From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 20 19:09:59 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7BAB716A4CE; Wed, 20 Oct 2004 19:09:59 +0000 (GMT) Received: from blackwater.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.135]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A87F43D31; Wed, 20 Oct 2004 19:09:56 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from grog@lemis.com) Received: from blackwater.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.135]) by blackwater.lemis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2EB9C85629; Thu, 21 Oct 2004 04:39:52 +0930 (CST) Received: by blackwater.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id A3FDD4AC44; Sun, 17 Oct 2004 11:03:56 +0200 (CEST) Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 11:03:56 +0200 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey To: Tom Connolly Message-ID: <20041017090356.GA1488@eucla.lemis.com> References: <20041015192444.GB819@gothmog.gr> <00aa01c4b2ed$de40d2c0$9a11a8c0@d3stomc> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <00aa01c4b2ed$de40d2c0$9a11a8c0@d3stomc> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Organization: The FreeBSD Project Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ X-PGP-Fingerprint: 9A1B 8202 BCCE B846 F92F 09AC 22E6 F290 507A 4223 cc: 'Giorgos Keramidas' cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: topposting (was: colourization in ls command) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 19:09:59 -0000 [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] Irrelevant text trimmed. Long/short breakage *not* trimmed, but left as an(other) example. On Friday, 15 October 2004 at 13:33:37 -0600, Tom Connolly wrote: > Giorgos Keramidas wrote: >> On 2004-10-15 09:35, Tom Connolly wrote: >>> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >>>> On Tuesday, 12 October 2004 at 17:09:29 -0600, Tom Connolly wrote: >>>>> There is a nice little tool for Outlook users, [...] >>>>> >>>>> http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/ >>>> >>>> Are you aware that your message was formatted with long/short lines? >>> >>> Looks ok to me. This is possible (see below), but you're presumably writing for others, not for yourself. To quote http://www.lemis.com/email/fixing-outlook.html: Microsoft "Outlook" might not be the worst mailer available, but the results delivered to non-Microsoft mailers certainly make it look that way. This may not worry Microsoft, but it should worry you: your mail is one of the ways people judge you on the net. Send out a badly formatted message like the ones in the Email format page or like Microsoft's own format breakage, and people will often think that you are incompetent or careless. >> Sorry but no; Greg is right. Your post *did* exhibit the long/short >> line bug of Outlook. >> >> That's the problem with most of the email that Outlook sends, isn't >> it? It looks ok to the poster but not to the reader. Long/short >> lines that Greg referred to is a common symptom of Outlook-formatted >> (or, to be more precise, `unformatted', if I am excused for the pun) >> messages. I've recently had the misfortune to have to use "Outlook" for real work. I won't start on a rant about how difficult it is to use, but I'd like to point out that it reformats text for display, wrapping lines that weren't wrapped in the original. That makes it "look OK to you", but it doesn't solve the problem, and it's a breach of the RFC standards. >> I can't even begin to describe how many things are stupid about >> this format of replying. Indeed. I think I'll keep your text and add it to my own rant, if I may. >> What is very wrong about the wrapping style of Outlook (or the lack >> of one) is that Outlook users might never become aware of it. Just >> like you didn't know about it until Greg pointed it out ;-) > > That's all true but at least it solves the topposting problem which is what > most > People seemed to be complaining about. :) A number of things about this comment: 1. It still shows long/short. 2. I'm not sure what you're referring to, because you quoted the *entire* message. It doesn't seem to refer to the immediately preceding text. You'll note that a number of people, myself included, have drawn a distinction between "top posting" and "bottom posting" on the one hand and an appropriate interaction of original and reply on the other. It's the latter that we're hoping for. Leaving irrelevant text is always wrong. Greg -- When replying to this message, please take care not to mutilate the original text. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/email.html See complete headers for address and phone numbers