Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 15:32:13 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, rob <rob@pythonemproject.com>, "chat@freebsd.org" <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Bottom-quoting (was Re: My friends were amazed at FreeBSD...) Message-ID: <3CF1626D.DE01A84F@mindspring.com> 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>
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Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > 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". It's really annoying, but it appears to be an artifact of how mail readers operate. IT would be nice if they did not insist on inserting blank lines at the cursor point. Netscape has three different settings for how to quote: o Start my reply above the quoted text - Insert lines before - Put cursor at top o Start my reply beow the quoted text - Insert lines after - Put cursor at bottom o Select quoted text - No lines inserted - Cursor location depends on deselection/replacement Obviously, the best possible implementation to get the quoting methodology that people seem to want is to: - No lines inserted - Put cursor at top > One could even argue that it's in line with standard practice in > snail-mail: if you're including a copy of the original letter in your > reply, you'll place it below your reply while stapling them together, > not above. So I think bottom-quoting is not the best thing, but it's > not too bad; the main drawback is wasting bandwidth. Particularly when the reason for quoting in the first place is to ensure thread continuity, which is adequately guaranteed by quoting only the part you are responding to, and maintaining proper headers, in particular, the "In-Reply-To:" header. Arguing standard practice with "snail mail" is rather ridiculous, as it's difficult or impossible to break up a letter into parts, without a lot of manual labor with scissors. > Top-quoting an entire mail, on the other hand, serves only to annoy > the reader. Quoting a message in its entirety, as a blob, whether before or after, is generally annoying, since if the thread is interesting, then the blob was already read, and your reply is addressing the entire statement, not the statement in context. The entire statement, in context, is already in context as a blob, in the mail archives and/or the readers "inbox". Technically, I've nearly quoted your entire message here, with the exception of the first two sentences, in order to give context. I could, perhaps, have left out the second sentence of the second block, or broke the block up and replied to the sentences seperately, but it had more impact the way I did it. 8-). -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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