On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 3:36 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: >> Certainly easier for the average user than trying to do a >> slightly tricky rectangle selection within the Windows console. > > But I'm not seeing that it could possibly be easier than selecting text > and hitting copy and paste. Not even in the Windows console, which I > admit is a bit clunky, let alone a modern IDE. More *familiar*, maybe, > but easier?
The vanilla Windows console (conhost.exe IIRC) is far from ideal for copying and pasting from, and by and large, Windows error popups are *impossible* to copy text from. So people get into the habit of either transcribing by hand (tedious, error-prone, will inevitably abbreviate) or taking a screenshot (100% reliable, nice and easy, gives all the info). In a forum where attachments are acceptable, which one are they going to be encouraged to use? > Unless your sole programming language is Scratch or another "visual > programming language", you're writing text and your question is about > text. And the output is almost certainly text. Especially in the case of > an exception, say. I know that, and you know that, but not everyone does. > I didn't even say *plain text*. I would completely understand it -- hate > it, but understand it -- if people posted HTML and marked up their text > with comments and colour. Hell, I'm even willing to consider that /maybe/ > programming source code should be some form of rich text. But at least > rich text is text, not a bunch of pixels. Yeah, I've occasionally seen HTML emails with full syntax highlighting. It's rare though. > I'm sorry to the OP of the other thread if he feels I'm picking on him, > I'm not intending to single him out. I'm just seeing this habit more and > more often in many different forums, and I had to ask where it was coming > from. It's obviously *learned* behaviour: there's nothing natural about > taking a screen shot to ask a question. I'm not surprised that yet again > Microsoft has made the world a little bit worse by trying to make things > easier for ordinary (l)users, and their bad habits are spreading into the > programming community. Agreed, this is not about any single person. There is a huge problem, and most of it (IMO) derives from a general habit of the Windows (and maybe Mac) GUIs of giving critical information in pop-up windows that have *no way* to get a text dump from. The "culture of the screen shot" has been around for way too long, and it's not going anywhere any time soon, so all we can do is continue to tell people a better way, and... well... hope for the text. Okay, that pun was bad even in my own head. Sorry. Hope for the best. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
