Frequently Asked Questions : 520


FAQ / 520

Munafo's FAQ submissions (was Re: 202 FAQ items posted to lugnet.faq) —Robert Munafo

(...) I'll look around and try to find out what the "proper" format is. Maybe you could reply with a pointer to the LUGNET message I need to read. However, I want to point out that text-only ASCII is the world standard format for FAQ files and I'm (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: Munafo's FAQ submissions (was Re: 202 FAQ items posted to lugnet.faq) —Robert Munafo

Okay, I found it. It looks like I can handle it. I can cut and paste to make the job easier. I have 202 examples to work from! (-; Good luck to anyone of average intelligence who tries to figure it out, though. Everyone on LUGNET must be at least (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: Munafo's FAQ submissions (was Re: 202 FAQ items posted to lugnet.faq) —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) You want to re-write the answer? :-, ...or, to quote Bones: I'm an engineer, dammit! Not a technical writer! :-D Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

[faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Robert Munafo

(...) Here's my attempt at a more understandable answer: Subject: How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ? Content-Language: en Topic-Level: 1 Revision: Jacob Sparre Andersen, 1999-05-06 Revision: Jeremy Sproat, 1999-05-10 Revision: Robert (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Jacob Sparre Andersen

Robert: [...] It appears that you were correct, when you wrote that the explanation of the FAQ file format is incomprehensible. I will try to write something easier based on what you wrote (and what I think you misunderstood). Play well, Jacob (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Robert Munafo

(...) Thanks, that would be great. The three parts I think I misunderstood are: 1. The question says "How do I format an entry for the Lugnet FAQ?" so naturally I assumed the answer would be in the form of a step-by-step how-to. Instead it's a terse (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Matthew Miller

Robert Munafo <munafo@gcctech.com> wrote: [snip] (...) [snip, snip; goodbye context] So, there will be but does not currently exist a tool which extracts messages from this newsgroup, checks for actual properly-formatted ones, checks revision, and (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Luis Villa

This might not be my place to suggest, as I have not yet contributed anything, but is there some particular reason why we are custom designing out own thing, instead of using a standardized format which already has conversion tools, like Docbook? (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) But isn't this a contribution? :-, (...) Well, we are and we aren't using standardized formats. BTW, I've never heard about Docbook; I'd like to hear more. The FAQ format was chosen as a compromise between using a format many people are (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Todd Lehman

(...) That's OK -- there doesn't necessarily have to be a strong correlation between the two, right? You've got an opinion and if it's logical (and not a drive-by joke), then it's welcome here no matter what you have or haven't contributed. (...) (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) I have written a tool for my own uses which formats FAQ files on the hard disk. It does not, however, index, validate, searchify, or otherwise process the files for LUGNET consumption -- that'll be implemented by Todd or person(s) commissioned (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Todd Lehman

(...) If you're having trouble uploading it somewhere to distribute it, you could e-mail it to me and I could make it available for anonymous-ftp. --Todd (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) That sounds good. I tend to update it from time to time; e.g. most recently adding all of Robert Munafo's entries and giving them filenames, fixing some headers, etc. For more than one submission, would you prefer e-mail or does LUGNET's FTP (...) (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Todd Lehman

(...) There's a write-only directory called 'incoming' -- you could drop it there, then send me a note and I'll put in into the read-only directory called 'outgoing'. --Todd (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Matthew Miller

(...) What happens if I post random extremely unhelpful (counter-helpful, even) but properly-formatted messages to the newsgroup? Will I break things? :) (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) Nope! That's the beauty of not being automated yet! :-, If I see a new article in this ng (or anywhere else in LUGNET, for tha tmatter) that's probably appropriate for the FAQ, I snag a copy of it and store it in my "LUGNET FAQ -- TODO" (...) (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Todd Lehman

(...) Right, basically. One thing we were talking about a while back was using 'lynx --dump' to convert the source data (which includes minimal HTML markup) into ASCII for spitting out into the ng. (...) For right now, yes, but ultimately this group (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Matthew Miller

(...) Good idea. The current 200+ messages aren't any fun to read. (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Todd Lehman

(...) Wouldn't it be cool if there were something other than HTML that was actually readable as plaintext but which also looked great when converted to HTML? --Todd (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Robert Munafo

(...) It's interesting you said that. For my own purposes (and this is unrelated to LUGNET) I've developed a few simple ASCII tags that I use in my web page source files. My web pages (on (URL) ) are all typed in as plain ASCII text files. I use a (...) (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Good read (Was: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?]) —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) Okay, I've been reading aout numbers for a half hour now. Very interesting reading, at least for a geek such as I. :-, Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: Good read (Was: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?]) —Todd Lehman

(...) Me too! Great stuff, Robert! Say, here's a fun tidbit about the golden ratio if you're interested -- If you plot multiples of phi on the unit interval [0,1), then the nth multiple always falls into the largest "untouched" sub-interval. That is (...) (25 years ago, 16-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Good read (Was: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?]) —Robert Munafo

Well, *since* we're in the off-topic, GEEK newsgroup... <-: (-; [-8 Yes, I knew those things about *phi* and I've left out a lot of other stuff about *phi* for aesthetic reasons. I've been at a bit of a quandary about what to do with my number and (...) (25 years ago, 17-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: Good read (Was: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?]) —Todd Lehman

(...) Majorcool geekage! --Todd (25 years ago, 17-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Todd Lehman

(...) Hee hee! COOL! Say, I wonder if math-geeks have a strong natural affinity toward custom tools like that? Why design a special tool and a custom markup when HTML already exists? Answer: Because it's easy, more pleasant to work with for lots of (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

URL characters —Todd Lehman

(...) Gulp, I made the same mistake in my URL detection code on the web interface here. Just tightened up the set of allowable characters a bit and regression tested...much better now. BTW, I'm consciously going against what W3 says about the ~ (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq, lugnet.admin.general)

Re: URL characters —Lee Jorgensen

(...) Unix makes the ~ character a users home directory ... so UnixSystem/~lee ... would be my home directory ... Now because of this, and since the Internet (Arpanet) were all college schools when it 'went public', the system of choice at colleges (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Todd Lehman

(...) That's what I thought the etymology of ~ was in URLs too -- but how did it ever get *allowed* in URLs in the first place? That's what baffles me. The first time someone tried it, why didn't it fail? The early browsers and httpd daemons must've (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Kevin Loch

Wouldn't NCSA be the one to blame? ncsa-httpd supported the feature that caused people to use ~. Did they make that up? KL (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Larry Pieniazek

Universal Resource Locators (that's what it stands for) started out as path descriptions. For why twiddle is supported, you might read up on the Andrew File System. ~lpien is a valid file path (that is, you can cd to it) on a CTP unix box, or was (...) (25 years ago, 19-Jul-99, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Todd Lehman

(...) Total grokkage there! (Been using ~ for that since '84 :) It's one of the Truly Great Simplicities of modern day computing life, IMHO. (...) I think -that's- the key thing! (People considering it broken.) URLs & URIs do disallow twiddle (ASCII (...) (25 years ago, 19-Jul-99, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Jacob Sparre Andersen

Todd Lehman: (...) The primary reason for disallowing ~ is the special treatment it gets in several European languages. If people type <slash> <tilde> <s> <p> (expecting "/~sp") some systems will just return "sp". Similarly if people type <slash> (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Todd Lehman

(...) Wow. OK, that certainly makes sense. So, the hypothesis is that "~" may have been disallowed so that commonly available software (which used "~" for special formatting tricks) for certain languages didn't have to be altered to parse-recognize (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Jacob Sparre Andersen

Todd Lehman: (...) It works like I described (at least the ~n case) even in Word97/Win95(DK), so I am not sure it is correct to call it a "backward" compatibility problem[1]. People have to learn to type <tilde> <space> to get a tilde on most (...) (25 years ago, 27-Jul-99, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Anders Isaksson

Jacob Sparre Andersen skrev i meddelandet ... (...) for (...) It has nothing to do with different software (MS or others), it's in the keyboard driver (OK, that's probably MS). On a Swedish keyboard '~' is a 'dead char', which is automatically (...) (25 years ago, 31-Jul-99, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Todd Lehman

(...) Me too -- I know what you mean. And the cluelessness about non-U.S. conventions is IMHO even worse than the chauvinism... One thing to remember, though: The A in ASCII does stand for American. :-) Say, I've got a user-interface question about (...) (25 years ago, 2-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Selçuk Göre

(...) Tilde is not a shift+anykey character but rather RightAlt+anykey (ü in Turkish "q" keyboards) character. RightAlt key (actually named as "Alt Gr") behaves differently from LeftAlt key in most european keyboards and only used for performing a (...) (25 years ago, 2-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Anders Isaksson

Todd Lehman skrev i meddelandet ... (...) Agreed, but in my vocabulary 'clueless' rings harsher than 'chauvinist', am I totally out of line there? (...) I don't have all the messages in the thread left (and am off-line, as usual), but I'm sure my (...) (25 years ago, 3-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Selçuk Göre

(...) We have two different keyboard configurations here, "q" and "f". In the first one, letters are all located as a "qwerty" layout with a few additions like ç ö ü and some others that you can't see if I type, and almost all the special (...) (25 years ago, 2-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Todd Lehman

(...) Oh, not at all -- that's exactly what I meant. U.S. cluelessness about non-U.S. conventions is even worse than U.S. chauvinism. At least chauvinists know that other conventions exist. :-) (...) Yes, but the reason ISO-8859-1 (for example) has (...) (25 years ago, 3-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters (off-topic) —Anders Isaksson

Todd Lehman skrev i meddelandet ... (...) Pointers...??? Who needs pointers? We're talking about Pascal, right? :-) With the Object Pascal implemented in Borland Delphi, you can get a looong way without ever using pointers (consciously). BTW, I'm (...) (25 years ago, 3-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Bram Lambrecht

(...) What about just using a Dvorak keyboard? I've never seem one, but it is designed to lessen finger movements across the keyboard, where as QWERTY was designed to slow people down so their typewriters wouldn't jam... --Bram Bram Lambrecht / o o (...) (25 years ago, 3-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

QWERTY keyboards (was: Re: URL characters) —Fredrik Glöckner

(...) I don't think the original purpose of QWERTY was to _slow_ people down. Many mechanical typewriters can operate at hair raising speeds. What causes the typewriter "hammers" to jam is usually two subsequent letters from the same area of (...) (25 years ago, 4-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: QWERTY keyboards (was: Re: URL characters) —Todd Lehman

(...) Hmm, I thought the original purpose of the QWERTY keyboard was to make sure that, while giving a demo, the word TYPEWRITER could be plucked out using all keys from the top row of letters. ;-) --Todd (25 years ago, 4-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: QWERTY keyboards (was: Re: URL characters) —James Powell

(...) Yes, but in the process of making it slow down, you also make it into as inefficent as possable. (and have the keys as far from one another as is possible) My mom has a 70 year old _mechanical_ typewriter, and on a good day, I can still jam it (...) (25 years ago, 4-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: QWERTY keyboards (was: Re: URL characters) —Shiri Dori

(...) That's cool! I never noticed that ;-) -Shiri (25 years ago, 6-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: QWERTY keyboards (was: Re: URL characters) —Todd Lehman

(...) Just for fun, here are a couple one-liners which spit out a list of words that can type typed on a single hand using a QWERTY keyboard... Left hand: cat /usr/dict/words | grep -i '^[qwertasdfgzxcvb]*$' Right hand: cat /usr/dict/words | grep -i (...) (25 years ago, 4-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: URL characters —Jacob Sparre Andersen

Todd: [...] (...) Assuming we still are talking URL's, it is discouraged/invalid because there is a significant risk that people get it wrong if they type it in (which they shouldn't do). You are right that it shouldn't be necessary to rule it out (...) (25 years ago, 5-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Shiri Dori

(...) That sounds really useful! Although, as Todd mentions, would take a while to get used to... (...) Or try a hebrew keyboard. The english characters are on the same places. But when you switch the drive to hebrew, you get totally different (...) (25 years ago, 6-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Dan Boger

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000 05:10:07 GMT "Shiri Dori" <shirid@hotmail.com> wrote concerning 'Re: URL characters': (...) I belive the basic hebrew keyboard configuration comes from hebrew typewriters - which had the comma and semicolon on the upper left side (...) (25 years ago, 6-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Shiri Dori

(...) I'm guessing these are supposed to be letters + tildes on top. Funny thing, tho' - on my computer, which has a Hebrew + English system, I see them as hebrew letters. I've rarely seen that before - I think the only other time was when someone (...) (25 years ago, 6-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

Re: URL characters —Selçuk Göre

(...) No it's not your system..:-) it's just the case of different code pages. Same extended ASCII codes used for specialized characters of many other languages at the same time. I mean what you see on the monitor when you type a special character, (...) (25 years ago, 5-Mar-00, to lugnet.publish)

The way of the Math Geek (was Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Robert Munafo

(...) I actually believe my main reason for doing it was that I had to create hundreds of pages of HTML, and I didn't trust any of the "HTML authoring tools" to do what I wanted. Basically, I thought other people's tools would have bugs or (...) (25 years ago, 19-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Robert Munafo

(...) I should also point out that I have an almost pathological affinity for using ASCII when about 99.5 % of the sane world would use graphics. For example, see: (URL) actually wrote general-purpose code for converting bitmap images of line art (...) (25 years ago, 21-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) Ho...ly...smokes. This is cool. Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 21-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Matthew Miller

(...) I _know_ there's a good smartass answer to this comment somewhere, but I can't think of it. Very tragic. (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Todd Lehman

(...) Ahh, but it wasn't at all a smartass question. :-) Rather, it was 110% serious, tossed out as food for thought. There actually are things that fit the bill above. --Todd (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: QWERTY keyboards (was: Re: URL characters) —Matthew Miller

(...) Interesting: cat /usr/dict/words | grep -i '^[qwertasdfgzxcvb]*$'|wc -l 1447 cat /usr/dict/words | grep -i '^[yuiophjklnm]*$'|wc -l 187 (25 years ago, 4-Mar-00, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Todd Lehman

(...) Robert, I haven't looked closely yet at the rest of your post, but the above paragraph is only correct if it's in the future. :) That is, there's no program yet that goes and collects things from the group. It might not actually even end up (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?] —Robert Munafo

(...) Yeah, I realized that. I just wrote it that way to help point out how abysmally incomprehensible it was before. A better approach would be to write the answer in a way that takes into account the fact that there is no automatic processing yet (...) (25 years ago, 15-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: Munafo's FAQ submissions (was Re: 202 FAQ items posted to lugnet.faq) —Tim Courtney

(...) Heh - but he's a doctor, not an elevator. :) -Tim <>< (URL) timcourtne ICQ: 23951114 If someone tells you you're worth your weight in gold, fatten up. (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: Munafo's FAQ submissions (was Re: 202 FAQ items posted to lugnet.faq) —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) The format won't make it impossible to convert back to plain ASCII. It will, however, make it possible to incorporate into a larger, searchable, multimedia FAQ. The main rationale behind the FAQ format is to have a common source base from (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: Munafo's FAQ submissions (was Re: 202 FAQ items posted to lugnet.faq) —Todd Lehman

(...) (A super-restricted subset of HTML, that is.) --Todd (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)

Re: Munafo's FAQ submissions (was Re: 202 FAQ items posted to lugnet.faq) —Jeremy H. Sproat

(...) Whoops -- thanks Todd; allow me to clarify. s/publishing/output/ig The *final* *output* format of the FAQ may be plain text, it may be DHTML, or it may be etched in 36-bit EBCDIC-encoded XML in Farsi on stone tablets; the FAQ format supports (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)