HTML arrogance (was: Re: Tutorial: Notepad++ shortcuts.xml macro converts unicode to the 95-keyboard ASCII characters)

On 2025/12/15 8:56:53, R.Wieser wrote:

[Some attribution lines have been removed - not by me.]

> Chris,
> 
>>> If you have a better way to convert 'messy' text to ASCII, let us know.
>>>
>>> That way everyone benefits by you providing an even better way to do it.
>>
>> Carlos in a different ng has the solution for you: don't fuck around with
>> ng post headers and leave everything as UTF-8. It isn't 1993.
> 
> :-) Thats an "everyone has to do this" solution, and as such will never 
> work.  There is always at least one who won't obey the "works best for 
> everyone" rules.

Exactly.
> 
> Take for instance the kid who *purposely* posted HTML-ed messages, with the 
> text part of it replaced with a demand we use a HTML-capable newsgroup 
> readers. Quite the bit of arrogant barf (since using ES I have not seen him 
> anymore.  Likely ES has banned HTML posts for (text only) newsgroups like 
> these ones).

It's not just some "kid"; I've had companies that do same in emails.
Some even just say something like "we have tried to contact you in
words-and-pictures ..." in the plain-text part. The worst are ones where
their _system_ is sending two-part emails, but the person _sending_ them
has no idea that that's what's happening, and is unable to comprehend
when you try to explain. That's just about tolerable when it actually
works, but one large company (I think it was FindMyPast, a genealogy
company) had such a system for their newsletters that was _broken_ - the
plain text part (which I was reading by default) was stuck at sending
out the newsletter from one particular issue. I was asking them why they
were telling me about (e. g.) special offers that only had a few days to
run, and eventually they were telling me about them after they'd expired
(or events after they were over); of course, the people with whom I were
corresponding had no idea, and claimed the error was at my end.

[]

> Regards,
> Rudy Wieser
> 
> 

-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Too many are silent so the few will not be offended.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYoH8796SFE