Subject: AMS - IETF Press Release

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:36:27 -0500

Thought this would be on topic and of interest.

Regards
Marshall

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Picks Association Management  
Solutions (AMS) as Secretariat

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp? 
ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080212005014&newsLang=en

or

http://tinyurl.com/37qjnd
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From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:33:07 -0000

Speaking of the IETF eating its own dogfood, is there 
a reason why people write things like this?

> ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080212005014&newsLang=en

Or use services like this?

> http://tinyurl.com/37qjnd

Rather than following the advice of Appendix C in RFC 3986 which
recommends putting angle brackets around URLs like so?

<http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news
_view&newsId=20080212005014&newsLang=en>

I generally type <> left-arrow and then paste the URL between them.
In some environments it even works for non-standard URLs like
<\\SomeServer\Some Folder Name\Engineering\Joe Bloe\Important
Spreadsheet.xls>
or
<file:Q:\Engineering\Joe Bloe\Important Spreadsheet.xls>

--Michael Dillon

---

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:14:14 -0800

A good question but one that is likely to get the wrong answer.

People do what works for them, not what the spec might say

And this is exactly how it should be. People should not be slaves of
machines and people should not be slaves of 'standards' either.

The angle braces proposal was a typically clueless one in the first
place. It does not make the problem of identifying a URL any easier.
Like many proposals at the time it was foisted on the Web community by
unilateral decree by people who knew how to work the IETF better. 

Another example of cluelessness being the whole URI/URL/URN fiasco that
has caused nothing but confusion ever since.

The strong consensus of users is that cut and paste should work for URLs
in email clients. Blame the lazyness of the email client providers, not
the users.

If you want to persuade a billion people to behave in a particular way
you need to have a better communication plan than Appendix C of STD 66,
an identifier that sounds more like a bilogical classification for
herpes than best user practices for the Web.

But rather than try to improve the communications strategy in this case
a much better plan would be to consider what the most important thing to
tell the billion users of the Internet. I really do not think that would
be how to cut and paste URLs so that they work with MUTT. Not getting
involved with money mover or package reshipping rings is a much bigger
communication priority for me.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
[email-masked]
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 11:33 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: RE: AMS - IETF Press Release

Speaking of the IETF eating its own dogfood, is there a reason why
people write things like this?

I generally type <> left-arrow and then paste the URL between them.
In some environments it even works for non-standard URLs like
<\\SomeServer\Some Folder Name\Engineering\Joe Bloe\Important
Spreadsheet.xls> or <file:Q:\Engineering\Joe Bloe\Important
Spreadsheet.xls>

--Michael Dillon

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:39:14 -0000

> recommends putting angle brackets around URLs

Michael,

Try explaining that to the manufacturers of Outlook Express. It has a 
"smart" feature.

Adrian

---

From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:56:39 +0100

<[email-masked]> wrote:

> is there a reason why people write things like this?
[...long folded URL without angle brackets...]

One of several OE oddities, this beast tries to "eat"
angle brackets, and when I insist on it it will still
fold long lines.
 
>> http://tinyurl.com/37qjnd

It's an acceptable work around for this issue.  And it's
in a form where your MUA *could* handle it without angle
brackets.  Join the club of users despising their MUA...

> <file:Q:\Engineering\Joe Bloe\Important Spreadsheet.xls>

...that's cheating, produce the RFC permitting the file:
scheme starting with <path-rootless> in STD 66 terms. ;-)

 Frank

---

From: "IETF Member Dave Aronson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:20:31 -0500

Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Join the club of users despising their MUA...

The dictum of Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, re operating systems,
applies equally well to nearly every sort of application.

-Dave

-- 
Dave Aronson
"Specialization is for insects." -Heinlein
Work: http://www.davearonson.com/
Play: http://www.davearonson.net/
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From: Norbert Bollow <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:21:32 +0100 (CET)

> place. It does not make the problem of identifying a URL any easier.

I disagree.  Note for example that <http://example.com/,> is a
perfectly valid URL different from <http://example.com/>.
Nevertheless it is often desirable to use URLs in sentences where a
comma which is not part of the URL immediately follows the URL with
no intervening whitespace.

> in email clients. Blame the lazyness of the email client providers, not

Has the bug been reported to the email client providers?

Greetings,
Norbert.

-- 
Norbert Bollow <[email-masked]>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org
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From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:18:17 -0000

> The strong consensus of users is that cut and paste should 
> work for URLs in email clients. Blame the lazyness of the 
> email client providers, not the users.

But if you cut and paste between a pair of angle brackets,
you have a much better chance of presenting the reader 
with a clickable URL.

> I really do not think that would be how to cut and 
> paste URLs so that they work with MUTT.

I have no idea about MUTT but I do know that pasting into
a pair of angle brackets provides clickable URLs to 
Outlook users even if the URL contains spaces or is
very long.

--Michael Dillon

---

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:42:42 -0800

Actually it does not.

The real problem here is the loser MUAs and MTAs that reformat text to
wrap at 60 or 80 cols. It does not matter how you paste the URL, if it
is longer than 60 cols it is quite likely to get mangled en-route.

If you use a modern version of outlook it will often work out how to
undo the damage caused by brain-damaged line wrapping algorithms. 

It is not like it is difficult to write an MUA that does not wrap text
or one that only inserts line breaks at spaces.

Of course the even simpler solution is to use a text markup that is
better suited to the purposes of email than plaintext. HTML is an
improvement but not as suited to the purpose as a dedicated markup could
be.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
[email-masked]
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 2:18 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: RE: AMS - IETF Press Release

> The strong consensus of users is that cut and paste should work for 
> URLs in email clients. Blame the lazyness of the email client 
> providers, not the users.

But if you cut and paste between a pair of angle brackets, you have a
much better chance of presenting the reader with a clickable URL.

> I really do not think that would be how to cut and paste URLs so that 
> they work with MUTT.

I have no idea about MUTT but I do know that pasting into a pair of
angle brackets provides clickable URLs to Outlook users even if the URL
contains spaces or is very long.

--Michael Dillon

---

From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:26:50 -0500

> is longer than 60 cols it is quite likely to get mangled en-route.

Clients that implement RFC 2646 at least mangle and de-mangle in a  
consistent way, however.

Joe