[Axiom-developer] RE: IssueTracker emails

[Page, Bill]

Vladimir,

The guilty party has confessed. I am very sorry to have made
a false accussation. I do appreciate the effort that you
are making in testing Axiom and I hope that you will submit
bug reports to issuetracker and continue to discuss them via
this email list.

My sincere apology for assumming that you were doing so
indiscriminantly.

Bill Page.

-----------

Tim!

(Now I know that it is you...)

Why are you spaming the issuetracker with so many poorly
formatted emails from axiom-developer email list? Keep in
might that everything you post on MathAction is also being
sent to the axiom-developer list.

Please be more selective and careful with the formatting.
Some of your reports are almost unreadable.

Also, it would be very nice if you would identify yourself
to the system by setting 'preferences' before issuing so
many messages so that we can be sure who to 'blame'.

Regards,
Bill Page.

--------

There. Now I feel a little less presumptuous. :)

--------

On Tuesday, January 18, 2005 1:15 AM Tim Daly wrote:
> 
> Bill,
> 
> It isn't Vladimir, it's Tim
> 
> Everyone on the list says 2 things:
> 
>   1) this is a bug
>   2) somebody should file a bug report
> 
> Well, since I'm clearly a "somebody" I've taken it upon myself
> to walk thru the axiom email queue and record those things
> that are bugs. The side effect, of course, is that it appears
> that I'm spamming the list for those people who are subscribed.
> I can't seem to help that, unfortunately.
>

Well ok, but but ... If you let me know I could temparily disable
the forwarding to the axiom-developer list.

> I'm also updating the documentation (book volumes) and the FAQ.
> 

I am sure that that does take a lot of time.

> It is important to get these bugs captured and recorded
> somewhere and IssueTracker is the place of choice.

I agree. My main concern is how they look as web pages.

> 
> Once I complete this tedious task I'm going to flame people who
> post bug emails and do not file a bug report on IssueTracker.
> We do need to track and fix these bugs. I have not had the time
> (I still don't) but we're nearing a point where axiom is escaping
> our developer community. A quality piece of software needs bug
> tracking and bug fixing so this is a necessary first step.
>

I agree.

> I don't have the time to properly format several thousand
> emails so these are going to look rather poor in display but
> the content is all there.

Yes, but ... (well, I suppose we can go back and fix the
formatting later)

Do you seriously intended to post several thousand unformatted
emails to issuetracker? ~~shudder~~

> It would be useful if I could turn off formatting or quote the
> email somehow so it looks better.

This is possible. By default, issuetracker assumes the formatting
is "Structured Text + LaTeX" (which also includes Axiom commands).
This follows some fairly simple but specific rules about the
input style so that headings, lists, tables, bold font etc. all
appear quite natural both in the "edit" format (which is also
sent as email) and on the final web page. This is the usual format
for online submission to issuetracker.

But if what you are cutting and pasting into the issuetracker
`Details' box is raw unformatted text, then after submitting
the report you should click "edit" and change the `type:' to
"Plain text", otherwise the content of the email will be
interpreted as if it was coded as "Structured Text".

> 
> My apologies for the spam-like quality of this activity.
> 

If you let me know in advance, I can disable the forwarding
temporarily. It might also be possible for me to change the
default format to "plain text". But I suppose that the result
of this activity is not really that bad, since the emails
themselves are not badly formatted - only the issuetracker
web pages. Since you have confessed and I know you *are*
veru busy with many other things, I will change the formatting
to "plain text" for all of those reports that you have already
submitted.

Regards,
Bill Page.