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Jerry Stuckle · February 15th 15, 01:49 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna

On 2/14/2015 7:57 PM, wrote:
Rob wrote:
wrote:
Rob wrote:

snip

(who prohibited HTML, attachments, etc and delayed the creation of
newsgroups by prohibitive bureaucratic mechanisms)

If you actually knew anything about USENET and it's history, you wouldn't
be asking such questions.

I am on usenet since about 1994 and I have seen the "all postings should
be plaintext 80-column format" debates more than often enough.

Only since 1994; a newbee then.

Like you...

When HTML was suggested to allow markup and MIME was invented to allow
attachements, it was forbidden by the usenet people. This made those
that did not grow up with 80-character ASCII terminals leave the scene
in disgust. Pity.

The idea that USENET should be ASCII comes from the desire that it be
usable with ANY terminal out there. There are STILL lots of ASCII
only newreaders out there. A lot of people do not use web browsers
to interact with USENET.

Not entirely. There was also the fact that many people were using slow
modem connections and were being charged by the byte (which is still
true in some parts of the world today). HTML unnecessarily increased
download time and bytes transferred.

Attachments have ALWAYS been allowed if uuencoded; all real newsreaders
support uuencode/uudecode.

Not necessarily. Some news servers don't accept any attachments; others
don't accept binary attachments.

There are NO "prohibitive bureaucratic mechanisms" for the alt. groups
and it is blazingly obvious to the most casual observer what that
leads too.

And many news servers don't cary many of the alt.* groups. They're not
as well supported as the big eight.

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Jerry Stuckle

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