On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:17, ... <BearJerCares@
> May I advance an opinion without generating too much controversy?
No, of course not. Your post must include a minimum of 25%
controversy to be acceptable :-)
> I thought this site was going to be just that - a place where new users
> to Linux could get very practical down-to-earth advice without much
> technical jargon. I don't think that is the case. Too often, I find
> endless banter of those of you who are extremely experienced with Linux,
> use of the command line, etc. And the information is so involved and so
> technical, that I just scroll on past and don't have the time or
> background to absorb it.
It is, but there are not a lot of questions floating around at the
moment, so the group turns to discussing other things...
You should read that endless banter anyway, though. Even if it is
technically above your head, which it may or may not actually be.
You'll learn something new that way. To use myself for an example, I
know next to nothing about global networking, but I follow the North
American Network Operators Group discussion list and while I still do
not know squat about global networking, when I see the terms come up
elsewhere, the memory is triggered and I at least have an idea about
what's being talked about.
It's also a good way to learn about Linux... For another arbitrary
example, lets say there was some long technical discussion going on
about a certain kernel module. You may or may not know anything about
kernel modules or the kernel itself... but if you still read the
discussion, at some point later, you'll ask a question like "Why does
my network card not show up in the network configurator?
ask something like "Is the driver loaded?" and subconciously, you'll
remember having read a discussion about kernel modules and draw the
link to drivers being kernel modules, and then it will "click".
Of course, that was really just an arbitrary example I pulled out of
thin air, but really, NOTHING we discuss here, or at least 99% of what
we discuss here, is really that involved and technical. Believe me.
Check out the Linux Kernel Mailing List sometime ;-) And besides
which, if you're following along one of these discussions and see a
term or an idea you don't understand, all you have to do is ask... and
if, for some reason, your question gets overlooked, don't take it
personally, it's not people ignoring you so much as people being so
wrapped up in the discussion that they may forget to reply to a
question that is on a different track... So just ask again, like you
did here.
> Then I post a simple (maybe not so simple question) about why those
> extraneous lines appear in the posted e-mails, and those annoying >>>
> characters, and none of you pros even address it.
You're right... it's a simple not-so-simple question. It has
everything to do with A) the mail program you are using, be it the
Yahoo mail interface, gmail, thunderbird, pine, mutt, outlook (and
PLEASE tell me you are NOT using outlook), lotus notes, blackberry,
etc... and B) Yahoo Groups taking your mail and converting it to yet
another format and C) Yahoo groups then converting to a third format
for people who opted to get "traditional style" posts as opposed to
their new, shiny "enhanced style" posts that are just chock-full of
HTML garbage.
One thing you can do to fix weird line wrapping things is to figure
out how to configure whatever you're using for a mail client to word
wrap at a certain character limit. Of course, that's not always
possible, depending on your mail agent of choice, but it's a start.
Some things (like most web mail interfaces) will not allow you to set
arbitrary line-wrap limits so there's little you can do there beyond
continuously hitting the return key after you get a line that looks to
be about the right size.
I see cases where, using the gmail interface and replying, that quoted
text in replies either wrap quickly and look like this:
> this is quoted text that I am using as an example. You see, I am typing this
> out to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Now I'm just typing gibberish
> to add in an extra line here.
and other times, that look like this:
> this is a second block of fake quoted text that I'm creating out of thin air to
demonstrate another artifact of weird email behaviour. I also wonder
why it is that
I started typing the word behaviour with a "u". That's a decidedly
Queen's English
way of doing it.
So the first example is really what quoted material "should" look like.
The second example is what happens when A: you send an e-mail from
some program or interface that does NOT wrap lines at all and B: my
mail agent then decides to wrap at a certain interval, BUT because the
original text does not have a new-line character embedded in it, the
insertion of >> is never triggered, and the quoted text looks weird.
Now, to address your other question. > >> and >>> are the "normal"
and accepted markers for quoted text. The more > you see, the more
levels of quote... in other words this:
You send me an email. When I get your mail, your text looks like this:
Hi, I'm some text.
I quote you in my reply:
> Hi, I'm some text.
Hi Text, I'm some reply.
You quote in your reply:
>> Hi, I'm some text.
> Hi Text, I'm some reply.
What's up?
I quote you:
>>> Hi, I'm some text.
>> Hi Text, I'm some reply.
> What's up?
Not much, just chilling.
and it goes on and on. The OLDER a bit of quoted text is, the more >
will appear in front of it. And before you ask, there is no magic.
Look at the first line of my final example... ">>> Hi, I'm some text"
The first email sent a line of text that looked like "Hi, I'm some text"
The first quote then added a single > to the line.
The next email quotes again, and that adds another > to the quoted
line "> Hi, I'm some text."
The next email quotes yet again, and adds yet another > to the quoted
line ">> Hi, I'm some text"
And it can just snowball.
Look at the "FWD: HAHAHA THIS IS FUNNY TOO CUTE KITTEH ON THE
PIANO!!1!" forwarded messages that people insist on forwarding to
everyone they know, over and over. You'll see things like this:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Because that e-mail has been quoted and forwarded Bob knows how many
times and NEVER been trimmed. Messes like that is why we generally
request that you trim the quoted material down to only what's
necessary in your reply to keep the conversation going.
> If there are simple sites out there to address common and simple
> problems without going into endless detail, which may or may not address
> the problem at hand, I would be glad to know about it.
There are tons of them and they all start with Google. But to be
honest, the endless detail is the important stuff. There's an old
saying thrown about by good Christians..
eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he's fed for a lifetime.
And that's what many of us believe... I'm not implying ANYTHING about
anyone's choice in religion here, or lack thereof, but this ideal is
VERY pervasive in the F/OSS community. The community, despite what
inexperienced people would have you believe, grew up on people
actually learning what they were doing, not being spoon fed answers,
because spoon feeding answers to people generally does nothing to
enhance their knowledge, and thus does nothing to enhance the
community as a whole.
THAT is why you'll sometimes ask a simple question, as you did here,
and get a long, drawn out reply as I have just provided.
Of course, if there is a quick simple answer, you may get that as
well, but if it's something that sounds simple to you, but in reality
is not necessarily simple, then prepare for a potentially lengthy
reply. As I said, your question seems simple on the outside, but in
reality, there are a LOT of factors that affect even something as
trivial sounding as the way lines of text are wrapped in an e-mail
reply. And that is NOT Linux specific either. It has NOTHING to do
with Linux at all. It's a feature/problem with some mail programs,
regardless of what Operating System they run on.
Cheers
Jeff
>
> Just venting a little, sorry!
>
> Jerry in Michigan
>
> PS--I just corrected my text and used the delete key, so I'm quite sure
> I'll have extraneous spaces. What do I do, put everything into a
> text-based word processor and fix everything first, then paste into my
> e-mail? Maybe I'll try that.
>
>
> ------------
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>
>
--
Ogden Nash - "The trouble with a kitten is that when it grows up,
it's always a cat." -
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