Re: Selective quoting (was: Re: GNKSA and Gnus)

Re: Selective quoting (was: Re: GNKSA and Gnus)

[John Moreno]

Per Abrahamsen wrote:

>
>Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:
>
>> Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:
>> 
>> > This is something Gravity does, and in general a good idea.  It migth
>> > make less sense for Gnus.  However, I think it would be nice if quoting
-snip-
> 
>> I still don't think this idea makes any sense.  But YMMV.
>
>Think of the typical new user with a windows based newsreader.  Would
>you rather have that 
>
>1) He had to select which parts of the article to quote, or
>2) he had to select which parts of the article not to quote?
>
>I'd prefer #1, since I believe that having to make an explicit
>decision to quote some text would encourage him to only quote the
>relevant parts of the message.  
>
>Now Gnus is different because it is part of Emacs, and the commands
>must make sense within that frameworks, and Gnus users are in average
>more experienced than, say, users of MS Internet News.  Thus, you
>don't see as many beginner-errors with Gnus, and adding extra code to
>prevent them makes less sense in that context.

That's the idea, and that's why it's a SHOULD not a MUST.  But of course 
it's not quite that clear since even with the SHOULD it's only : SHOULD 
have a method of doing 1.  The user isn't to be required to use the 
method.

-- 
John Moreno

Re: GNKSA and Gnus

[Per Abrahamsen]

[ Lars:  I'd be willing to work on 10d and 10e if you are interested. ]

The GNKSA requirements seem reasonable to me.  Some of the SHOULD
doesn't really apply to Gnus because of special concerns, which I
suspect is why they are SHOULD and not MUST.

>     7c   Does not restrict references sensibly

I often have to manually edit the references line when posting
followups in gnu.misc.discuss in order to make INN accept it.  I guess
it happens in gnu.misc.discuss because

1) The threads there are very deep.
2) There are a high fraction of Gnus users, thus none of the posters
   software will restrict the header.

This is with 

nntp-server-type's value is 
"200 ssv2.dina.kvl.dk InterNetNews NNRP server INN 1.5.1 17-Dec-1996 ready (posting ok).\n"

I found this in the config file.

##  Maximum size of a single header.
#### =()<MAXHEADERSIZE          @<MAXHEADERSIZE>@>()=
MAXHEADERSIZE           1024

I would feel more safe having Gnus truncate the header, than doing it myself.

> Additionally, the software violates the `soft' GNKSA requirements
> (SHOULDs) in the following way:
>     10d  Does not omit (proper) signatures from quoted text

I think Gnus should do that.  The default Gnus citation handler is too
barebone, probably in reaction too the alternative citation handler
(SuperCite) which is too advanced.

>     10e  Does not let the user indicate which part to followup to

This is something Gravity does, and in general a good idea.  It migth
make less sense for Gnus.  However, I think it would be nice if
quoting would be restricted to the currently region in the messsage
being quoted, iff `transient-message-mode' is on, and the region is
active.

>     10g  Attribution line lacks Message-ID of original article

This is the only point I disagree with.  The message-id is in the
references line, which should be enough.  I don't think therte is
anything resembling a consensus on whether it should be included in
the attribution line as well.

>     16b  Does not refuse posting an empty article
>     16d  Does not refuse to post quoted text only
>     16f  Does not try to prevent posting multiple copies entirely

Actually, I believe I have gotten warnings for all three of these.

> The software sports the following nice net-keeping features unmentioned
> by the GNKSA:

Command to fetch FAQ for the group.

Re: GNKSA and Gnus

[Russ Allbery]

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

> I often have to manually edit the references line when posting followups
> in gnu.misc.discuss in order to make INN accept it.  I guess it happens
> in gnu.misc.discuss because

> 1) The threads there are very deep.
> 2) There are a high fraction of Gnus users, thus none of the posters
>    software will restrict the header.

I stand corrected.

> ##  Maximum size of a single header.
> #### =()<MAXHEADERSIZE          @<MAXHEADERSIZE>@>()=
> MAXHEADERSIZE           1024

I believe this only affects headers which are not continued.  If one uses
continuation lines, headers can be much larger.  (Or that at least is my
understanding.)  Keep in mind that the version of Gnus that I'm using
still wraps References using continuation lines; I think Lars took that
out at some point?

It sounds like either the header wrapping code needs to be put back in or
Gnus needs to shorten the Reference headers it generates, in the short
term.  In the long term, I expect the new news RFC to require References
headers not be truncated.

> This is something Gravity does, and in general a good idea.  It migth
> make less sense for Gnus.  However, I think it would be nice if quoting
> would be restricted to the currently region in the messsage being
> quoted, iff `transient-message-mode' is on, and the region is active.

I still don't think this idea makes any sense.  But YMMV.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)         <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Selective quoting (was: Re: GNKSA and Gnus)

[Per Abrahamsen]

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:

> Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:
> 
> > This is something Gravity does, and in general a good idea.  It migth
> > make less sense for Gnus.  However, I think it would be nice if quoting
> > would be restricted to the currently region in the messsage being
> > quoted, iff `transient-message-mode' is on, and the region is active.
> 
> I still don't think this idea makes any sense.  But YMMV.

Think of the typical new user with a windows based newsreader.  Would
you rather have that 

1) He had to select which parts of the article to quote, or
2) he had to select which parts of the article not to quote?

I'd prefer #1, since I believe that having to make an explicit
decision to quote some text would encourage him to only quote the
relevant parts of the message.  

Now Gnus is different because it is part of Emacs, and the commands
must make sense within that frameworks, and Gnus users are in average
more experienced than, say, users of MS Internet News.  Thus, you
don't see as many beginner-errors with Gnus, and adding extra code to
prevent them makes less sense in that context.