The message 1129155977.31359.6.camel@localhost.localdomain from Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.plus.com contains these words:

You are not seeing chomp errors during the Knoppix boot are you ? Some of the symptoms you describe sound like a dud CD Drive.

Ah, I was wondering about that. No1 task today is to disconnect (one at a time) the two UW SCSI drives.

The Knoppix thing sounds like X cannot talk to your graphics card, you may want to use some of the boot options to force Vesa mode (you will still have KDE but it will be a little slow).

ATI Rage 128 (AGP card) - but why can't it just use VGA like any other OS when the drivers aren't loaded?

Another very likely possibility is dud ram, Ram can go in funny ways (including being triggered by temp or just being intermittent) So my advice is to use your other box to burn a Memtest86 Boot CD and run it overnight, checking for errors in the morning.

www.memtest86.com

Thanks - yes that's been suggested too, from various directions, and will be tried.

If CD burning isn't an option you can also find Memtest on some Linux installation media as a pre installation boot option (SuSE and I think Ubuntu does this)

Ah - no, CD burning relies on the duff box - I do have an external parallel port thing which I might be able to get to work, but last time I tried it, it couldn't find the Freecom component, and reinstalling the software didn't help.

I'll look on my CoverCDs

The message XFMail.051012230513.Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk from (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk contains these words:

Tony, that looks like serious hardware problems to me. Difficult to suggest where to start -- was going to suggest putting a different drive in as HD0 and seeing where you got to, but you've tried playing with that sort of thing it seems.

Yes - Win98SE works OK, though there are obviously 'issues'.

One thing that you may find very useful in diagnosis, however, is "Linux on a Floppy", aka "tomsrtbt". Find it at

http://www.toms.net/rb/

donwload the tarball, and follow the instructions in the FAQ. You end up with a single floppy which will plant a very capable mini-Linux in RAM, from which you can explore your system (including playing with the hard drives using fdisk, though I'd leave actially altering anything on the drives until you are pretty clear as to what's going on).

Thanks - sounds useful, but

Note that you'll need a floppy drive capable of formatting the floppy as 1.722MB (/dev/fd0u1722); recent floppy drives should handle this fine.

I haven't got such an animal. However, could I boot from an ordinary one and run tomsrtbt from a memory st.... er - USB port won't be working innit...

The just boot off the floppy, and follow the on-screen instructions. It's all very simple. Since it resides entirley in RAM, you don't need to touch the hard drive if you only want to look at it.

This Linux also includes a good variety of drivers for hardware, as well as an impressive array of system tools.

Hum - I bet it can't compress the (AGP) ATI Rage 128 Pro drivers quite *THAT* much... (Ys, I know they won't e needed - VGA will suffice)

If you can't get it properly booted off the floppy, then you have a problem with the floppy/RAM/motherboard/video; maybe conflict with other devices (you've got an interesting bunch of kit in there).

I was connecting things one at a time, and all seemed hunky-dory until I fed Win 2000 Pro the SP4 CD. I have a5Œ" floppy drive and two SCSI II HDs in there too, but not connected or powered-up yet.

I'm going to gut the box and give it the minimalist treatment, and on advice from Zetnet's development guru, run it for a few days with each added component. He's also sending me some (Windows 2000 diagnostic stuff on a CD.)

But Knoppix falling over is *NOT* a good sign.

Thanks for the input. (I'll have to make a sig of that.)

Highly recommended as a last resort -- I now always have one by me, including in a pocket of my laptop, just in case!

Good luck,

The message 20051012231718.7da2608f.lists@pelvoux.nildram.co.uk from Steve Fosdick lists@pelvoux.nildram.co.uk contains these words:

Multiple OSes having reliablity problems running on the same hardware does suggest there is a hardware fault. I would proceed as follows:

1. Remove all PCI cards that are not required for boot.

There's only the USB card and the modem - I hadn't got round to anything else. I can dispense with the USB card OK because I have a four-port hub now, but before, I couldn't use the memory stick without removing any (scanner or camera) connectors first. Those live in the PCI card now.

If that solves the problem put half of them back etc. i.e. binary search which PCI card is causing the problem.

I'll try that first - well, no, second. I'm slightly suspicious of the SCSI drives - or at least, one of them: I've noticed a tick-tock . . . tick-tock . . . while the box is trying to boot. It still happened last time I tried Knoppix, with HD0 and HD1 disconnected. (They're both in caddies.)

2. If that doesn't fix the problem and you have more than one memory

module again try with half the memory installed, then the other half to test for faulty memory.

Yes, that's another suggestion received from several angles. There are three modules.

3. If you have a multimeter check the voltages the PSU is giving the

motherboard are correct. I had a bout of random locking up when the CPUs 3.3V line was actually 4.4V.

I have a meter, but I've no idea which connectors carry what potential. If you (or someone could add them to the following diagram, I'd be grateful. ___ Orange |o o| Orange Orange |o o| Blue Black |o o| Black Red |o o| Green Black |o o|-, Black Red |o o|-' Black Black |o o| Black Grey |o o| White Purple |o o| Red Yellow |o o| Red ¯¯¯

The message 434E1C7B.7070901@brownowl.com from Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com contains these words:

As has been mentioned, the main problem is probably two slave devices on the same IDE channel. However, there's something else worth pointing out here.

When two devices share the same IDE channel, the speed of said channel slows or is set to the speed of the slowest device. So if you have a whizzy ATA-133 HD as master, and a CD (ATA-33/66) as slave, the fastest that channel will transfer data is 33 or 66, wasting the speed of the HD. So, put the HD and the CD on separate channels or at least configure things so your HD isn't crippled... Oh, and remember there's a difference between ATA-133 and ATA-66 IDE cables...

Hum. No speakee ATA - how do I tell?

First, I had the two IDE HDs on IDE channel 1 (cable detect) and the CD/DVD-RW and Zip on IDE2, CD as master and Zip as slave. The Zip didn't work at all.

Putting HD1 (master) and the Zip (slave) on IDE2 worked after a fashion, but only, I believe, until it had filled the RAM. It only worked well after changing HD1 to slave as well as the zip.

But what you say abut IDE cables being different is new to me. How can I tell ATA-133 from ATA-33/66? I have an idea that all the innards are too elderly for the ATA-133 - the newest is probably HD0, which is a 61·4 GB IMB Deskstar molished in March 2002, and just says: ATA/IDE.

Everything else is older, some of it *MUCH* older.

The message E1EPzWB-00016B-00@pipe.localnet from MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop contains these words:

Aside from the IDE thing (each channel should have exactly one master, else some things complain, so if you remove a master, set the slave to master IMO), I'd also be suspicious of the graphics card. Try knoppix in any "expert" mode to see if it boots in any way, then it's on to what I rudely call standard engineering methods:

Hmmm. So much to try. And, Expert?

Me + Expert = Does not compute

1. rip parts out one by one and put them back in the kit bin;
2. when it works, test parts from the kit bin on a known-good

system;

Ah. If all else fails, I was going to do that the other way round: gut the box to bare motherboard and video card (no onboard graphics), check BIOS etc, then add things one at a time.

3. if that doesn't find the bug, put parts back in various

combinations until the system doesn't work.

I think the one-at-a time method might be more reliable - I have checked for conflicts and there is none.

If you've not got a known-good system around, it can get expensive. Sorry about that. You local computer hardware shop may have diagnostic boards and other tools if you get as far as suspecting the motherboard, but that can also cost (risk of a bad motherboard killing their diagnostic tools, for example).

I have some suspicions about the motherboard: I can't get it to talk to the (external) modem, though it has done so. Task Mangler says it's working OK, likewise the COM ports (tried modem on both), but when I look at it in Control Panel, Telephony and Modems, Properties, Query modem, it says it's either switched off or not connected.

However, a PCI (Hardware) modem works OK.

<note to self>

Reinstall Debian and ditch Windows...

</note>

Anthony Anson wrote:

Oh, Zetnet's development Guru suggested exorcism...

Slugg freelance, very first strip and following on... How to mess up your comptuer ...

http://www.sluggy.com/images/comics/970826a.gif

The message 200510131548.43433.runlevelten@gmail.com from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:

Well, there are so many things to try. Can't distance-analyse your problem= =20 from here. Can type a lengthy and technically naive stream-of-consciousness= =20 on what I'd do though, saving me from doing some work I should be doing.=20 Maybe something will spark an idea at your end, that's how it works with=20 me :)

Sorry, Ten, your mail is almost unreadable.

Well, deciphering it and taking in the contents is doing my head in.

The message 200510140035.41757.runlevelten@gmail.com from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:

...

Sorry, Ten, your mail is almost unreadable.

On reading that back, I see what you mean. Haha.

I don't think you do...

Still, you were warned - rapid, unconnected and tangential thoughts are=20 characteristic of stream of consciousness..

It's not the thoughts, it's the format.

Having been in deep hack for around 4 hours non-stop immediately prior, I=20 fired off that mail in a few seconds.

Don't make excuses for the mail software - it's making a pig's ear of formatting the text, especially ends of lines andnon-standard characters.

I find that once I'm in the zone the part of my brain that controls human=20 language temporarily turns to mush...it sometimes takes a good 10 minutes t= o=20 "surface" again.

Anyway, whilst I appreciate the helpful linguistic critique,

It isn't a critique of linguistics, it's a lament for the absence of plain ASCII

I can't help=20 wondering - did you ever test that ram?

No. I think the URL may have disappeared up the SCSI with the earlier incarnation of ZIMACS - but if it didn't, I shall be visiting it, ta.

Go on, you know you want to. :)

You may be right.

...now this, I can appreciate. I shall try to be mindful of this, though go easy on me if I forget some time. It would still be multipart, mind you, because of the gpg signature :)

This should read "It would still be quoted-printable, mind you, when there's a gpg signature" :)

The message 200510141901.18754.runlevelten@gmail.com from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:

On Friday 14 October 2005 01:12, Anthony Anson wrote:

...

The message 200510140035.41757.runlevelten@gmail.com

from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:

...

...

Sorry, Ten, your mail is almost unreadable.

On reading that back, I see what you mean. Haha.

I don't think you do...

...

Still, you were warned - rapid, unconnected and tangential thoughts are=3D20 characteristic of stream of consciousness..

It's not the thoughts, it's the format.

Ahhhh, (*sound of penny dropping*) _now_ I see what you mean, honest. :)

...

...

Having been in deep hack for around 4 hours non-stop immediately prior, I=3D20 fired off that mail in a few seconds.

Don't make excuses for the mail software - it's making a pig's ear of formatting the text, especially ends of lines=20

On this note, I suspect that this may be your email client not correctly=20 reading the message as quoted-printable.

It tells me:

Attachment 1: ,text/plain --nextPart1856573.UnSRygy2nE Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline

This may be as a matter of choice of course (many people consider qp icky),= =20

Indeed I do, but ZIMACS renders properly-formatted qp

but I suspect it's more likely to be related to your client not doing MIME= =20 properly, as evidenced by the empty content-type header etc.

I usually trim unnecessary detail in the reply. I could have sent the full header too...

Speaking of which..

...

andnon-standard characters.

Your client not giving proper information on what your message contains, is= a=20 reason others reading your mails may see squares and stuff when you use=20 non-standard characters - which is what I see and probably what you see=20 quoted back :)

I only use plain ASCII

You may want to fix/report that behaviour, which could be considered broken.

Anyway, I don't want to stick my neck out and say kmail's doing it right an= d=20 your client's doing it wrong, because I'll want to check that, but your=20 client is doing _some_ stuff wrong which relates to at least one of the=20 problems. :)=20

I'll forward your emu to our Development Guru...

However, if it's your client that just refuses to read qp, blaming qp for t= hat=20 is equivalent to blaming JPEG for vanilla versions of links being plain-tex= t.

We accept we won't see the images if we use something that won't show them = to=20 us...

Like I said, I will check because Kmail's weirdness with quoted-printablene= ss=20 when you quote it (ie: showing the =3D and =3D20 signs in the quote) makes = me=20 suspicious.

If you could send me back a copy of my email as it arrived at your end, I'd= be=20 grateful, thanks :)

Consider it sent - and Cc'd to the developer of ZIMACS. I'll relay his views.

...

It isn't a critique of linguistics, it's a lament for the absence of plain ASCII

=2E..now this, I can appreciate. I shall try to be mindful of this, though = go=20 easy on me if I forget some time. It would still be multipart, mind you,=20 because of the gpg signature :)

I suspect I'm not the only one to find the qp borked.

...

...

I can't help=3D20 wondering - did you ever test that ram?

No. I think the URL may have disappeared up the SCSI with the earlier incarnation of ZIMACS - but if it didn't, I shall be visiting it, ta.

...

Go on, you know you want to. :)

You may be right.

If I am, could I have it in writing? My other half won't believe it happene= d=20 otherwise :D

Later,

IKWYM - but I think you have it in writing already, yhough it's only in plain ASCII. I could do you a certificate in a blackletter font though and send it as an attachment, but you'll have to d without the seal and the ribbon as they won't go through the modem.

Ten

Ten-Ten

On Friday 14 October 2005 20:09, MJ Ray wrote:

Ten runlevelten@gmail.com

...

but I suspect it's more likely to be related to your client not doing MIME properly, as evidenced by the empty content-type header etc.

Ten's mail client (KMail) is using quoted-printable for plain text emails, which seems broken. It should only be necessary if there's 8bit text and a known dud mailserver, or lines of more than 1000 characters. Otherwise please use Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit and everyone's happy, give or take a few spare headers.

This is what is in the headers of mail sent from my mail client (KMail):-

MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline

Looks fine to me. Nothing wrong with quoted-printable. 8bit is too limited for internationalised messages hence why the world is moving on.

Which leaves me with the headers from your e-mails or rather lack of them. Seems to me it's your client that's borked.

Matt

Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk writes:

This is what is in the headers of mail sent from my mail client (KMail):-

MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline

Looks fine to me. Nothing wrong with quoted-printable.

If you happen to read in non-MIME-aware software then it degrades very badly. Yes, such software is still being actively used.

8bit is too limited for internationalised messages hence why the world is moving on.

This is incorrect. QP is no more expressive than 8bit. It's the charset that you're thinking of there.

Frankly QP is rather silly in a world composed almost entirely of 8-bit clean links.

Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk writes:

Richard Kettlewell wrote:

...

Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk writes:

...

...

Looks fine to me. Nothing wrong with quoted-printable.

If you happen to read in non-MIME-aware software then it degrades very badly. Yes, such software is still being actively used.

Like I said, the world has moved on. MIME aware software has been standard for at least 10 years. Anyone not using MIME aware software should either upgrade or put up with the consequences - its their choice.

Where's the QP-aware version of grep and awk?

The adoption of modern standards should not be put on hold for a few diehards that insist on using out of date software.

8bit is (usually) a more sensible choice even within MIME than QP: it's both smaller and more readable in the absence of MIME software. Why the resistance to using it?

Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk

[...] Since QP is a recognised standard and grep/awk don't support it, don't you think that the pressure should be put onto the makers of those tools to update them rather than put pressure on QP users to take a step backwards? [...]

QP is part of a totally irrelevant standard. You might as well write that IPv6 is a recognised standard, so don't you think that pressure should be put on grep's maintainer to support it? (I'll probably get email about some grep that does now.)

I don't have a resistance to using 8bit, just that KMail came pre-configured to use QP and I'm happy with it.

I think you'll find that either KMail or its users are abusing QP, using it when it adds little but bloat to messages.

Plain 8bit is only a sensible choice from the point of view of people who insist on using tools that don't support it. Personally I'd prefer to step upwards again to using Unicode, but then there'd be a real outcry.

I've been using UTF-8 for some time now, because I need to access characters not in ISO-8859-1, which is why I aim for my setups to use extended mail only when they need to be extended now.

Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk

Depends what you mean by bloat. You'd have to have written an enormous e-mail to even notice the extra bandwidth. In the old days of 640Kb RAM, 1.44Mb floppies, and 9600 baud modems maybe I'd agree with you, but nowadays, I just can't see that it makes any difference.

YES! I want to waste space on everyone's hard disks and the network. Please rush me my guide to how to send my emails with unnecessary Content-Transfer-Encodings as a base64'd ASCII text file.

[...] Do you find that people have trouble reading UTF-8? [...]

Not anyone who needs to read it. I don't use it unecessarily, and translators are well-known among the target audience.

On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 02:13:05AM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:

The message E1ERfmH-00028l-00@pipe.localnet from MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop contains these words:

...

YES! I want to waste space on everyone's hard disks and the network. Please rush me my guide to how to send my emails with unnecessary Content-Transfer-Encodings as a base64'd ASCII text file.

Embed your message as an HTML document generated in M$ Word...

Carry on long rambling bandwidth wasting conversations about email via email mailing lists quoting "standards" but not including references to the relevant RFCs, so people watching end up no more informed than at the beginning. Conversations that almost threaten to turn into a flame war but havn't quite got enough fuel them to get there.....

;)

Adam PS *note* smiley...

Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk writes:

Who cares? If I want to search my e-mail I use KMail's search function. How you search your e-mails is your business. Since QP is a recognised standard and grep/awk don't support it, don't you think that the pressure should be put onto the makers of those tools to update them rather than put pressure on QP users to take a step backwards?

It seems a shame that someone posting to a UNIX-related mailing list has apparently forgotten the advantages of general-purpose tools working on plain text files.

I don't have a resistance to using 8bit, just that KMail came pre-configured to use QP and I'm happy with it. Plain 8bit is only a sensible choice from the point of view of people who insist on using tools that don't support it.

So we should abandon a huge collection of widely used and well-standardized tools just because you're too lazy to change a badly thought out default? Right...

Personally I'd prefer to step upwards again to using Unicode, but then there'd be a real outcry.

The choice of 8bit or QP is orthogonal to use of Unicode, in fact. UTF-8 is pretty widely used these days, including in email.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk wrote:

On Thursday 20 October 2005 17:03, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

...

...

I don't have a resistance to using 8bit, just that KMail came pre-configured to use QP and I'm happy with it. Plain 8bit is only a sensible choice from the point of view of people who insist on using tools that don't support it.

So we should abandon a huge collection of widely used and well-standardized tools just because you're too lazy to change a badly thought out default? Right...

Or, possibly it's because you're too lazy to upgrade to more modern tools that can handle it. It can be looked at both ways.

It's only badly thought out in your opinion. I happen to think it's a decent default for my needs, and I'm obviously not the only one since the KMail team also think so.

Besides, no-one's having problems with my e-mails except for Anthony. It's obvious its his mail client that's broken as evidenced by the fact that most on this list are seeing squares and/or backslashes for some of the (presumably extended character set) characters that he's using in his e-mails.

*SIGH* - quoted printable is generally a broken idea, personally, I don't give a shit how you encode your mail, but I am now bored of this ongoing thread that has nothing new to offer...

I haven't had problems with either of the posts, but then mutt just rocks and hides the crap that other mail clients put in. I get nice, plain, text. Now, I will agree with Jonathon that I didn't get the characters of one of the posts that Anthony sent, but as Jonathon said at the time, that was just a missing encoding type header.

These are 2 seperate issues, anyways - and I'd rather see mail as straight normal utf-8 than quoted-printable... who actually wants to print their mail afterall ;)

Now if all mail clients would kindly support flowed text, then we'd be in with a chance... as it stands, lets just all agree to disagree, and have done with it? It seems somewhat silly to be arguing about this. Can you both read each others posts? Obviously you can... so, how about we leave it at that (yes, =20 at the end of lines because a MUA doesn't support quoted-printable is a pain, but at the end of the day, who really cares?)

Thanks, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk

The message 200510150154.51134.runlevelten@gmail.com from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:

On Friday 14 October 2005 20:09, MJ Ray wrote:

...

Ten's mail client (KMail) is using quoted-printable for plain text emails, which seems broken.

What, just the idea of using quoted-printable?

IMO, yes.

If so, KMail has been using qp in signed messages, and IIRC the PGP/MIME sp= ec has the use of quoted-printable or base64 in such signed messages as a=20 required/must.

Well, does that excuse M$'s introduction and (mis)use of HTML and embedded Word in e-mails and news?

Mail and news together are a text-only medium. (AUP and various protocols.)

It's a bit harsh to see that behaviour as "broken", I think.

From the angle of what my mailreader (which does in fact read qp if

properly presented) it *IS* seriously borked.

(Not only that, it is *SERIOUSLY* borked..)

I'd be more inclined to call it intentional and standards-compliant than=20 broken.

No, it is completely standards non-compliant.

Now, if you want to talk about whether the _standard_ is borken or whether = I=20 can help list harmony by doing it a different way, that's a different matte= r,=20 but broken seems a bit unfair, tbh.

...

It should only be necessary if there's 8bit text and a known dud mailserver, or lines of more than 1000 characters. Otherwise please use Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit and everyone's happy, give or take a few spare headers.

I'm not clear on what this would achieve, would you mind elaborating please= ?=20 Thanks.

Well, it would mean that everyone, techie or beginner, endowed of loads of round tuits or tuit-challenged would be able to read what appears in e-mails (and news).

The message 200510161715.15665.runlevelten@gmail.com from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:

...

Well, does that excuse M$'s introduction and (mis)use of HTML and embedded Word in e-mails and news?

Nope, it's an entirely unrelated topic.

On a more relevant note, mailing lists have played host to PGP/mime for years, many googlable and readable examples of which use Content-Transfer-Encoding:quoted-printable.

It's really not that zany an idea, you know.

Well, your text is now perfectly clean and readable - but this mailreader does render qp. (The alpha version will be able to render HTML too - but not to compose it. What I'm using, BTW, is the beta.)

...

...

It's a bit harsh to see that behaviour as "broken", I think.

From the angle of what my mailreader (which does in fact read qp if properly presented)

Actually, I would have to disagree, if what you quoted back to me is representative of its usual behaviour.

What I received wasn't the usual behaviour of qp.

...

I'd be more inclined to call it intentional and standards-compliant than=20 broken. No, it is completely standards non-compliant.

No, it is standards-compliant, as there is demonstrably a standard with which it deliberately complied, and a sensible reason for using it at the time.

Au contraire, it was a US introduction, and not protocol-compliant. I can see that it is handy, and maybe *SHOULD* be added to the protocols, but unilaterally dumping it on other users of the net was not the way to go about it.

...

Well, it would mean that everyone, techie or beginner, endowed of loads of round tuits or tuit-challenged would be able to read what appears in e-mails (and news).

I feel I've kind of started bickering with you here when your point is reasonable, and that's not what anyone wants to achieve.

Well, I didn't think we were bickering - debating, maybe. Anyway, it keeps the old grey matter active innit...

On a personal level, I tend towards plaintext being the Right Thing, and of *course* I am happy to try and ensure everything's spick & span and done the Right Way :)

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, there are only rules on Usenet and in Mail, not regulations.

However, to paraphrase my personal hero the great Douglas Adams, we will then have plaintext, anything your mail client still can't cope with is therefore your own problem :)

Quite. With the caveat of course that if the sender wishes me to read what he/she has written, I need to be able to...

...

it *IS* seriously borked.

On a loosely related note, you have a mild quirk to quoting behaviour which seems to place things in the wrong level of quotation (including your actual message text) :) I keep almost missing your text because it's a quote...

I noticed one line which had acquired a chevron somehow - maybe injudicious flourishes on the Del key.

Anyway, toodle-oo :)

And thanks for all the fish?

Pip-pip, old top.

On Monday 17 October 2005 11:16, MJ Ray wrote:

Ten runlevelten@gmail.com

...

On Friday 14 October 2005 20:09, MJ Ray wrote:

...

Ten's mail client (KMail) is using quoted-printable for plain text emails, which seems broken.

What, just the idea of using quoted-printable?

Using Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions for non-extended parts of emails does seem a broken idea to me. I realise that some people advocate using MIME for everything, because it's there, but the amount of MIMEd email nasties means that my bulk email client runs plain-text-only until I tell it otherwise.

Not so much because it's there with me, but since beginning to use kmail (ie since it became acceptable) I've become much more guilty of this.

That said, the indignant revulsion I reserve for HTML mails leads me to understand this viewpoint perfectly.

...

If so, KMail has been using qp in signed messages, and IIRC the PGP/MIME spec has the use of quoted-printable or base64 in such signed messages as a required/must.

Ah, yes, that rules out 8-bit. However, RFC 3156 says: "all data signed according to this protocol MUST be constrained to 7 bits" ...which means, if you're not sending 8-bit, you don't need to qp it. KMail seems to be qp-ing everything regardless. It's not as bad as gmail, which base64s everything regardless for some users!

Eugh!

Hope that explains it,

Yes, thanks.

As probably mentioned, on examining the mail to work out the cause for this behaviour (and to give ground to my evangelical faith in the One True Desktop Suite, of course :-) ), I'm pretty much certain that the 'thinking' behind kmail doing that was that there were trailing spaces and stuff in the email.

Now, whilst I'm not really au fait with the minutiae of pgp/mime, it seems that when sending the data via 7bit which had those trailing spaces _when it was signed_, encoding it as quoted-printable is a fair thing to do if you don't want your signature borken at the other end.

So teh issues would seem to be (1) me not cleaning up my spaces post-edit, and (2) trailing spaces getting signed.

Like I said, I don't pretend to be an expert on this, but that's my inference of what's going on there.. CMIIW :)

Also as a matter of interest, thank you for drawing my attention to rfc 3156, as the last one I read on the matter was 2015! Probably before the turn of the century, literally ( which should give you a rough idea of how au fait I aren't! ).

-- Ten

PS: Those who know about a certain proprietary software I worked on in late 2001 will pour scorn on my standards-compliancy naffness, but I should point out that I worked on the horrid flash-based update UI, not any of the manly stuff.

On Monday 17 October 2005 13:03, Anthony Anson wrote:

The message 200510171244.05365.runlevelten@gmail.com

from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:

...

PS: Those who know about a certain proprietary software I worked on in late= =20 2001 will pour scorn on my standards-compliancy naffness, but I should poin= t=20 out that I worked on the horrid flash-based update UI, not any of the manly= =20 stuff.

Borked again.

I don't know whether your reader retranslates the formatting, or whether in replies you can see all the equal signs and 20s dotted about?

With respect, I think you'll find that it's ZIMACS that's borked. I've checked my e-mails in all mail clients that I have available and none of them has a problem with mail from KMail - other than, it seems, ZIMACS.

I used to be a Zetnet user a few years ago and I remember back then that ZIMACS was a horrible e-mail client - so much so that I refused to use it. Seems like it hasn't changed.

Matt

On Monday 17 October 2005 13:33, James Taylor wrote:

...

<snip> I used to be a Zetnet user a few years ago and I remember back then that ZIMACS was a horrible e-mail client - so much so that I refused to use it. Seems like it hasn't changed.

Talking about mail clients - I've heard lots and lots of people rant about evolution and how great it is, so here I am, fresh from thunderbird, with evolution - but what the hell are they ranting about?

Am I missing why this is supposidly so good?

It used to be the gold standard of Linux mail/groupware. I'm a long time KDE user but used to use Evolution as it was head and shoulders above both KMail and Thunderbird (Mozilla Mail as it was at the time). However, KMail (Kontact) and Thunderbird have done a lot of catching up recently so the differences are less pronounced now IMO.

The biggest advantage it has is its ability to connect to an MS Exchange server though, so for people on corporate networks its invaluable.

Matt

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

Ten runlevelten@gmail.com wrote:

My review:

No you're not, it's awful unless you're under the thrall of Windows because of Exchange.

If you don't (1)have to use it because of such groupware requirements, or (2)need the HTMLificated ambience of Outlook Express, I wouldn't bother.

I would have said Thunderbird until version 1.7.1+ of kmail, when kmail finally "got there". It's now my favourite gui mail client, mostly because it's so featureful.

Meh, evolution has IMAP support that fucks up less often than Thunderbirds, in my experience. It's by far my favourite GUI mail client... but given that I don't play with GUI mail clients very often any more (they all get the hell in the way of actually doing anything useful, like, erm, reading and composing e-mail), YMMV.

Personally, I'd recommend mutt to everyone, it's by far the most useful mail client that I've ever used, gets in the way very little, and it has nice configuration fun ;)

Of course, I'm very odd, and I use lots of terminally things, vim is the *only* editor I use for doing anything sane these days (including editing e-mails), it has lots of nice shiny tweakables, and it works quickly and stays out of the way (as long as you can get your head round modes).

Anyways - back to the origional topic, the only thing that pissed me off about evolution was that it didn't have an option for defaulting to the text/plain part of e-mails, which was annoying. I believe that's now fixed, though.

Thanks, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk

On Monday 17 October 2005 13:28, Matt Parker wrote:

On Monday 17 October 2005 13:03, Anthony Anson wrote:

...

The message 200510171244.05365.runlevelten@gmail.com

from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:

...

PS: Those who know about a certain proprietary software I worked on in late= =20 2001 will pour scorn on my standards-compliancy naffness, but I should poin= t=20 out that I worked on the horrid flash-based update UI, not any of the manly= =20 stuff.

Borked again.

I don't know whether your reader retranslates the formatting, or whether in replies you can see all the equal signs and 20s dotted about?

With respect, I think you'll find that it's ZIMACS that's borked. I've checked my e-mails in all mail clients that I have available and none of them has a problem with mail from KMail - other than, it seems, ZIMACS.

I used to be a Zetnet user a few years ago and I remember back then that ZIMACS was a horrible e-mail client - so much so that I refused to use it. Seems like it hasn't changed.

Matt

Replying to myself. I know that's bad form. But from the Zetnet site about ZIMACS you see this:-

"The Zetnet Information Management And Control System is a custom written piece of Windows® software which allows the off-line creation and reading of both e-mail and newsgroup articles. It also uses Zetnet's proprietary mail delivery system ZetMail. This uses the TCP/IP protocol to send the pre-packed mail and news packets to you quickly and allows you to process the incoming information when you disconnect from the system."

The bit about a proprietary mail delivery system shows just how standards compliant you can expect the software to be.

Matt

On Monday 17 October 2005 15:31, Anthony Anson wrote:

The message 200510171339.29908.matt@mpcontracting.co.uk

from Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk contains these words:

...

Replying to myself. I know that's bad form. But from the Zetnet site about ZIMACS you see this:-

"The Zetnet Information Management And Control System is a custom written piece of Windows® software which allows the off-line creation and reading of both e-mail and newsgroup articles. It also uses Zetnet's proprietary mail delivery system ZetMail. This uses the TCP/IP protocol to send the pre-packed mail and news packets to you quickly and allows you to process the incoming information when you disconnect from the system."

The bit about a proprietary mail delivery system shows just how standards compliant you can expect the software to be.

What has the delivery system got to do with the software?

How do I know? It's proprietary. Is it reformatting the messages to be sent down this proprietary protocol and munging them? No one can tell if we can't see the source.

Matt

The message 200510171328.45680.matt@mpcontracting.co.uk from Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk contains these words:

With respect, I think you'll find that it's ZIMACS that's borked. I've checked my e-mails in all mail clients that I have available and none of them has a problem with mail from KMail - other than, it seems, ZIMACS.

Possibly - maybe in the same way that IE has no problem with websites written in Frontpage?

I used to be a Zetnet user a few years ago and I remember back then that ZIMACS was a horrible e-mail client - so much so that I refused to use it. Seems like it hasn't changed.

ZIMACS has never been 'horrible' - it did have some bumpy bits while Tim was ill, and these weren't sorted as quickly as otherwise they might have been. I've been using it for ten years, and nothing but ZIMACS, but that doesn't mean I haven't seen other clients being used, or followed others' experiences of them in the support groups or in The Shed. ZIMACS has had its drawbacks, and these have been ironed-out over the years, and even MIME and qp are supported for reading - but not composing - mail/news. Nowadays, if we (beta testers, or anyone else for that matter) find a problem, it's very often fixed the same day and the new version on the alpha site for download.

However, it is protocol-compliant, and won't play with a lot of stuff which isn't. The v. 3.x ZIMACS (alpha version) understands HTML (if you turn it on) but does not write it. (Hoorah!) Just about [1Ÿ] everything else you'd expect in a mail client is there, as well as many goodies that others do not have, and some which (AFAIK) no other has.

[1Ÿ] I say 'just about' to CMA

However, these last attributes only apply to the packing, the method of delivery, and unpacking of mail and news.

In the early days the late Tim Cole (Zetgod and originator) was told by Micro$oft that it wasn't possible to hold a mail/news connection open after download, so that a browser could be set lose on the WWW - and he very soon saw to it that a ZIMACS connection could do just that.

IMO ZIMACS is now the best news and mail client available, but has the drawback that you can't delete junk on the server. I am prepared to put up with that for all the positive features.

<Mae West>

Why don't you come round and see it sometime...

</Mae>

The message 200510171556.10069.matt@mpcontracting.co.uk from Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk contains these words:

On Monday 17 October 2005 15:26, Anthony Anson wrote:

...

The message 200510171328.45680.matt@mpcontracting.co.uk

from Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk contains these words:

...

With respect, I think you'll find that it's ZIMACS that's borked. I've checked my e-mails in all mail clients that I have available and none of them has a problem with mail from KMail - other than, it seems, ZIMACS.

Possibly - maybe in the same way that IE has no problem with websites written in Frontpage?

I'm not talking about proprietary extensions. I'm talking about standards that are in the RFCs. If ZIMACS can't deal with them, it's broken.

AFAIK, ZIMACS complies with all standards. It just doesn't have any bells and whistles that are totally non-compliant.

...

...

I used to be a Zetnet user a few years ago and I remember back then that ZIMACS was a horrible e-mail client - so much so that I refused to use it. Seems like it hasn't changed.

ZIMACS has never been 'horrible' - it did have some bumpy bits while Tim was ill, and these weren't sorted as quickly as otherwise they might have been.

I beg to differ. I was on Zetnet in 1999 according to Google Groups - http://tinyurl.com/bnd3c and the user interface back then was about the worst I've ever used. Maybe it's got better - but looking at this http://zimacs.zetnet.co.uk/docs/main.gif it doesn't look like it's changed much in 6 years.

The appearance hasn't changed, but the versatility has. Even in the 1999 versions I'd disagree with you about the 'user interface'.

...

I've been using it for ten years, and nothing but ZIMACS, but that doesn't mean I haven't seen other clients being used, or followed others' experiences of them in the support groups or in The Shed. ZIMACS has had its drawbacks, and these have been ironed-out over the years, and even MIME and qp are supported for reading - but not composing - mail/news.

*Even*? MIME has been a standard for at least 10 years and ZIMACS has only just got support for reading MIME encoded messages. Hmmm...

ZIMACS has been reading MIME and qp for a very long time - it's only when something's borked that I notice that it's there.

...

Nowadays, if we (beta testers, or anyone else for that matter) find a problem, it's very often fixed the same day and the new version on the alpha site for download.

So have you reported the fact that it can't deal with common Internet standards yet?

No, because it does deal with all internet (applicable) standards.

...

However, it is protocol-compliant, and won't play with a lot of stuff which isn't. The v. 3.x ZIMACS (alpha version) understands HTML (if you turn it on) but does not write it. (Hoorah!) Just about [1Ÿ] everything else you'd expect in a mail client is there, as well as many goodies that others do not have, and some which (AFAIK) no other has.

[1Ÿ] I say 'just about' to CMA

It's not protocol compliant or I wouldn't be seeing empty boxes here. Besides which, do you not think the developers should get the basics right before adding features that no other has?

Empty boxes?

...

However, these last attributes only apply to the packing, the method of delivery, and unpacking of mail and news.

In the early days the late Tim Cole (Zetgod and originator) was told by Micro$oft that it wasn't possible to hold a mail/news connection open after download, so that a browser could be set lose on the WWW - and he very soon saw to it that a ZIMACS connection could do just that.

IMO ZIMACS is now the best news and mail client available,

Earlier you said "I've been using it for ten years, and nothing but ZIMACS" so you're contradicting yourself. If you've never used the others, how do you know?

Try reading the sentence following the bit you quoted.

...

but has the drawback that you can't delete junk on the server. I am prepared to put up with that for all the positive features.

I wouldn't be.

That's your loss. If I wanted to, I could still collect news from outside servers using another client as well, and have POP3 addresses.

...

<Mae West>

Why don't you come round and see it sometime...

</Mae>

Been there, done that, and no thanks.

Ah. <I know I'm right, don't confuse me with facts?>

The message 200510182340.36448.runlevelten@gmail.com from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:

Well each to their own, I say. Can I just say that I'm not sure the empty boxes and spaces a few of us are seeing, are the result of everything being done in a standard manner. :)

You may have a problem that needs sorting.

Could someone *PLEASE* tell me what these empty boxes and spaces are?

I have a suspicion that these are what *YOU* are seeing because sometimes, Ten's messages are dotted with formatting, ZIMACS is quoting it, and your (selective collective 'your') readers are reinterpreting the codes.

On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 12:04:29AM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:

The message 200510182340.36448.runlevelten@gmail.com from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:

...

Well each to their own, I say. Can I just say that I'm not sure the empty boxes and spaces a few of us are seeing, are the result of everything being done in a standard manner. :)

...

You may have a problem that needs sorting.

Could someone *PLEASE* tell me what these empty boxes and spaces are?

As Adam has said they're in your mail, with characters that don't fit in 7 bits. Some mailers show them as a dotted box, some (like mutt) show them as <character code>

I have a suspicion that these are what *YOU* are seeing because sometimes, Ten's messages are dotted with formatting, ZIMACS is quoting it, and your (selective collective 'your') readers are reinterpreting the codes.

It is indeed what we rather than you are seeing; it's a problem with *your* messages.

It's because ZIMACS doesn't indicate what character set it's using when it uses 8bit characters. I'm not especially fussed about this (hey, it's your loss if people can't see some of the characters you type ;), but I brought it up originally because I thought you were beta testing ZIMACS and that such a problem might be of interest to you and something that should be reported back to the developers.

Ten's quoted printable stuff is an entirely different kettle of fish.

J.

On Wednesday 19 October 2005 00:12, MJ Ray wrote:

Ten runlevelten@gmail.com

...

Of course when we send an ordinary email and think better of something, we might ignore trailing spaces etc. as unimportant - but when kmail notices them in a pgp-mime message, it knows they *must* be represented at the other end, and via 7 bit (rfc3156) too, so it uses qp(rfc2015).

A space, even when trailing, is still a 7-bit character, isn't it? I suspect KMail's misbehaviour is being triggered by a line length

72 but even that shouldn't trigger it. The trailing spaces seen

so far just looked like artefacts of other encoding-fu.

Alas, it is triggered by the trailing spaces (rfc3156: "implementations MUST make sure that no trailing whitespace is present after the MIME encoding has been applied" clashes with the need to protect the signed data).

You have two choices, to strip the trailing spaces prior to signing, or use quoted-printable(or base64 I s'pose).

I guess they choose the Content-Transfer-Encoding route because in a signed message it does not do to mess about with the intended data too much.

Not that I *know* that's why they choose it, mind, but it seems like a realistic possibility.

An interesting quirk(?) in the same part of rfc3156 is that content-transfer-encoding is to be used for messages where any line begins with "From "*, which would presumably trigger the same behaviour in kmail.

Imagine going back over your message trying to work out the problem if *that* was the cause!

Argh.. I must extricate myself from this thread now, I think the last RFC I read actually squoze my other half's birthdate out of the other side of my brain, and I don't like qp myself very much anyway. :)

My foonting turlingdromes,

--

Ten

*apparently "This is because many mail transfer and delivery agents treat "From " (the word "from" followed immediately by a space character) as the start of a new message and thus insert a right angle-bracket (>) in front of any line beginning with "From " to distinguish this case, invalidating the signature"

Dave Briggs linux@davebriggs.net

I have set up an external style sheet for a simple website. I have set up a way for links to appearing, setting all the a:hover stuff and all that, only when they appear in the header it doesn't quite work.

Can't debug that without seeing the stylesheet. It sounds like one selector is overriding another. If you can't publish the stylesheet, the validator at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ or the spec at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ might help.

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Dave Briggs wrote:

Am sure almost anyone could answer this for me, but despite loads of googling and browsing through tutorials, I just can't find an answer to this that will work!

I have set up an external style sheet for a simple website. I have set up a way for links to appearing, setting all the a:hover stuff and all that, only when they appear in the header it doesn't quite work.

So, I want to change the way that links appear in the header div on the site.

If your header is <div class="header">...

div.header a:hover { some gubbins }

...or if it's <div id="header">...

#header a:hover { some nubbins }

...is that what you mean?

Steve

Quoting Dave Briggs linux@davebriggs.net:

So can I set anchor attributes within the <h1> definition?

Saw the light at last. Got rid of the <h1> tags and just did the #header a things as I wanted it to appear.

Cheers all

Quoting MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop:

If it's the primary header on the page, please use h1 tags for it. It will help non-CSS browsers (like links) to display it better.

Oh right, that's interesting. I did see a "tip of the day" on the w3c validating site earlier today saying the same thing. But when I validated my site *before* removing the <h1> tags, it complained about it - saying that I couldn't put <h1> tags inside <a> ones.

What's the way around this? To have an <h1> title without it linking anywhere?

Steve Engledow wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

Dave Briggs wrote:

...

when I validated my site *before* removing the <h1> tags, it complained about it - saying that I couldn't put

<h1> tags inside <a> ones.

What's the way around this? To have an <h1> title without it linking anywhere?

If you need your title to link somewhere, put the anchor inside the h1

<h1><a href="blah">My title</a></h1>

If it doesn't need to link anywhere, you don't need the anchor.

With the exception of it being an anchor - <h1> <a name="splat" /> My title </h1> OR <a name="splat" /> <h1> My title </h1>

as opposed to a link...

JT

MJ Ray wrote:

I think you should use <h1 id="splat">My title</h1> if it's xhtml.

Anyone want a webmastering-with-gnu-by-email workshop?

Am thinking now that I need one! First up, a confession - when I was doing all the work on Friday, it was on a Windows PC at work and all I had to test it on was IE, on which it looked just fine.

Now I have just had the chance to check it in Netscape, Firefox and Opera at home, the results are mixed, to say the least. See http://davebriggs.net/test to see. The stylesheet is at http://davebriggs.net/test/layout.css.

The problems are that the header box is too small and there aren't any line breaks between paragraphs. As you all could probably tell from my earlier mails, I am pretty new to CSS and I just can't figure this out at all.

Can anyone offer any advice on this?

Cheers all

Dave Briggs wrote:

The problems are that the header box is too small and there aren't any line breaks between paragraphs. As you all could probably tell from my earlier mails, I am pretty new to CSS and I just can't figure this out at all.

You seem to have specified the height of the #Header element three times as 14px - why? Removing that goes a long way to solving the problem with the header box (which, given that 14px height, is simply too small).

Then you have: #Content>p {margin:0px;}

.. which sets all margins to 0px in <p> elements within #Content, which would explain the lost paragraph spacing.

In both cases (the Header height and the paragraph spacing) IE simply ignores these, I have no idea why.

Where did the original style come from? It has the feel of one that's been heavily hacked; for what you're trying to achieve there seems to be a lot of code. For example, the header box only contains one line of text but is controlled by several styles which compete with each other (some stuff snipped in what follows):

#Header { margin:5px 0px 10px 0px; padding:17px 0px 0px 20px; height:33px; height:14px; }

body>#Header { height:14px; }

#Header a { margin:0px 0px 15px 0px; padding:0px; }

body>#Header { height:14px; }

As you can see, its not surprising that the bits you're having problems with got confused!

Dave Briggs linux@davebriggs.net

It turns out that the link in question is the title of the page, and so is set as <h1> and it is *that* which is over-riding the other stuff.

So can I set anchor attributes within the <h1> definition?

As with Steve's example, but use h1 instead of #Header, or make the title of the page <h1 id="linkheader"> and use #linkheader a:link { /* ...stuff... */ } Your CSS looked mostly fine from what little I saw.