Subject:
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Re: // and ** vs {} and [] (was: testing in rtl...)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.publish, lugnet.admin.nntp
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Date:
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Fri, 30 May 2003 12:35:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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16 times
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In lugnet.publish, Todd Lehman wrote:
> In lugnet.publish, William R. Ward wrote:
> > I agree that FTX should translate {} and [] to // and ** when displaying in
> > plain text, and I'm *not* joking.
>
> The problem with that is that articles are stored in the news server in their
> raw original format only. When they're displayed by the web interface, and
> the FTX content is rendered into HTML for viewing on a web browser, it's done
> so on-the-fly by a fairly complex set of Perl5 operations. Although it
> wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to convert {} and [] to // and **
> when dispatching articles by e-mail, I sure don't like the idea of firing up
> Perl to convert the content on-the-fly from the news server every time an
> article is fetched. An alternative to on-the-fly converstion might be to
> store two copies of articles on the server (one raw, one converted), but that
> seems pretty gunky to me.
>
> But all of the above presupposes that the conversion should even happen in the
> first place, which I disagree with anyway. If the conversion did occur, what
> would happen in replies? How would those get magicly converted back?
>
> Let's approach the problem from a different direction: What if FTX simply
> supported // and ** directly? I'll bet that if it did, a lot of people would
> choose that over {} and [], and you'd be able to read them in Mozilla.
>
> Now I'm tossing this idea out without having thoroughly thought through the
> ramifications of parsing. The syntax of // and ** is much more subtle than
> the syntax of {} and [].
>
> Help convince me that // and ** could be parsed without horrible anomalies
> and exception tables. Here is some food for thought...
>
> Menelaus replied, "/How/ do I take your meaning? Am I to stay with ...
>
> "Have you read Steven King's /Pet Semetary/?" she asked.
>
> "What's the /Herald/'s position on this issue?"
>
> Coffee with cream /and/or/ sugar.
>
> "No, you're supposed to turn it /counter/clockwise!"
>
> I think all of those except the last one could be handled with some clever
> word-boundary detection. Some more:
>
> * = .10 level (10%) ** = .05 level (5%) *** = .01 level (1%)
>
> I think *Bill* was the one who mentioned this earlier.*
>
> Dude, I love your mosaic! (*Wow!*)
>
> Microsoft (*cough* bloat *cough*) Windows.
>
> (*^_^*)
>
> I suppose that defining a word boundary might start with dividing the ASCII
> character set into 3 character classes...
>
> 1. Whitespace - tabs, spaces, newlines
> 2. Printable "punctuation" characters - .,:;!?'"()[]{}
> 3. Everything else - letters, numbers, and other symbols
>
> ...and then doing...
>
> my $FOO = q{.,:;!?'"()[]{}};
> my $BAR = join "", grep { !m/[\Q$foo\E\s]/ } map { chr($_) } (32..255);
> s{\b([\Q$FOO\E]*)/([\Q$BAR\E])}{$1<I>$2}g;
> s{([\Q$BAR\E])/([\Q$FOO\E]*)\b}{$1</I>$2}g;
> s{\b([\Q$FOO\E]*)\*([\Q$BAR\E])}{$1<B>$2}g;
> s{([\Q$BAR\E])\*([\Q$FOO\E]*)\b}{$1</B>$2}g;
>
> ...or something like that. But that doesn't handle (*Wow!*) or /Herald/'s
> yet.
>
> --Todd
I think you'll find too many anomalies if FTX supports // and ** directly.
You have to also make sure you don't FTX format text that is not intended to be
FTX formatted. Some examples to consider follow.
For slashes:
Valid web addresses:
http://www.lugnet.com/publish/ftx/guide/
//www.lugnet.com/publish/ftx/guide/
http://www.lugnet.com/publish/ftx/guide/lists
Text:
One plate is 1/3 the height of a brick and 2 plates 2/3 the height.
I'll be there on 5/30/03 at noon.
You need to put a </TD> tag after the </A> tag.
my $BAR = join "", grep { !m/[\Q$foo\E\s]/ } map { chr($_) } (32..255);
For asterisks:
If you want to do that use: grep -l a*b* *.txt
The correct formula is a * a + b * b = c * c
Some situations may even be ambiguous as to whether they were intended to be
FTX formatted or not.
Even with [] and {} you might have some problems. For example, what would
happen if I wanted this message to use FTX formatting in a reply to your
message? What would your parsing code look like? And do I really need the
headache of having to take the time to make the FTX changes to preserve the
format? What if I don't know I need to do it in subtle situations?
Brian H. Nielsen
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