Re: [OT] Re: Asking if elements in struct arre zero

From: Programmer Dude (Chris_at_Sonnack.com)
Date: 11/11/03 

Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:36:38 -0600

"Arthur J. O'Dwyer" wrote:

> Keith is right: plain ASCII text is one of the easiest media to
> format readably. It's not that plain text is easier to read than
> proportionally formatted text; it's that one can more easily (to
> use a resident Brit's phrase) make a pig's breakfast of
> proportionally formatted stuff.

Well, two points. My personal experience is that plain ASCII text
is harder to format the way I want it (which I'd like to think is
easily readable). I spend more time than I'd like dealing with
line endings and ASCII emphasis.

I compare my amUSENET writings to the writing I do incompany for
tech docs or (RTF-based) email, and I get WAY more bang for my
buck with more powerful text features.

Indented paragraphs alone are worth their weight in gold, not to
mention auto-wrapping paragraphs and automatic justification.
Having the ability to do bullet lists would be nice, too!

Second point is that I'm not sure I want to live in a world
governed by the lowest common denominator. In fact, I KNOW I
don't.

> For paper stuff, typewriting or even text editing is often cheaper
> than word processing, too, as Keith points out. That's one reason
> why those monographs were fixed-pitch -- cost.

Come again? It costs no more to use a variable-pitch font than it
does to use a fixed-pitch one. These days (and for quite some time
now), it's just typing. The software does the rest.

> (Another reason, I suppose, would be the substance-over-aesthetics
> attitude Keith described.)

I favor substance+aesthetics. Must be my art background talking.

> I completely agree. Your newsreader, that lets you read HTML
> mail -- does it let you compose HTML mail, too? Easily?

Trivially so. In fact, I had to turn it off.

> But is it really *easier* to hit Ctrl-B instead of Shift-8 when
> I mean *bold*, or Ctrl-U instead of Shift[-]?

Definitely (IMO, obviously). Control+alpha is much easier to me
than Shift+symbol. More importantly, it looks a million times
better. Maybe even a billion times! (-:

> And if the editor were to really give you control of the process,
> the composition of HTML messages could easily take much longer
> than the composition of messages free from <meta> tags, hyperlinks,
> and what-have-you.

Formatting a message carefully takes some time, period. If I just
want to type without any special formatting, then it hardly matters
what the editor outputs. But if I have something I can make more
clear using formatted text, that sounds like a win.

> ***HEAR HEAR!***
>
> (See, couldn't that have been a hell of a lot more annoying
> in HTML?)

Not really (to me). (I'm not easily annoyed by text.)

> Nor do I really want to give spammers the ability to count hits
> on Usenet postings, like HTML mail has given them the ability to
> count hits on private email.

?? How do they do that? (Are you talking using images?)

> I suspect that HTML will never make it into Usenet. Those
> interested in making their correspondences look pretty are
> usually simply not interested in public discourse.

[shrug] Time will tell! 

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
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