Thoughts about numbered URLs in TidBITS

Sander Tekelenburg (tekelenbeuronet.nl)wrote:
>
> Ah! Confirmed, Eudora inserts the ">" before any line starting with
> (case-sensitive) "From", if the previous line is empty.
>

Wow! This partially solves a mystery for me. I do page composition for books
and sometimes I receive rtf files of the previous edition's text with the
">" character inserted before each capitalized "From"--even when it falls in
the middle of a paragraph. Now I just wonder at what point the insertion
happens.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Joy Freeman
~ from manuscript to bound book ~
Editorial, Design, and Production Services
joy at pagesbyjoy.com

On Aug 15, 2006, at 10:40 PM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

> At 22:08 +0200 2006-08-15, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>> At 10:26 -0400 UTC, on 2006-08-15, Dave Scocca wrote:
>>
>>>> Weird. Something at TidBITs' end inserted a ">" before my text,
>>>> changing
>>>> it to a quote. It's not in the Web version though:
>>>> <http://emperor.tidbits.com/webx/TidBITS/Talk/911>.
>>>
>>> Because of the standard Unix mailbox format, some mail programs/
>>> mailers are
>>> sensitive to email messages in which the first non-blank line of
>>> text
>>> begins with the word "From". I'd bet that's what caused
>>> something to drop
>>> a quote char in there.
>>
>> Ah! Confirmed, Eudora inserts the ">" before any line starting with
>> (case-sensitive) "From", if the previous line is empty.
>>
>> I'll go bug Steve Dorner about this.
>
> According to Steve my ISP's MTA, Postfix I think, is doing this.
> Eudora's log
> indeed seems to confirm this.
>
> Surely this isn't considered accetable behaviour? If I approach my
> ISP about
> this, is there a specific Postfix setting I can ask them to change?

For Postfix, if it is storing into mbox files as seems likely, it is
not only acceptable behavior, but mandatory behavior. It is how mbox
works. If Postfix is storing in some more modern format, then it
*shouldn't* adjust lines starting with "From" and can probably be
configured not to. It appears that is automatic--one can tell
Postfix to deliver in maildir format, but I don't see a way to change
the behavior other than following the standard format rules (Postfix,
The Definitive Guide, Kyle D. Dent, O'Reilly).

It's up to the POP server and the MUA (specifically the MUA--Eudora
in your case--as I recall) to do the right thing when you retrieve
the mail. Eudora isn't very good at it if I recall correctly from my
days using Eudora heavily--hence my habit of enclosing "From" in
quotes in my quoted post above, just in case it landed at the start
of a line.

(I now use Eudora primarily for its convenience with (plain text)
stationery and with "personalities" (silly name). It allows me to
send test messages to our SMTP servers in a variety of ways, and send
my "I'm here", "to lunch", and "back" messages to co-workers. And I
recently put Windows Eudora onto my Macbook to test something--ah
yes, TLS and SSL connections.)

And, of course, it holds my work message archives from before I
switched. ("Import...we don't need no stinkin' Import!")

We don't run any mbox format mail stores here, so testing is a little
difficult. If you know that in your mailbox on the server you have a
message with "From " at the start of a line, you can speak POP and
see what comes in. You need the USER, PASS, LIST, and RETR
(retrieve) commands (and QUIT is handy) from the POP protocol...stay
away from DELE (delete).

   --John

>> OTOH, you place the notes at the end of the paragraph rather than at the
>> bottom of the page or the end of the article. This makes the explicit
>> connection less important.
>>...
>
>I'm not sure what you mean by less important, but I think that having
>the references to the URL at the end of the paragraph in which they
>are used makes it more likely that they'll be used as any point/idea
>raised will be fresh in the mind. Also, they would be distributed more
>than if they were all at the end of an article, or even a page.

I think the point here is that our URLs always follow the paragraph
in which they're referenced, so it's not as though you have to look
at the bottom of the article to figure out what the connection is (at
which point the numbers would be key).

cheers... -Adam

--
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Publisher <http://www.tidbits.com/adam/>

>I realised I hadn't noticed them as there was not a space between the
>previous word and the [1] etc.

Huh, I hadn't thought of that, since they come from using Markdown,
where there's no space between the link text and the bracketed
number. Might be a possibility.

>Perhaps adding space between the word and the number & number and url would
>be useful, certainly it would make them easier to read. This is in the
>plain text version.

We can't put a space between the number and the URL or long URLs
break at the space, leaving the number on one line and the URL on the
next. Ugly...

cheers... -Adam

--
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Publisher <http://www.tidbits.com/adam/>

>I suppose I haven't been paying much attention to TB, but I didn't
>realize you'd finally come out with an HTML version. I may look into
>that, but some of the posters are right that there's a relaxing feel
>to the text-only newsletter. I'll try both and see...

It's worth noting that our HTML version is incredibly simple and
basically uses only some heading styles and a few character styles.
It's not much more than plain text, although the URLs are now
embedded.

cheers... -Adam

--
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Publisher <http://www.tidbits.com/adam/>

Hi John,

At 10:54 -0700 UTC, on 2006-08-16, johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:

> On Aug 15, 2006, at 10:40 PM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

[...]

> For Postfix, if it is storing into mbox files as seems likely, it is
> not only acceptable behavior, but mandatory behavior. It is how mbox
> works. [...]
>
> It's up to the POP server and the MUA (specifically the MUA--Eudora
> in your case--as I recall) to do the right thing when you retrieve
> the mail.

Are you saying Eudora can know that the ">" isn't there on purpose, inserted
by the sender?

[...]

> We don't run any mbox format mail stores here, so testing is a little
> difficult. If you know that in your mailbox on the server you have a
> message with "From " at the start of a line, you can speak POP and
> see what comes in. You need the USER, PASS, LIST, and RETR
> (retrieve) commands (and QUIT is handy) from the POP protocol...stay
> away from DELE (delete).

Sounds like you mean I should do this from the cli somehow, but I'm not sure
how :) IIRC, one uses telnet, but my ISP doesn't allow that.

FWIW, I just did these tests:

[1] I sent a message using Eudora, the body containing exactly "
From x" (so it starts with an empty line, and has "From x" on the next line
-- just "From" doesn't trigger this issue, it needs to be followed by a space
and some other character)

When I use MailSiphon to look at that message on the POP server, I see:"
>From x"

When I fetch the message with Eudora it too shows "
>From x"

[2] I sent a message with MailSiphon, the body again containing exactly "
From x"

When I use MailSiphon to look at that message on the POP server, I see:"
>From x"

When I pick up the message with Eudora, it again reads "
>From x"

[3] I sent the message again using Eudora, and this time CC-ed it to another
of my email addresses, at another server. When I fetch it with the problem
account, there's an inserted ">", but the CC to the other email address does
not. All one and the same Eudora.

From this it seems pretty clear to me that it is the server that inserts the
">". Especially given that it does not happen with another POP server. I
don't see any evidence Eudora could somehow be responsible.

There's something I can't exactly follow about your message: I get the
impression you're saying Eudora should be smart enough to not display that
">", but I don't understand how it could. Surely it has no way of knowing
whether that ">" was put there by the POP server, or by the Sender?

I'm also confused about the fact that this is the first time in over 10 years
of email use that I notice this. If it is such common MTA behaviour, surely
it would be (relatively) common knowledge? Of all the email sent since the
beginning of time, surely at least milions must have contained paragraphs
that start with "From x"? :)


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

At 10:54 08/16/06 -0700, Joy Freeman wrote:
>I receive rtf files of the previous edition's text with the
>">" character inserted before each capitalized "From"--even when it falls in
>the middle of a paragraph. Now I just wonder at what point the insertion
>happens.

There are various ways text in email can get rewrapped, including explicit
user command or automatic due to use of format=flowed. Once the extra
character is added, it won't get deleted -- because there's no automatic
way to be sure it wasn't in the original.

As for the various complaints about the footnote links (the bracketed
numbers within the text) making the text harder to read, I assure you that
almost everyone will get used to it. I just read the latest issue and
didn't even notice them until I was almost finished. The obvious reason is
that I'm already accustomed to this kind of annotation, as I mentioned before.

Edward
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On Aug 17, 2006, at 6:06 AM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

> From this it seems pretty clear to me that it is the server that
> inserts the
> ">". Especially given that it does not happen with another POP
> server. I
> don't see any evidence Eudora could somehow be responsible.

It's an artifact of the BSD mbox format, which identifies the start
of a new mail message with a line that starts From .... As a result,
MTAs that know they're storing the messages in BSD mbox format modify
lines starting with From, usually by adding a > in front of the line,
to prevent the text line from being misinterpreted as the first line
of a new message.

> I'm also confused about the fact that this is the first time in
> over 10 years
> of email use that I notice this. If it is such common MTA
> behaviour, surely
> it would be (relatively) common knowledge? Of all the email sent
> since the
> beginning of time, surely at least milions must have contained
> paragraphs
> that start with "From x"? :)

It is relatively common knowledge, at least among people with long
BSD experience.

Charlton




--
Charlton Wilbur
cwilburchromatico.net

On Aug 16, 2006, at 9:30 PM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

> At 19:52 -0700 UTC, on 2006-08-16, John W Baxter wrote:
>
>> Moderator: Message Cc'd directly to Sander in case you want to
>> drop it.
>
> Agreed, this is probably getting too off-topic. Still CC-ing
> TidBITS though,
> in case the moderators are interested in more goodies from John :)
>
>> On Aug 16, 2006, at 5:29 PM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>>
>>> Are you saying Eudora can know that the ">" isn't there on purpose,
>>> inserted by the sender?
>>
>> That could be why Eudora doesn't try. Probably the better assumption
>> would be that the sender never meant it
>
> I don't know. I have this feeling it's bad enough that one party
> messes with
> the contents of mail. If other parties do guesswork to unmess it,
> there's a
> risk of messing things up even more.
>
> Man, I never realised mail was this messy... It must be great fun
> to run
> mailservers ;)

And I hadn't even gotten into the SMTP side of things (transmission
among mail servers). There, the sequence
CR LF . CR LF
is the signal that the message data has ended. Meaning a lone "." on
a line would end a message prematurely. So the sending SMTP server
inserts a . before the real data on a line starting with ., and the
receiving one removes the . from lines with more than one . between
the CR LF sequences. (Messages are--normally--stored on a machine
using the machine's line ending convention, but in transmission the
CR LF sequence is the line ender.)

>
> [...]
>
>> telnet server.example.com 110
>
> Ah! I needed to specify the port of course :) Thanks. With the
> commands you
> listed I managed to look at mail on my POP server just fine.
> Definitely
> useful to know how to do this. And confirmed: in this way too do I
> see an
> inserted angle bracket on my POP server in my test messages.
>
>> The 110 specifies the port. Unless your ISP requires the use of SSL,
>> they do allow that, or POP wouldn't work. It's not just the
>> occasional person doing POP by hand that uses telnet, it is also the
>> mail client programs.
>
> Ha! I never realised that.
>
> [...]
>
> [$telnet mail.euronet.nl 110]
>
>> I'm not sure that that initial banner means they use Qualcomm's (ie,
>> Steve's) qpopper, but I think so. If so, the latest version is
>> 4.05.
>
> Oh wow, so with 2.53 they're apparently using an ancient version then.

On the other hand, early versions of 3.x had a security flaw. I'm
not sure how much real progress is being made in qpopper these days
(or how much is needed).

>
> But, I'm still confused about exactly what part of mail is
> inserting that
> angle bracket. Are you saying qpopper does? Because another part of
> my ISP's
> mail servers seems to be Postfix, so up until now I was under the
> impression
> that Postfix inserts those angle brackets. (I know that mail
> servers exist of
> different parts, MTA's and something else, or even multiples of
> else, but I'm
> unaware of the details.)

It is Postfix which is inserting the >. On the Euronet servers, the
 > is present. The POP server is merely passing it along untouched
(and also using it to count messages. (The RETR, DELE, etc commands
have a message number argument, and when the storage is mbox the
messages are counted based on the "From blah" lines. You can RETR
the last message first if you want to, or just the 17th out of 37.


>
> [...]
>
>> A pair of messages at the start an mbox file looks something like
>> this [...]
>>
>>
>> From <some text showing the return path and the date*>
>> SomeHeader: stuff
>> From: John <exampleexample.com>
>> SomeOtherHeader: stuff
>>
>> Message body stuff (which may itself start with a headerish line)
>>
>> From <here starts the next message>
>> SomeHeader:
>> From: ...
>> More Headers:
>
> Now I'm confused again :) Why are there both a "From " and a "From:
> " header
> here? I don't think I've ever ran across anything but a "From: "
> header in
> email. Not even when I use that telnet approach. That suggests it
> is not a
> header at all, but 'just' the delimiter in the POP server's mbox,
> and not
> made visble to (or by?) MUAs? Is it generated by the MTA that
> writes the
> mbox? Or by the sending MUA? Or by the smtp server?
>
> (Sorry, but that's what you get for giving such great information:
> more
> questions ;))

I did that deliberately to show that the "From " line is not the
From: header in the message. The "From " line does not travel over
the wire between SMTP servers; it is generated when the message is
stored in mbox format. Other storage formats exist in which there is
no "From " line, in at least some of those there is no messing about
with added ">" characters.

The ISP you found with your test messages, which didn't "helpfully
provide" the ">", is using one of those, probably "maildir" in which
each message is a separate file (with things like having been seen
(S), replied to (R I think), trashed (T), and flagged (F I think)
tacked onto the end of the file name on the server.

With mbox, the entire mailbox content is one file (meaning if you
delete a message, the file has to be copied without that message.
That becomes really slow if people let their mailbox files grow (and
really hard to fix by hand on the server when that happens--speaking
from experience). In the extreme case, the mbox file has grown so
large that the mail client times out while the POP server is doing
its copy. (qpopper, at least, copies the mbox file at login time,
then deals with another--complex--copy at logout to take care of both
shrinkage due to deletions and growth due to new messages arriving
between login and logout.)

We use maildir, which is why it's hard for me to test mbox.

There are a couple of reasons I said a few messages ago that Eudora
uses an "mbox-like" format, rather than saying mbox. One is that the
messages aren't deleted from the middle when you delete them--Eudora
keeps track of things using its Table of Contents. So if you open
one of Eudora's mailbox files in a text editor, you see deleted
messages along with current ones. When Eudora--either automatically
or manually--"compacts" a mailbox, it is getting rid of the stale
bytes from deleted messages.

While we're at it, Eudora, on the one hand and Windows Outlook
Express, on the other hand, use different logic in sending DELE
commands. Eudora sends a DELE for a message as soon as it knows it
wants the message off the server. Right after a successful RETR
command if it isn't leaving messages on the server, for instance.
Outlook Express keeps track of what messages it wants to issue DELE
for, and does so when everything else is done. That means if OE
crashes on the 10th message, it doesn't delete the first 9. That
also makes manual cleanup on the server harder. There was an overly-
popular Christmas message sometime around 1996 with crashed OE every
time. So not only was OE crashing, it was giving users multiple
copies of everything before the problem message. Aarrgh. I spent
hours cleaning up those mbox files. (OE may have reformed since
then; I haven't cared since we ditched mbox. And in Vista, there
will be no "Outlook Express"--it will be called Microsoft Mail.)

Glossary:
POP: Post Office Protocol (which is now--and has been for more than
25 years--at POP3); server to mail client.
SMTP: Simplified Mail Transport Protocol. Server to Server. Also
decades old (and broken by the spammers, unfortunately).
"over the wire": the "wire" is mostly fiber these days, but "over
the wire" is still used to describe what is transmitted from machine
to machine.

   --John

On Aug 16, 2006, at 7:35 PM, Adam C. Engst wrote:
>> I suppose I haven't been paying much attention to TB, but I didn't
>> realize you'd finally come out with an HTML version. I may look into
>> that, but some of the posters are right that there's a relaxing feel
>> to the text-only newsletter. I'll try both and see...
>
> It's worth noting that our HTML version is incredibly simple and
> basically uses only some heading styles and a few character styles.
> It's not much more than plain text, although the URLs are now
> embedded.

I'd offer an opinion in favor of the numbered URLs except that I'm
happy with the HTML version. I get slashdot's text newsletter with
numbered URLs, and I like them, but I don't care what you do for
TidBITS, since the HTML is quite friendly. (I use Mail.app)

Geoff

On 16 Aug 2006, at 17:35 , Adam C. Engst wrote:
>> I suppose I haven't been paying much attention to TB, but I didn't
>> realize you'd finally come out with an HTML version. I may look into
>> that, but some of the posters are right that there's a relaxing feel
>> to the text-only newsletter. I'll try both and see...
>
> It's worth noting that our HTML version is incredibly simple and
> basically uses only some heading styles and a few character styles.
> It's not much more than plain text, although the URLs are now
> embedded

I'm as anti-html emaila s anyone. I have mail.app set to prefer
plain text, I drop most html-only mail at the server, and most of the
rest is quarantined.

I also subscribe to the HTML version of TibBITS. It's what HTML
email SHOULD be.


--
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know
what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be
president.

At 03:06 08/17/06 -0700, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>Are you saying Eudora can know that the ">" isn't there on purpose, inserted
>by the sender?

It cannot. That's why the > never gets deleted once it's inserted.

>I'm also confused about the fact that this is the first time in over 10 years
>of email use that I notice this. If it is such common MTA behaviour, surely
>it would be (relatively) common knowledge?

It is common knowledge. The surprise is that you haven't run into it
before. Just good luck I suppose. ;-) However, note that it's much more
commonly a mail client behavior than an MTA behavior. Eudora and various
other Mac and Windows clients use the mbox format, as do various Unix
mailers such as the venerable pine and elm. It's so standard that
converting from any of these mail clients to another mostly consists of
copying the mbox files (and converting newline formats if you're changing
platforms).

>IIRC, one uses telnet, but my ISP doesn't allow that.

Use any telnet client and connect to "somemailserver.com 110" for POP3.
Your ISP cannot tell the difference between a mail client and a telnet
client connecting on port 110. Technically POP3 and telnet are different
protocols, but they are both subprotocols of TCP and are similar enough
that you can get away with using a telnet client with a POP3 server.

Edward
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On Aug 18, 2006, at 1:10 PM, Google Kreme wrote:

> I also subscribe to the HTML version of TibBITS. It's what HTML
> email SHOULD be.


OK, with all of this talk, I decided to see what the HTML version
would look like; I'm currently getting the old-foogey plain text
version.

I guess it's Friday and I'm stupider than usual, but I've clicked
around the "Manage Subscriptions" and "Your Preferences" web pages,
and I just can't see how to make this change.

I can see where to make the choice if I was starting a subscription
("TidBITS Subscription Options"), but not if I'm already a
subscriber. I guess I could unsubscribe and re-subscribe, but that
seems rather lame, and would probably just annoy the TidBITS database.

Can someone please point out what my eyes just can't seem to see today?

TIA,
-Dave
--
Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

At 3:06 AM -0700 2006/08/17, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>Hi John,
>
>At 10:54 -0700 UTC, on 2006-08-16, johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:
>
>> On Aug 15, 2006, at 10:40 PM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> For Postfix, if it is storing into mbox files as seems likely, it is
>> not only acceptable behavior, but mandatory behavior. It is how mbox
>> works. [...]
>>
>> It's up to the POP server and the MUA (specifically the MUA--Eudora
>> in your case--as I recall) to do the right thing when you retrieve
>> the mail.
>
>Are you saying Eudora can know that the ">" isn't there on purpose, inserted
>by the sender?
>
>[...]
>
>> We don't run any mbox format mail stores here, so testing is a little
>> difficult. If you know that in your mailbox on the server you have a
>> message with "From " at the start of a line, you can speak POP and
>> see what comes in. You need the USER, PASS, LIST, and RETR
>> (retrieve) commands (and QUIT is handy) from the POP protocol...stay
>> away from DELE (delete).
>
>Sounds like you mean I should do this from the cli somehow, but I'm not sure
>how :) IIRC, one uses telnet, but my ISP doesn't allow that.

        You can "telnet mail.example.com 110" to telnet to the POP
port -- they block the telnet port, but can't block the telnet client
program on your Mac from running...


> >From this it seems pretty clear to me that it is the server that inserts the
>">". Especially given that it does not happen with another POP server. I
>don't see any evidence Eudora could somehow be responsible.

        Yes, this is common.

>There's something I can't exactly follow about your message: I get the
>impression you're saying Eudora should be smart enough to not display that
>">", but I don't understand how it could. Surely it has no way of knowing
>whether that ">" was put there by the POP server, or by the Sender?
>
>I'm also confused about the fact that this is the first time in over 10 years
>of email use that I notice this. If it is such common MTA behaviour, surely
>it would be (relatively) common knowledge? Of all the email sent since the
>beginning of time, surely at least milions must have contained paragraphs
>that start with "From x"? :)

        I've been seeing it for years. Were you using another ISP
that didn't use mbox format?

        Or perhaps you had a procmail recipe somewhere in the mix
that reversed it, assuming that '\r>From ' should really be \rFrom '.

        See Jamie Zawinski <http://www.jwz.org/doc/content-length.html>.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
                             <http://www.reppep.com/weblog/pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

I subscribe to the text-only version of TidBITS, and have always loved the
clean, easy-to-read layout and style. The URLs have stood out nicely, and
their placement made pretty clear what they were related to in the
newsletter, so the numbering seems a bit extraneous...and it definitely gets
in the way of the "smooth" feel of the layout. Still, as many have said,
eventually we'll probably get used to it.

One thing I have noticed that is a problem is that my mail reader no longer
recognizes the URL is an URL! That is, this text shows up with the link
highlighted and "clickable":

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=8495>

While this line shows up as just text, and to follow the link I need to
copy/paste the link by hand:

[9]<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=8495>

Now, one caveat that probably puts me in the minority here is that I am
reading TidBITS in Microsoft Outlook using the Preview Pane (with all my
defaults set to "text only"). The irony of reading TidBITS under Windows
isn't lost on me, of course, but still, I will miss the ability to click on
links directly, and will probably wind up following fewer links just for the
"perceived" incremental difficulty.

So, my vote (at least for the text-only version) is to quash the numbers and
go back to Ye Olde Ways.

  ..Chris..

At 13:53 -0700 UTC, on 2006-08-20, Chris Pepper wrote:

> At 3:06 AM -0700 2006/08/17, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

[...]

        [gratuitous quote characters before "From"]

> I've been seeing it for years. Were you using another ISP

No.

> that didn't use mbox format?

I suppose it's possible, but it seems unlikely to me

My bet is that I simply never noticed this before.


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

>One thing I have noticed that is a problem is that my mail reader no longer
>recognizes the URL is an URL! That is, this text shows up with the link
>highlighted and "clickable":
>
><http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=8495>
>
>While this line shows up as just text, and to follow the link I need to
>copy/paste the link by hand:
>
>[9]<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=8495>
>
>Now, one caveat that probably puts me in the minority here is that I am
>reading TidBITS in Microsoft Outlook using the Preview Pane (with all my
>defaults set to "text only"). The irony of reading TidBITS under Windows
>isn't lost on me, of course, but still, I will miss the ability to click on
>links directly, and will probably wind up following fewer links just for the
>"perceived" incremental difficulty.

That's because Microsoft Outlook is, gasp, broken!

The lack of a space between the number and the URL (which, if it were
present, would cause long URLs to appear on the next line) is
apparently utterly boggling to Microsoft Outlook, even though the URL
is properly enclosed in angle brackets.

If you switch to the HTML edition of TidBITS (use the URL below with
the exact email address you're subscribed at now), you'll get inline
links, which I think Outlook can maybe handle. (On a good day, with a
tailwind.)

http://www.tidbits.com/about/list.html

cheers... -Adam

--
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Publisher <http://www.tidbits.com/adam/>

At 1:53 PM -0700 8/20/06, David Emme wrote:
>OK, with all of this talk, I decided to see what the HTML version
>would look like; I'm currently getting the old-foogey plain text
>version.
>
>I guess it's Friday and I'm stupider than usual, but I've clicked
>around the "Manage Subscriptions" and "Your Preferences" web pages,
>and I just can't see how to make this change.

Right now, the interface on those pages is insanely bad, and I'm
working with a programmer at Web Crossing to fix them. But they're
useful for changing your address or unsubscribing, not for adding a
new subscription.

>I can see where to make the choice if I was starting a subscription
>("TidBITS Subscription Options"), but not if I'm already a
>subscriber. I guess I could unsubscribe and re-subscribe, but that
>seems rather lame, and would probably just annoy the TidBITS database.

The Subscription page at this link:

http://www.tidbits.com/about/list.html

is what you need to use to subscribe to a new list. The trick is that
you MUST be careful to use the same email address as the system
already has or you'll end up with a second account.

Eventually, I'll have a single Manage Subscriptions page where you
can just check boxes for the lists you want. If only there weren't so
many other things to do every day!

cheers... -Adam

--
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Publisher <http://www.tidbits.com/adam/>

Erm... one of us is grossly misunderstanding the other here. I hope
it's not me, but that has been known to happen...

On Aug 22, 2006, at 1:32 PM, Adam C. Engst wrote:

> At 1:53 PM -0700 8/20/06, David Emme wrote:
>> OK, with all of this talk, I decided to see what the HTML version
>> would look like; I'm currently getting the old-foogey plain text
>> version.
>>
>> I guess it's Friday and I'm stupider than usual, but I've clicked
>> around the "Manage Subscriptions" and "Your Preferences" web pages,
>> and I just can't see how to make this change.
>
> Right now, the interface on those pages is insanely bad, and I'm
> working with a programmer at Web Crossing to fix them. But they're
> useful for changing your address or unsubscribing, not for adding a
> new subscription.
>

Yes, well that's what I'm trying to do -- change the style of an
existing subscription, as I tried to point out in my first sentence.
I already subscribe to TidBITS; I was just trying to switch from
plain text to the HTML format the people have been bragging about
lately.


>> I can see where to make the choice if I was starting a subscription
>> ("TidBITS Subscription Options"), but not if I'm already a
>> subscriber. I guess I could unsubscribe and re-subscribe, but that
>> seems rather lame, and would probably just annoy the TidBITS
>> database.
>
> The Subscription page at this link:
>
> http://www.tidbits.com/about/list.html
>
> is what you need to use to subscribe to a new list. The trick is that
> you MUST be careful to use the same email address as the system
> already has or you'll end up with a second account.

Aha; after having looked at that page again, I think I see the
problem: terminology. In my brain, TidBITS is a single list with two
styles - plain text and HTML. To you the "text format" and "HTML
format" are *different* lists. Yes? So in your terms, I do have to
"unsubscribe and re-subscribe" to a *different* (HTML) list.

I guess my confusion stems from other lists I belong to, which have a
"Your Preferences" web page where I can simply change style (and
other prefs) at any time by selecting radio buttons, without worrying
about "be[ing] careful to use the same email address as the system
already has or you'll end up with a second account". (See any list
marked "Delivered by Mailman" <http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/
index.html> and containing the caricature of GNU/Stallman.)
Hopefully, as you indicate above, TidBITS will someday have a similar
transparent interface. Meanwhile, I'll go "unsubscribe and re-
subscribe... (lame)" :-)

Cheers!
-Dave

--
FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!
It comes bundled with the software.

On Aug 22, 2006, at 2:44 PM, David Emme wrote:

> I guess my confusion stems from other lists I belong to, which have
> a "Your Preferences" web page where I can simply change style (and
> other prefs) at any time by selecting radio buttons, without
> worrying about "be[ing] careful to use the same email address as
> the system already has or you'll end up with a second account".
> (See any list marked "Delivered by Mailman" <http://www.gnu.org/
> software/mailman/index.html> and containing the caricature of GNU/
> Stallman.) Hopefully, as you indicate above, TidBITS will someday
> have a similar transparent interface. Meanwhile, I'll go
> "unsubscribe and re-subscribe... (lame)" :-)

OK, I did that. Here's the result (for the record): 6 email messages -

( I received 2: )
To sign off from TidBITS, reply to this message.
To sign up for TidBITS in HTML, reply to this message.

( I replied to both - that's 4 )

( Then I received - for a total of 6: )
Mailing list command processed
Welcome to the TidBITS HTML Issue List


Oh, and by the way ... "To sign off from TidBITS..." was marked as
Spam by Mail.

Ain't technology great!

-Dave

--
C++: an octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog.