[Info-vax] [OT] Real Usenet clients, was: Re: backups and compaction or nocompaction might be better

[Simon Clubley]

On 2013-01-29, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
> On 2013-01-29 17:47:04 +0000, Simon Clubley said:
>
>> On 2013-01-29, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>>> 
>>> ps: Get yourself a news reader for your preferred platform and a (free)
>>> account on Endless September, or one of the other (free) nntp servers
>>> available.
>>> 
>> 
>> $ set response/mode=good_natured
>> 
>> That's a bit of a change from you. :-)
>
> Um, OK.
>
> I've changed my opinion on server uptime and on some other topics, but 
> I don't recall switching sides on the morass that is Google Groups.
>
> Corrections and objections here are welcome, of course.
>

[snip Hoff's quoted message]

In previous discussions, when Google Groups started, for example, including
HTML and XML escape entities in messages as well as encoding messages as
one very long line per paragraph, the impression you gave at the time was
that since Google was doing this it was suddenly ok, and we should just
accept it.

Based on what you say here, that may not be what you intended to say, but
that's how it came across at the time.

Simon.

PS: I'm not talking about things like encoding 8-bit non-UK/non-US
characters for display in a 7-bit environment; that's just the reality of
of today's international environment. I'm talking about all the other
things they did such as, for example, HTML and XML escaping common
characters.

PPS: Regarding the line length issue; if you ever look at the raw source
of a message generated using Google Mail, you will see that Google break
long lines into lines less than 80 characters in length (or at least they
used to do when I last checked a few months ago). I see no reason why
Google could not use the same code in their Usenet client as well.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world