Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Zack Weinberg]

I get this sort of thing periodically as part of (what appears to be)
Japanese-language spam:

┏━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━━┳━━━━━┳━━━━━┓　
┃        　   ┃ 50万円  ┃100万円 ┃ 300万円    ┃ 500万円    ┃ 800万円    ┃　
┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━┫　
┃ １２回    ┃42,325円 ┃84,650円 ┃253,951円   ┃423,252円   ┃677,203円  ┃　
┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━┫　
┃ ２４回    ┃21,469円 ┃42,939円 ┃128,817円   ┃214,696円  ┃ 343,513円  ┃　
┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━┫　
┃ ４８回    ┃11,046円 ┃22,092円 ┃ 66,277円    ┃110,461円  ┃ 176,736円  ┃　
┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━┫　
┃ ８４回    ┃6,585円   ┃13,170円 ┃ 39,511円   ┃ 65,852円   ┃105,364円   ┃　
┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━┫　
┃１２０回   ┃4,806円   ┃ 9,612円 ┃ 28,836円   ┃ 48,061円   ┃ 76,898円    ┃　　
┗━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━━┻━━━━━┻━━━━━┛　

The vertical bars were presumably intended to line up neatly, forming
a nice little table, but the spaces are too wide, or the horizontal
lines are too short, or both.  Confusion over which characters are
double-wide and which are single? Are the fonts not really
fixed-width?  Inquiring minds, &c.

zw

Re: Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Daniel Pittman]

On 22 Feb 2005, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> I get this sort of thing periodically as part of (what appears to be)
> Japanese-language spam:

[...]

> The vertical bars were presumably intended to line up neatly, forming
> a nice little table, but the spaces are too wide, or the horizontal
> lines are too short, or both.  Confusion over which characters are
> double-wide and which are single? Are the fonts not really
> fixed-width?  Inquiring minds, &c.

The most likely case: your Emacs selected a double-width font for the
Asian characters, but a single-width font as your normal font.

This is, basically, always the case, because it is really hard to
represent far east language symbols in the same small space as you do
normal characters.

Regards,
        Daniel
-- 
Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate to
make 10 ways to do something.  :-)
        -- Larry Wall in <9695@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>

Re: Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Reiner Steib]

[ This is not a Gnus issue, AFAICS.
  Moving it to emacs-pretest-bugs, Mail-Followup-To set accordingly. ]

On Tue, Feb 22 2005, Zack Weinberg wrote:

> I get this sort of thing periodically as part of (what appears to be)
> Japanese-language spam:
>
> ┏━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━━┳━━━━━┳━━━━━┓　
> ┃        　   ┃ 50万円  ┃100万円 ┃ 300万円    ┃ 500万円    ┃ 800万円    ┃　
> ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━┫　
> ┃ １２回    ┃42,325円 ┃84,650円 ┃253,951円   ┃423,252円   ┃677,203円  ┃　
> ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━┫　
> ┃ ２４回    ┃21,469円 ┃42,939円 ┃128,817円   ┃214,696円  ┃ 343,513円  ┃　
> ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━┫　
> ┃ ４８回    ┃11,046円 ┃22,092円 ┃ 66,277円    ┃110,461円  ┃ 176,736円  ┃　
> ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━┫　
> ┃ ８４回    ┃6,585円   ┃13,170円 ┃ 39,511円   ┃ 65,852円   ┃105,364円   ┃　
> ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━╋━━━━━┫　
> ┃１２０回   ┃4,806円   ┃ 9,612円 ┃ 28,836円   ┃ 48,061円   ┃ 76,898円    ┃　　
> ┗━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━━┻━━━━━┻━━━━━┛　
>
> The vertical bars were presumably intended to line up neatly, forming
> a nice little table, but the spaces are too wide, or the horizontal
> lines are too short, or both.  Confusion over which characters are
> double-wide and which are single? Are the fonts not really
> fixed-width?  Inquiring minds, &c.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Miles Bader]

Zack Weinberg <zack@codesourcery.com> writes:
> The vertical bars were presumably intended to line up neatly, forming
> a nice little table, but the spaces are too wide, or the horizontal
> lines are too short, or both.  Confusion over which characters are
> double-wide and which are single? Are the fonts not really
> fixed-width?  Inquiring minds, &c.

I think the people making this sort of thing are not usually well versed
with the notion of "quality" or "testing"; it may have looked OK on
their model XYZ word-processor but completely screwy to _everyone_ who
receives it.

I note that you sent it in UTF-8; was that the coding system used in the
original spam?

-Miles
-- 
o The existentialist, not having a pillow, goes everywhere with the book by
  Sullivan, _I am going to spit on your graves_.

Re: Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Miles Bader]

Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net> writes:
> The most likely case: your Emacs selected a double-width font for the
> Asian characters, but a single-width font as your normal font.

Actually that seems unlikely to be the reason:  if you look at the text,
the basic problem is that there are too many spaces -- even though Emacs
uses "half-width" (from a CJK perspective) spaces, they're _still_ too
wide.

I expect what really happened is that the original creator's editor
(well, probably "word processor") for some reason used a variable-width
font for space characters, so they had to add lots of thin spaces to
make everything line up.  Us Emacs users, viewing the same text with
"normal" spaces -- even half-width -- see the spaces portions as being
too wide.

-Miles
-- 
Next to fried food, the South has suffered most from oratory.
  			-- Walter Hines Page

Re: Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

> Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net> writes:

>> The most likely case: your Emacs selected a double-width font for the
>> Asian characters, but a single-width font as your normal font.

>>>>> In <87brac3ysu.fsf@tc-1-100.kawasaki.gol.ne.jp> Miles Bader wrote:

> Actually that seems unlikely to be the reason:  if you look at the text,
> the basic problem is that there are too many spaces -- even though Emacs
> uses "half-width" (from a CJK perspective) spaces, they're _still_ too
> wide.

UTF-8 decoding often changes character width, for example:

(let ((s (string (make-char 'japanese-jisx0208 40 45))))
  (list (string-width s)
	(string-width (decode-coding-string
		       (encode-coding-string s 'utf-8)
		       'utf-8))))
 => (2 1)

Although I'm not quite familiar with the unicode, I accept that
it is so.

Re: Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Zack Weinberg]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> Zack Weinberg <zack@codesourcery.com> writes:
>> The vertical bars were presumably intended to line up neatly, forming
>> a nice little table, but the spaces are too wide, or the horizontal
>> lines are too short, or both.  Confusion over which characters are
>> double-wide and which are single? Are the fonts not really
>> fixed-width?  Inquiring minds, &c.
>
> I think the people making this sort of thing are not usually well versed
> with the notion of "quality" or "testing"; it may have looked OK on
> their model XYZ word-processor but completely screwy to _everyone_ who
> receives it.

Fair enough.  This is hardly causing me lost sleep, nor is it anywhere
near the most important thing I wish Gnus did better.

> I note that you sent it in UTF-8; was that the coding system used in the
> original spam?

Nope.

| MIME-Version: 1.0
| Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-2022-JP"
| Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I can try to extract the original text and send it along uuencoded or
something, but in view of what you say above, I'm not sure it's worth
bothering...?

zw

Re: Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Henrik Enberg]

Zack Weinberg <zack@codesourcery.com> writes:

> I get this sort of thing periodically as part of (what appears to be)
> Japanese-language spam:

[...]

> The vertical bars were presumably intended to line up neatly, forming
> a nice little table, but the spaces are too wide, or the horizontal
> lines are too short, or both.  Confusion over which characters are
> double-wide and which are single? Are the fonts not really
> fixed-width?  Inquiring minds, &c.

Emacs doesn't seem to do colum lineup very well.  If you download
<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/UTF-8-demo.txt>, and look
at the excerpt from La poetry on The Romance of The Three Kingdoms",
you'll probably see that something's wrong there too.

-- 
Vaya Con Satan

Re: Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Zack Weinberg]

Henrik Enberg <henrik.enberg@telia.com> writes:

> Emacs doesn't seem to do colum lineup very well.  If you download
> <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/UTF-8-demo.txt>, and look
> at the excerpt from La poetry on The Romance of The Three Kingdoms",
> you'll probably see that something's wrong there too.

I see lots and lots of unknown-character boxes, but you're right, they
don't line up for beans.

zw

Re: Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Adam Duck]

Zack Weinberg <zack@codesourcery.com> writes:

> Henrik Enberg <henrik.enberg@telia.com> writes:
>
>> Emacs doesn't seem to do colum lineup very well.  If you download
>> <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/UTF-8-demo.txt>, and look
>> at the excerpt from La poetry on The Romance of The Three Kingdoms",
>> you'll probably see that something's wrong there too.
>
> I see lots and lots of unknown-character boxes, but you're right, they
> don't line up for beans.

Hmm, I see many of the unknown-character-boxes, too, but the real
boxes line up very nice. (emacs-version) "GNU Emacs 21.3.50.1
(i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.4.13)
 of 2005-01-14 on oumu.localdomain"
 
bye, Adam.

Re: Gnus does not format my spam correctly!

[Miles Bader]

Adam Duck <duck@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de> writes:
>>> Emacs doesn't seem to do colum lineup very well.  If you download
>>> <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/UTF-8-demo.txt>, and look
>>> at the excerpt from La poetry on The Romance of The Three Kingdoms",
>>> you'll probably see that something's wrong there too.
>>
>> I see lots and lots of unknown-character boxes, but you're right, they
>> don't line up for beans.
>
> Hmm, I see many of the unknown-character-boxes, too, but the real
> boxes line up very nice.

What's funny is that the current Emacs CVS trunk does an appreciably
better job than the Emacs "unicode" branch (which uses unicode as its
internal representation)...  Actually I'd say the CVS trunk really does
quite well.

[BTW, Firefox does a pretty crappy job of lining up the "unknown" boxes
too.  :-]

-Miles
-- 
In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you
have to take the subway to their house.  And sometimes on the way, the train
is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway.
  [George Carlin]