Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 15:58:10 +0200 From: Joachim Dagerot <freebsd@dagerot.nu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Top posting solution Message-ID: <200408111358.i7BDwBv07267@thunder.trej.net> In-Reply-To: <499FA0D4-EB94-11D8-9364-000A956D2452@chrononomicon.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
(This message is also located at the bottom of the message, and also in-line) [top post] Oh boy, am I tired of this discussion that in some kind of nature law must pop up every three or four month..... | > Here's a good reason to top-post: I'm referring to the message as a | > whole, rather than to the content. | | What reference to a whole? Whole what? | | > | > This message came in while I was writing my previous message in this | > thread. It shows *exactly* the points I was referring to. | | What are you referring to? | | > Yes, the | > reply is posted at the bottom, but the quoted text is mutilated beyond | > what anybody could have believed 20 years ago. Your reply appears to | > refer to the last paragraph only (I suppose; I can't read the | > message), but you've (mis)quoted it in its entirety. | > | [inline] Oh boy, am I tired of this discussion that in some kind of nature law must pop up every three or four month..... | Whereas I have no idea what you're referring to now. | | > A question to you: do you like the appearance of this message? | | It's a very pretty message. But it is all blah blah blah blah if I | haven't a frame of reference for the content in question. | | Whereas this way of replying reads like conversation; moreover, | Mail.app will highlight lines with indent marking and color so I can | easily process what was already written visually and if I want to skip | it, I can; if I'm reading a conversation, I can easily tell what was | written and at what point. | | > Or do | > you do it because it's too difficult to write a tidy reply? | | Top posting? Or inline posting? I inline because it's more like a | conversation style. It's PRECISE. I know exactly what point is being | referred to, and I would think that ambiguity is something in the | technology field that should be AVOIDED. | | You should get a new one then. | | New what? What is being referred to if the "message as a whole" is | more than three paragraphs? And am I right with my assumption of what | it's referring to? | | Vs.: | | >My car is a piece of crap. $^@@# thing broke down for the third time | today. | You should get a new one then. | | AH! Simple. Referring to the car. Not the dog that chewed the shoes, | or the DVD player that has buffer problems, or anything else in the | contrived example... | | > I suspect | > the latter, and that's the point I'm trying to make. I do | > occasionally have to use "Outlook", and I find it incredibly painful | > to use. | | No, I think the latter makes it sound more like the replier has | schizophrenia and is talking to himself. My personal theory was that | more literate people tend to inline post while the less literate tended | to top-post, but I'm not in a field where I could study that theory | conclusively. Longer top posters seem to ramble on and on, unless the | reader scrolls down to figure out what in hell they're referring to. | The only time I "top post" is when I'm truly sending something as | content that shouldn't be forwarded again (a notice or memo, a story | that should NOT be edited to understand it...and people that keep | forwarding jokes ad infinitum, PLEASE trim the damned quoted HEADERS!!) | as well as propagate a growing list of crud that ISN'T referred to. | It's not a matter of pretty replies, it's laziness. Pure laziness. | When I want to reply to a point or question, I quote the reply or | question portion and don't include the sigs or the random crap already | inserted. | | Let's stop trying to justify top posting for every single email out | there and just admit it; people are lazy. People who top post for | *everything* are just lazy with trimming crap out. they want to spill | out their response and that's it. There are some things we're lazy | about that can be taken care of with features or protocol; for | instance, word wrapping. Someone is going to justify my asbestos | underwear as I send this because I didn't word wrap at 72 characters. | Why?! Because I didn't keep hitting enter at "reasonable" spots. Most | mail readers will do it automatically. My reader doesn't. I'm using | Mail.app; it uses a different method for dynamically wrapping | text...forgot what it was called already...but basically no matter what | the display is, it'll word wrap my mail so that it appears legible | (within reason) and if I manually insert returns, it'll look like CRAP | as it interprets the linefeeds. That can be taken care of by using a | reader with this feature (it's an open standard...) and inserting the | manual feeds reminds me of the idiots that typed up their five page | reports in word processors by hitting enter at the end of each line and | then inserting a word so there were stair-stepping throughout the | entire friggin' document. Deal with it. That's something that can be | taken care of by updating readers so that when the right character is | hit, it inserts on your display a linefeed and quote character. This | means that in the age approaching, you may be able to actually read | your email from your system at home with the huge display, your PDA, | and your laptop, each with different resolutions and screen sizes but | at the same time be able to read your email without scrolling all over | timbuktu (that's actually why Apple used this format...the company that | started it, Qualcomm?...was coming up with a simple way for messages to | be read on anything from regular clients to cellphone screens easily, | as I recall from the FAQ on the subject). | | But I'm afraid that where you choose to quote, inline, top, bottom, | CANNOT be interpreted by your mail reader or any protocol. | Unfortunately, that still takes intervention by the user, the person | actually composing a reply. It can *encourage* it by either starting | your insertion point at the top or bottom and by putting in the | prefacing "On YY date so and so thus spake:" before each reply, but | that's it. | | Outlook has this wonderful ability to mangle headers and encourage | crappy habits to being with, and should be avoided like the plague (as | if the virus propagation features and bloated features included in it | that most people don't use aren't enough reason). | | breathe...breathe...whew... | | -Bart [bottom] Oh boy, am I tired of this discussion that in some kind of nature law must pop up every three or four month.....
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200408111358.i7BDwBv07267>