Gianni said:
Read my last question as an open question about any improvement. I'm
not trying to convince anyone of any particular improvement at this
point, just trying to see if there are any other ideas.
My training says that to facilitate a change, you must first ensure
there is a perceived need for change.
Did you try the link I posted N times in this thread ? I'm still not
sure if anyone tried the "reply" link.
Yes, Google groups is not an acceptable tool. If your point is that
other readers could work that way, then why not go evangelize the people
that maintain and develop newsreaders.
Cool. What were your decision factors ?
Factors include but not limited to:
Google won't do offline reading.
Attachments are inherently risky.
It's kind of hard to do that if you don't try it first.
As noted, I tried your link and I don't like it. It doesn't meet my
needs.
Yes. You can't make all those changes happen at once. There has to be
a first step.
Then you should probably start with the nntp administrators. Until they
generally allow attachments your "improvement" is a moot point. Until
you can propose a way to make attachments safe and require no additional
resources on servers, I'll remain skeptical that your idea is even
feasible.
Ideally I would like a "compile selected" function but too often the
text is jumbled. Attaching a file avoids the text formatting on many
news clients. The real goal here is that posters will take the time to
distill their posts and compile it before posting to that it clearly
demonstrates the problem they are having. More often than not my
response is "come back with a chunk-o-code that generates the error
messages that you said it generates."
Seems like two different issues. One is the formatting related problems
and the other is the lack of ability/willingness of posters to do the
work to generate a well formed test case/illustration.
I have yet to see a convincing argument that attachments will do
anything to change the ability/willingness to generate a well formed
test case/illustration. IMHO I would expect to see the problem get worse
as the lazy or ignorant will simply attach whole programs and projects
as there would be no incentive to condense the source. In any case,
speculation seems unconvincing.
A more proactive approach might be to develop guidelines as to exactly
what constitutes a well formed test case/illustration and possibly some
tips or heuristics. I haven't looked for any such thing and I'm unaware
of any. Should you choose to draft such a document, please don't post it
as an attachment :0
No unix command can fix some of the code I see.
I concede that no single command could work all the time, I have yet to
see a case where the tools fail.
Sure - what do you think ?
Editors are a matter of religion. I personally use both emacs and vim. I
would consider the ability to program and extend the editor a non
negotiable point. To avert any flames, I willingly admit that there are
many wonderful editors other than emacs and vim.
It's a garbage-in-grabage-out problem. I'm trying to clean up the
garbage in.
I don't mean to quibble, but it seems like all your idea does is move
the location of the garbage chute; it will have no positive impact on
the quality or quantity of the contents.
