9 ms·
No comic sans in httpd status pages
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Sidnicious 11y agoText of the message (since the site seems to be down): - - - List: openbsd-tech Subject: [PATCH] No comic sans in httpd status pages From: Peter Krantz <peter () peterkrantz ! se> Date: 2016-02-19 16:40:33 Message-ID: AAE82534-AF27-4CC9-B780-38F05596FE38 () peterkrantz ! se [Download message RAW] Hi! For some reason the httpd status pages (e.g. 404) use the Comic Sans typeface. This patch removes comic sans and sets the typeface to the default sans-serif typeface of the client. This lowers the number of people contacting website maintainers with typeface complaints bordering on harassment. Cheers, Peter ? no_comic_sans_in_404.patch Index: server_http.c =================================================================== RCS file: /cvs/src/usr.sbin/httpd/server_http.c,v retrieving revision 1.105 diff -r1.105 server_http.c 811c811 < "'Comic Sans MS', 'Chalkboard SE', 'Comic Neue', sans-serif; }\n" --- > "sans-serif; }\n”
- scrollaway 11y agoBe nice with the poor server. Text mirror (pastebin): http://dpaste.com/3E9B7BB.txt http://dpaste.com/3E9B7BB.txt
- stygiansonic 11y agoSeems like they succeeded in their objects of "annoying web hipsters"?
- pkz 11y agoHi! I am the patch submitter and I just wanted to make an honest contribution to fix something I thought was broken. I could not find a way to specify custom status pages in OpenBSD httpd. The smart quote error was my mistake. I figured patches to email lists should be submitted in a signed email message and used Mail.app for the first time in a while (where I have it configured). Didn't see the auto corrected quote before sending. Contributed a new corrected patch which I hope works better. I guess this patch will never be considered if the use of Comic sans is intentionally hard coded into httpd but at least I tried.
- dmaz 11y agoReplacing https with http worked for me: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=145590012904434&w=2 http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=145590012904434&w=2
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoAn elegant example of a troll trolling other trolls (and few more masterful than the OpenBSD developers), I'd reckon.
- slig 11y agoGood eyes. I've been bitten by those before, took me a while to hunt that bug.
- samlinkl 11y agoThe hate for Comic Sans seemingly knows no bounds.
- DanielBMarkham 11y agoSince it seems fashionable to be outraged over something on the internet, I choose the unbridled and unfair hatred towards Comic Sans, the lemonade stand of typefaces. What kind of sick, evil bastards don't like lemonade stands? I'm also pretty pissed about Pluto getting demoted.
- jamesblonde 11y agoI think you've hit the nail on the head here. People like to feel part of a collective group, and the Internet's biggest collective group is outraged people. In this case, outraged nerds. We collectively 'agree' that outsiders (that is, idiots) use Comic Sans. Then we attack the style, rather than the substance, because they didn't know of the unwritten rules of our subculture.
- lomnakkus 11y agoTo provide at least one data point: My feelings about Comic Sans amount to "meh". I actually think it's a very-well designed font. It's just that people have no idea when it's appropriate and when it isn't. I saw the light when I realized that Simon Peyton Jones (of Haskell/GHC fame) purposely used Comic Sans in all of his presentations -- just to weed out who was paying attention to the styling over the content. Generally, I think this might be a good principle, but you can definitely take it too far. For example, SPJ's slides are always well-articulated and don't contain L33tsp33k (or whatever we call what the kids use on IM these days).
- quchen 11y agoSPJ about Comic Sans: > This is a very funny question, "Why use Comic Sans?" So, all my talks use Comic Sans and I frequently see remarks like 'Simon Peyton-Jones, great talk about Haskell but why did he use Comic Sans?' but nobody's ever been able to tell me what is wrong with it. It's a nice legible font, I like it. So until somebody explains to me ... Ah, I understand that it's meant to be a bit naff, but I don't care about naff stuff, I care about being able to read it. So if you have got a sort of ... some rational reasons why I should not then I'll listen to them. But just being unfashionable? I don't care.
- alanh 11y agoHow long had Comic Sans been used on httpd status pages? (The mind reels…)
- i80and 11y agoSince it was released in 5.8, I believe. OpenBSD projects tend to use Comic Sans as a matter of course as a ward against hipsters[1]. [1]: http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-libressl/mgp00025.html http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-libressl/mgp00025.htm...
- SwellJoe 11y agoPeople who use the term "hipsters" to describe "anyone who is not like me" are the new hipsters.
- andrewchambers 11y agoThey said web hipsters, I think they know they are basically the security obsessed cvs hipsters themselves.
- hodwik 11y agoThe irony here is that using/liking something specifically because it makes you unusual, and wards off people who aren't like you, is exactly what hipster means. So OpenBSD are a bunch of hipsters.
- stock_toaster 11y agoPretty sure they were security hipsters before it was cool. ;)
- ksherlock 11y agoRevision 1.2, Sat Jul 12 23:55:35 2014 UTC (19 months, 1 week ago) by reyk Use Comic Sans (or Chalkboard) as the default font for HTTP error messages because we love web hipsters. ok beck@
- h1fra 11y agoThe message does not specify why they got complaints. But it's fair to assume that it was a bad choice, considering the font is not on most plateform
- logicrook 11y agoI have a script that do most installations and configurations that I run after each Linux install. It contains the following lines: ### fix font issues sudo rm /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/comic* sudo rm /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/Comic* So no comic sans cancer for me (except when people are perverse enough to put it into images, or worse, meatspace...)
- Ruud-v-A 11y agoOr when they use webfonts. (Yes, some people actually do that.)
- theandrewbailey 11y agoI was watching an episode of That 70s Show a few weeks ago, and I swear I saw Comic Sans on a sign. Not even dramatizations of the past are escapable from it.
- philovivero 11y agoLook into "find -iname '...' -print0 | xargs -0"
- gpvos 11y ago> "sans-serif; }\n” Note the incorrect, "smart" quote at the end of the line. I'm not sure if that's intentional, but this is going to be interesting.
- alice_Alice 11y agoMust.. Control.. Fist... ...of Death!
- kmm 11y agoInterestingly, my browser detects the page as Windows-1252 and displays that quote as â€
- gpvos 11y agoYeah, that's how I noticed it too.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoThat's because marc.info doesn't supply a Content-Type header (or equivalent <meta> tag) to specify encoding, so the browser must assume it's using some 8-bit one. On most computers in Western Europe, the US and so on, it'll assume Windows-1252. You have to explicitly specify you want UTF-8 to get it. This would seem to be strange since it's The Encoding now, but assuming 8-bit is necessary for backwards-compatibility, I'm guessing.
- DonHopkins 11y agoThe typefascists have won.
- SFjulie1 11y agoI guess the idea of putting comic sans MS as a way to force companies into putting relevant customised status error messages for users has failed. EDIT see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9240906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9240906 For 500 a ticketing or a contact info to report the problem For a 404 whatever can help the user finds it way For congestion status a link to a status page? For stuff 40? that requires payment a link with a link for legitimately acquiring it ... The webmasters email in case there is something to report could be nice too ... It really is business meaningful to customize them, I fully support shaming irresponsible webmasters that keep default status pages with comic sans MS.
- ewindisch 11y ago> shaming irresponsible webmasters that keep default status pages with comic sans MS. Until they have a filesystem failure that results in the server unable to locate the custom pages, and defaults to rendering the Comic Sans page? Even responsible developers find themselves hitting the consequences of the chaos monkey.
- pkz 11y agoI could not find a config setting for httpd in OpenBSD that allows me to specify custom status pages.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20140625075722/http://www.libressl.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140625075722/http://www.libres... > This page scientifically designed to annoy web hipsters. Donate now to stop the Comic Sans and Blink Tags All the OpenBSD presentations I've read have been in Comic Sans. They really like that font :)
- snuxoll 11y agoI think they do it to make a point, they don't care about stuff being pretty, they care about it being sane and secure. If the only thing you complain about is a typeface then maybe they're doing their job right :)
- cbd1984 11y agoGiven that fonts are attack vectors, why style text at all?
- snuxoll 11y agoThe consideration of fonts as attack vectors is highly overplayed - the bytecode allowed in TTF in OTF fonts is pretty limited, while mistakes have certainly been made in FreeType and other implementations it's no worse than the JavaScript sandbox most people are already relying on in their browsers.
- DonHopkins 11y agoThere are some fonts you should never install, even if they look innocuous: http://fontmeme.com/freefonts/134412/the_trojan_horse.font http://fontmeme.com/freefonts/134412/the_trojan_horse.font And other fonts are so beautiful that merely looking at them can cause harm: http://re-type.com/notaweblog/2013/03/06/new-font-from-retype-medusa/ http://re-type.com/notaweblog/2013/03/06/new-font-from-retyp...
- stock_toaster 11y agoThey aren't actually embedding the font, they are just setting a style in the css to use a particular system font, if present.
- kyledrake 11y agoAs I understand it, there's no Comic Sans (MS Web Fonts) in OpenBSD, so it basically just trolls everybody else. I thoroughly approve of it.
- Mojah 11y agoIf you prefer a clean/readable version, it's available here: https://marc.ttias.be/openbsd-tech/2016-02/msg00313.php https://marc.ttias.be/openbsd-tech/2016-02/msg00313.php
- bcohen5055 11y agoI was hoping to click on this and find the same page in Comic Sans
- xylon 11y agothank god
- DominikD 11y agoThis patch is a prime example of why I understand OpenBSD devs' frustration with newcomers. It takes several hours of lurking to get the general idea of what OpenBSD culture[1] is. And yet about once or twice a week there's someone new coming with some demand, backward idea or GPL evangelism, who gets aggressive when challenged. I'd flip the table every single time if I were one of the contributors. [1] as long as you're not devoid of sense of humor, I guess, in which case there's no hoping
- stock_toaster 11y ago> And yet about once or twice a week there's someone new > coming with some demand, backward idea or GPL evangelism, > who gets aggressive when challenged. You forgot to mention the people who try to spam the lists with propaganda for their own rando OpenBSD fork or derivative. As a regular reader of openbsd-misc, considering the relatively low volume of the list, the frequency with which people just storm in with batshit craziness is indeed boggling. I mean..in the last three days alone, look at this[1] and this[2]. wtf! [1]: https://marc.info/?t=145589643700008&r=1&w=2 https://marc.info/?t=145589643700008&r=1&w=2 [2]: https://marc.info/?t=145564257000002&r=1&w=2 https://marc.info/?t=145564257000002&r=1&w=2
- qb45 11y agoYou are in a maze of gpio pins, all alike, all undocumented, and a few are wired to bombs. Is this theo.c what it appears to be?
- notalaser 11y agoIt is exactly what it appears to be.
- nickysielicki 11y agoThe shame of it is that misc posts asking for help are frequently ignored while any troll can pop up asking about LibertyBSD or the GPL and fresh replies roll in for a week or more. Misc needs more self-restraint.
- snorkel 11y agoA thoughtful rebuttal by Comic Sans: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole
- ams6110 11y agoThis reply sums it up nicely. https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=145592464111609&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=145592464111609&w=2
- rahimzayid 11y agoFarewell my dear and favorite font!