Re: Warning -- ASCII art and Netscape Messenger 5.0

Matthew Thomas wrote:
> * show anything surrounded by *asterisks* or /slashes/ in bold and
>   italic respectively (I've managed to convince them to leave the
>   asterisks and slashes there, instead of hiding them)

It wasn't you, who convinced me.

> * show :) or :-) as a smiley face graphic (which could be awful for some
>   ASCII art pictures).

We will leave ":)" alone, we just change " :)", which should be more
secure.

> On the positive side, they are discussing ways of detecting when plain
> text is ASCII art and when it isn't, so that even people who read
> messages in a proportional font will see ASCII art in a fixed-width font.

I will step into this. We still have no good rule to detect ASCII-art,
that doesn't sound like "60% of ...". Can somebody give me a good *and*
simple (easy to remember and figure out with just using the software)
rule? It should catch ASCII-tables, but shouldn't trigger, if not
appropriate.

Currently, we walk char-by-char through the message, an algorithm that
honors that has better chances to be implemented. Of course, I can't
even garanty, if such an detection will make it into Mozilla.

> You can look at the relevant `bug' for text->HTML rendering of mail/news
> messages, at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16507.
> 
> And finally, if you have done all (or at least most) of the above, you
> can pester the person doing the programming, Ben Bucksch,
> mozilla @ bucksch . org. Tell him you're from news:alt.ascii-art.

I'm displeased with the way you are bringing this discussion into this
newsgroup.

bugzilla is our work tracking system and not for discussions. It has no
threading.

Posting my email address is even more impudent.

-- 
Ben Bucksch
http://www.bucksch.org