Compulsory water metering

It is just as easy for me to post a graphic using plain text as it is with html so this is another red herring. It is not a requirement for pictures to be used with html and is entirley dependent on the policy of the group and the usenet police.

Usenet was designed in the era of low speed dial up links that were shared by several users. In the main things are somewhat different these days and a few html tags is not going to have an adverse effect on >99.99% of users. However it does bring obvious benifits in the way of readability.

Yahoo groups are almost unusable. The interface is abismal.

Do you intend to keep up the dinosaur image forever?

Been there done that.

However I have been working on networks with 10G links and 380G switches and routers in since then.

Anyone who thinks the Internet has limited bandwidth should have to configure a few routers, DSLAMs, 160G longreach optical links, add drop multiplexors, etc. so they can actually work out where these restrictions they go on about are.

I still fail to see why you think html is graphics?

Who has mounted a crusade? I use Usenet and I abide by the rules.

That doesn't stop me from having an opinion.

That was a bug in the application. It didn't take html to cause the breach either just to attach a picture.

Even the security breaches people attach to html have nothing to do with html they are invariably to do with the scripting language which is not a part of html.

I still don't see why people confuse pictures and graphics with html they are *not* the same things.

There are many areas in the world where ASCII text doesn't allow the population to be able to read or write in their own language. It just happens, in the main, to be the same areas you think suffer from poor conectivity. So unless you want to impose English on these areas that argument is a bit thin.

We are talking about maybe 15% more bandwidth which could eaily be saved if it makes it easier to quote and snip the original messages. It is obvious with plain text some find it hard to decide who posted what and where to snip.

If you really want to take the silly "it save bandwidth" argument any further then maybe we should all use txt spch as it will save even more than you are currently saving by avoiding html tags.

We are *not* talking about graphics here we are talking about html tags.

No it isn't. You will find many local language Usenet groups.

That is precisely why Usenet has posting rules. They are very simple to follow and it doesn't require fancy text tagging to look at who posted what. Even if you do use tagging, if s previous poster has snipped too much or formatted incorrectly, attributions can be incorrect.

I am simply suggesting using the set of rules and format that are well understood for Usenet use.

The problem is that many tools that support HTML also allow graphics insertion. As soon as tagging is allowed it would be difficult to prevent that.

One would either need to have tools that prevent graphics being inserted or there would need to be filters to prevent transmission.

The existing methods of text marking are perfectly adequate.

So why are you advocating rich format for something that already works perfectly well?

it doesn't really matter. Enough people are perfectly happy with the format and methodology as it is.

If you want to do something different, you are at liberty to do it on a web site or even invent your own new technology. Send in an RFC and make yourself as famous as Tim Berners-Lee if you like.

I'm fully aware of where the restrictions are.....

I didn't say that it was, only that once a transmission method, storage method or application becomes HTML enabled, graphics inevitably follow.

You can insert the graphics now so why is there any difference?

what if I insert a very long line then say 100 words. Do all readers cope with that or are you relying on the sender word wraping it for you? I prefer to decide on how it is displayed myself.

It doesn't work very well. It only works if everyone does as they are told.

People often reply by add onto the trailing > at the end of the messages In general it limps along.

That would be the Tim that made html a reality.

Some of us have done stuff to influence the design of the internet.. but you wont like it;-)

No they are not the same but pictures come with html like swallows with spring.

Eee, transatlantic phone links, tha was spoilt. When Ah were a lad we 'ad Usenet sent over on tape by sea mail and thought ourselves lucky :-)

Owain

You don't recall the (long) period throughout which Windows would run *any* kind of executable file it was given by Internet Explorer, and while IE only bothered looking at the file extension *listed in the multipart header* to decide whether a file was safe to run? Not a script in sight, the culprit was the IFRAME.

My aversion to HTML is that what you see isn't what you get, and there's no way of knowing what bugs lie within even sanely-written software. I particularly don't want web bugs spreading details about me even more widely than at present, so none of my email or news clients render HTML.

HTML is no more 'modern' than plain text, it's just designed for a different purpose. Its use in plain-text media such as email and NNTP, where pictures are unnecessary and hypertext links rare, is simply a sign of ignorance.

oldest first???? - that's a good idea - not - think about it

i cant help that you dont like it - but that doesn't stop it being a FACT!

hence you're mis-guided (unaware of facts)

yeah right - ha ha ha

Do you understand your sig? (i suspect not) - because it applies appropriately here

"....Q7: Why shouldn't I put my comments above the quoted material? A7: ...........When you have just a single question and response, and they're both short, and the discussion doesn't develop any further, it really doesn't make that much difference in practice...."

".... Another problem is that top-posters often word their replies on the assumption that you just read the previous message,,,,,"

Errrrrm - You HAVE! - duh! - and if you haven't - i suggest you do!

Latest News should always come first! the history is there if you can be bothered to read it - and if you cant then it's evidently not of interest

I can only thank god that newspapers / TV and any other news medium doesn't adopt this counter-intuative method of spreading news - They prefer the intuative method of STARTING with the headlines and don't 'first' bore me to death with the ancient history that appeared in the last 15 prints (that i would ALREADY know if i was really interested) before 'eventually' telling me THE NEWS

General suggestion - not just to dennis@home: If you use Outlook Express try OE Quotefix. It sorts out several problems and colour codes conversations.

I expect someone else will be along soon to say "If you use Outlook Express you should dump it and get a proper news client..." But I submit this as a halfway option.

IE is a web browser not a news reader. Its the user thats to blame if they run downloaded stuff without thinking.

Web bugs only work if your reader is permitted to load them. There are many ways of tracking you which don't use html BTW.

So you are happy with manually adding tags to words to make them "bold/italicised/etc." but don't like html where the tags are also text strings?

it wasnt necessary to 'run' anything, just visit the page in question.