End of ADS-L Digest - 17 May 1998 to 18 May 1998
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<br>From: Automatic digest processor (5/18/98)
<br>To: Recipients of ADS-L digests
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<br>         ADS-L Digest - 16 May 1998 to 17 May 1998             98-05-18 00:00:28
<br>There are 9 messages totalling 482 lines in this issue.
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<br>Topics of the day:
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<br>  1. Geekspeak (2)
<br>  2. 2 CFPs
<br>  3. Scumbag; Midget/Dwarf; Pop-Up; Valedictory; Hello; Night Hawks; Gal
<br>  4. Scumbag; Midget/Dwarf; Pop-Up; Valedictory; Hello; Night Hawks;
<br>  5. guilted me
<br>  6. repurposed
<br>  7. Neologisms
<br>  8. BULWORTH anachronisms
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<br>
<br>Date:    Sat, 16 May 1998 22:12:44 -0700
<br>From:    Gabor Fencsik <gabor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]WELL.COM>
<br>Subject: Geekspeak
<br>
<br>Donald M. Lance writes:
<br>
<br>> "Your message has been enqueued and undeliverable for 1 day"
<br>>
<br>> This 'enqueued' (enqued in USian) is reminiscent of the 'undecode' that
<br>> I posted earlier.  Is there a redundancy or a pleonasm at work here?
<br>
<br>I don't think so.
<br>
<br>In geek-speak, 'enqueue' is a retronym used to disambiguate software
<br>operations performed on queues.  The verb 'enqueue' refers to the act of
<br>inserting an entry (your mail message, in this case) at the end of the
<br>queue.  'Dequeue' is the act of yanking the message off the top of the
<br>queue and sending it on its merry way.  The error message is alerting you
<br>to the fact that enqueuing was successful, but dequeueing was not.
<br>
<br>The word 'queue', used as a verb, would strike the typical journeyman
<br>hacker as ambiguous, which is why 'enqueue' took its place in technical
<br>software documentation. The trouble begins when error messages larded with
<br>such technical terms are indiscriminately dumped on unsuspecting users who
<br>could care less about the innards of the mail forwarding software.
<br>
<br>I suspect 'undecode' is a misspelling.  The word was probably 'uudecode',
<br>which is another technical term describing (what else) the inverse of
<br>'uuencode'.  These operations were originally performed by eponymous UNIX
<br>programs, (the 'uu' prefix meant 'Unix-to-Unix') but nowadays are built
<br>into most PC-based mail client software.  This type of encoding is used to
<br>transform image files, sound files, and other non-ASCII files into ASCII
<br>text that can be sent along as mail attachments.  The sender uses
<br>'uuencode' to transform the data into printable gobbledygook; the receiver
<br>performs the inverse operation, and restores the original image file,
<br>sound file, or whatever.  This is necessary to get around the mail
<br>delivery infrastructure of the Net which was originally designed to
<br>transport printable ASCII data only.
<br>
<br>-----
<br>Gabor Fencsik
<br>