++ as ever anything useful, but 45°
tangental to > > > this > original thread is something that bothers
me. There is a > > > *prevailing* > notion that:

> > > > If it ain't standard C, it ain't C
> > > > which I think is not quite true.
>
> Mr Dik Winter, this is the result of white spae before the quote

token. > This serves as an exellent example of what can happen, and
why we are > asking you to fix this :-)

My newsreader is a bit more intelligent. I have instructed it to
insert " > " before quotations. But if the quoted text already
starts with a
space it will only insert " >".

Well, in any case, I've asked the creator of OE_QuoteFix about this issue.
He'll contact me with /his/ take on it, probably soon.

In any case, Dik's usual (and arguebly broken) quoting IS a problem,
eventually wrapping get horrendous, forcing others to manually repair
it if any readablity is to be restored.

Dik, once and for all, PLEASE fix you QUOTES. over 90% of readers and
parsers will NOT parse " > ..." as a line of quoted text. "> ..." is
_UNIVERSAL_, meaning any parser should not trouble with it, so why
break this universally accepted paradigm? Seems rather absurd and
selfish.

[Al MacHonahey]

"Dik T. Winter" <Di********@cwi.nl> wrote in message news:<I6********@cwi.nl>...

In article <hcbhd.842$o52.240@trndny03> "Thomas G. Marshall" <tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> writes:
...

> Dik T. Winter, if it's ok with you, *please* change that. The *standard* is
> to quote a line by placing a ">" at the very beginning of the line.

What standard?

The the UseNet univerally accepted way of quoting; Quoting with ">
...." isntead of " > ..." will allow your text to be parsed by
virtually every parser/reader without a hitch. Your quoting, however,
does NOT get parsed as quoted text on a vast majority of
readers/parsers. Why break quoting like this? Please fix them.

[Al MacHonahey]

"Dik T. Winter" <Di********@cwi.nl> wrote in message news:<I6********@cwi.nl>...

In article <2u*************@uni-berlin.de> "Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> writes:

> Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

> > Dik T. Winter coughed up:
> > > In article <Bltgd.6$304.0@trndny06> "Thomas G. Marshall"
> > > <tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> writes: ...
> > > > I don't see i=i++ as ever anything useful, but 45° tangental to
> > > this > original thread is something that bothers me. There is a
> > > *prevailing* > notion that:
> > > > If it ain't standard C, it ain't C
> > > > which I think is not quite true.

>
> Mr Dik Winter, this is the result of white spae before the quote token.
> This serves as an exellent example of what can happen, and why we are
> asking you to fix this :-)

My newsreader is a bit more intelligent. I have instructed it to insert
" > " before quotations. But if the quoted text already starts with a
space it will only insert " >".

Thats fine and dandy, sonny, but that ain't the problem. You don't
need the space BEFORE the >, "> ..." is the universal way of quoting
on UseNet. Your quotes don't get ~parsed~AS~QUOTED~TEXT~ on most
parsers/readers. Please fix them. The uiversally accepted UseNet
quoting style is univerally accepted, and has bene for decades,
~FOR~VERY~GOOD~REASONS~. UseNet would of gone to complete insane
quoting hell long ago if not for them.

[Al MacHonahey]

fl***@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) wrote in message news:<87************@barrow.com>...

"Dik T. Winter" <Di********@cwi.nl> wrote:

In article <2u*************@uni-berlin.de> "Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> writes:

The point here, is that 99.9% of UseNet uses >, or |, or soem other
quote character, /without/ and leading white space, and this is how most
quote-level color-coding and broken-word-wrap fixers work, liek for what
I described above, which only serve on the client end, to make the text
mor readable.

My point is that (with my non-colour coded newsreader) I find quotes
flushed to the left quite unreadable, and unseparable from the actual
new text.

I had to look twice to even figure out what they were
complaining about. Gnus does "quote-level color-coding", and it
works just as expected... which is to say quite correctly with
your articles as well as with others.

You must be horribly blidn then, sir. The entire point is Dik's
quoting break on many readers and parsers, ie: thye don't get parsed
as quotes on most readers/parsers.

There is nothing wrong with asking someone to follow a universal
UseNet standard thats been in place for decades, but some people wont
listen to any reason and think they are god..... sigh

[Al MacHonahey]

"Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> wrote in message news:<2u*************@uni-berlin.de>...

Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

Floyd L. Davidson coughed up:

...[rip]...

The point you have *missed* is that 99.9% of all Usenet readers
do the appropriate thing with what Dik T. Winters is posting.

You've tried them all, have you?

And that number isn't weighted by the number of folks actually using
them. I'm guessing that the number of folks using OE with OE_QuoteFix
is very large.

And this is the first time I've ever seen this issue before, and I've
been in usenet for a long time. So Dik T. Winters' style post is
certainly not a common occurrence.

And as I was trying to point out, it's not common for very good reasons.

That because, unlike Dik, other people have actually got a clue of
what and WHY some things are done on UseNet in the way they have been
for decades.

[Al MacHonahey]

"Dik T. Winter" <Di********@cwi.nl> wrote in message news:<I6********@cwi.nl>...

In article <2u*************@uni-berlin.de> "Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> writes:
...

> Now this is /NOT/ what this is about. I have no problem with making
> improvements any any existing thing, but making unnecissary changes to
> something that has been vastly accepted for /good reason/, and not just
> merely because it is an accepted norm. It's all for the sake for sane
> news reading, not having to deal with malformed quoting and broken quote
> casscades.
Have you read what I wrote? I use this kind of quoting already about 17
years. Once upon a time it was propagated for good reasons, and so I
started with it in early 1987.

And people even then asked you to fix it. The onyl thing that was
propagated from that was you to people's killfiles.
So who is changing what? See:
<http://groups.google.nl/groups?as_umsgid=352%40zuring.mcvax.cwi.nl>
and also see that Google has no problems with it; colour-coding is OK.
For the most part, no, but it causes google to treat non quoted text
that happens to start with whitespace and a ">". Seems broken to me.

Also, you were already killfiled by the time by some, after being
repeatedly asked to fix your damn quoting.
Google apparently knows a bit more about quoting than other systems.
And a lot more than you, apparently.
The apparent requirement that quotation marks should *not* be preceded
by a space is an arbitrary change from previous practice.
No, it's been an accepted UneNet standard since almsot the beginning
of UseNet. Stop trying to find cheap and fact-twisting excuses.
(To be
entirely correct, I changed it between 11 November 1986 and 25 April
1987.)

And this serves to show how long you've been utterly clueless, or
unwilling to reason.

[J. J. Farrell]

"Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> wrote in message news:<2u*************@uni-berlin.de>...

Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

"Dik T. Winter" <Di********@cwi.nl> wrote in message
news:I6********@cwi.nl...

In article <2u*************@uni-berlin.de> "Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> writes: > Dik T. Winter wrote:
> > In article <wAPgd.512$fw2.217@trndny01> "Thomas G. Marshall"
> > <tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> writes: Dik > > T. Winter coughed up: ... > > Refixing the bad quotes:
>
> Could you please not put any white space /before/ the quote
character > ">"

You know. I do it on purpose. You are the third person complaining
in the about 20 years I am posting on Usenet.

OE_QuoteFix didn't exist back that far.

Well, let me put it a slightly different way:

1. OE is enormously common.
2. More and more OE folks are using OE_QuoteFix
3. OE_QuoteFix does not regard {space}{reply marker}
as part of a reply.

So you're going to be dedicatedly producing posts that are hard to
reply to for a rather large number of people.

And not just people using OE_QuoteFix, other readers as well. OEQF is
just the tip of the ice burg. I've seen styles like Dik make things hard
to read in google groups as well.

URL, please. Dik's style works fine in Google Groups in my experience,
and I agree it is more readable than the commoner style.

[J. J. Farrell]

"Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> wrote in message news:<2u*************@uni-berlin.de>...

Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

Dik T. Winter coughed up:

In article <Bltgd.6$304.0@trndny06> "Thomas G. Marshall"
<tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> writes: ...
> I don't see i=i++ as ever anything useful, but 45° tangental to
this > original thread is something that bothers me. There is a
*prevailing* > notion that:
> If it ain't standard C, it ain't C
> which I think is not quite true.

Mr Dik Winter, this is the result of white spae before the quote token.
This serves as an exellent example of what can happen, and why we are
asking you to fix this :-)

Nonsense. It's the result of using a broken or misconfigured
news reader.

[J. J. Farrell]

"Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> wrote in message news:<2u*************@uni-berlin.de>...

The text after "Dik T. Winter coughed up:" is in fact Thomas's quoting
of Dik, which got horribly miss wrapped, mainly because of the white
space before his quote char. Why should everyone change the way thing
have bene done the past decade anda half because one person decides to
diverge from that accepted norm?

I'm puzzled. What has "the past decade and a half" got to do with
anything? Dik's been quoting in this way in his posts to Usenet
for well over 17 years. Why should he change because you choose
to use a broken program to read his postings?

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

Programmer Dude wrote:

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

I can't imagine using a second piece of software to fix the first.
When I asked Forte about the lack of sub-folders they told me there
was a third party product that provided that functionality.
Thats why I asked before if someone news of a good replacement that
good do color coding, sort-by-thread-watching-AND-date.

Agent--if the little things that annoy me don't annoy you so much--
isn't horrible (yes, I AM damning with faint praise, but you may
not object to its faults as much as I do). It does color code quotes
(one level--colored or not colored) and it does allow some tailoring
of what you see in a group (has watched posts, kept posts).....

No, I take it back. Agent's crap.

That's good to know.
Consider this: in the editor, it word wraps what I type just fine,
but completely ignores quoted material. Therefore, I have to
manually re-wrap quotes to fit my line length.

Or, if you double-click a word and then attempt to drag-highlight
other words.... nothing happens. Only the double-clicked word
remains highlighted (what idiot thought of that?!?!).
Ineed. Another classic example of a programmer's try-your-own-thing gone
horribly wrong.
Or, it's sort of a quasi-MDI application (multiple windows in a big
window), but its behavior is annoyingly non-standard. The part I
hate most is that the "main" window is a three pane deal with your
list of groups, list of articles and current article. But I want
articles in their own window, thank you, AND I want to be able to
have multiple article windows open. But all this piece of crap
will give you is one article window. You can open a second "main"
window, but who needs that?
I've seen very few applications successfully pull off this ort of MDI
style appllication. If thye wantd to do it that way, they should have
looked at Trillian (Pro) at how it lets you have *tabbed) containersfor
message boxes galore, lets you have multiple containers, as well as
"pulling" indicual message boxes "outside" the container, or do away
with the container all together. One of the best semi-MDI designs of
this sort of nature I've ever seen.
Or, the only reasonable way to use it (due the three-pane mistake)
is with the main window maxed. Which means getting at any other
window (your outbox, for e.g.) requires going to the Window menu
and opening it there.
What the hell? Have the authors never used any other reader before, or
did thye just miss the fact that Outbox is always a folder in the list
(and I like when it turns bold (or some other style to indicate change)
when there is something in it (ie: unsent messages), like any other
folder.
And why is my outbox NOT listed with my Inbox and other folders?
Since you have to explicitly go open your outbox, it was weeks before
I noticed that I had a couple messages that never made it out (due
to Agent's "send" command being ^N (send Now)...I just can't get
used to that. ^N is almost universally New.
Another classic example of auothrs completely ignoring how things
normally work in editors. I really don't posibly know what their excuse
could be here, given that ^N not only is a stanard shortcut for New on
Win32 platforms, but also on Mac's (well, Command + N), and I've even
seen this used in some GUI editors in Unix and Linux environments.
Or how about the fact that the folder list only provides a count of
UNREAD articles. Not the total in the folder (a far more useful
number to me, although I prefer both).

It's also braindead in its handling of column widths.

I mean, what kind of bad weed were these jokers smoking? They
might be decent programmers in some fashion, but they ain't much
in the user interface design area.

No, don't buy Agent. You'd only come to regret it.
After that review, I'll keep looking :-)

I have to agree with you here too, if you know of a godo replacement,
I'm all ears (and eyes :-)

[sigh] I really liked Netscape 3. Simple and fast. Stayed the
heck out of my way, and I like that in a piece of software (also
in other drivers :-). I learned to love Netscape 4.7 and would
have stayed with it, but my company only supports IE, so I lost
the ability to get through our corporate firewall.

NS3 (Gold) was my browser of choice once upon a time. Then came NS4
(bleh, gag, snarl, spit) (Did ya ever try getting CSS to work properly
in it after it was working with othes?) Well I suppose NS4.7 was
alright, and used it for sometime.

As for your corporate firewall, I doubt it would be checking wehat
browser you are (were) using, it probably used soem automatic proxy
settings; just snag them, and insert 'em into NS's prefs and you should
be on your way :-)
I think the problem is often featureitus. The idea that an app
needs to have it all. The CuteFTP product *used*to*be* one of
the best FTP apps out there until they ruined it. Each new
"upgrade" made me like it less and less until--trying to jump
through the misbegotten registration hoops--I finally said, the
hell with it and dis-installed it permanently. (And they've
lost me as a customer forever.)
I hear ya loud and clear. Thats why I never upgraded form BulletProof
FTP (1.07, nice and clean). Later version of it also kidna went the way
of CuteFTP.

Another great example of bulkware if ICQ, after AOL took over it. They
stuffed it like a 200 lbs turkey. (Anothe reason why I went towards
Trillian.)
I've seen a number of really decent shareware apps go down that
road. Pity.
Exactly. :(

True, but some people had made the point that it isn't just
OE that parses quotes in that way.

Understood. But you're "talking" to someone who doesn't even
mind top-posting (even prefer it in some circumstances--I tend
to skip posts when all I see on the first screenful is quotes).

Yes, sometiems needless bulk-quoting is a lot mroe of a problem. I find
it extreamly annoying wen I'm surfing the google groups archieves on
some search, only to have to click the show whole post link because some
moron didn;t trim out the needly fat from their post. Come one people,
you don't need to quote 8 paragraphs of irrelevant crap. *grumbles* lazy
bums...
HOW a post is formatted is trivial and way below my radar. [shrug]
True. I've seen enough top-posting, trim-your-damn-post, and such
rantings to last me a life time. IIRC, I started this mess by asking Dik
if you could adjsut his quoting style, seing how many people's readers
would mis wrap his quotes as normal text (as well as my color coder
p ), just seemed like the right thing to do.
Now what was it... oh, yeah,... post ^Now

I'll just ^Send :-)

[Thomas G. Marshall]

J. J. Farrell coughed up:

"Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> wrote in
message news:<2u*************@uni-berlin.de>...

The text after "Dik T. Winter coughed up:" is in fact Thomas's
quoting of Dik, which got horribly miss wrapped, mainly because of
the white space before his quote char. Why should everyone change
the way thing have bene done the past decade anda half because one
person decides to diverge from that accepted norm?

I'm puzzled. What has "the past decade and a half" got to do with
anything? Dik's been quoting in this way in his posts to Usenet
for well over 17 years. Why should he change because you choose
to use a broken program to read his postings?

Is there a document somewhere which suggests how to form a standard usenet
quoted reply line? I cannot find it via google.

My understanding was that the line to be quoted has a quote character
(usually >, sometimes | ) inserted at the /beginning/ of the line. Not just
before the first non whitespace character.

Is there someplace that defines (unofficially of course) the guideline for
it?
--
Everythinginlifeisrealative.Apingpongballseemssmal luntilsomeoneramsitupyourn
ose.

[J. J. Farrell]

su***************@yahoo.com (Al MacHonahey) wrote in message news:<f4**************************@posting.google. com>...

In any case, Dik's usual (and arguebly broken) quoting IS a problem,
eventually wrapping get horrendous, forcing others to manually repair
it if any readablity is to be restored.

Dik, once and for all, PLEASE fix you QUOTES. over 90% of readers and
parsers will NOT parse " > ..." as a line of quoted text. "> ..." is
_UNIVERSAL_, meaning any parser should not trouble with it, so why
break this universally accepted paradigm? Seems rather absurd and
selfish.

"Selfish"? Don't be ridiculous. The people demanding that Dik should
change the quoting method he has used for over 17 to suit some broken
Johnny-come-lately newsreaders are the ones who are being selfish.

It's perfectly simple. If you don't like the way Dik posts his messages,
don't read them. If you want to read what Dik posts, tolerate his
style, and perhaps get a less buggy newsreader.

[Dik T. Winter]

In article <f4**************************@posting.google.com > su***************@yahoo.com (Al MacHonahey) writes:

"Dik T. Winter" <Di********@cwi.nl> wrote in message news:<I6********@cwi.nl>...

In article <2u*************@uni-berlin.de> "Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> writes:
...

> Now this is /NOT/ what this is about. I have no problem with making
> improvements any any existing thing, but making unnecissary changes to
> something that has been vastly accepted for /good reason/, and not just
> merely because it is an accepted norm. It's all for the sake for sane
> news reading, not having to deal with malformed quoting and broken quote
> casscades.

Have you read what I wrote? I use this kind of quoting already about 17
years. Once upon a time it was propagated for good reasons, and so I
started with it in early 1987.

And people even then asked you to fix it. The onyl thing that was
propagated from that was you to people's killfiles.

Where do you get that idea? Before this thread I have had only three
complaints in all of the newsgroups I write in, and all three the last
two years only. As I wrote (just look upwards), at one time it was
propagated for good reasons.

So who is changing what? See:
<http://groups.google.nl/groups?as_umsgid=352%40zuring.mcvax.cwi.nl>
and also see that Google has no problems with it; colour-coding is OK.

For the most part, no, but it causes google to treat non quoted text
that happens to start with whitespace and a ">". Seems broken to me.

Also, you were already killfiled by the time by some, after being
repeatedly asked to fix your damn quoting.

Where do you get that idea from? Can you quote *any such request* from
that time?
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, [phone]
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/

[Thomas G. Marshall]

J. J. Farrell coughed up:

su***************@yahoo.com (Al MacHonahey) wrote in message
news:<f4**************************@posting.google. com>...

In any case, Dik's usual (and arguebly broken) quoting IS a problem,
eventually wrapping get horrendous, forcing others to manually repair
it if any readablity is to be restored.

Dik, once and for all, PLEASE fix you QUOTES. over 90% of readers and
parsers will NOT parse " > ..." as a line of quoted text. "> ..." is
_UNIVERSAL_, meaning any parser should not trouble with it, so why
break this universally accepted paradigm? Seems rather absurd and
selfish.

"Selfish"? Don't be ridiculous. The people demanding that Dik should
change the quoting method he has used for over 17 to suit some broken
Johnny-come-lately newsreaders are the ones who are being selfish.

It's perfectly simple. If you don't like the way Dik posts his
messages,
don't read them. If you want to read what Dik posts, tolerate his
style, and perhaps get a less buggy newsreader.

It's not very likely that the masses will outright abandon OE and OEQF
combo.

It's not the fault of OE by the way. OE QuoteFix made a policy decision
that lines that began with non-indent characters (> |) are regular text.

By the way, Dik's choice is /not/

{space} >

it results in

{space} > {space}

which adds to the width of the lines should he quote something that contains
his own text in it somewhere, unless his nr is smart enough to remove the
extra spaces.

OEQF removes extra spaces for us as an options, properly turning

> >
into

But I'm not sure that most do that.

I'm still waiting on an answer from the creator of OEQF. We've chatted
before via email, he should get to this concept soon. I'm betting he's
already "ruled" on this---back when he wrote it the first time, but I just
don't know.


--
Forgetthesong,I'dratherhavethefrontallobotomy...

[Programmer Dude]

Thomas G. Marshall writes:

Is there someplace that defines (unofficially of course) the
guideline for it?

Of course not. We're talking about *tradition*, not a standard.

That newsreaders have come to do something fancy with that
tradition means *nothing*. EVERY SINGLE newsreader I know
allows you to configure your quote style. That should tell
you something.

[Programmer Dude]

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

re Forte's Agent...

Or, if you double-click a word and then attempt to drag-highlight
other words.... nothing happens. Only the double-clicked word
remains highlighted (what idiot thought of that?!?!).
Ineed. Another classic example of a programmer's try-your-own-thing
gone horribly wrong.

And I can't get used to it. To this day I find myself double-clicking
a word and trying to drag-highlight.... ARG!!

Or, the only reasonable way to use it (due the three-pane mistake)
is with the main window maxed. Which means getting at any other
window (your outbox, for e.g.) requires going to the Window menu
and opening it there.

What the hell? Have the authors never used any other reader before, or
did thye just miss the fact that Outbox is always a folder in the list
(and I like when it turns bold (or some other style to indicate change)
when there is something in it (ie: unsent messages), like any other
folder.

Same here. I get the impression they may not have well-developed
GUI skills. It's almost like they didn't know how to implement sub-
folders or something. It's hard to see how they could have missed
the *value* of such a thing.

to Agent's "send" command being ^N (send Now)...I just can't get
used to that. ^N is almost universally New.

Another classic example of auothrs completely ignoring how things
normally work in editors. I really don't posibly know what their excuse
could be here, given that ^N not only is a stanard shortcut for New on
Win32 platforms, but also on Mac's (well, Command + N), and I've even
seen this used in some GUI editors in Unix and Linux environments.

Yep. Their menus are a little goofy, too. I find things in what
seems to be the "wrong" place.

No, don't buy Agent. You'd only come to regret it.

After that review, I'll keep looking :-)

Then this has been time well spent! (-:

[sigh] I really liked Netscape 3. Simple and fast. Stayed the
heck out of my way, and I like that in a piece of software (also
in other drivers :-). I learned to love Netscape 4.7 and would
have stayed with it, but my company only supports IE, so I lost
the ability to get through our corporate firewall.

NS3 (Gold) was my browser of choice once upon a time. Then came NS4
(bleh, gag, snarl, spit) (Did ya ever try getting CSS to work properly
in it after it was working with othes?) Well I suppose NS4.7 was
alright, and used it for sometime.

Concur (particularly wrt the CSS---yeesh!). By "learned to love"
I don't mean it was easy. More a matter of how you can get used
to just about anything.
As for your corporate firewall, I doubt it would be checking wehat
browser you are (were) using, it probably used soem automatic proxy
settings; just snag them, and insert 'em into NS's prefs and you should
be on your way :-)
Right. Only it was never that simple. (At least I could never get
it to work.) There was some sort of active scripting going on in
picking the proxy server (we're a Fortune 50 company, so our systems
are on the large-ish side--multiple proxy servers).

Each new "upgrade" made me like it less and less until--trying to jump
through the misbegotten registration hoops--I finally said, the
hell with it and dis-installed it permanently.

I hear ya loud and clear. Thats why I never upgraded form BulletProof
FTP (1.07, nice and clean). Later version of it also kidna went the way
of CuteFTP.

Yep. I tried to stay with an early version of CuteFTP, but keeping it
registered (when upgrading PCs) was what finally did me in. I found
their help line rather cold and unresponsive, so I decided there were
other fish.

Compare that to a company I want to mention favorably: Axialis. I'd
been using their *outstanding* icon editor for years when the upgraded
the GUI beyond my taste for cruft. Also took away a feature (due to
customer request) that I relied on (the ability to build icon libs).

I complained to their help line and the response was outstanding! First
they explained the situation, *THANKED* me for my honest input (wrt the
GUI cruft)(and I don't mean that political "thankyouforyourinput" thing,
but genuine, "hey guy, you got a good point"). In the end they ended
up *giving* me their corporate edition version which had the library
building feature I needed.

As a result, I'm a loyal fan forever, and I mention them whenever I
can. THAT'S customer service.

So, everyone, go check out http://www.axialis.com/ They make some some
good stuff (NO complaints from me about function!) and they are a very
customer conscious company.

............But you're "talking" to someone who doesn't even
mind top-posting (even prefer it in some circumstances--I tend
to skip posts when all I see on the first screenful is quotes).

Yes, sometiems needless bulk-quoting is a lot mroe of a problem.

People just don't take the time to edit! (-:
I find it extreamly annoying wen I'm surfing the google groups archieves on
some search, only to have to click the show whole post link because some
moron didn;t trim out the needly fat from their post. Come one people,
you don't need to quote 8 paragraphs of irrelevant crap. *grumbles* lazy
bums...

Lazy Bums, indeed. And if I may diverge into a local political rant:
This provisional ballet thing....here we go again. All because some
people are too lame to properly get registered. ARG!!! Okay, I'm done.

HOW a post is formatted is trivial and way below my radar. [shrug]

True. I've seen enough top-posting, trim-your-damn-post, and such
rantings to last me a life time.

Same here. It saddens me that my fellow programmers can be so anal
and annoying about something so meaningless.

Oh, well, such is life, I guess.

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

Programmer Dude wrote:

Thomas G. Marshall writes:

Is there someplace that defines (unofficially of course) the
guideline for it?

Of course not. We're talking about *tradition*, not a standard.

That newsreaders have come to do something fancy with that
tradition means *nothing*. EVERY SINGLE newsreader I know
allows you to configure your quote style. That should tell
you something.

Well, most don't allow you to put white space before your quote token.
You are right it is a /tradition/, it has always bene tradition to start
a line with a quote character, lest it be counted as local text. furthur
more, most readers that allow for od and unusual quoting styles are
usually features created by people who probably haven't spent a lot of
time in UseNet. (Not always the case, but ther are some poor readers out
there.)

[Jerry Coffin]

"Thomas G. Marshall" <tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> wrote in message news:<P9%hd.3381$rZ1.522@trndny05>...

[ ... ]

Is there a document somewhere which suggests how to form a standard usenet
quoted reply line? I cannot find it via google.

The only official guidelin on the general subject is RFC 1036, which
is ancient and provides no real guidance in this specific area.
Somewhat newer (but still roughly 10 years old) is Henry Spencer's
"Son of RFC 1036", which he published to Usenet as an "RFC Draft to
be" -- i.e. he didn't even consider it sufficiently finished to
qualify as a draft. OTOH, there isn't anything better either...

Taking the Son of RFC 1036 as our guidance, we find only that lines
should be broken "as appropriate", and "Although styles vary widely,
for plain text it is usual to use no left margin..." That's
_extremely_ weak guidance at best -- even reading it as strongly as
possible, I can't see how it could be taken as much more than a
suggestion that Dik's style is mildly unusual.

Then again, IMO one style guide to cover all of Usenet is nearly a
hopeless proposition. I'd _almost_ go so far as to say that for any
style accepted by one newsgroup, there is almost certain to be at
least one other newsgroup where that style would be rejected. Some
things are almost universally rejected, but there seem to be far fewer
that are universally accepted.

--
Later,
Jerry.

The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

[Dik T. Winter]

In article <8m********************************@4ax.com> Programmer Dude <Ch***@Sonnack.com> writes:

Thomas G. Marshall writes:

Is there someplace that defines (unofficially of course) the
guideline for it?

Of course not. We're talking about *tradition*, not a standard.

That newsreaders have come to do something fancy with that
tradition means *nothing*. EVERY SINGLE newsreader I know
allows you to configure your quote style. That should tell
you something.

One interesting thing I found was in one of the FAQs (but I disremember
which). It is stated that when you get the message 'more quoted text
than new text' with a rejection by the system you should first try to
reduce the amount of quoted text, en if you still was sure that all the
quoted text was needed, you should do:
:%s/^>/</
to change the quoting symbol. I am very sure that in earlier releases
it was advised that you should do:
:%s/^>/ >/
but I am not entirely sure. (That FAQ came into being long after I
started using news.)

[ Now try to find out from what time that advice dates ;-) I would think
from about the emergance of 'rn' as successor of 'readnews'.]

An interesting other tid-bit in (I think) the same FAQ is that
originally many people put a non-empty first line in their article
if the actual first line started with a space (and that happened
very much with that quoting style). The reason was that there were
news systems out there that would eat the first part of the article
if the first line started with a space...
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, [phone]
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/

[Richard Herring]

In message <8m********************************@4ax.com>, Programmer Dude
<Ch***@Sonnack.com> writes

Thomas G. Marshall writes:

Is there someplace that defines (unofficially of course) the
guideline for it?

That would be the Internet-Draft-that-never-made-it, commonly known as
"son of RFC1036", which says:

This SHOULD be done by prefacing each quoted line (even if it is empty)
with the character ">".
Of course not. We're talking about *tradition*, not a standard.

That newsreaders have come to do something fancy with that
tradition means *nothing*. EVERY SINGLE newsreader I know
allows you to configure your quote style.
This one doesn't.
That should tell
you something.

Any chance you could take this discussion somewhere where it's on-topic?
I'd set followups, but it wouldn't be fair to any of the groups it's
being crossposted to at present.

--
Richard Herring

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Dik T. Winter coughed up:

In article <8m********************************@4ax.com> Programmer
Dude <Ch***@Sonnack.com> writes: > Thomas G. Marshall writes:

>

> > Is there someplace that defines (unofficially of course) the
> > guideline for it? >
> Of course not. We're talking about *tradition*, not a standard.
>
> That newsreaders have come to do something fancy with that
> tradition means *nothing*. EVERY SINGLE newsreader I know
> allows you to configure your quote style. That should tell
> you something.

One interesting thing I found was in one of the FAQs (but I
disremember
which). It is stated that when you get the message 'more quoted text
than new text' with a rejection by the system you should first try to
reduce the amount of quoted text, en if you still was sure that all
the
quoted text was needed, you should do:
:%s/^>/</
to change the quoting symbol. I am very sure that in earlier releases
it was advised that you should do:
:%s/^>/ >/

I saw this as well yesterday----Not sure what it means.

but I am not entirely sure. (That FAQ came into being long after I
started using news.)

[ Now try to find out from what time that advice dates ;-) I would
think
from about the emergance of 'rn' as successor of 'readnews'.]

An interesting other tid-bit in (I think) the same FAQ is that
originally many people put a non-empty first line in their article
if the actual first line started with a space (and that happened
very much with that quoting style). The reason was that there were
news systems out there that would eat the first part of the article
if the first line started with a space...

--
It'salwaysbeenmygoalinlifetocreateasignaturethaten dedwiththeword"blarphoogy"
..

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Richard Herring coughed up:

In message <8m********************************@4ax.com>, Programmer
Dude <Ch***@Sonnack.com> writes

Thomas G. Marshall writes:

Is there someplace that defines (unofficially of course) the
guideline for it?

That would be the Internet-Draft-that-never-made-it, commonly known
as "son of RFC1036", which says:

This SHOULD be done by prefacing each quoted line (even if it is
empty) with the character ">".

Of course not. We're talking about *tradition*, not a standard.

That newsreaders have come to do something fancy with that
tradition means *nothing*. EVERY SINGLE newsreader I know
allows you to configure your quote style.

This one doesn't.

That should tell
you something.

Any chance you could take this discussion somewhere where it's
on-topic? I'd set followups, but it wouldn't be fair to any of the
groups it's being crossposted to at present.

Yes, that's forever a problem---you yank swaths of people out of
conversations by narrowing something that was already widely cross-posted.

--
It'salwaysbeenmygoalinlifetocreateasignaturethaten dedwiththeword"blarphoogy"
..

[Programmer Dude]

Alfred Z. Newmane writes:

Is there someplace that defines (unofficially of course) the
guideline for it?
Of course not. We're talking about *tradition*, not a standard.

That newsreaders have come to do something fancy with that
tradition means *nothing*. EVERY SINGLE newsreader I know
allows you to configure your quote style. That should tell
you something.

Well, most don't allow you to put white space before your quote
token.

As you can see, Agent does. Interestingly, doing so breaks the
color coding of quotes. On the flip side, it also breaks the
broken behavior of not wrapping quotes.
You are right it is a /tradition/, it has always bene tradition
to start a line with a quote character, lest it be counted as
local text.

Agreed. I'll be interested to see what Agent makes of this post
when it reads it (that is, will it color code the quotes).

[Programmer Dude]

Programmer Dude writes:

I'll be interested to see what Agent makes of this post
when it reads it (that is, will it color code the quotes).

No colors. Looks just like an "old fashioned" post in tin or
something. Oooooh,... 80s flashback!!

[Floyd L. Davidson]

"Thomas G. Marshall" <tg****************@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail. com> wrote:

Dik T. Winter coughed up:

which). It is stated that when you get the message 'more quoted text
than new text' with a rejection by the system you should first try to
reduce the amount of quoted text, en if you still was sure that all
the
quoted text was needed, you should do:
:%s/^>/</
to change the quoting symbol. I am very sure that in earlier releases
it was advised that you should do:
:%s/^>/ >/

I saw this as well yesterday----Not sure what it means.

Some newsreaders, and some news servers, will refuse to post a
message that contains more quoted text than non-quoted text.
The mechanism used is extremely simple, and merely counts lines
that begin with the most commonly used quote prefix characters.

The method for overriding the count is to use a quote prefix
that begins with a space or any other character that is rarely
used (and thus does not trigger the mechanism). The
newsreader/server will then allow the message to be posted.

Of course it should be realized that when newsreaders and
servers began implementing that mechanism it caused a
significant number of people to permanently override it by
making their default quote prefix something that would not be
counted. That resulted in the now common practice of using a
variety of characters other than '>'. (Other methods to
override it are even worse...)

--
FloydL. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) fl***@barrow.com

[Måns Rullgård]

Programmer Dude <Ch***@Sonnack.com> writes:

Programmer Dude writes:

I'll be interested to see what Agent makes of this post
when it reads it (that is, will it color code the quotes).

No colors. Looks just like an "old fashioned" post in tin or
something. Oooooh,... 80s flashback!!

FWIW, gnus colored it properly.

--
Måns Rullgård
mr*@inprovide.com

[Floyd L. Davidson]

"Alfred Z. Newmane" <a.**************@eastcoastcz.com> wrote:
<Programmer Dude wrote:

That newsreaders have come to do something fancy with that
tradition means *nothing*. EVERY SINGLE newsreader I know
allows you to configure your quote style. That should tell
you something.

AZN> Well, most don't allow you to put white space before your
AZN> quote token.

You continue to advocate the use of *broken* newsreaders as a
default standard for Usenet... (The /reasonable/ solution is to
use a better newsreader.)

Just for grins (and groans), I reconfigured Gnus just to post
this one article. You'll note that it allows the quote prefix
to begin with whitespace, /and/ that is also allows two
different quote prefixes. In this example the text *quoted*
*from* the previous article is prefixed by " AZN>", and text
*quoted* *in* the previous article is prefixed by " > ".

I haven't used this facility before (and won't likely again),
and I assume that it is perhaps handy for dealing with some of
the odd things people do with /supersite/. Note that I also let
Gnus reformat the paragraphs to maintain proper line lengths,
and it had no problem with the odd quote prefix or the leading
whitespace. (Good newsreaders really are *nice*! Or, they are
if you define "good" as a measure of functionality rather than
glitter. You'll be pleased, though, to hear that the spell
checker was indeed confused, and wanted to correct your spelling
errors as well as mine. But that's a bug, not a Usenet
Standard!)

AZN> You are right it is a /tradition/, it has always bene
AZN> tradition to start a line with a quote character, lest it
AZN> be counted as local text. furthur more, most readers that
AZN> allow for od and unusual quoting styles are usually
AZN> features created by people who probably haven't spent a
AZN> lot of time in UseNet. (Not always the case, but ther are
AZN> some poor readers out there.)

Incidentally, given these "OE folks are using OE_QuoteFix" are
the makings for de facto standards and tradition claims, have
you ever taken a look at /supercite/ and the way it cites
previous articles?

Since /supercite/ existed long before OE began to "standardize"
Usenet with non-functionality, it would seem that the authors of
OE and OE_QuoteFix *should* have looked at examples of similar
programs to avoid the same mistakes and at least to include the
same features. (Of course, since they had little Usenet
experience at the time, they may just have not understood...)

--
FloydL. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) fl***@barrow.com