wmartin@brl-smoke.ARPA (Will Martin ) (05/12/86)
I have noticed a distressing trend lately -- some posters embed numerous CTRL-L characters in their postings. When you display such postings on a screen, it causes many delays and requires that the reader hit the space bar frequently to get through the posting. When such postings are dumped to print for later off-line reading, they waste much paper, often with only a few lines per printed page. The only reason to include Ctrl-L's in a posting is to paginate a long document into actual printed-output pages, and to insure that printers will get top-of-form correct, such as having one at the start to keep the header info on a separate page from the data. It is not "neat" or "clever" to include multiple Ctrl-L's in posted text just to force displays to pause between each of your paragraphs -- it is merely irritating and annoying (and will therefore detract from the points you are trying to make, not help them). (Perhaps a line could be added to network-etiquette documentation disparaging such practices?) Will
ins_apmj@jhunix.UUCP (Patrick M Juola) (05/23/86)
In article <775@brl-smoke.ARPA> wmartin@brl-smoke.ARPA (Will Martin ) writes: >I have noticed a distressing trend lately -- some posters embed >numerous CTRL-L characters in their postings. > >The only reason to include Ctrl-L's in a posting is to paginate a long >document into actual printed-output pages,... [remainder edited] > >(Perhaps a line could be added to network-etiquette documentation >disparaging such practices?) > >Will I disagree. Where I have seen ^L used most frequently is in net.jokes and net.puzzle. In net.puzzle, they work wonders for separating the question from the answer (much easier than trying to rot-13 only PART of a file). In net.jokes, it either separates the joke from the punch line : "So the lady responds : ^L <whatever>" or it gives the people a chance not to read the joke if they would be offended by it. I think this is a good idea for several reasons, among them : it's easy to put in a ^L, and not everyone knows how/is able to unrotate statements. Well, that's my $.02 -- Pat Juola Hopkins Maths
henry@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU (Henry C. Mensch) (05/25/86)
In article <2903@jhunix.UUCP> ins_apmj@jhunix.ARPA (Patrick M Juola) writes: >I disagree. . . . . . . In net.puzzle, they work wonders for separating >the question from the answer . . . . . >In net.jokes, it either separates the joke from the punch line : > You assume that everyone is using the same news software and the same terminals as you are. I used to have a terminal that would have epileptic seizures when it received a ^L. Some news software doesn't deal with ^L's very well (old versions of vnews, for example). The bottom line is that ^L doesn't work the same everywhere, so please don't use it. The rest of us will be grateful. -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Henry Mensch | Technical Writer | MIT/Project Athena henry@athena.mit.edu ..!mit-eddie!mit-athena!henry
mkr@mmm.UUCP (MKR) (06/04/86)
In article <2903@jhunix.UUCP> ins_apmj@jhunix.ARPA (Patrick M Juola) writes: >In article <775@brl-smoke.ARPA> wmartin@brl-smoke.ARPA (Will Martin ) writes: >>I have noticed a distressing trend lately -- some posters embed >>numerous CTRL-L characters in their postings. >> >>Will > >I disagree. Where I have seen ^L used most frequently is in net.jokes and >net.puzzle. In net.puzzle, they work wonders for separating the question >Well, that's my $.02 -- Pat Juola Well, I agree with Will that Control-L's are obnoxious But on the other hand, I agree with Pat that They are useful in net.jokes and net.puzzle. Let's compromise: Use them in net.jokes and net.puzzle, where they are appropriate, but keep them out of other groups. Otherwise, I'll have to take the responsibility upon myself and edit my shell variables to ignore the buggers. --MKR