Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 23:33:04 -0500
From: Ted White <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: gah! let's try that again - Re: google word list
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

On 12/20/2010 11:11 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:

>  Ted White <twhite8 at cox.net> wrote:
 >
> > I'm fine with plain text, but I draw the line at fixed-width
> > fonts, all of which look ugly on a monitor screen, ...
>
>  But a lot of text is in the form of tables or columns, intended to
>  line up vertically. One approach would be to be able to easily
>  switch between fixed-width and proportional fonts, and to not
>  complain unless both looked wrong.

Keith, this is an *email list* on which people exchange personal
communications.  I cannot recall the last time I saw a table or columns
(of figures?) here.

> > We're living in nearly the second decade of the 21st century now,
> > Keith, not the eighth decade of the 20th century. I find it odd
> > that a man as much into personal computers as you are has chosen to
> > remain in their early years of development, softwear, etc.
>
>  Uh, no. I pick and choose what's best, rather than glomming onto
>  whatever random junk is floating around this week and will be
>  deprecated or forgotten next week.

Most of what you've chosen dates to the era of monochrome monitors and
plain text rendered in green on black.  You have yet to acknowledge the
value of any kind of graphics, from photos to videos to pure art,
although these are freely accessible to and used by the rest of us.
This is not "random junk."  This is making good use of current
technology.  (So is editing music in the form of .wav files, something
else you can't do without a graphics capability, and something I do
frequently.  Audition/Cool Edit Pro have been around for more than ten
years.)

>  Note that in over eight years this list has only gotten one spam,
>  and no viruses. And none of my home systems have ever gotten a virus
>  or been taken over by a botnet. So I think I know what I'm doing.

I'm sure.  But I'll note that of the more than a dozen Yahoo Groups
lists I'm on, only one (a comics list, publicly accessible) has ever
been spammed (once) and none has ever transmitted a virus.

> > However, and more to the point, what failed you in your misguided
> > attempt to underline a word with symbols a line below it is the
> > simple fact that each of us has undoubtedly chosen a different
> > number of characters for line-wrapping (width of right-hand
> > margins; a wide or narrow column of type), if we've chosen any at
> > all,
>
>  Line-wrapping is up to the sender. The recipient then sees the line
>  breaks wherever the sender put them. The recipient can change them,
>  but will only do so if they look really screwed up. At least that's
>  how it's supposed to work.
>
> > with the result that it was very unlikely that your "underlining"
> > would end up under the word you wished.
>
>  I'd bet that most people on the list saw it under the correct word.

Again, you misunderstand me.  If you go back to the exchange which
triggered this, you'll find that your emphasis had moved, and was thus
deleted by me, *in my reply*.  Had I left it in, it would not have been
where you'd put it.  Likewise for anyone else responding to your post.

> > There are of course far easier and more obvious ways to emphasize
> > a word, from the old fashioned "[sic]" to using an asterisk on
> > each end of the word (puts it into boldface in some email clients,
> > like mine; otherwise provides a form of emphasis which dates back
> > to typewriter days), or putting an underline at each end of the
> > word (which will induce underlining under the word in some clients
> > but otherwise, to my eye, looks clunky). And forward slashes
> > bookending a word will put it into Italics....
>
>  Indeed, but I don't like to do that within quoted text. I prefer to
>  leave quoted text strictly unchanged, except for where the line
>  breaks go. And I leave even that alone if it appears to have
>  significance.

Using "[sic]" after an error in quoted material (rather than correcting
it) has been standard practice for well over a century.

--Ted White