[Dixonary] Test message

[Paul Keating]

http://f6.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/8E2sQtgZ9iYhH4IES5JCZxwu3h2S7zMOctLSY8sYyonxPcNXyq fJVCCgIztC6kGnPZqWP_SCscAmGShuIsQY/Dixonary%20Crown.html

[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Paul Keating" <coryphaeus (AT) prodigycomputing (DOT) com>
Subject: [Dixonary] Test message

http://f6.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/8E2sQtgZ9iYhH4IES5JCZxwu3h2S7zMOctLSY8sYyonxPcNXyq fJVCCgIztC6kGnPZqWP_SCscAmGShuIsQY/Dixonary%20Crown.html

Beautiful!

Judy

[Paul Keating]

Casting about for a way to display it so that it doesn't in look as though it had been sat on in email clients like Thunderbird, and on Yahoo. The big question is, will that URL stay constant?

[Guerri Stevens]

Paul Keating wrote:
> Casting about for a way to display it so that it doesn't in look as
> though it had been sat on in email clients like Thunderbird, and on
> Yahoo. The big question is, will that URL stay constant?
>
>
I don't know about the URL, but all I get is "document not found". Was
there something there?

--
Guerri

[Toni Savage]

That URL did not work for me just now.

--- Paul Keating <coryphaeus (AT) prodigycomputing (DOT) com>
wrote:

>
> Casting about for a way to display it so that it
> doesn't in look as
> though it had been sat on in email clients like
> Thunderbird, and on
> Yahoo. The big question is, will that URL stay
> constant?
>
>
> --
> Paul Keating
>

[Mike]

Yahoo regularly changes its URLs so that only those who log in can see the content.

[Marijke van Gans]

Paul Keating wrote:

> Casting about for a way to display it so that it doesn't in look as
> though it had been sat on in email clients like Thunderbird, and on
> Yahoo.

Here on mail your message just looked like a huge underlined URL. On
closer inspection it has "Dixonary%20Crown.html" at the end, so i expect
it's about the crown. Will try and find it back and click it next time
i'm online.

Talking about crowns, how did you see my fixed font crown in a box
message a couple of days ago?

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Paul Keating]

That _was_ your fixed-font crown, hatbox and all. I was trying to find
a way to get it to display in Yahoo without it looking as though it
had been sat on. It looked great on tapcis.com, but Yahoo strips out
html tags and reflows everything.

It looks like you can't do anything tabular in a message on Yahoo, so
some of what we are used to doing in messages may need to be posted as
files with a url.

It's was like that for years on WebView, of course, but when most
players used Tapcis it annoyed only a few of us.

I understand that the long url has stopped working, but this should be
ok: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coryphaeus/files/Dixonary%20Crown.html

> Talking about crowns, how did you see my fixed font crown in a box
> message a couple of days ago?

[Bill Hirst]

--- In coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, Paul Keating <coryphaeus@p...> wrote:
>
> Casting about for a way to display it so that it doesn't in look as
> though it had been sat on in email clients like Thunderbird, and on
> Yahoo. The big question is, will that URL stay constant?
>
>
> --
> Paul Keating
How about converting it to a jpg? I've put one in the photo library
here on Coryphaeus. It's only 9k.

-Bill

[Guerri Stevens]

Paul Keating wrote:

>
> I understand that the long url has stopped working, but this should be
> ok: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coryphaeus/files/Dixonary%20Crown.html
>

The crown looked OK, but this weird thing happened. I clicked on the
URL, and was taken to the Yahoo sign-in dialog. I signed in, then it
apparently opened a new Mozilla session to show me the crown. The
original was back at the sign in dialog as though I had not signed in. I
guess that's just the way it works.

--
Guerri

[Marijke van Gans]

Paul Keating said on 05-06-13 20:43 in this group:

> That _was_ your fixed-font crown, hatbox and all.

D'oh! :)

> It looks like you can't do anything tabular in a message on Yahoo

I must say Mike Shefler's lists look great here in mail from the Yahoo
group.

If leading spaces are a problem in the various web views then maybe we
should take care to post formatting-sensitive material (if there are
lines that start with a space) with a "hatbox". You only need the left
edge of the hatbox.

> It's was like that for years on WebView, of course, but when most
> players used Tapcis it annoyed only a few of us.

When i still dealt by hand i always posted the result with a table where
i took great care to avoid leading spaces, even multiple spaces within a
line. Precisely because of CIS's crummy webview. As long as the reading
user managed to choose fixed font it should display even on the web. I'm
considering automating that table and adding it to Dixomatic's result
messages.

> I understand that the long url has stopped working, but this should be
> ok: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coryphaeus/files/Dixonary%20Crown.html

Works. And, credit where credit is due (in as far as it is meaningful to
speak of separate identities of identical copies of digital data), i
snagged that particular crown from a message by Dodi. Only days before
GO TAPCIS finally, ummm, WENT.

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Marijke van Gans]

Bill Hirst said on 05-06-13 23:40 in this group:

> How about converting it to a jpg? I've put one in the photo library
> here on Coryphaeus. It's only 9k.

JPEG is the worst possible format for images with sharp boundaries or
lines (especially images with text) and generally all cartoons, diagrams
and such in a few distinct colors. You either get almost no compression,
or if you crank up the compression you get ghosted shadow effects.

GIF and PNG both have the right kind of compression mechanism for this
kind of thing.

JPEG is ideal for photographs, and things that look like photographs.
Shades of color merging into each other, lots of fuzzy fiddly detail,
subtle color and natural shapes. Where GIF and PNG perform poorly.

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Daniel B. Widdis]

I'm going to reply to this Test Message thread to see if my new
signature works.

--
Dan Widdis
on the road (or at sea) using Gmail on the web

[Daniel B. Widdis]

On 6/14/05, Daniel B. Widdis <widdis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
> --
> Dan Widdis
> on the road (or at sea) using Gmail on the web

Yay, it works!

It even uses the internet standard for signatures: <cr><dash><dash><space><cr>

[John Barrs]

Dan

you wrote
On 6/14/05, Daniel B. Widdis <widdis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

>> --
>> Dan Widdis
>> on the road (or at sea) using Gmail on the web


>Yay, it works!

>It even uses the internet standard for signatures:
><cr><dash><dash><space><cr>


*****BUT that message had no siggie *****

JohnnyB

[Marijke van Gans]

Daniel B. Widdis said on 05-06-15 06:41 GMT in this group:
>
> the internet standard for signatures: <cr><dash><dash><space><cr>

I didn't know it was a standard, but i noticed a few days ago that
Thunderbird displays people's sig (and any following material) greyed
out *if* the sig follows exactly that standard (including the space).

It's useful here on the list, to mitigate the visual impact of all the
"Yahoo! lists are here" stuff at the bottom.

So i changed my usual sig

--Regards, marijke [whatever]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

to the format you mention (which T'bird gives by default).

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Bill Hirst]

Ok, it's now a GIF.

http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/coryphaeus/vwp?.dir=/&.src=gr&.dn
m=Dixonary+crown+gif.gif&.view=t&.done=http%
3a//photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/coryphaeus/lst%3f%26.dir=/%
26.src=gr%26.view=t

But can users who aren't on Yahoo see it?

--- In coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, Marijke van Gans <gmarijke@g...>
wrote:
> Bill Hirst said on 05-06-13 23:40 in this group:
>
> > How about converting it to a jpg? I've put one in the photo
library
> > here on Coryphaeus. It's only 9k.
>
> JPEG is the worst possible format for images with sharp boundaries
or
> lines (especially images with text) and generally all cartoons,
diagrams
> and such in a few distinct colors. You either get almost no
compression,
> or if you crank up the compression you get ghosted shadow effects.
>
> GIF and PNG both have the right kind of compression mechanism for
this
> kind of thing.
>
> JPEG is ideal for photographs, and things that look like
photographs.
> Shades of color merging into each other, lots of fuzzy fiddly
detail,
> subtle color and natural shapes. Where GIF and PNG perform poorly.
>
> --
> Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
> http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Bill Hirst]

I think my previous reply vanished. So, take two. I've made the JPG
into a GIF and it's here:
http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/coryphaeus/vwp?.dir=/&.src=gr&.dn
m=Dixonary+crown+gif.gif&.view=t&.done=http%
3a//photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/coryphaeus/lst%3f%26.dir=/%
26.src=gr%26.view=t
Now my question is, can non-Yahoo readers see it?

-Bill


--- In coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, Marijke van Gans <gmarijke@g...>
wrote:
> Bill Hirst said on 05-06-13 23:40 in this group:
>
> > How about converting it to a jpg? I've put one in the photo
library
> > here on Coryphaeus. It's only 9k.
>
> JPEG is the worst possible format for images with sharp boundaries
or
> lines (especially images with text) and generally all cartoons,
diagrams
> and such in a few distinct colors. You either get almost no
compression,
> or if you crank up the compression you get ghosted shadow effects.
>
> GIF and PNG both have the right kind of compression mechanism for
this
> kind of thing.
>
> JPEG is ideal for photographs, and things that look like
photographs.
> Shades of color merging into each other, lots of fuzzy fiddly
detail,
> subtle color and natural shapes. Where GIF and PNG perform poorly.
>
> --
> Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
> http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Bill Hirst]

That long url isn't working right. How about this?

<http://tinyurl.com/9d8gm>

-Bill

[Guerri Stevens]

Daniel B. Widdis wrote:
> On 6/14/05, Daniel B. Widdis <widdis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
>
> It even uses the internet standard for signatures:
<cr><dash><dash><space><cr>
>
>

Oh, that's the internet standard? I was about to ask if anyone had found
a way to get rid of, or modify, T-bird's format (yes, I know I can edit
it in the composed message).

--
Guerri

[Guerri Stevens]

Bill Hirst wrote:
> Now my question is, can non-Yahoo readers see it?

I suspect the answer is "no". I clicked on the link and Yahoo wanted my
login information or wanted me to sign up to enjoy all the great stuff
they've got.

What would be the delivery procedure for the crown in the future? In the
past, it was just posted as a message. Would you still do that? If so,
the crown itself could be an attachment and presumably anyone could open
and view it. It would be an annoyance to CompuServe HMI users, though.

--
Guerri

[Hugo Kornelis]

Hi Guerri,

> > It even uses the internet standard for signatures:
> <cr><dash><dash><space><cr>
> >
> >
>
> Oh, that's the internet standard?

The usenet (aka newsgroups) standard, actually. With the growth of online
communities, it might spread out to Internet-based discussion groups,
Forums, etc., but this standard for signatures originated on usenet and is
recognised by most news reader software.

Best, Hugo

[Judy G. Russell]

We could put a crown into the tapcis.com site and then people could post BOTH the Yahoo link and the Tapcis link and...

[Daniel B. Widdis]

On 6/15/05, John Barrs wrote:
> *****BUT that message had no siggie *****

Indeed. When you use gmail's quick-reply feature, you don't need to
add the signature. When you reply normally, the signature line is
automatically included in the text and can be edited or deleted. I
then manually deleted it, since I was already quoting it.

Bottom line (pun intended) is that I don't have to type it or, when
using my palm, graffiti-write it.

--
Dan Widdis
at sea using Gmail on the web

[Marijke van Gans]

Guerri Stevens said on 05-06-15 19:22 GMT:
>
> What would be the delivery procedure for the crown in the future? In the
> past, it was just posted as a message. Would you still do that?

The following dual approach might cover most bases: a URL for those who
are online anyway and a crown-in-a-hatbox that works in HMI and on
tapcis.com on the web, and hopefully some other places too.

http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/dixcrown.png


<pre>

+-------------------------+
| |
| D |
| D * * * D |
| * o ^ o ^ o ^ o * |
| ^o * o * o * o * o^ |
| \ \ \ \|/ / / / |
| \^o^*^o^*^o^/ |
| \o_o_o_o/ |
| |
+-------------------------+

</pre>


You may have to look at View menu, Message Source (Ctrl U) in T'bird to
see what i actually typed. Everybody has hereby permission to link to
the dixcrown.png URL in their messages (there's no login required to
view that site).

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]

[Daniel B. Widdis]

On 6/15/05, Marijke van Gans <gmarijke (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
> It's useful here on the list, to mitigate the visual impact of all the
> "Yahoo! lists are here" stuff at the bottom.

Wow -- actually that yahoo groups stuff doesn't even show at all in
Gmail's web view. See how nice standards are? :)

--
Dan Widdis
on the road (or at sea) using Gmail on the web

[Guerri Stevens]

Judy G. Russell wrote:
> We could put a crown into the tapcis.com site and then people could post
> BOTH the Yahoo link and the Tapcis link and...
>
>

But there is still at least one person participating in the game via
CompuServe Mail, read by TAPCIS. One person that I know of, that is.
There may be others.

On the other hand, crowns are reasonably rare, and if a link to one
arrived, the recipient wouldn't necessarily have to *see* it.

--
Guerri

[Guerri Stevens]

Marijke van Gans wrote:
> You may have to look at View menu, Message Source (Ctrl U) in T'bird to
> see what i actually typed. Everybody has hereby permission to link to
> the dixcrown.png URL in their messages (there's no login required to
> view that site).
>

Personally, I'd be happy with the crown in a box, if that works for
everyone.

What was I supposed to see with Ctrl+U that I couldn't otherwise see?
Ctrl+U seemed to just give me the routing, or other, internet
gobbledegook. Oh, I do see one difference, the blank line that is
between the line of o's with asterisks between them and the first of the
lines with slashes. There may be other subtle differences. Too late at
night for me to look. I have to send everything then time how long it
takes to come back to me.

--
Guerri

[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Marijke van Gans" <gmarijke (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Test message from Judy

Will it work if I copy and paste the crown? It worked when I sent it to myself, but Yahoo! Groups or other programs may mess it up ?????????

+-------------------------+
| |
| D |
| D * * * D |
| * o ^ o ^ o ^ o * |
| ^o * o * o * o * o^ |
| \ \ \ \|/ / / / |
| \^o^*^o^*^o^/ |
| \o_o_o_o/ |
| |
+-------------------------+



Judy Madnick
Albany, NY

[Marijke van Gans]

Guerri Stevens said on 05-06-16 01:37 GMT:
> What was I supposed to see with Ctrl+U that I couldn't otherwise see?

*I* don't know what others will see, that's the whole point. People
looking at tapcis.com on the web won't see that "CODE" between [ ]
brackets for instance -- but it will make the whole thing sit on a blue
field in fixedfont text for them. Others may not see some other things.

> Ctrl+U seemed to just give me the routing, or other, internet
> gobbledegook.

It does that too. But it shows what people actually typed. For example
_this_ will show up as underscore this underscore rather than as an
underlined word. It also shows i just typed the URL as is (underlining
and clickability, if any, of URLs are added by the software used to view
the message, pretty universally nowadays).

I only wrote that remark about Ctrl U for the benefit of whoever might
want to copy part of that message to display a crown in future.

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Marijke van Gans]

Judy Madnick said on 05-06-16 01:38 GMT:

> Will it work if I copy and paste the crown? [...]
>
> +-------------------------+
> | |
> | D |
> | D * * * D |
> | * o ^ o ^ o ^ o * |
> | ^o * o * o * o * o^ |
> | \ \ \ \|/ / / / |
> | \^o^*^o^*^o^/ |
> | \o_o_o_o/ |
> | |
> +-------------------------+

Works for me -- but then, i view *all* messages in fixed font anyway.

To make it work for the largest number of people perhaps you should add
the word CODE between square [ ] brackets on a line before the crown,
and the word /CODE between square [ ] brackets on a line after the crown.

You're welcome to link to http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/dixcrown.png
as well, in a message delivering a crown. Belt and braces approach...

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Marijke van Gans]

Bill Hirst said on 05-06-15 18:00 GMT:

> That long url isn't working right. How about this?
>
> <http://tinyurl.com/9d8gm>

The tinyurl tiny url is brilliant.

The actual site is the same of course, so still requires login.

The picture is atrocious though, all fuzzy and with ghosting haloes. It
looks as if you took the jpeg and converted *that* to a gif (which gives
the absolute worst of both worlds, and a big file too). To cap it all
Yahoo! shows a thumbnail at non-integer scaling which is even fuzzier.

Never mind me, i'm particular about graphics image quality degradation,
and have no social skills to say things nicely <g>.

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[leonardgoran]

--- In coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, Marijke van Gans <gmarijke@g...>
wrote:
> Works for me <

Marijke, I'm testing to see if copying and pasting the the Dixon Crown
from an old Tapcis message will work for me with this message to you:


D
D * * * D
* o ^ o ^ o ^ o *
^o * o * o * o * o^
\ \ \ \|/ / / /
\^o^*^o^*^o^/
\o_o_o_o/ Regards, Len

[leonardgoran]

--- In coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, "Judy Madnick" <email@j...> wrote:
> Will it work <

Judy, I'm conducting a test of the Crown to see if an old Tapcis
message works.


D
D * * * D
* o ^ o ^ o ^ o *
^o * o * o * o * o^
\ \ \ \|/ / / /
\^o^*^o^*^o^/
\o_o_o_o/ Regards, Len

[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Marijke van Gans" <gmarijke (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Test message

<< To make it work for the largest number of people perhaps you should add
<< the word CODE between square [ ] brackets on a line before the crown,
<< and the word /CODE between square [ ] brackets on a line after the crown.

You may have explained this earlier -- but what does the "code" code <G> actually do?

Judy Madnick
Albany, NY

[leonardgoran]

--- In coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, "leonardgoran" <LENSUE468@c...>
wrote:
> Judy, I'm conducting a test of the Crown to see if an old Tapcis
message works.
>
>
> D
> D * * * D
> * o ^ o ^ o ^ o *
> ^o * o * o * o * o^
> \ \ \ \|/ / / /
> \^o^*^o^*^o^/
> \o_o_o_o/ Regards, Len


Judy, it didn't work too well in the message I'm reading via Yahoo--the
crown is skewered. Yet when I hit reply and my message appears the
crown looks absolutely straight. Another puzzling computer feature!
Regards, Len [g]

[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: leonardgoran <LENSUE468 (AT) compuserve (DOT) com>
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Test message

<< Judy, I'm conducting a test of the Crown to see if an old Tapcis
<< message works.

Works for me!

Judy Madnick
Albany, NY

[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: leonardgoran <LENSUE468 (AT) compuserve (DOT) com>
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Test message

<<Another puzzling computer feature!

Computers can be one big puzzle. <sigh>

Judy Madnick
Albany, NY

[leonardgoran]

--- In coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, "Judy Madnick" <email@j...> wrote:
> Works for me!<

Judy, really--you got a nice even crown, not one slightly skewered.
When I read my own message the crown is definitely slightly off.
Regards, Len

[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: leonardgoran <LENSUE468 (AT) compuserve (DOT) com>
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Test message

<< Judy, really--you got a nice even crown, not one slightly skewered.
<< When I read my own message the crown is definitely slightly off.

Gee, thanks! <G

Judy Madnick
Albany, NY

[Bill Hirst]

The tinyurl tiny url is brilliant.

The actual site is the same of course, so still requires login.

The picture is atrocious though, all fuzzy and with ghosting haloes. , etc....

Ok, so a graphic crown is a poor idea. I think I'll go by Yahoo! later and delete it. We're just going to have to accept that Yahoo! doesn't make it easy for Ascii artists.

[Marijke van Gans]

Bill Hirst said on 05-06-16 19:26 GMT:

> Ok, so a graphic crown is a poor idea.

Well no, a graphic crown is fine if you save the screenshot as GIF, PNG
or TIFF (which have "zip"-like lossless compression) or BMP (run length
compression or, more usually, no compression). And/or freely convert
back and forth between any such formats to your heart's content.

JPEG is different. It has a peculiar FFT lossy compression which is the
work of genius for photographs, achieving better image quality for that
kind of image at much smaller image sizes than any lossless compression.

It just works very poorly for cartoons, logos, diagrams etc. For such
discrete boundaries of a few distinct colors, PNGs and GIFs excel (and
here they get smaller files too). It's horses for courses.

Crucially though -- because JPEG is lossy, you can never recover the
original once it has been through a stage of JPEG conversion. The JPEG
you saved as GIF has all the smudginess of the best JPEG could do on it,
and because of that it is also 89K rather than the 3K it would have been
if saved as a crisp GIF or PNG first time round.

I hope you found this minitutorial on graphics formats interesting
rather than annoying...

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Marijke van Gans]

Judy Madnick said on 05-06-16 15:38 GMT:

> << To make it work for the largest number of people perhaps you should add
> << the word CODE between square [ ] brackets on a line before the crown,
> << and the word /CODE between square [ ] brackets on a line after the crown.
>
> You may have explained this earlier -- but what does the "code" code <G> actually do?

It's vBulletin code that tells the software behind the www.tapcis.com
site "This material is is a snippet of computer program code, now
programmers like to see that sort of stuff line up right, so keep all
the spaces and use monospaced font". It wasn't really computer code but
ASCII art of course, but the same "CODE" tags work for any snippet of
material you want to give that treatment.

While the CODE thing solves the problem for those who view things on the
web at the www.tapcis.com site, it doesn't do anything for those who
receive the list by email, or watch things at Yahoo! on the web.

In my original boxed crown posting i put additionally a pair of

<pre>
crown goes here
</pre>

tags in. That's HTML for the same purpose. I don't know if that actually
helped anybody. I can't tell here --- i receive non-HTML mail and view
everything in monospace (fixed) font anyway.

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Paul Keating]

I guess you are using Thunderbird. You have set (or accepted as default)
a proportional font to display messages, but a fixed-width font for
quoted messages. Ascii art is not at its best in proportional fonts, so
it is skewed when you read it, but snaps back into the vertical when you
see it quoted in a reply.

leonardgoran wrote:

>when I hit reply and my message appears the
>crown looks absolutely straight.
>
>


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[Paul Keating]

I started this thread, because I thought the Dixon crown was a tradition
that needed to be upheld.

I still think that. But we've all had a shot at making the Web look like
CompuServe, and despite the ingenuity displayed, I think we've come
reluctantly to the conclusion that it can't really be done.

So I think we should just give up on ascii art, as a craft whose time
has come and gone.

In the City of London, just across the street called London Wall from
Moorgate Station, lies the guildhall of the Worshipful Company of
Armorers and Braziers, a regency jewel of a building, dwarfed by the
steel and glass and traffic around it. It houses one guild and not two,
because the armourers had to merge with somebody when nobody wanted
steel armour anymore. They had to merge with the braziers, despite the
fact that you can't make useful armour out of brass: either too heavy or
too brittle. It wasn't so much a merger as a submergence.

There's a lesson to be learnt from that.

We don't live in an ascii world anymore.

It is of course sad that clever and ingenious crafts are lost when the
technological restrictions they were so good at overcoming no longer
exist. But we're kidding ourselves if we pretend that we still need the
crafts because the restrictions are still there. They're not.

I'm not saying we don't need the Dixon crown anymore. Of course we do.
That is part of what makes the game what it is. But maybe it needs to
come as a .gif or a .pdf or a .jpeg.


Bill Hirst wrote:

>Marijke van Gans Wrote:
>
>
>>The tinyurl tiny url is brilliant.
>>
>>The actual site is the same of course, so still requires login.
>>
>>The picture is atrocious though, all fuzzy and with ghosting haloes. ,
>>etc....
>>
>>
>
>Ok, so a graphic crown is a poor idea. I think I'll go by Yahoo! later
>and delete it. We're just going to have to accept that Yahoo! doesn't
>make it easy for Ascii artists.
>
>
>
>

--
Paul Keating
The Hague
52N02 4E19



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[leonardgoran]

--- In coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, Paul Keating <keating@a...> wrote:
> I guess you are using Thunderbird.<

Paul, I don't think so--I barely know what that is. I'm a Compuserve
user. Regards, Len

[Marijke van Gans]

Paul Keating said on 05-06-16 22:47 GMT:

> In the City of London, just across the street called London Wall from
> Moorgate Station, lies the guildhall of the Worshipful Company of
> Armorers and Braziers, a regency jewel of a building, dwarfed by the
> steel and glass and traffic around it. It houses one guild and not two,
> because the armourers had to merge with somebody when nobody wanted
> steel armour anymore. They had to merge with the braziers, despite the
> fact that you can't make useful armour out of brass: either too heavy or
> too brittle. It wasn't so much a merger as a submergence.

I liked the story. But i think we're talking at cross purposes, on a
number of levels.

> We don't live in an ascii world anymore.

Patently untrue. Strict ASCII (the 7-bit code) may be on the way out
(except in internet addresses where you still can't expect an 8-bit
character to be reliably transmitted across intermediate servers) but
really, the "ASCII" we're talking about in the context of "ASCII art" is
any (usually 8-bit) character set transmitted *as such*. Without font
face info, without bold or italic styles, without font sizes, without
colors, without pictures. And it is still very much alive.

Over 90 percent of what i write in the course of a day is that kind of
"ASCII". I use it when i write
- emails (i won't knowingly inflict "HTML mail" on anyone i know)
- source of everything i code (be it C, asm, etc.)
- much of the documentation
and when i write in an added value format, such as a thesis in LaTeX or
a web page in HTML or a Windows help file source in RTF, what i *really*
write (the LaTeX, HTML or rtf source code) is still pure ASCII. Written
by hand.

But all this is largely irrelevant. What we encounter here among
Dixonary players trying to communicate via three channels and thirty
different software setups is how hard it can be to just see the plain
text, withour well meaning software intruding and skewing things.

> But we're kidding ourselves if we pretend that we still need the
> crafts because the restrictions are still there. They're not.

The shoe is on the other foot. There are new restrictions, our quest to
get alignment right tries to overcome them.

Don't kid yourself. The alignment problem is not just there for ASCII
art as a leisure activity (such as quaint old crowns). Messages where
alignment matters are the lifeblood of scientists, engineers,
programmers and so on when they need to communicate
- program code
- tabular data
- schematic diagrams doodled as ASCII art
in email or newsgroup posts.

And the problem isn't caused by everything being so wonderful and snazzy
and modern now, but by one silly coincidence and one instance of human
stupidity.

The silly coincidence is that HTML source looks a lot like the intended
output text it codes for, except that its designers adopted the common
convention in programming languages that any sequence of whitespace
characters (spaces, tabs, newline) is as good as a single space.

The human stupidity is that people who designed the scripts that power
most web message boards took a shortcut, accepting message text typed in
as if it was HTML source, with just a quick fixup to add paragraphing.
And disregarded the issue that that method completely collapses any
consecutive spaces.

So... now we need good workarounds.

Even here (not a hotbed of swapping snippets of C code or a hastily
executed wiring diagram or genome data or group theory character tables
or plant breeding trial results or Feynman diagrams or...) we already
find ourselves badly needing good alignment -- not just for that daft
crown but for the rolling scores of every round as well!

By the way, those brass workers are now as extinct as the Frontpage and
Shockwave jockeys will be in three years' time, but steel armor plating
got a new lease of life in the shape of the hard to argue with tank...

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Guerri Stevens]

I agree. I believe you have proved that an ASCII crown can be delivered
to everyone. If that is true, I suggest we continue doing that. It may
take up more space than a link, but undoubtedly takes up less than a
.gif or whatever. We aren't going to be sending zillions of them and as .
far as I'm concerned, I'd rather get the crown intact than have to click
on a link to go see it.

Dodi has typically been doling out the crowns. Maybe you could explain
to her what she has to do to get it to work for all of us and we can
continue as we have been.

--
Guerri

[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Marijke van Gans" <gmarijke (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Test message

<< i receive non-HTML mail and view everything in monospace (fixed) font anyway. >>

Yet I received your message in HTML . . . even though I've chosen "Do not convert to HTML - Don't change the format of messages I receive" in the Cory Yahoo! Group.

Judy Madnick
Albany, NY

[John Barrs]

Marijke

> i .. view everything in monospace

You surprise me but it accounts for a lot! from my research days, monospace was the kind of place where people who couldn't face up
to the real world did their research - like ecologists working in 2-species comunities when the real world was rain-forest - <vbgd&r
- although I doubt if there is anywhere far enough>


JohnnyB [using email; via corypaheus/yahoogroups]


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[Paul Keating]

>> The alignment problem is not just there for ASCII
>> art as a leisure activity (such as quaint old crowns). Messages where
>> alignment matters are the lifeblood of scientists, engineers,
>> programmers and so on

That much we can agree on. The question is about how the alignment is to be achieved.

I still remember mechanical typewriters that had settable metal tab stops on a toothed rail. Hit the tab key and the carriage would trundle along to the next stop.

Programmers emulated that by embedding spaces, or by having complicated rules about how you translate an HT character into 1-8 spaces depending on context. Ask any Python programmer (a language where indentation is syntactic) how well that works, even between different text editors on the same machine.

As you say, we need tabular data. Monospace type and carefully counted spaces is one way to do it, but by no means the best way: it was always an emulation. (And to be fair, the mechanical typewriters couldn't do right-aligned tabs, so the typists had to do a similar emulation, though they generally used backspaces to achieve it.)

Many of the software platforms we have to deal with now assume they can do what they like with whitespace. That is what I meant by "not an ascii world" -- the software sees semantic whitespace, however spelt, not a row of nine char(32)s that it has to reproduce verbatim. It isn't looking at the individual characters anymore, but what the characters represent.




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[donjordan]

Judy,

The crown came through fine in compuserve e-mail using Ozwin2.


Don

[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: donjordan <donjordan (AT) compuserve (DOT) com>
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Test message

<< The crown came through fine in compuserve e-mail using Ozwin2.

Good! The truth is, most of the time I let others post the crown. <G>

Judy Madnick
Albany, NY

[Marijke van Gans]

Judy Madnick said on 05-06-17 12:18 GMT:

> Yet I received your message in HTML . . . even though I've chosen "Do
> not convert to HTML - Don't change the format of messages I receive"
> in the Cory Yahoo! Group.

And i have UNchecked "compose as HTML" for every email account in my
Thunderbird, and in the list of domains to never ever send HTML too i
filled in net, org, com, info, and a bunch of country TLDs (as well as
the pirated "uk" non-domain), to cover most bases <g>.

So i don't know whose culpa this is but i don't think it's mea...

What do you actually mean when you say "in HTML", how can you tell?

There were a few messages recently (that crown business) where i put a
couple HTML <pre>...</pre> tags in by hand in what i thought was still
an ASCII message, just in case it would help those seeing it on the web.

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Marijke van Gans" <gmarijke (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Test message

<< What do you actually mean when you say "in HTML", how can you tell?

I can receive email in text or HTML format. I send all email in text format, an option offered by Express Plus, my email program. If an email arrives in text format . . . it looks like plain ASCII text (which is probably very redundant!). However, if an email has been sent in HTML format, I see proportional fonts and, of course, any HTML formatting. In addition, a little "tab" above the message indicates HTML or text. Sometimes I can click on either tab and see the message in text OR HTML.

Hope that helps!

Judy Madnick
Albany, NY

[Marijke van Gans]

Judy Madnick said on 05-06-19 11:50 GMT:
> However, if an email has been sent in HTML format, I see proportional
> fonts and, of course, any HTML formatting. In addition, a little "tab"
> above the message indicates HTML or text. Sometimes I can click on
> either tab and see the message in text OR HTML.

Hmmmm.... does all mail from this list come HTMLified or just some?

--
Regards, marijke [52½°N 2°W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Guerri Stevens]

Marijke van Gans wrote:
> Hmmmm.... does all mail from this list come HTMLified or just some?
>

I don't think all mail from this list comes as HTML. Most messages I see
do not have proportional fonts, anyway. I think I have seen some with
proportional fonts, but I am not sure.

--
Guerri

[Tim Bourne]

In article <42B5F18C.3020701 (AT) gmail (DOT) com>, Marijke van Gans wrote:
> Hmmmm.... does all mail from this list come HTMLified or just some?
>
Looking back over the messages since I was last here, it seems that
the only people whose messages don't carry any HTML wrapper are John
Barrs and myself. I don't know how John sends messages; I use the
Virtual Access software, which doesn't do HTML, and I send to the
Coryphaeus list.

Tim B

[John Barrs]

Tim

>
Looking back over the messages since I was last here, it seems that the only people whose messages don't carry any HTML wrapper are
John Barrs and myself. I don't know how John sends messages; I use the Virtual Access software, which doesn't do HTML, and I send to
the Coryphaeus list.
>

That is quite amazing... Maybe I have fought and won *one* battle with Outlook....I have merely set 'Compose in plain text' and
somewhere else down in security said 'send clear text signed messages when sending signed messages' --- whatever that means...

I have lost all other battles - eg. I cannot receive the crown *consistently* - how it arrives depends on how it was sent, and even
the 'reflected' back to me message from cory is distorted and appears in a proportional font. (I am composing in fixed font but I
can find no place to set what the font is - all formatting commands are 'greyed')

Just to clarify my use of terms here... 'reflected': I send a message to cory/yahoo; then when it sends out the message to those on
the list, it includes me - so I see the message from me (invariably within a minute (I've set Outlook to pole every minute) and I
mean 'invariably' - every time - within a minute)

In the context of Dixionary, apart from private messages I only send to the Cory/Yahoo list

JohnnyB [using email; via corypaheus/yahoogroups]



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[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Tim Bourne" <Tim.Bourne1 (AT) ntlworld (DOT) com>
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Test message

<< Looking back over the messages since I was last here, it seems that
<< the only people whose messages don't carry any HTML wrapper are John
<< Barrs and myself.

All my messages are sent in plain text. Have you chosen "Convert to HTML" in Yahoo! Groups?

Judy Madnick
Albany, NY

[Marijke van Gans]

Tim Bourne said on 05-06-20 08:30 GMT:

> In article <42B5F18C.3020701+AEA-gmail.com>, Marijke van Gans wrote:
>
>>Hmmmm.... does all mail from this list come HTMLified or just some?
>>
>
> Looking back over the messages since I was last here, it seems that
> the only people whose messages don't carry any HTML wrapper are John
> Barrs and myself.

The header of my message has

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

which shows i am not +ACo-sending+ACo- HTML (neither does anybody else here
whose messages i've looked at). Remaind the question why people's email
programs wrap most incoming messages in HTML except yours and John's.
Your header has exactly the samr Content-Type as mine, but has

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

whereas mine has 8bit. Significantly, John's also has 7bit. The plot
thickens! So it seems as if "8bit" is used by some software to trigger
"display as HTML" (which leaves those like me who send 8bit text in the
lurch). I will try fiddling with the settings. I'm sending this as UTF7
and see what happens (probably messes up the degree signs in my sig <g>).

--
Regards, marijke [52+AL0AsA-N 2+ALA-W]
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/marijke/

[Tim Bourne]

In article
<200506201227.j5KCRiP4026812 (AT) ms-smtp-03 (DOT) nyroc.rr.com>, Judy
Madnick wrote:
> All my messages are sent in plain text. Have you chosen
> "Convert to HTML" in Yahoo! Groups?
>
That's highly unlikely, but I'll check.

[a few minutes later]

Astonishingly, yes. Now changed. But how did John's
messages escape?

Tim.