Re: NYC LOCAL: Wednesday 15 April 2009 NYLUG: Jon Stanley on Rolling Your Own Linux With Fedora

[Alan Mackenzie]

In gnu.misc.discuss Doctor Smith <iaintgotnostinkinemail@ols.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:51:47 +0000 (UTC), Alan Mackenzie wrote:

>> In gnu.misc.discuss Doctor Smith <iaintgotnostinkinemail@ols.net> wrote:
 
>>> One last thing, when are you guys going to format these messages so that
>>> they are easily readable by humans?

>>> They look like they came out of some listsever ciraca 1975.

>> I find them perfectly readable - they have an optimal line width of ~70
>> characters, there's a single line gap between paragraphs, and they aren't
>> right justified, hence giving the eye something to grip onto.  This has
>> been standard Usenet formatting since there was Usenet.

>> It could be you're using inappropriate software to read it with - you
>> should configure your software to display posts in an easily readable
>> fashion (whatever that means for you), and if you can't do this, start
>> using some decent software with which you can.  What are you using, by
>> the way?

> Typical Linux, blame the user, the reader etc.
> You *nix high priests have to get with the program.

Oh, I see, you want to hurl abuse at somebody.  Well, fair enough!

> FWIW it doesn't matter what reader is used.

Really?  Maybe it matters more who the reader is.

> It's the carp you insert at the start of these messages.

I didn't insert any goldfish whatsoever.

> Here it is copied right off Google:

> <blockquote
>  what="official announcement of Russ Nelson talk and OpenStreetMap party"
>  note="The Courant Institute is associated with NYU, not Columbia
> University."
>  info="for Thursday 16 April 2009 talk at Courant:
>        http://cs.nyu.edu/~macsweb";
>  edits="">

Oh, I see.  Yeah, it isn't that brilliant, is it?  It looks like the
input to some sort of scripting program which produces the announcement,
and it's left trash in the posting.  I'll admit I didn't notice it first
time.  But the message, as a whole, was readable.

You'd be doing everybody a favour if you sent an email to the author,
asking him to fix his script.  A polite email, that is.  I just wish he'd
stop spamming the newsgroup.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).