Detecting End-of-File using READLINE command

[Brian K. White]

George Simon wrote:
> So, I did not do anything different from the message I posted
> yesterday about html quoting and today, except that I specifically
> told Outlook not to use Word as the editor.  So it has nothing to do
> with html or plain text because I have always had the setting on
> Outlook to use plain text.   Maybe Word changes the plain text
> default to html, I don't know.
>
> Unfortunately, I must use Word as my editor (company rules), so
> unless I go into the defaults and change the settings each time I
> post to the list... I guess I won't be doing much posting.
>
> I did not send the original message, which was in html.  My point was
> that I had no trouble quoting that html message and was wondering why
> others did. And, if I did not have Word as the editor, it probably
> would have quoted correctly.
>
> As far as the vertical line, I do not see it when I reply to a
> message, so I don't know how it gets there.
> As far as top posting, I find it much easier to read a message that
> is top posted than to have to scroll all the way down to read what
> the poster has to say.  Especially when it is a long post.
> Just wondering again here but, if top-posting is such a no-no, why
> does Outlook default to that method?  I find no way of changing that,
> except to scroll all the way to the end of the message.  It's OK on
> short messages but when the original message is written by someone
> like Lujak, that can take several minutes, especially if there are
> responses!
>
> As a parting note, I've received several private messages on this
> subject. Here is one of them, without revealing the identity of the
> sender, which is representative of most of the others:
>
> "George, I've been happy reading your emails all along. I'm sick of
> the whining about HTML. It's  a shame they live in there own tiny
> world.
>
> filePro as a major data base engine is disappearing out of the market
> place faster than "D"  batteries @ Home Depot with a Hurricane
> coming. Its a shame, I am starting to see where they are a dead end
> street."
>
> Now, I don't necessarily agree with the statement the filePro is a
> dead-end street.  I love filePro and I think it's a great tool, but
> is time to move to the 21st Century. If you could experience what can
> be done with other databases, such as FileMaker Pro, you could see
> how far behind the times filePro is.
> Sure, filePro can do some things that file Maker Pro can't do or it
> is a lot harder to do in FileMaker Pro, but FileMaker Pro can do A
> LOT more things that filePro cannot and will never be able to do.
>
> The fact is John, that 90% of the world loves HTML.  People in
> general love to attach pictures, use fancy fonts, use emoticons,
> etc., etc, in their emails.  Preferring plain-text to HTML is like
> preferring black and white TV to color.  I guess some people do, but
> I prefer color.

pathetic arguments.
90% of the world thinks mcdonalds is good food and that k-mart is good
furniture and that windows is good software.
they are all wrong. numbers like that don't mean squat. 90% of the voting US
voted for either Gore or Bush both of which choices completely terrible. 90%
of the world are idiots or ignorant or both.

The reason outlook/outlook-express/word default to top-posting and don't
even offer a way to change that behaviour is simply because that's one of
the ways those programs suck. Sure they have their good points too. And they
have bad points and that is one of them. No big mystery.

The logic and reasoning behind email nettiquet were figured out a long time
ago by people who actually _thought_ about what they were doing and they
were right and all the kinks were shaken out long before microsoft ever
wrote an email client.

Then microsoft wrote an email client and for whatever reason _they_ decided
to have this particular behaviour in their program which differed from the
default behaviour of all other email clients up to that time. But,
unfortunately microsoft just happened to arrange things so that windows and
office and oe was forced into the grubby hands of every single one of the
great unwashed masses. These masses mostly never saw a computer before and
were utterly ignorant of the preexisting history and the _sound_ reasoning
behind lots of things that had already been figured out. As far as they were
concerned, microsoft invented email and however outlook express worked,
that's just how email works period.

Well it doesn't matter that the sudden explosion of ms users vastly
outnumbered the preexisting users, they are still all ignorant and doing
things slightly, but continuously and chronically, counter-productive. It's
2/3 MS's fault, 1/3) for making crappy software based on bad design
decisions and then implimented slipshod & poorly but _looking_ slick & shiny
like the worst example of a lemon used car with a gallon of armorall and
tire-shine soaked into it. 1/3) for attempting to make something inherently
complex like computers and software pretend to be simple enough so that
everyone in the world all the sudden gets a computer, doesn't spend 10
minutes learning anything about it, and thinks they are qualified to use it
and then proceeds to do so, peeing in the pool that the qualified older
users had built for themselves and which only worked by virtue of all users
being knowledgeable and conscientious to keep it all working well and not
abuse it. And the final 1/3 is the actual new users faults, for willingly
being stupid enough to buy into this crappy arrangement and buy MS's shiny
polished perfumed turds and also for then continuing to remain ignorant
perpetually as well as starting out ignorant.

Go on, keep top-posting and using html, heck, why limit yourself to html?
use flash! there ya go, how about every message is a complete interactive
java application, no, better yet a visual basic application, with it's own
ai engine and database of dialog? or vrml? send a 3d avatar and a virtual
earth for it and the recipient to exist in. who cares if it's practical or
cripples the internet or if it causes greif for others, all that matters is
it's cool for you.

I know you didn't happen to be the one who posted the post I initially
commented about. Actually, that post, and that poster, I didn't really feel
like saying any more than the one little passing dropped comment that I did,
and that person as it happens replied priveately apologizing and after that
I actually feel bad for saying anything since Mark ended up misdirecting an
overkill rant at them that I don't think they deserved. What triggered this
post, and what always gets me, is not merely being new or unaware of
something, or even not understanding something that you might be aware of
for some time. What gets me is this blithely inconsiderate attitude of "I
don't care what you say or how many others or for how many years they say
it. I like it and so I'm simply going to ignore any complaints that arise
from it." Ignorance is no crime, everyone starts out ignorant of everything,
and remains ignorant of 99.9999% of all there is to know theif whole life.
Willful deliberate choosing to stay ignorant. Actively maintaining ignorance
in spite of being plied with wisdom, that's just inexcuseable.

How about I decide that from now on as part of a program of immersion
language training, I post all correspondance in esperanto? I don't care if
you don't speak it, or have a font that can render it, or can find any kind
of translater software. I like it and I can read it and 90% of my other
esperanto friends can read it and it's required by my school so I don't know
what the problem is, why are you always whining like some baby about the
esperanto sheesh...

Actually, if your "90% of the world" argument was worth the spit that
evaporates while saying it, then you should have no problem if we all posted
in Chinese. There are many more of them than us or anyone else.

Just for the record, since this got a little out of hand, I dont' think your
are like a bad person or anything or have any kind of personal thing against
you. I don't even know you beyond a few posts on this list. You just pressed
a big fat button is all.
You have to understand, I sit there and waste time manually editing
malformed messages and replies all the time and it's very time consuming and
tedious and a fat pain in the ___. But I do it because _I_ don't want to
perpetuate counter-productive sloppy illegible posts and unfollowable
conversations and false quoting and just generally broken communication. So
if I'm going to reply to a thread at all, I'm going to make _my_ post
logical and readable and unambiguous. And if that means rearranging 7 layers
of backwards quoting or missing/wrong credits and missing quoting, that just
sucks for me for being conscientious of others who might try to read the
post. So while I'm sitting there doing that silently 500 times for every
time I ever bother to say anything about it, reading this (all too common)
attitude where you can't be bothered to tweak a damned setting... well let's
just say it's really hard to swallow.

> See you around.

yeah.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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