Post by brightsideOn Tue, 16 Apr 2019 10:08:25 +0100, Ian Goddard
Post by Ian GoddardPost by brightsidePost by PeterPost by johnPost by PeterMy family are from Ireland. Most likely came to England at the time of
the Potato famine.
I'm finding it difficult to trace their past lives in Ireland, and I'm
told that thhis is due to the Irish Records burning during the Irish
Civil War.
I've checked on Google and this seems to be an accurate statement. How
diffiicult is it? Can anyone advise me.
PeteFJ
Have you looked tried Google to find the remaining sources that are
available?
Didn't you find
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/how-to-trace-your-
irish-family-history-a-step-by-step-guide-1.3423973
https://www.familytreemagazine.com/premium/11-best-irish
-genealogy-websites/
Have you looked at sites such as
https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/
http://www.rootsireland.ie
http://www.from-ireland.net
http://genealogy.nationalarchives.ie
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
etc?
https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/irish-records-burned.html.
Incidently, your posting is too wide. There is a Usenet standard of 80
characters width.
That is what happens when one uses google groups to post. The data on
the input screen does *automatically* enter a pseudo new line which
is not included in the data posted. Hence the post is just a long
line, unless read with google groups. I don't bother to read such
posts.
I think I see what happened. John posted (via T-bird and a usenet
server, not GG) a very long URL. Short of using a URL shortening
services <spit> there's nothing to be done about that, the URL is what
it is. Although he had normal line length set to 72 T-bird will, quite
rightly, insert a URL without line breaks.
Mozilla-based clients handle this gracefully, wrapping at the margin
depending on the width of the client window. It still handles the URL
as a single string internally (if the width of the window is changed the
wrap changed to suit) so clicking on any part of it will open the link.
Peter is using a client I've never heard of before but presumably
truncates the URL on display. A client that can't handle a URL wider
than 80 characters has a problem.
who posted vial google groups whose posting has "long lines". John
pointed out the usenet standard of 80 characters. I pointed out that
long lines it a fault of google groups which Peter used to post but
wouldn't see the long line problem ..
Peter made the original post from indvidual.net using MacSOUP/2.8.5
(ea919cf118) (Mac OS 10.14.4). He may have a gmail address but this is
not a posting from GG
John replied from aioe.org with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64;
rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/60.6.1 This also is not a posting
via Google Groups.
That post starts with a free-standing sentence ("Have you looked...")
which, as it happens, is 78 characters long. I'll return to that below.
He then posted a line starting "Didn't you find " followed by a long URL
from the Irish Times and on another line a URL from Family Tree Magazine
and then another list of sites followed by a line simply saynt "etc?"
No complaint about line length. The line with the Irish Times URL is
indeed long. Even if it hadn't been tagged onto "Didn't" etc. it would
have exceeded 100 characters.
It was Peter who then replied about the 80 character lines. Ironically
as his first post, as you pointed out, has lines above 80 characters long.
However, line length is more nuanced than that. It appears to come from
RFC 2822 which says "Each line of characters MUST be no more than 998
characters, and SHOULD be no more than 78 characters, excluding the
CRLF." So it's actually 80 bytes including the EOL pair, coincidentally
the length of one of John's lines. But the RFC goes in to say
"The 998 character limit is due to limitations in many implementations
which send, receive, or store Internet Message Format messages that
simply cannot handle more than 998 characters on a line. Receiving
implementations would do well to handle an arbitrarily large number of
characters in a line for robustness sake."
"The more conservative 78 character recommendation is to accommodate the
many implementations of user interfaces that display these messages
which may truncate, or disastrously wrap, the display of more than 78
characters per line, in spite of the fact that such implementations are
non-conformant to the intent of this specification...Again, even though
this limitation is put on messages, it is encumbant upon implementations
which display messages to handle an arbitrarily large number of
characters in a line (certainly at least up to the 998 character limit)
for the sake of robustness."
As I took pains to point out URLs can be much longer than the
recommended limit. That gives extra force to suggestion that larger
lines should be handled properly. Any implementation which fails in
either displaying or posting URLs has not been fit for purpose for the
last couple of decades and more.
It may well be naughty of Google Groups to post lines longer than 78
without good reason but so long as they stick within the 1k including
EOL they are actually legitimate. However nobody in this thread has
posted from Google Groups.