Derek Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Anyone besides me notice that if you start a line of an e-mail message
> with the word "From" your mailer sticks a '>' in front of it? This is to
> prevent sendmail et. al. from seeing this as the start of another
> message...
>
> This is all well and good, but I wish they'd have picked a character other
> than the one that generally is used to indicate quoted text... It
> potentially makes messages hard to follow, especially when there are
> comments from multiple people.
As I recall, the >From came first, and the convention of using > to quote
when replying was taken explicitly from that, on the assumption that
users were already familiar with the >From quote and would implicitly
understand it. Remember that the 'Net was a lot more techie in the '70s.
If the >From had used a different character, then that would have been
adopted instead, and we'd have had the same problem.
This reminds me of an old Andy Capp cartoon, where Andy is reading this
other guy's newspaper over his shoulder. He moves in closer with each
panel, until at the end he's holding the newspaper himself and yells
at the other guy, "Hey! Do you *mind* ?!"
--
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / URL: http://www.blu.org
ICQ#28611923 / AIM abreauj
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