GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everybody Else

Please avoid the use of colons (:) in your Subject lines. Here's why: Some newsgroup clients (Outlook Express 5, for one), when creating a reply to a post will automatically drop anything to the left of a colon in the subject line. For example, A reply to a post with a subject of: "GPL : Some Original Topic" is generated with a subject of "Re: Some Original Topic". This creates a problem when readers filter on particular subjects: Some or all of the responses may be filtered out. In the example, if a reader was filtering posts on the subject "GPL", he/she would miss some or all of the responses to the original post. Along these same lines, based on the volume of activity in this newsgroup, it would be helpful if everyone would make an effort to include the acronym for the sim which is the subject of the post in the subject line. This makes it easier for all of us to pick up everything that posts relative to our particular sims of interest. Perhaps someone better versed than I would like to compile an acronyms list for this purpose?

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> Please avoid the use of colons (:) in your Subject lines. > Here's why: > Some newsgroup clients (Outlook Express 5, for one), when creating a reply > to a post will automatically drop anything to the left of a colon in the > subject line.

Some folks have been posting to Usenet for years, and have been using colons in their subject lines the whole time. If Outlook Express can't handle it, the best course of action would be to switch to a newsreader that doesn't exhibit the problem. Also, a bug report to Microsoft might be in order. Trips

Jack wrote That won't work.... Your the 485729586th person to ask to do this. I know I was "semi-able" for a week to make this happen long ago. It's just the mentality of Usenet users. There's always people who will do (and they all already do), but the amount of non-doing people will be far superior. -= Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard/Nas-Frank> -= NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide http://www.nros.com/ -= SimRacing Online http://www.simracing.com/ -= Official mentally retarded guy of r.a.s. -= May the Downforce be with you... "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Is that why so many posts start with Re: ? No wonder it's so hard to figure out what't going on. JM

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> Jack wrote > >A reply to a post with a subject of: > >"GPL : Some Original Topic" > >is generated with a subject of > >"Re: Some Original Topic". > That won't work.... > Your the 485729586th person to ask to do this. I know I was "semi-able" for > a week to make this happen long ago. It's just the mentality of Usenet > users. > There's always people who will do (and they all already do), but the amount > of non-doing people will be far superior. > -= Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard/Nas-Frank> > -= NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide http://www.nros.com/ > -= SimRacing Online http://www.simracing.com/ > -= Official mentally retarded guy of r.a.s. > -= May the Downforce be with you... > "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise > how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

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> Please avoid the use of colons (:) in your Subject lines. > Here's why: > Some newsgroup clients (Outlook Express 5, for one), when > creating a reply to a post will automatically drop anything > to the left of a colon in the subject line.

There are any number of non-broken news clients in existence. Perhaps a more reasonable solution to the "problem" of a broken newsreader is to get one that ain't broken. If your house was missing a front door, would you expect your friends and family to just wear coats in the house and ask that your neighbors gaurd your possessions on a rotating schedule, or would you put a new door on the place? ---Jim PS: Any reasonable client will have the ability to thread based on references, making the fact that someone mangled the subject line somewhat moot.

Did you spend a lot of time on this? The threads aren't broken. As I said, some of the posts are filtered out.

By "broken", I mean the client is no longer able to associate a reply with its parent post. In my client, Outlook Express, they DO get filtered out and are NOT broken. If I show all the messages by removing the filter, all the posts are there, including those coming from readers whose clients truncate subjects containing colons. There's plenty of indication in this newsgroup that there are a lot of people using clients that truncate. Take a look for yourself. Display all messages and look for any top-level posts that contain a colon. Then look at the replies to those posts. You'll likely find a lot of truncated subject lines. Posts with truncated subject lines obviously won't appear in filtered views if the key word was in the piece of the subject line that was lost. My suggestion was a simple one that would help insure that no one misses anything they'd like to read. Enough said on this subject! I can't really understand anybody's objection to a suggestion that clearly does no one harm. If you choose to heed the suggestion, GREAT! If you choose to use colons in your subject line and have people that are using the default Windows news client miss replies to your post, that's clearly your choice too. But why waste bandwidth arguing about a suggestion? If your motivation is to slam Microsoft and/or their news client, there are plenty of appropriate places to do that!

A "real" news program doesn't really rely on subject line contect but on the "References" line in the header of a newsgroup message. For instance this one has: That's how a real thread is followed and built. Just an insight on how Usenet works vs. a news reader. % By "broken", I mean the client is no longer able to associate a reply with % its parent post. In my client, Outlook Express, they DO get filtered out and % are NOT broken. If I show all the messages by removing the filter, all the % posts are there, including those coming from readers whose clients truncate % subjects containing colons. % There's plenty of indication in this newsgroup that there are a lot of % people using clients that truncate. Take a look for yourself. Display all % messages and look for any top-level posts that contain a colon. Then look at % the replies to those posts. You'll likely find a lot of truncated subject % lines. Posts with truncated subject lines obviously won't appear in filtered % views if the key word was in the piece of the subject line that was lost. My % suggestion was a simple one that would help insure that no one misses % anything they'd like to read. % Enough said on this subject! I can't really understand anybody's objection % to a suggestion that clearly does no one harm. If you choose to heed the % suggestion, GREAT! If you choose to use colons in your subject line and have % people that are using the default Windows news client miss replies to your % post, that's clearly your choice too. But why waste bandwidth arguing about % a suggestion? If your motivation is to slam Microsoft and/or their news % client, there are plenty of appropriate places to do that! -- **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

A "real" news program clearly relies on the subject line when filtering on key words in that subject line. Respectfully, Michael, I don't think you've read this thread carefully enough.

% A "real" news program clearly relies on the subject line when filtering on % key words in that subject line. Yes, a real newsreader will rely on the subject line when filtering for a particular post. But, a "real" newsreader won't hatchet a subject line just because it saw a ":". % Respectfully, Michael, I don't think you've read this thread carefully % enough. Unfortunatley, I have followed it carefully and the thread has moved left and right in what is being talked about. When we are talking about threads, this is related to who answered what message and then who responds to that response. It is possible for a properly threaded discussion to have several "threads" in it. For an example, this is the "threaded" version of this discussion so far: 0 GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everybody Else Jack 1 GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everybody Else Trips 2 GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everybody Else ymenard 3 GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everybody Else John Moore 4 GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everybody Else Jim Sokoloff 5 GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everybody Else Jack 6 GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everybody El Richard Walker 7 GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everybody Jack 8 GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everybod Michael E. Carver 9 GPL N99 N2 Readers and Everyb Jack You will notice a couple of things here. First there are 2 separate threads tied to this discussion (0-3 & 0,4-9). These threads are based on the "Reference" line I mentioned in my previous post, not the subject line content. The other thing to note is that there are no "Re:"'s in this list. Why is this? Well, the proper method of parsing a subject line in Usenet is to ignore the first 4 characters if they are "Re: " or even "re: ". Now a newsreader that bobitizes subject headings based on a ":", is a piss-poor newsreader. This used to be a big problem in the old days when alot of people used "freeware" and "shareware" programs to "off-load" news articles and generate responses off-line to be later uploaded. Of course your big concern is not "proper threading" (though I was mislead by your comment, "By 'broken', I mean the client is no longer able to associate a reply with its parent post." -- which is "threading" in my book), but contents of subject line. And of course piss-poor newsreaders that don't comprehend the rules for Usenet posting/reading. You asked us not to use ":"'s in our subject headings. Well, there aren't any Usenet rules that say we shouldn't, just poorly coded newsreaders and their users. I would suggest one to file a bug report to the company that wrote their newsreader and ask them to fix it. Since Usenet is bigger than any one company (and that includes Microsoft -- though MS doesn't really want to think that's possible <G>). And to make matters worse, I am changing the subject header of this message as it is indeed discussing things beyond the original subject line. Of course since you are "filering" based on subject line content, you may miss this post. Properly coded newsreaders will recognize this post as a part of the 2nd thread in this discussion (based on the reference numbers). Poorly coded newsreaders will see this as a brand new discussion. Don't blame us for the broken tools. BTW: I do sympathize with your desire to only read threads of interest to you and I agree wholeheartedly with need to include acronyms for the game/sim being discussed in the subject line. That's why I post the Introductory FAQ for r.a.s. -- **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I agree with you that Outlook Express doesn't seem to show a lot of smarts when parsing subject lines! Unfortunately, I think that the realities of the marketplace make the avoidance of colons probably a good idea...at least until Microsoft, and any other guilty parties, agree to fix the way they handle subject lines. Great! It sounds as if there's a list of acronyms in the FAQ. If not, maybe it would be helpful if you or one of the other vets here compiled one? Take care. Thanks for all the worthwhile contributions you make to this group.

>A "real" news program clearly relies on the subject line when filtering on >key words in that subject line. Let me see if I get this right. The problem is this: Person A writes a posting with the subject line "GPL: input problems" Person B follows up, using a "broken" newsreader, and the subject line is changed to "Re: input problems" Person C (with a "good" newsreader) has set up a filter to retrieve all threads that have "GPL" in the header. Now, it seems to me that there is a problem only if C's server never gets the message from A, but just the follow-up. Then, C's newsreader can't determine that the thread is relevant, since "GPL" doesn't appear in the subject anymore. So it will skip the "Re: input problems" thread, including all follow-ups to B's reply. As soon as either A's original posting appears on C's server, or a follow-up with an un-truncated subject line ("Re: GPL: input problems") is posted, the whole thread will be marked for retrieval, based on the references in the header. Given that interesting threads tend to contain many replies to the original message, some (most?) of which will have a complete subject line, this seems to be a minor problem. But a problem nonetheless. Ok, you have convinced me. If I manage to remember, I will prefix my next original posting with something like "GPL -" rather than "GPL:" But since not many people will do this, here is a workaround which should help you to retrieve all threads that are of interest to you: after a while of reading RAS, you will know which people usually post stuff you deem interesting. Set a watch filter to retrieve all messages by those people. If you see a message by one of those guys in a thread you find interesting, but which your newsreader didn't retrieve in its entirety, just manually mark this thread for retrieval. Bingo. -- Wolfgang Preiss \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome.

Bingo. Person C (with the "good" newsreader) misses posts in which he's interested, because B was one of millions with a "broken" newsreader.

HELLOOOOO!!! I believe the original post also addressed the possibility of comming up with "standard" acronyms to help in filtering on subjects. I wanted to read N99 or NASCAR99 or N1999 BUT NOOOOOOOO! What'd I get? A crapload of drivel about who has the bestest newsreader and who has a broke toilet seat. SHEESH!!!!! Doug B. Jackson MI You think in the storm we've found the eye of the calm.....Bill Mallonnee, Vigilantes Of Love

Well, I'm glad somebody noticed, Doug. I did discover that Michael Carver does periodically post some guidelines for this newsgroup, under the following subject: "[rec.autos.simulators] New Readers please read - Welcome!" It contains many of the commonly used acronyms used for sims discussed by this group, although I'm not sure that it's completely up-to-date. Hope it helps.

Jack wrote Yes that is the rec.autos.simulators official FAQ. It should be read by each and every lurker/poster to this newsgroup at least once per year, as it helps making this a better place. "Not Reading the r.a.s. FAQ can be damaging for your life" hehe. -= Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard/Nas-Frank> -= NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide http://www.nros.com/ -= SimRacing Online http://www.simracing.com/ -= Official mentally retarded guy of r.a.s. -= May the Downforce be with you... "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Hello, here are some commonly used acronyms:- AFAIK as far as i know AFK absent from keyboard. AIUI as i understand it AOL ! "me too !" (from the alleged [commonly accepted as true] newbie-("aol !") ish 'net behaviour of users posting via a certain ISP (q.v.), butneither restricted to their users, nor universal to them [it just *seems* like it, sometimes...])(is losing capitalisation as it be- comes generic through common usage - frequently in triplicate...) ATB all the best ATM at the moment BBFN, 'bye-'bye for now BFN 'bye for now BICBW but i could be wrong (also ICBW, ICWBW, BICVWBW ..very well be...) BTSOOM beats the shit out of me [also ..F.. - ****; ..H.. - hell; BTW, btw by the way cc courtesy copy; originally carbon copy e.g. exempli gratia etc. et cetera FAQ, faq frequently asked questions; and files listing same, with answers. FTP, ftp file transfer protocol: getting files from a distant online computer FUBAR ***ed up beyond all recognition* FUD fear, uncertainty, and dismay [or doubt, or disinformation] FWIW for what it's worth FX, fx. effects - originally a stage direction indicating sound effects - now frequently given as <fx: (description or definition of effect desired)>, or <fx>: (name of sound or other effect to be imagined) GBFN good-bye for now g,d&r Grins, Ducks & Runs (Very Fast); or "...& Runs (Very Very Fast)" (vf)(vvf) and so on... HAND "have a nice day" HTH hope this [/that] helps ICBW i could be wrong i.e. id est IIRC if i recall [remember] correctly IIUC if i understand [understood] correctly IMAO in my arrogant opinion IMHO in my humble opinion IMNSHO in my not so humble opinion IME in my experience IMO in my opinion IOW in other words [or, in other worlds]; IRL in real life [see RL] ISTR i seem to recall [remember] IYWBSG(AT) if you would be so good (as to...) [similarly IYWBSK ....kind] LOL laugh(ing) out loud NYK not yet known (orig. n.y.k.) NYP not yet published OLF one line follow-up [commonly considered a netcrime, OTOH on the other hand OTT over the top POV point of view RL real life - a semi-mythical state of existence rumoured to exist ROFL see ROTFL RO(T)FL rolling on (the) floor laughing RO(T)FLKAS rolling on (the) floor laughing, kicking and screaming [etc....] Rot13 deliberately easily-breakable encryption in which every letter is replaced with that thir*** letters on in the alphabet. RSN real soon now RTFFAQ read the ***ing FAQ RTFI read the ***ing instructions RTFM read the ***ing manual SFAIAA so far as i am aware SFAICR so far as i can recall (remember) SFAIK so far as i know SFAIU so far as i understand SFAR so far as regards SHM(M)HYG so how much (money) have you got ? SIG, .SIG signature file SNAFU situation normal; all ***ed up SO Significant Other - spouse, partner, etc. - non- prescriptive as to sex, or legal status, and therefore PC (q.v.) T.B.A. to be announced TIA thanks (or thank-you) in advance WTF what the *** WTH what the hell...? And here are some that may help here:- Cart Cart racing, by Papyrus / Sierra ( updated ICR2) CPR Cart Precision Racing, Microsoft F1 (97/CE/98) Formula 1 (97/ championship edition/ 98), by Psygnosis) F1RS Formula 1 Racing Simulator, by Ubisoft GP2 Grand Prix 2 (world circuit) by Microprose GPL Grand Prix Legends, Papyrus / Sierra ICR ( 2 ) Indycar racing ( 2 ) by Sierra / Papyrus MGPRS2 Monaco GP Racing simulator 2 ( sequel to F1RS ) by Ubisoft MTM (2) Monster Truck Madness (2), Microsoft N2 Nascar racing 2, by Sierra / Papyrus N99 Nascar Racing 99 by Sierrar Papyrus