On Thursday, December 5, 2013 6:28:54 AM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote: > Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> > Yes, I'm > > aware of web forums: I've used hundreds of them. They suck. They ALL > > suck, they just all suck differently. I could spend the next several > > thousand lines explaining why, but instead I'll just abbreviate: they > > don't handle threading, they don't let me use my editor of choice, > > they don't let me build my own archive that I can search MY way including > > when I'm offline, they are brittle and highly vulnerable to abuse > > and security breaches, they encourage worst practices in writing > > style (including top-posting and full-quoting), they translate poorly > > to other formats, they are difficult to archive, they're even more > > difficult to migrate (whereas Unix mbox format files from 30 years ago > > are still perfectly usable today), they aren't standardized, they > > aren't easily scalable, they're overly complex, they don't support > > proper quoting, they don't support proper attribution, they can't > > be easily forwarded, they...oh, it just goes on. > The real problem with web forums is they conflate transport and > presentation into a single opaque blob, and are pretty much universally > designed to be a closed system. Mail and usenet were both engineered to > make a sharp division between transport and presentation, which meant it > was possible to evolve each at their own pace. > Mostly that meant people could go off and develop new client > applications which interoperated with the existing system. But, it also > meant that transport layers could be switched out (as when NNTP > gradually, but inexorably, replaced UUCP as the primary usenet transport > layer). There is a deep assumption hovering round-about the above -- what I will call the 'Unix assumption(s)'. But before that, just a check on terminology. By 'presentation' you mean what people normally call 'mail-clients': thunderbird, mutt etc. And by 'transport' you mean sendmail, exim, qmail etc etc -- what normally are called 'mail-servers.' Right?? Assuming this is the intended meaning of the terminology (yeah its clearer terminology than the usual and yeah Im also a 'Unix-guy'), here's the 'Unix-assumption': - human communication… (is not very different from) - machine communication… (can be done by) - text… (for which) - ASCII is fine… (which is just) - bytes… (inside/between byte-memory-organized) - von Neumann computers To the extent that these assumptions are invalid, the 'opaque-blob' may well be preferable. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
