On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 05:27:37PM -0500, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Aug 2016 19:07:20 +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote:
> >
> >I could have written that poor MUAs lead to respondends being unable
> >to trim their emails to manageable size ... 
> > 
> I've heard of this misbehavior but never suffered it. 

I believe I suffer it on a daily basis. You too, probably. There are
MUAs who will not conform to standards, and the number of people
sending from their smartphones is growing too - I think it is hard to
trim text using one's finger or a mouse, and it is hard to do serious
editing or writing without help given by decent editor (and even small
effort could be helped and it adds up the more often one writes). So I
guess that users of such platforms suffer more than I - I would, if I
had to use them for writing. However, I have very limited experience -
so maybe they do not suffer as much as I imagine.

Given I am only reading those emails, this gives me just an
itch... about two or three hundred times a month (I am avid mailing
lists subscriber so I believe the number to be literal rather than a
metaphore). As of now I am going throu various webpages to see how I
can help myself - modular technology to the rescue.

> I assumed it was by design for integrity, preventing misquotation or
> alteration of context or denial of previous statements.

As of integrity, deniability etc, I guess people have been writing
emails for about 50 years, give or take a decade, so perhaps something
could be learned from the past. Or maybe not. Anyway, the digitally
signed _unedited_ copy could be used as a proof who wrote what, when,
maybe even where (some tweaks to existing solutions could be required
for all this, albeit I am not sure about jurisdiction where such proof
could serve in a court). Thus manipulating someone else's words would
make no sense as long as she could serve such a signed copy. The
archive could be a reliable third party to serve one. Alas, archives
come up and down, and personal computers can be broken into. I admit I
have not studied this subject at all.

However, I do not think that leaving full copy in response is going to
solve such problem better, or solve it at all. Or that anybody choose
to make program do so because of such noble intention.

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:[email protected]             **

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