Re: [Pan-users] New file posting feature, broken? Misunderstood?

[Duncan]

Heinrich Mueller posted on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:36:32 +0200 as excerpted:

> On 06/28/11 11:17, Duncan wrote:

>> Could the text appear as another post, beside the others?  That's what
>> I expected.

> Perhaps, but I have to figure out what the subject/text would be then.

If it's a reply (as discussed in the next point), the subject is already 
filled in.  And if it's not, the originating post has the subject line 
available just as it would if you were making a normal text post, so it 
can be filled in the same way.

>> Meanwhile, the binary posts all seem to strip the references header. 
>> If the original post triggering them (the one the user selects files to
>> post on) is a reply, the references header shouldn't IMO be stripped
>> but instead should remain, so the posts ultimately end up threaded
>> under the post the user was replying to when he selected the files to
>> post.

> Good point, I'll change that.

Thanks. I just sort of expected it to work that way, but obviously the 
idea didn't seem as intuitive to you as it did to me.  That's what 
testing is for, I guess.  Many heads (and use cases) are better than one! 
=:^)

(I remember when I came up with the idea of linking the posting server to 
the posting profile.  It's a posting setting, so it seemed perfectly 
intuitive to me to have it in the posting profile.  As nobody else had a 
better idea, that's where Charles put the option, but I quickly found out 
just how unintuitive my "perfectly intuitive" ideas are to others, many 
of whom were soon asking on the list how to set that option.  So yeah, 
I'm used to my "perfectly intuitive" ideas not seeming quite so intuitive 
to others.  You're not the first and surely won't be the last. =:^)

>> Finally, could the encoding type be made user-selectable?  For posts to
>> for example gmane, the mailing list to news and back gateway, most
>> readers will be seeing the message in their /mail/ clients, many of
>> which don't implement yenc.  That's the problem I just had (the guy
>> with the question got the files but couldn't read them).  Being able to
>> select encoding type would eliminate that issue.
> Yes, that's possible. But again, the problem lies in the options:
> If you want to post binary data, the text would be the same for _every_
> file. Or at least every upload. Well, it's the user's choice.

I believe you misunderstood me there.  Yes, I had earlier asked about 
text posted along with the files, but that's not what I was suggesting 
here.

What I was suggesting here was that one of the encoding choices be 
"identity", which would effectively post the file as-is, as an un-encoded 
text post that has as its body the literal content of the (text) file.

Look at it as a way to cut-and-paste the exact content of a text file as 
the body of the message, without having to manually open the file in a 
text editor and actually cut-and-paste, but instead simply adding that 
file to the file queue.  The user wouldn't interact with the contents of 
the message any more than they do when it's a binary file.  It would 
simply be posted as text directly, instead of yenc (or uue or whatever, 
this assumes the encoding is selectable) encoded.

> I'll look into all of that if a have the time, but you point out some
> valid things,
> thanks.

Thank you!  Not only is the new feature HUGELY appreciated in itself, but 
it's enjoyable to once again have a new pan feature to explore and try to 
figure out all the use-cases I can come up with to break the concept as 
the author originally implemented it! (Not that such tends to be 
particularly hard for me; see the "perfectly intuitive" note above. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman