Re: The ultimate luxury ?

From: Jesse F. Hughes (jesse_at_phiwumbda.org)
Date: 08/02/04 

Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 12:43:18 +0200

jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

> In article <20040801141141.057$Lo@news.newsreader.com>,
> Hamilcar Barca <hamilcar@tld.always.invalid> wrote:
>>In article <410cc6ab$0$2847$61fed72c@news.rcn.com> (Sun, 01 Aug 2004
>>09:17:21 +0000), jmfbahciv wrote:
>>
>>> You have a misunderstanding of the term sort
>>> when used in the computer biz.
>>
>>The technobabble in which you're engaging is unimpressive.
>>
>>> I understand that. Picking up the ref data is not a sort; it's
>>> a sift or an extraction following a set of selection rules.
>>
>>"Sift" is not a technical term.
>
> When did the term stop getting used?
>
>>
>>> Your software used the contents of the ref field as an address and
>>> does NOT sort the data stored within that ref field.
>>
>>This is as stupid as it gets. How did you think sorting worked?
>
> Sort orders a set of data stored in a specified field. The operation
> you claim is sorting, used to be called collation and/or merge.

What is it you think we're talking about?

Here's what I'm talking about.

My newsclient has downloaded headers for some number of articles. It
must then present a summary of those headers so that I can choose
which I wish to read. That summary ought to be presented in a logical
order. Since the summary is presented one article per line,
presenting it in a logical order amounts to sorting the headers.

My client (due to my personal settings) sorts according to the
contents of the references header. Does this mean that it sorts
alphabetically on those contents? Of course not. That is just
silly. It means that the contents of the header is used to create a
partial order on the set of articles (which is extended to a linear
order by other settings).

I posted some of the natural requirements for such orderings in
<87zn5fxdsz.fsf@phiwumbda.org>. That last string is one of those
Message-IDs which are not meant to be human-readable. Or so I'm told.

Now, why would one call this process "merging" or "collating"? It is
sorting. The headers have already been fetched. The issue is only
the order in which to present them to the user.

Maybe you're talking about something else, but this is the topic I
have been discussing since the start. And I have been clear on this:
I am not telling you what your client does. I am telling you what my
client does. 

-- 
Jesse F. Hughes
"You shouldn't hate Mother Mathematics."
                          -- James S. Harris

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Looking for a newsreader with a specific feature
    ... under Windows) allow sorting by the *last* post in each thread, ... This still doesn't change the order of sort *within* a thread. ... Why wouldn't showing unread headers, threaded, be efficient enough? ... You can sort posts in Xnews by clicking column headers. ...
    (news.software.readers)
  • Re: Looking for a newsreader with a specific feature
    ... 'threaded view' (for headers) allows sorting by the date of *first* post in ... Does any newsreader (running under Windows) allow ... sorting by the *last* post in each thread, ...
    (news.software.readers)
  • Re: Looking for a newsreader with a specific feature
    ... under Windows) allow sorting by the *last* post in each thread, ... This still doesn't change the order of sort *within* a thread. ... Why wouldn't showing unread headers, threaded, be efficient enough? ...
    (news.software.readers)
  • Re: Looking for a newsreader with a specific feature
    ... under Windows) allow sorting by the *last* post in each thread, ... This still doesn't change the order of sort *within* a thread. ... Why wouldn't showing unread headers, threaded, be efficient enough? ... You can sort posts in Xnews by clicking column headers. ...
    (news.software.readers)
  • Re: Ws-Addressing - WSE and vanilla Web Service Proxies
    ... I can clearly get this working by figuring out when i have a WSE client ... writing services on the assumption that my decision to use routing is a good ... You will need minimally the wsa headers. ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.webservices.enhancements)
Quantcast