Re: Sort items in a list without OSAXen
Re: Sort items in a list without OSAXen
- Subject: Re: Sort items in a list without OSAXen
- From: Paul Berkowitz <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2001 11:53:20 -0700
On 9/3/01 9:14 AM, "Jon Pugh" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
> I'm sending it below as hexa.
>
>
But why hexa?
>
>
Is this (and don't you *dare* quote this):
>
>
6F6E20736F7274286C290D096966206C656E677468206F66206C20B22031207468656E20726574
<...OK, OK, big snip of hexa >
>
>
*really* better than this:
>
>
on sort(l)
>
if length of l > 1 then return l
<snip regular script>
>
I don't think so. Adding an extra step to read a message is
>
counter-productive.
>
>
So please, stop it before you go blind.
Jon, I think Emmanuel must have brought that in as his technique for getting
around the disgusting higher-ASCII-character mangling perpetrated by this
list server operated by Apple for Apple User groups using Apple computers,
and which has never been configured for the Macintosh Roman character
formatting and never will be.
For Emmanuel, and anyone using Smile with its hexa-to-string conversions, it
would be a very simple matter to convert, and always correct, with no
possibilities of stumbling. As it happens, the script which was encoded had
no higher-ASCII characters, although it did have >, < and |. It's possible
that some of those do indeed require the option key on French computers - I
know that certain other characters we take for granted on US keyboards do
so. It's also hard to keep track of the "bad" characters and to remember to
check everything through before sending scripts every time.
So it wasn't so perverse of Emmanuel to send that hexa. It is perverse of
Apple to never configure their list servers. But that's a lost cause.
Supposedly making the archives searchable is a higher priority, and of
course they've been hard at work doing that instead. I won't say another
word about it for 12 more months. Oh well.
--
Paul Berkowitz