[Tutor] Beginner - explaining 'Flip a coin' bug

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 05:26:26PM -0500, Dave Angel wrote:

> He posted in html and included two attachments.  His email program
>  added added a text version, which we know is frequently bogus.

"Frequently?" I don't think so. I hardly ever see text parts which don't 
say the same thing as the html part, modulo changes to indentation. I 
can't say "never", as I have seen a few commercial emails (usually 
advertising) that say "If you cannot read the body of this email, 
upgrade your email program" instead of a formatting-free version of 
their HTML part. (Which, by the way, is incredibly rude of them.) But in 
general, the text part and the html part match very closely, if not 
exactly.


>  The nntp news system tossed the attachments,  I believe.

If you check out the gmane.comp.python.tutor mirror, you will see the 
attachments.

 
> Now,  my newsreader (nntp NewsReader,  which is the best I've
>  found for my tablet) has bugs, but not as important as the ones
>  I've stopped using. I can read the html version of the email, but
>  when replying it quotes none of it. Sometimes I just give up,
>  sometimes I use copypaste and sometimes I just mention it. But I
>  don't mention it anymore if it's the only thing I have to
>  say.
> 
> Are you recommending we ignore newsreader usage, or am I permitted
>  to object to attachments? 
> Do you have another suggestion for me, other than:
> 
> 1) switch to googlegroups
> 2) read and post only occasionally,  when I get back to my laptop
> 3) write my own reader that runs on the Android

As I said in my earlier response, I think it's time for you to switch 
your default assumption from "the original poster didn't send a 
plain text message" to "unless other people on the mailing list 
complain, there probably is a plain text component, I just can't see 
it".

I'm sorry that your technology is letting you down. I'm even more sorry 
that your current choice is the least worst of a bunch of even worse 
choices. (Googlegroups? Ew.) I'm afraid that the tech world is going to 
keep getting worse and worse in this regard, as more and more sites and 
programmers make unjustified assumptions about what technology is 
available to the reader. My pet bugbear is websites that don't degrade 
gracefully when Javascript is turned off, but are essentially 
unreadable. Worse, sites that are unusable unless you allow Facebook and 
other spyware sites to run code in your browser.

But you've admitted that your tool of choice has limitations, and I 
don't think it is either fair or useful to rail against the sender for 
the limitations in your news reader. It's not 1990 any more, and the 
battle against HTML mail has well and truly be lost. (More's the pity, 
in my opinion.)

I don't know if this works for you, but can you not get mail on your 
tablet? Perhaps you could read this via the mailing list?


-- 
Steven