Oops, didn't make myself clear. It's really the second issue that I was
asking about -- a standard for when HTML is to be interpreted or not. The
complication is that a single message might include HTML that should be
interpreted and some that is "example" HTML. Right now, I skirt the issue
in my converter by treating everything as if it were an example, then I
make URLs hot, too, and a few other things on a "best guess" basis.
>If you can do it without pissing anybody off, great! Well, you're
>guaranteed to piss somebody off. If you can do it without creating
>an anti-HTML or anti-WWW sentiment in the USENET/mail community,
>I suppose I'm in favor of this.
There are people who are offended by *any* unsolicited e-mail, but I can
take that kind of heat. But if I include a 2,000-word sales pitch for our
products... ;-)
Anyway, I'm looking for a standard way to set aside some example HTML in
messages. In this list, in particular, it's a common occurence. In the
HTML 2.0 spec, I see <SAMP> refers to "a sequence of literal characters,"
which would seem to be what we want. We could easily modify the converter
to do reserved character substitutions for anything enclosed in <SAMP>
tags, but interpret the rest. Was this the intent of <SAMP>?
As a transition, we can include links to the current "best guess" method
that I'm using now. We already include links to the original article,
which is just the text wrapped with <PRE>.
Next, we'll get people to put <BLOCKQUOTE> around quoted text... then an
anchor back to the quoted message. Yeah, that's what we'll do... Then
we'll have them send us all their money. ;-)
Nick
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nick Arnett "We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunity."
Verity Inc. -- Pogo (Walt Kelly)
narnett@verity.com