Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:41:12 -0400 From: Kurt Hackenberg <kh@panix.com> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Posting Netiquette [ref: Threads "look definitely like" unreadable mess. Handbook project.] Message-ID: <e8fd408c-d193-a687-983a-1055608b0cb1@panix.com> In-Reply-To: <20220623102922.1af2e539@archlinux> References: <CAD2Ti2_GFxRzAjgSwf55tC9c3jSUAzeR42xzhUgG87QZ7JT5_g@mail.gmail.com> <20220623030118.GA59423@eureka.lemis.com> <20220623060320.aad6a631.freebsd@edvax.de> <CAD2Ti2-F7%2BZ3QtpV7PxfcbnaHXGLcFytRihv-cVWn=7qDdWsxw@mail.gmail.com> <20220623102922.1af2e539@archlinux>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 2022/06/23 04:29, Ralf Mardorf wrote: >> ; No idea what the ';' in the '“> ;”' is doing there for. > > "“>” to the original message works best. Leaving white space after the > “> ;”" > > This way the reader does notice the space: “> ;” > ";" is a placeholder mentioning that text starts at this position. > This way the reader is missing the space: “> ” > The text is a little bit misleading. I've never heard of that ';' convention before. Why must the reader notice the space? I vote for ">" alone, without a space character, because, as somebody noted, this quoting convention must be understood by software, too. Software can't tell whether the space is part of the quoting convention or part of the original message. RFC 3676 (text/plain format=flowed) forbids that space character, to avoid that ambiguity. Remember also that quoting can be nested, to any number of levels. With a mix of space and no space, that's kind of a mess. ">> > >>> > " etc. Many current mail readers interpret text quoted with ">", and display it some other way, which presumably is not hard to read. Thunderbird displays it as a colored vertical line, and multiple lines of different colors for nested quoting. Apparently some phone mail readers collapse quoted text, to fit on a tiny screen. An HTML reply to a message with ">" quoting should turn ">" into nested <blockquote>. It's best not to give those mail readers something ambiguous.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?e8fd408c-d193-a687-983a-1055608b0cb1>