Re: Managing Google Groups headaches

From	Roy Smith <roy@panix.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.python
Subject	Re: Managing Google Groups headaches
Date	2013-12-06 02:36 -0500
Organization	PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC
Message-ID	<roy-1384C7.02363006122013@news.panix.com> (permalink)
References	<5f370a06-8d2c-4d7d-bc22-b9a489c15c59@googlegroups.com> <132658ff-d06a-4136-ade6-353189da5769@googlegroups.com> <mailman.3565.1386170444.18130.python-list@python.org> <roy-9C2ADB.19585404122013@news.panix.com> <51007240-6bc9-4f0b-9937-4883bcc0ceb6@googlegroups.com>

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In article <51007240-6bc9-4f0b-9937-4883bcc0ceb6@googlegroups.com>,
 rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, December 5, 2013 6:28:54 AM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote:

> > 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)'.

It has nothing to do with Unix.  The separation of transport from 
presentation is just as valid on Windows, Mac, etc.

> 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??

Yes.

> 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 communicationŠ
> (is not very different from)
>   - machine communicationŠ
> (can be done by)
>   - textŠ
> (for which)
>   - ASCII is fineŠ
> (which is just)
>   - bytesŠ
> (inside/between byte-memory-organized)
>   - von Neumann computers
> 
> To the extent that these assumptions are invalid, the 'opaque-blob'
> may well be preferable.

I think you're off on the wrong track here.  This has nothing to do with 
plain text (ascii or otherwise).  It has to do with divorcing how you 
store and transport messages (be they plain text, HTML, or whatever) 
from how a user interacts with them.

Take something like Wikipedia (by which, I really mean, MediaWiki, which 
is the underlying software package).  Most people think of Wikipedia as 
a web site.  But, there's another layer below that which lets you get 
access to the contents of articles, navigate all the rich connections 
like category trees, and all sorts of metadata like edit histories.  
Which means, if I wanted to (and many examples of this exist), I can 
write my own client which presents the same information in different 
ways.

Thread

Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 05:52 -0800
  Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-11-29 00:58 +1100
    Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 06:17 -0800
      Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-11-29 01:25 +1100
        Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 07:04 -0800
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-11-29 02:08 +1100
            Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Alister <alister.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2013-11-28 15:50 +0000
              Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 08:22 -0800
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Alister <alister.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2013-11-28 16:33 +0000
            Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Alister <alister.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2013-11-28 15:49 +0000
            Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Alister <alister.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2013-11-28 15:49 +0000
            Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Alister <alister.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2013-11-28 15:50 +0000
              Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2013-11-28 11:43 -0500
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-11-29 04:29 +1100
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Neil Cerutti <neilc@norwich.edu> - 2013-12-02 13:03 +0000
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2013-12-02 08:29 -0500
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Neil Cerutti <neilc@norwich.edu> - 2013-12-02 14:04 +0000
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-02 09:11 -0800
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-02 17:48 +0000
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-03 04:54 +1100
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-02 18:07 +0000
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2013-12-02 19:56 -0500
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2013-12-02 19:54 -0500
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2013-12-02 18:17 -0700
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2013-12-02 20:43 -0500
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-02 18:27 -0800
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2013-12-02 20:09 -0700
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-02 19:26 -0800
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2013-12-03 04:27 +0000
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-03 18:01 +1100
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches alex23 <wuwei23@gmail.com> - 2013-12-03 16:30 +1000
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-03 07:13 +0000
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches alex23 <wuwei23@gmail.com> - 2013-12-04 10:23 +1000
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches Neil Cerutti <neilc@norwich.edu> - 2013-12-04 14:34 +0000
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-04 15:21 +0000
                Re: [OT] Managing Google Groups headaches Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-03 12:09 +0000
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 08:40 -0700
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Travis Griggs <travisgriggs@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 08:23 -0800
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> - 2013-11-28 12:23 -0500
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 11:29 -0700
            Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 10:37 -0800
              Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 11:00 -0800
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 12:55 -0700
              Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Walter Hurry <walterhurry@lavabit.com> - 2013-11-28 19:40 +0000
              Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 11:50 -0700
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Arif Khokar <akhokar1234@wvu.edu> - 2013-11-28 19:46 -0500
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-11-29 14:41 +0000
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2013-11-29 16:17 +0000
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au> - 2013-12-04 11:38 +1100
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-03 17:39 -0800
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-04 13:03 +1100
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au> - 2013-12-05 09:47 +1100
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-05 23:42 -0800
              Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Walter Hurry <walterhurry@lavabit.com> - 2013-11-28 20:39 +0000
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2013-11-28 16:41 -0500
            Re: Managing Google Groups headaches pecore@pascolo.net - 2013-11-30 14:25 +0100
              Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au> - 2013-12-04 11:40 +1100
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2013-12-04 15:50 +0000
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-04 16:07 +0000
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> - 2013-12-04 11:21 -0500
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-04 16:33 +0000
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Zero Piraeus <z@etiol.net> - 2013-11-28 13:29 -0300
            Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2013-11-29 16:15 +0000
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2013-11-28 17:32 -0500
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2013-11-28 17:44 -0500
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-11-29 14:39 +0000
  Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 10:13 -0800
    Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> - 2013-12-04 09:52 -0500
      Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2013-12-04 19:58 -0500
        Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-05 23:13 -0800
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2013-12-06 02:36 -0500
            Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-06 05:03 -0800
              Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-07 00:19 +1100
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-06 05:32 -0800
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-07 00:48 +1100
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-06 06:11 -0800
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-07 01:51 +1100
              ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches] Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-06 19:00 +0000
                Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches] Gene Heskett <gheskett@wdtv.com> - 2013-12-06 14:34 -0500
                Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches] Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2013-12-06 20:54 +0000
                Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches] Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-07 10:42 +1100
                Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches] rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-06 18:33 -0800
                Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches] Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-07 13:41 +1100
                Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches] rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-06 19:16 -0800
                Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches] Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-07 15:08 +1100
                Re: ASCII and Unicode [was Re: Managing Google Groups headaches] MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> - 2013-12-07 03:19 +0000
                Re: ASCII and Unicode giacomo boffi <pecore@pascolo.net> - 2013-12-07 17:05 +0100
                Re: ASCII and Unicode rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-08 08:41 -0800
                Re: ASCII and Unicode Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-08 17:22 +0000
                Re: ASCII and Unicode rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-08 09:39 -0800
                Re: ASCII and Unicode giacomo boffi <pecore@pascolo.net> - 2013-12-08 21:11 +0100
                Re: ASCII and Unicode rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-08 19:02 -0800
              Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2013-12-07 12:27 +1300
              Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> - 2013-12-06 21:24 -0500
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-06 23:43 -0800
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2013-12-07 02:16 -0800
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-07 11:25 +0000
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-07 22:49 +1100
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2013-12-07 11:08 -0500
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Rotwang <sg552@hotmail.co.uk> - 2013-12-07 16:15 +0000
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com> - 2013-12-07 10:19 -0600
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-07 08:27 -0800
                Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> - 2013-12-07 12:04 -0500
          Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-07 03:07 +0000
            Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2013-12-06 22:40 -0500
    Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-05 02:46 +1100
    Re: Managing Google Groups headaches Travis Griggs <travisgriggs@gmail.com> - 2013-12-04 08:31 -0800

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