Olin Lathrop wrote:

> Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
>> I never called anybody 'stupid' (or 'inept' or whatever
>> you have come up with along these lines).
> 
> "Browsers and newsreaders handle that and display that correctly. It's
> only not available when there's a bug, or an inept programmer"

Um... What has this to do with metric vs imperial in the USA? What has this
to do with proprietary software that never goes online? That's the two
areas you felt offended. How do you get from here (the quote) to there
(your characterization of it)? 


Just for reference, here's a bigger context of this quote. Note the absence
of any relationship with imperial units or applications that don't go
online -- and note the smiley right after the "inept programmer".

> On the Internet, all the necessary standards are in place for a long time
> to represent mu correctly and platform-independently. Pretty much all
> web server script languages have ready-made functions to convert user
> input into the appropriate HTML entities. Character sets are
> well-defined, and so are the ways to define which one is used. Browsers
> and newsreaders handle that and display that correctly. It's only not
> available when there's a bug, or an inept programmer :)

I still stand to that. An online application like a browser or newsreader
for use on public networks that doesn't handle common communication
standards properly and therefore can't display common characters properly
either has a bug or has been written by a programmer who is by definition
inept for this task (as in "lacking skill or aptitude, especially for a
particular task" -- a definition from a dictionary). That's not an opinion,
that's a fact. (This notwithstanding the possibility that his employer
rather pays a programmer who is inept for this task, for a variety of
reasons. There's room for everybody... and everybody is inept at something
:)

You can be upset about it, but it's still a fact. The programmer inept for
this may very well not be inept for other tasks. Him being inept for this
task definitely doesn't mean that he is stupid. These misinterpretations
happened only in your mind.

Gerhard

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