C to Java Byte Code

[Floyd L. Davidson]

It may nto be the best news reader, but I'd hardly call it the worst. I
don't think you've seen Netscape/Mozilla Messenger (the one that would
come with NS4 and mozilla equivalent at least.)

That won't make OE any better, but you do have a point that it
may not be the worst. But... what I said was "one of if not
the"... ;-) (There are several that actually are worse, to the
point of being simply unusable in any reasonable fashion.)

OE is actually a pretty solid news reader, if one knows how to use it

Cough. giggle. choke. laugh. Barrrfffffff!

(Now just look at the mess on my keyboard! I'm not worried
about how Dik quotes text, but I sure wish you wouldn't say
things like *that*.)

right. OEQuoteFix fixes the quoting/wrapping problems it has, which has
always been the biggest problem, it also color-codes quoted text, which
is also a godsend. Through the ability to sort Watched threads /AND/
still sort by Date, I'd say it's a decent reader, when used with
OEQuoteFix.

If you don't want to use it, fine. We all use what we are comfortable
with.

I'm not sure what "Watched threads" do in OE, but as one example,
Gnus (which is an eLisp package for news and email that runs
under either Emacs or XEmacs) does all of your other
requirements, plus a great deal more. And it comes with its own
little editor too. ;-)

(That said, if you know of a better news reader that can do what I
mentioned, I'll be open & happy to try something new.)

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.

 

[Dik T. Winter]

> I don't reformat quoted text, I only fix word wrap snafus, where you
> have full line, followed by another line with 1 or 2 words, then another
> full line:

I generally reformat text I quoted to remain in my 80 character window.
Including all quote characters that are needed to make it a full textual
quote with reasonably filled lines. (Yes, I say 80, but in general I
keep it quite a bit below that figure.)

>
> This usuaully happens after a coupel levels of quoting, or when the
> person being quoted made their lines too long to begin with, which is
> more the case than the former.

This generally happens when a newsreader tries to reformat quotes without
having the faintest idea.

> 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.

 

[Dik T. Winter]

>
> 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 " >".

 

[Dik T. Winter]

>
> As I've said already, I've used similar machines, but you claimed that they
> had vastly differing sizeof(long)'s while at the same time yielding such
> small results from my example. Please verify-----Does the C on that DG
> return 1 yet still have sizeof(long) == 8 ????? Having either one of those
> is fine, but I'd like to know if both would be true. And precisely /what/
> DG chip is it? It isn't the old Aviion 88000 based system, that was one of
> mine.

Pray read what I wrote. The Cray returns 1 with a sizeof(long) of 8.
The Data General returns 2 with a sizeof(long) of 4. The chip is
by DG, a Nova. The 88000 is from Motorola.

> <selfquote (from upthread)>
> long *a = 0; // C99: not platform independent null pointer
> a++; // C99: not allowed to increment null pointer
> printf ("%d\n", a); // C99: not using %p

>
> So you're wrong then about the sizeof()'s? This is critical. You didn't
> directly answer that.

How do you come at that conclusion? On a DG Nova, a is 0 initially.
After incrementing it the internal value as word pointer becomes 2,
but when casted to a byte pointer that is 4. So, when regarded as a
byte pointer it is indeed incremented by sizeof(long). On that machine
conversion from "char *" to "long *" and the reverse is *not* empty.
On that machine when c is a (char *), (int)(long *)c != (int)c in
general. There is only *one* exception where they are equal. I have
seen too many programs where it was assumed that all pointers where
byte (or, which is the same, char) pointers.

But returning to my quoting methods. Do you see that those lines you
quote from yourself are not even valid C anymore?

> <selfquote (from upthread)>
> long *a = 0; // C99: not platform independent null pointer
> a++; // C99: not allowed to increment null
> pointer
> printf ("%d\n", a); // C99: not using %p
> </selfquote>

(I reformatted the lines in my quote above.)

Back to the issue, and I will reformat:

>
> A 33 bit address???????????

Probably the 33rd bit will be stripped, so it will become: 0x808a0000.
(Also not right, as the highest bit is an indirection indicator and the
next 4 bits are the ring number, but I hope that you now will understand
what I am telling you.)

>
> Doubt that's the case, but again---making it survive portability isn't the
> issue either.

It will also work as you wish on the Data General MV.

> The point is to discuss with the applicant what he can /likely/ expect
> results to be, and if that includes discussions about the particulars of
> various platforms, then all the better.

Well, that is what we are doing just now. You have experienced machines
with sizeof(long) == 1. I have experienced machines where not all
pointers where byte pointers. But it is just this why the standard leaves
things undefined.

 

[Floyd L. Davidson]

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.

 

[Kelsey Bjarnason]

[snips]

Sound like that coudl get ugly /fast/. Though I haven't worked with such
setups, aren't there safe guards against such (resulting) data
corruption?

Yes - write C code that doesn't rely on undefined behaviour.

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Thomas G. Marshall coughed up:

....[rip]...

It's "likely" in general, when you understand that the vast majority
of machines operate that way. Even if you remove the 75% of

....all cpu's which are...

intel
cpu's which operate that way, the majority remaining machines IME
have similar "likely" behavior.

....[rip]...

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

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.

....[rip]...

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

....[rip]...

But it is just this why the standard leaves
things undefined.

Which is not the point to make, since I was not contesting that there should
be some things left as "undefined" or "platform dependent" or any of the
term definitions found at the beginning of the C specification.

Regardless of all of that, I want a prospective engineer to understand how
to write malloc(), and/or device drivers, and/or embedded graphics
controllers, etc., without throwing a hissy fit about the standard.

Thanks for the discussion on differing pointer types.

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

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.

....[rip]...

 

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

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.

 

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

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.

 

[Arthur J. O'Dwyer]

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

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

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]

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.

 

[Michael Wojcik]

[Dropped comp.lang.c++ and comp.unix.programmer. Followups restricted to
comp.lang.c.]

Here is something that you can gauge "likely behavior", for example on a
byte addressable 32 bit sparcstation 1:

long *a = 0; // C99: not platform independent null pointer

I haven't yet seen anyone mention that Thomas' comment is wrong here.
0 is a valid null pointer constant in all conforming implementations
for any release of the standard. In a pointer context (as here), the
implementation is required to convert 0 into a null pointer.

And *this* is what comp.lang.c is good for.

a++; // C99: not allowed to increment null
pointer

And this is an excellent example of why // comments shouldn't be used
in Usenet posts.

--
Michael Wojcik (e-mail address removed)

Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured
by the circumstances in which one remembers, and no doubt this applies to
certain of the recollections I have gathered here. -- Kazuo Ishiguro

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Michael Wojcik coughed up:

[Dropped comp.lang.c++ and comp.unix.programmer. Followups
restricted to
comp.lang.c.]

Here is something that you can gauge "likely behavior", for example
on a byte addressable 32 bit sparcstation 1:

long *a = 0; // C99: not platform independent null
pointer

I haven't yet seen anyone mention that Thomas' comment is wrong here.
0 is a valid null pointer constant in all conforming implementations
for any release of the standard.

Sure, ok. I thought so as well, and then there was someone who pointed out
that he worked on a machine where the architecture itself regarded nil
pointers as 0xffffffff, and that there were conversions done as a result.
{shrug}. Don't care.

It is possibly not mentioned because it doesn't counter the notion of likely
behavior, which is the subject of my OP. If it is conforming to the spec,
then it is only /all the more/ likely.



....[rip]...

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

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

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 " >".[/QUOTE]


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.

 

[Programmer Dude]

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.

 

[Programmer Dude]

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.

 

[Alfred Z. Newmane]

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.