From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2006-07-29T01:54:16+09:00
Subject: Re: state of unicode support

On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 01:39:34AM +0900, Cliff Cyphers wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> >Maybe that has something to do with the fact that I've been an
> >intermittent member of this list, not a constant member, since I first
> >discovered it -- and my most recent membership (this one) started on the
> >25th of this month.
> 
> It shouldn't matter if one is constantly subscribed.  One should search
> archive to see if question already discussed before posting dup.  Given
> that sometimes one might not have a search sting that doesn't find a
> match there are cases where there will be dups.  But at least try.

News flash: I used Google and found a grand total of two posts from that
thread before I posted the question -- two posts that didn't help.  I'm
not a complete moron, thanks.

Drop the friggin' subject.  Forget I asked.  It's not worth an entire
thread devoted entirely to a defense of my decision to ask rather than
rely on incomplete addressing of a simple question asking for a summary
response that spanned more than fifty emails, requiring hours of reading
just to get to an answer that's something like "Regex support good,
strict Unicode support good, localization via Unicode needs work."  WTF?
Is your time so damned precious that you can't spend thirty seconds
posting a one-sentence summary response rather than twenty minutes
chastising me for not wasting hours finding out almost nothing?

I recently saw a couple posts lamenting the downhill trend of Ruby
community friendliness.  At the time, I'd been on this list for about a
day and a half this time around, and couldn't really comment.  On a
previous occasion when I followed this list for a bit, my impression was
"Those guys at ruby-talk are a great bunch of guys, unless you ask about
the nature of :symbols, in which case you'll get useless answers and
someone trying to give useful answers will get his head bitten off.
Otherwise, friendliest programming community I've ever seen."  Now,
judging mostly by reactions others have received for innocent questions
and comments, and a couple of reactions I myself have received, it looks
like things have degenerated.

The old guard I recall (D. Black, Matz, et cetera) seem mostly to still
be a great bunch of guys from the posts I've witnessed "realtime" and
the recent archives I've read, but some others here need an attitude
check.  Seriously.

"It shouldn't matter if one is constantly subscribed."  Yeah.  'Cause at
a rate of hundreds of posts a day (wild guesstimate -- I don't have time
to actually count 'em), I really have time to read the last six months
of archives to see if I've missed something relevant.  Even a search
engine won't solve that problem effectively.  Maybe next time you should
say "Have you checked the archives?  There's something relevant in there
from last month.  Does it answer your question?" rather than the
equivalent of "Someone already said Unicode this year!  Out, heathen!"

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
This sig for rent:  a Signify v1.14 production from http://www.debian.org/