From owner-freebsd-chat Sun May 26 11:35: 9 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from postfix1-2.free.fr (postfix1-2.free.fr [213.228.0.130]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3366F37B403 for ; Sun, 26 May 2002 11:35:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bluerondo.a.la.turk (nas-cbv-6-62-147-149-178.dial.proxad.net [62.147.149.178]) by postfix1-2.free.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5CAE7AB5C1 for ; Sun, 26 May 2002 20:35:01 +0200 (CEST) Received: (qmail 517 invoked by uid 1001); 26 May 2002 18:35:04 -0000 Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 20:35:04 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Mike Meyer Cc: rob , "chat@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: Bottom-quoting (was Re: My friends were amazed at FreeBSD...) Message-ID: <20020526183504.GA472@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20020524143036.C67484@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20020524164101.P51722-100000@muheleja.eenet.ee> <20020524163603.L81843@lpt.ens.fr> <3CEECD6A.5E9BB6A6@pythonemproject.com> <20020525175149.A69827@lpt.ens.fr> <15601.2665.379231.456776@guru.mired.org> <20020526173949.GA230@lpt.ens.fr> <15601.10022.167754.574044@guru.mired.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <15601.10022.167754.574044@guru.mired.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 4.6-PRERELEASE i386 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > > My remark, about the mail client not letting you delete lines, was > > not meant to be serious -- I certainly hope such a thing doesn't > > exist. Selective and appropriate quoting is the best of all, but > > bottom quoting is not so bad; I've seen JKH and Linus Torvalds do > > it, among other celebrities, and it's pretty standard in the "real > > world". > > If by "real world", you mean "clueless computer users", I'd agree > with that. Since you hang around the -current and -hackers lists, I imagine you've seen several such "clueless computer users" there. Some of whom are significant contributors to the project. Now I'm scared for the future of FreeBSD. You haven't said why it's wrong to bottom-quote (apart from the bandwidth issue). You claim that it's as "annoying" as top-quoting an entire post, which is strange, since if it's bottom-quoted you're not forced to look at it. If we're talking annoyance factors, one can pick out several in anyone's style. Here are some in yours. Mike Meyer said on May 26, 2002 at 13:19:18: > In <20020526173949.GA230@lpt.ens.fr>, Rahul Siddharthan typed: Is it really necessary to quote the message ID, sender's name *and* sender's address in the attribution line, thus causing it to overflow the margin? What happened to the "keep to 72 characters" rule? > > > > Maybe you need another haircut :) or your mails do, they're too long > > > > on top. There is no earthly reason to quote an entire mail on top of > > > > each of your mails. If your mail client doesn't allow you to delete > > > > lines[1], maybe you could bottom quote instead. Some people don't > > > > like it, but it's better than forcing your readers to wade through > > > > lines and lines of irrelevant stuff which they've read already, before > > > > getting to your point... > > > If your mail reader is that broken, don't quote. All the stuff that's > > > been read before is irrelevant whether it's on the top or the bottom. > > If you receive more that around 20 emails a day, *some* form of > > quoting is essential, otherwise keeping track will be impossible. How about adding a few spaces between those lines, to distinguish paragraphs more clearly? A carriage-return character wouldn't consume significant bandwidth and it would make the whole thing much more readable. - Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message