Re: Top posting solution
Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: On Tuesday, 10 August 2004 at 14:58:02 -0700, Kevin Stevens wrote: On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, JJB wrote: The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Not true. Pine doesn't, for example. It begins a reply with the cursor at the very top of the message body. In fact, the entire concept is flawed. You should be able to write text anywhere you want in a reply. Even most Microsoft-oriented MUAs allow that. Absolutely. Wherever your cursor starts off when you reply to a mail, you'll have to move it about to reply in a legible way. [...] To all you Unix hard liners, Please instead of complaining to the top posters, it would be so much nicer if you just informed the [truncated by sender] It would actually be much nicer if they'd just quit trying to enforce their preferences on others. It also has nothing whatsoever to do with Unix or personal preferences. Nobody has any interest at all in how you format mails in any context other than this list. And these issues affect mails on lists regarding all technical issues. You'll find correct formatting on MS tech lists as well, though admittedly it tends to be patchier there. The point is that these mails are not private correspondence; they form a public archive. Once an OP has had several contributions added to it, the only way it remains a useful reference is if reasonable discipline is observed by contributors. In fact, the formatting requested for FreeBSD lists is clear: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/mailing-list-faq/etiquette.html And the only people trying to enforce their personal preferences on others are those who ignore this guidance. Peter. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
Chris wrote: Paul Schmehl wrote: --On Tuesday, August 10, 2004 05:45:58 PM -0400 JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Over the years I have seen many posts on this list where Unix hard liners complain about people posting their replies to the top of the email messages on this list. The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Not true. Pine doesn't. Mulberry doesn't. I don't believe Evolution does. I'm pretty sure the Firefox solution (don't recall the name) doesn't. Thunderbird gives you the option And of course OE/Outlook users could just learn to hit Ctrl-End before they start typing :-) Mark ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
On Aug 10, 2004, at 6:25 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: Here's a good reason to top-post: I'm referring to the message as a whole, rather than to the content. What reference to a whole? Whole what? This message came in while I was writing my previous message in this thread. It shows *exactly* the points I was referring to. What are you referring to? Yes, the reply is posted at the bottom, but the quoted text is mutilated beyond what anybody could have believed 20 years ago. Your reply appears to refer to the last paragraph only (I suppose; I can't read the message), but you've (mis)quoted it in its entirety. Whereas I have no idea what you're referring to now. A question to you: do you like the appearance of this message? It's a very pretty message. But it is all blah blah blah blah if I haven't a frame of reference for the content in question. Whereas this way of replying reads like conversation; moreover, Mail.app will highlight lines with indent marking and color so I can easily process what was already written visually and if I want to skip it, I can; if I'm reading a conversation, I can easily tell what was written and at what point. Or do you do it because it's too difficult to write a tidy reply? Top posting? Or inline posting? I inline because it's more like a conversation style. It's PRECISE. I know exactly what point is being referred to, and I would think that ambiguity is something in the technology field that should be AVOIDED. You should get a new one then. New what? What is being referred to if the message as a whole is more than three paragraphs? And am I right with my assumption of what it's referring to? Vs.: My car is a piece of crap. $^@@# thing broke down for the third time today. You should get a new one then. AH! Simple. Referring to the car. Not the dog that chewed the shoes, or the DVD player that has buffer problems, or anything else in the contrived example... I suspect the latter, and that's the point I'm trying to make. I do occasionally have to use Outlook, and I find it incredibly painful to use. No, I think the latter makes it sound more like the replier has schizophrenia and is talking to himself. My personal theory was that more literate people tend to inline post while the less literate tended to top-post, but I'm not in a field where I could study that theory conclusively. Longer top posters seem to ramble on and on, unless the reader scrolls down to figure out what in hell they're referring to. The only time I top post is when I'm truly sending something as content that shouldn't be forwarded again (a notice or memo, a story that should NOT be edited to understand it...and people that keep forwarding jokes ad infinitum, PLEASE trim the damned quoted HEADERS!!) as well as propagate a growing list of crud that ISN'T referred to. It's not a matter of pretty replies, it's laziness. Pure laziness. When I want to reply to a point or question, I quote the reply or question portion and don't include the sigs or the random crap already inserted. Let's stop trying to justify top posting for every single email out there and just admit it; people are lazy. People who top post for *everything* are just lazy with trimming crap out. they want to spill out their response and that's it. There are some things we're lazy about that can be taken care of with features or protocol; for instance, word wrapping. Someone is going to justify my asbestos underwear as I send this because I didn't word wrap at 72 characters. Why?! Because I didn't keep hitting enter at reasonable spots. Most mail readers will do it automatically. My reader doesn't. I'm using Mail.app; it uses a different method for dynamically wrapping text...forgot what it was called already...but basically no matter what the display is, it'll word wrap my mail so that it appears legible (within reason) and if I manually insert returns, it'll look like CRAP as it interprets the linefeeds. That can be taken care of by using a reader with this feature (it's an open standard...) and inserting the manual feeds reminds me of the idiots that typed up their five page reports in word processors by hitting enter at the end of each line and then inserting a word so there were stair-stepping throughout the entire friggin' document. Deal with it. That's something that can be taken care of by updating readers so that when the right character is hit, it inserts on your display a linefeed and quote character. This means that in the age approaching, you may be able to actually read your email from your system at home with the huge display, your PDA, and your laptop, each with different resolutions and screen sizes but at the same time be able to read your email without scrolling all over timbuktu (that's actually why Apple used this format...the company that started it, Qualcomm?...was coming up with a simple way for messages to be read on anything from
Re: Top posting solution
(This message is also located at the bottom of the message, and also in-line) [top post] Oh boy, am I tired of this discussion that in some kind of nature law must pop up every three or four month. | Here's a good reason to top-post: I'm referring to the message as a | whole, rather than to the content. | | What reference to a whole? Whole what? | | | This message came in while I was writing my previous message in this | thread. It shows *exactly* the points I was referring to. | | What are you referring to? | | Yes, the | reply is posted at the bottom, but the quoted text is mutilated beyond | what anybody could have believed 20 years ago. Your reply appears to | refer to the last paragraph only (I suppose; I can't read the | message), but you've (mis)quoted it in its entirety. | | [inline] Oh boy, am I tired of this discussion that in some kind of nature law must pop up every three or four month. | Whereas I have no idea what you're referring to now. | | A question to you: do you like the appearance of this message? | | It's a very pretty message. But it is all blah blah blah blah if I | haven't a frame of reference for the content in question. | | Whereas this way of replying reads like conversation; moreover, | Mail.app will highlight lines with indent marking and color so I can | easily process what was already written visually and if I want to skip | it, I can; if I'm reading a conversation, I can easily tell what was | written and at what point. | | Or do | you do it because it's too difficult to write a tidy reply? | | Top posting? Or inline posting? I inline because it's more like a | conversation style. It's PRECISE. I know exactly what point is being | referred to, and I would think that ambiguity is something in the | technology field that should be AVOIDED. | | You should get a new one then. | | New what? What is being referred to if the message as a whole is | more than three paragraphs? And am I right with my assumption of what | it's referring to? | | Vs.: | | My car is a piece of crap. $^@@# thing broke down for the third time | today. | You should get a new one then. | | AH! Simple. Referring to the car. Not the dog that chewed the shoes, | or the DVD player that has buffer problems, or anything else in the | contrived example... | | I suspect | the latter, and that's the point I'm trying to make. I do | occasionally have to use Outlook, and I find it incredibly painful | to use. | | No, I think the latter makes it sound more like the replier has | schizophrenia and is talking to himself. My personal theory was that | more literate people tend to inline post while the less literate tended | to top-post, but I'm not in a field where I could study that theory | conclusively. Longer top posters seem to ramble on and on, unless the | reader scrolls down to figure out what in hell they're referring to. | The only time I top post is when I'm truly sending something as | content that shouldn't be forwarded again (a notice or memo, a story | that should NOT be edited to understand it...and people that keep | forwarding jokes ad infinitum, PLEASE trim the damned quoted HEADERS!!) | as well as propagate a growing list of crud that ISN'T referred to. | It's not a matter of pretty replies, it's laziness. Pure laziness. | When I want to reply to a point or question, I quote the reply or | question portion and don't include the sigs or the random crap already | inserted. | | Let's stop trying to justify top posting for every single email out | there and just admit it; people are lazy. People who top post for | *everything* are just lazy with trimming crap out. they want to spill | out their response and that's it. There are some things we're lazy | about that can be taken care of with features or protocol; for | instance, word wrapping. Someone is going to justify my asbestos | underwear as I send this because I didn't word wrap at 72 characters. | Why?! Because I didn't keep hitting enter at reasonable spots. Most | mail readers will do it automatically. My reader doesn't. I'm using | Mail.app; it uses a different method for dynamically wrapping | text...forgot what it was called already...but basically no matter what | the display is, it'll word wrap my mail so that it appears legible | (within reason) and if I manually insert returns, it'll look like CRAP | as it interprets the linefeeds. That can be taken care of by using a | reader with this feature (it's an open standard...) and inserting the | manual feeds reminds me of the idiots that typed up their five page | reports in word processors by hitting enter at the end of each line and | then inserting a word so there were stair-stepping throughout the | entire friggin' document. Deal with it. That's something that can be
Re: Top posting solution
On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 17:45:58 -0400, JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Over the years I have seen many posts on this list where Unix hard liners complain about people posting their replies to the top of the email messages on this list. The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Top posting came along when MS/Windows came on the market with their own email clients: Outlook express which is the email client built into Internet explorer and the MS/Office Outlook email client. There is a little known fix for MS/Outlook express and MS/Office Outlook email clients that change the behavior of these MS/Windows email clients so they adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Information and fix download can be found at these URLs. MS/Outlook express http://home.cs.tum.edu/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/ MS/Office Outlook http://home.cs.tum.edu/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/ To all you Unix hard liners, Please instead of complaining to the top posters, it would be so much nicer if you just informed the MS/Windows top poster of the above links so they know about the solution to fix their email clients to adhere to the Unix email format used on this list. Geez this is tough to ask cause it has nothing to do with FreeBSD, but has anyone tried this (Outlook-quotefix) with Outlook 2003 in an Exchange (2000 or 2003 envrionment)? For the record, I love FreeBSD and utilize it's power throughout a company which is mainly MS (not my choice right now) boxen. :) ...D ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
On Wednesday, August 11, 2004 12:24:24 PM Bart Silverstrim [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: |Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 08:45:13 -0400 |From: Bart Silverstrim [EMAIL PROTECTED] |Subject: Re: Top posting solution |To: FreeBSD Questions [EMAIL PROTECTED] |Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed | | |On Aug 10, 2004, at 6:25 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: | | Here's a good reason to top-post: I'm referring to the message as a | whole, rather than to the content. | |What reference to a whole? Whole what? | | | This message came in while I was writing my previous message in this | thread. It shows *exactly* the points I was referring to. | |What are you referring to? | | Yes, the | reply is posted at the bottom, but the quoted text is mutilated beyond | what anybody could have believed 20 years ago. Your reply appears to | refer to the last paragraph only (I suppose; I can't read the | message), but you've (mis)quoted it in its entirety. | | |Whereas I have no idea what you're referring to now. | | A question to you: do you like the appearance of this message? | |It's a very pretty message. But it is all blah blah blah blah if I |haven't a frame of reference for the content in question. | |Whereas this way of replying reads like conversation; moreover, |Mail.app will highlight lines with indent marking and color so I can |easily process what was already written visually and if I want to skip |it, I can; if I'm reading a conversation, I can easily tell what was |written and at what point. | | Or do | you do it because it's too difficult to write a tidy reply? | |Top posting? Or inline posting? I inline because it's more like a |conversation style. It's PRECISE. I know exactly what point is being |referred to, and I would think that ambiguity is something in the |technology field that should be AVOIDED. | |You should get a new one then. | |New what? What is being referred to if the message as a whole is |more than three paragraphs? And am I right with my assumption of what |it's referring to? | |Vs.: | | My car is a piece of crap. $^@@# thing broke down for the third time |today. |You should get a new one then. | |AH! Simple. Referring to the car. Not the dog that chewed the shoes, |or the DVD player that has buffer problems, or anything else in the |contrived example... | | I suspect | the latter, and that's the point I'm trying to make. I do | occasionally have to use Outlook, and I find it incredibly painful | to use. | |No, I think the latter makes it sound more like the replier has |schizophrenia and is talking to himself. My personal theory was that |more literate people tend to inline post while the less literate tended |to top-post, but I'm not in a field where I could study that theory |conclusively. Longer top posters seem to ramble on and on, unless the |reader scrolls down to figure out what in hell they're referring to. |The only time I top post is when I'm truly sending something as |content that shouldn't be forwarded again (a notice or memo, a story |that should NOT be edited to understand it...and people that keep |forwarding jokes ad infinitum, PLEASE trim the damned quoted HEADERS!!) |as well as propagate a growing list of crud that ISN'T referred to. |It's not a matter of pretty replies, it's laziness. Pure laziness. |When I want to reply to a point or question, I quote the reply or |question portion and don't include the sigs or the random crap already |inserted. | |Let's stop trying to justify top posting for every single email out |there and just admit it; people are lazy. People who top post for |*everything* are just lazy with trimming crap out. they want to spill |out their response and that's it. There are some things we're lazy |about that can be taken care of with features or protocol; for |instance, word wrapping. Someone is going to justify my asbestos |underwear as I send this because I didn't word wrap at 72 characters. |Why?! Because I didn't keep hitting enter at reasonable spots. Most |mail readers will do it automatically. My reader doesn't. I'm using |Mail.app; it uses a different method for dynamically wrapping |text...forgot what it was called already...but basically no matter what |the display is, it'll word wrap my mail so that it appears legible |(within reason) and if I manually insert returns, it'll look like CRAP |as it interprets the linefeeds. That can be taken care of by using a |reader with this feature (it's an open standard...) and inserting the |manual feeds reminds me of the idiots that typed up their five page |reports in word processors by hitting enter at the end of each line and |then inserting a word so there were stair-stepping throughout the |entire friggin' document. Deal with it. That's something that can be |taken care of by updating readers so that when the right character is |hit, it inserts on your display a linefeed and quote character. This |means that in the age approaching
Top posting solution
Over the years I have seen many posts on this list where Unix hard liners complain about people posting their replies to the top of the email messages on this list. The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Top posting came along when MS/Windows came on the market with their own email clients: Outlook express which is the email client built into Internet explorer and the MS/Office Outlook email client. There is a little known fix for MS/Outlook express and MS/Office Outlook email clients that change the behavior of these MS/Windows email clients so they adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Information and fix download can be found at these URLs. MS/Outlook express http://home.cs.tum.edu/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/ MS/Office Outlook http://home.cs.tum.edu/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/ To all you Unix hard liners, Please instead of complaining to the top posters, it would be so much nicer if you just informed the MS/Windows top poster of the above links so they know about the solution to fix their email clients to adhere to the Unix email format used on this list. Thanks for you attention ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, JJB wrote: The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Not true. Pine doesn't, for example. It begins a reply with the cursor at the very top of the message body. Top posting came along when MS/Windows came on the market with their own email clients: Outlook express which is the email client built into Internet explorer and the MS/Office Outlook email client. Not true. See above. There is a little known fix for MS/Outlook express and MS/Office Outlook email clients that change the behavior of these MS/Windows email clients so they adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Fix is a loaded term which presumes that something is broken. To all you Unix hard liners, Please instead of complaining to the top posters, it would be so much nicer if you just informed the It would actually be much nicer if they'd just quit trying to enforce their preferences on others. MS/Windows top poster of the above links so they know about the solution to fix their email clients to adhere to the Unix email format used on this list. Please provide a cite/ref to the Unix email format as something more concrete than your personal definition. And more concrete than RFC 1855, whose second sentence reads: This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. KeS ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
--On Tuesday, August 10, 2004 05:45:58 PM -0400 JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Over the years I have seen many posts on this list where Unix hard liners complain about people posting their replies to the top of the email messages on this list. The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Not true. Pine doesn't. Mulberry doesn't. I don't believe Evolution does. I'm pretty sure the Firefox solution (don't recall the name) doesn't. But I'm trying to think why someone would be posting to a freebsd list from a Windows box Paul Schmehl ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Adjunct Information Security Officer The University of Texas at Dallas AVIEN Founding Member http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
On Tuesday, 10 August 2004 at 14:58:02 -0700, Kevin Stevens wrote: On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, JJB wrote: The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Not true. Pine doesn't, for example. It begins a reply with the cursor at the very top of the message body. In fact, the entire concept is flawed. You should be able to write text anywhere you want in a reply. Even most Microsoft-oriented MUAs allow that. There is a little known fix for MS/Outlook express and MS/Office Outlook email clients that change the behavior of these MS/Windows email clients so they adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Yes, I refer to it at http://www.lemis.com/email/fixing-outlook.html. Unfortunately, it doesn't address the basic problems with Outlook. Fix is a loaded term which presumes that something is broken. I think that Outlook is broken. Putting the text in the right relative place doesn't help much if it's so difficult to write well-formatted messages that most people don't bother. What any good MUA needs is a text editor (or, preferably, an interface to one) that makes it easy to send well-formatted messages. To all you Unix hard liners, Please instead of complaining to the top posters, it would be so much nicer if you just informed the [truncated by sender] It would actually be much nicer if they'd just quit trying to enforce their preferences on others. It would actually be much nicer if people would return to literacy standards that existed, not only in the computer world, before Microsoft came along. I've long given up actively trying to help people write literate mail. I just ignore their messages. That's not helpful either, except to me. MS/Windows top poster of the above links so they know about the solution to fix their email clients to adhere to the Unix email format used on this list. Please provide a cite/ref to the Unix email format as something more concrete than your personal definition. And more concrete than RFC 1855, whose second sentence reads: This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. RFC 1055 is a good start. What matter is that the second sentence states (obviously incorrectly for an RFC)? It seems that you'd reject anything which isn't concrete enough for your own way of thinking. Certainly I don't think of a Unix email format (or even a UNIX email format); I just like to be able to read messages which don't make themselves painful to read, that don't contain lots of irrelevant junk, and that don't give me the impression that the sender is only semi-literate. For more details, you might like to take a look at http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html, though I suppose you'll find a reason to reject it. Greg -- Note: I discard all HTML mail unseen. Finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. pgp1Q6tVMGhLK.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Top posting solution
Hi Paul, --On Tuesday, August 10, 2004 5:13 PM -0500 Paul Schmehl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But I'm trying to think why someone would be posting to a freebsd list from a Windows box Because some of us are working in part on building / servicing a predominantly Windows network during the day, while reading mail on my FreeBSD mail/ DNS/IMAPS server as is the case now g -- Gary ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
Here's a good reason to top-post: I'm referring to the message as a whole, rather than to the content. This message came in while I was writing my previous message in this thread. It shows *exactly* the points I was referring to. Yes, the reply is posted at the bottom, but the quoted text is mutilated beyond what anybody could have believed 20 years ago. Your reply appears to refer to the last paragraph only (I suppose; I can't read the message), but you've (mis)quoted it in its entirety. A question to you: do you like the appearance of this message? Or do you do it because it's too difficult to write a tidy reply? I suspect the latter, and that's the point I'm trying to make. I do occasionally have to use Outlook, and I find it incredibly painful to use. On Tuesday, 10 August 2004 at 18:14:41 -0400, JJB wrote: Kevin Stevens wrote: On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, JJB wrote: The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Not true. Pine doesn't, for example. It begins a reply with the cursor at the very top of the message body. Top posting came along when MS/Windows came on the market with their own email clients: Outlook express which is the email client built into Internet explorer and the MS/Office Outlook email client. Not true. See above. There is a little known fix for MS/Outlook express and MS/Office Outlook email clients that change the behavior of these MS/Windows email clients so they adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Fix is a loaded term which presumes that something is broken. To all you Unix hard liners, Please instead of complaining to the top posters, it would be so much nicer if you just informed the It would actually be much nicer if they'd just quit trying to enforce their preferences on others. MS/Windows top poster of the above links so they know about the solution to fix their email clients to adhere to the Unix email format used on this list. Please provide a cite/ref to the Unix email format as something more concrete than your personal definition. And more concrete than RFC 1855, whose second sentence reads: This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. KeS So your a hard core purest on the other side of the coin. You can nit pick about wording all you want. It still does not detract from the fact that there is an 'FIX' to change the behavior of MS/windows top posting. As always, the reader has the chose in how they want to reply to posts on this list, top or bottom posting. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Note: I discard all HTML mail unseen. Finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. pgpTMHl1ygrhq.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Top posting solution
Paul Schmehl wrote: --On Tuesday, August 10, 2004 05:45:58 PM -0400 JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Over the years I have seen many posts on this list where Unix hard liners complain about people posting their replies to the top of the email messages on this list. The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Not true. Pine doesn't. Mulberry doesn't. I don't believe Evolution does. I'm pretty sure the Firefox solution (don't recall the name) doesn't. Thunderbird gives you the option -- Best regards, Chris An optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist fears this is true. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Top posting solution
On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, JJB wrote: So your a hard core purest on the other side of the coin. You know absolutely nothing about my position on this subject other than what you infer from the formatting of the posts I've made. The fact that I reject specious argument from incorrect facts is irrelevant to how I feel about top posting. You can nit pick about wording all you want. It still does not detract from the fact that there is an 'FIX' to change the behavior of MS/windows top posting. As always, the reader has the chose in how they want to reply to posts on this list, top or bottom posting. Or whether to use a spell/grammar checker, of course. Might as well switch fires. KeS ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
On Aug 10, 2004, at 5:20 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: It would actually be much nicer if people would return to literacy standards that existed, not only in the computer world, before Microsoft came along. I've long given up actively trying to help people write literate mail. I just ignore their messages. That's not helpful either, except to me. I got fed up with the top posters on other lists expecting ME to help THEM in spite of blatantly ignoring my instructions on how to properly reply. So I use the following .signature which accurately and briefly states my position. I won't honor them with a reply, however the door is wide open if I believe they need a bit of dishonoring. -- David Kelly N4HHE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Top posters will not be shown the honor of a reply. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
On Aug 10, 2004, at 4:58 PM, Kevin Stevens wrote: On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, JJB wrote: The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Not true. Pine doesn't, for example. It begins a reply with the cursor at the very top of the message body. Cursor at the top on reply is correct. Its correct because that is where one should start *editing*, is very rarely where one should start *typing*. Blaming the situation on Microsoft is too simplistic. The #1 problem I have with top-posters is that they fail to read the entire message they are re-sending. Had they bothered to read the whole thing they would have deleted the illegible bulk. But then again if they would actually read their own message in its entirety they'd know it was a mess with everything out of order and badly formatted and learn to properly trim and reply with inserted comments. -- David Kelly N4HHE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Top posters will not be shown the honor of a reply. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
On 2004-08-10 18:14, JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Kevin Stevens wrote: On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, JJB wrote: The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Not true. Pine doesn't, for example. It begins a reply with the cursor at the very top of the message body. Top posting came along when MS/Windows came on the market with their own email clients: Outlook express which is the email client built [...] Please provide a cite/ref to the Unix email format as something more concrete than your personal definition. And more concrete than RFC 1855, whose second sentence reads: This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. So your a hard core purest on the other side of the coin. You can nit pick about wording all you want. It still does not detract from the fact that there is an 'FIX' to change the behavior of MS/windows top posting. As always, the reader has the chose in how they want to reply to posts on this list, top or bottom posting. I apologize in advance if I jump in in what might sound like a knit-picking manner. However, if this fix produces messages like the one above, where all the usual mutilation of Outlook regarding quoting and wrapping the text is clearly visible... it's not a fix :-( ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Top posting solution
CRAP. HERE WE GO AGAIN. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of JJB Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2004 4:46 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ORG Subject: Top posting solution Over the years I have seen many posts on this list where Unix hard liners complain about people posting their replies to the top of the email messages on this list. The fact of life is all the Unix mail clients adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Top posting came along when MS/Windows came on the market with their own email clients: Outlook express which is the email client built into Internet explorer and the MS/Office Outlook email client. There is a little known fix for MS/Outlook express and MS/Office Outlook email clients that change the behavior of these MS/Windows email clients so they adhere to the Unix email format of posting the reply to the bottom of the email while indenting with a quote character. Information and fix download can be found at these URLs. MS/Outlook express http://home.cs.tum.edu/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/ MS/Office Outlook http://home.cs.tum.edu/~jain/software/outlook- quotefix/ To all you Unix hard liners, Please instead of complaining to the top posters, it would be so much nicer if you just informed the MS/Windows top poster of the above links so they know about the solution to fix their email clients to adhere to the Unix email format used on this list. Thanks for you attention ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/free bsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] CRAP. HERE WE GO AGAIN. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
Giorgos Keramidas wrote: On 2004-08-10 18:14, JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [ ...badly quoted stuff... ] I apologize in advance if I jump in in what might sound like a knit-picking manner. However, if this fix produces messages like the one above, where all the usual mutilation of Outlook regarding quoting and wrapping the text is clearly visible... it's not a fix :-( Giorgos-- it would be reasonable to assume that JJB was using the tool he speaks of, only that would not be correct; oe-quotefix doesn't work with Outlook itself: ] From: JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] Subject: RE: Top posting solution ] Message-id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409 ] X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) [ Only someone condemned to support Windows users would want to understand the relationship between Outlook and OE in more detail, so suffice it to say that the two are much more different than one might expect from the shared name. ] Anyway, the oe-quotefix utility actually does do a pretty good job of fixing the braindead quoting of Outlook Express. But I'd much rather use Mozilla than Outlook from the standpoints of both security and only mildly broken mail composition by comparision. But then, I'd rather use Mail.app than Mozilla. For that matter, I'd rather use Emacs with fill-mode on and fill-column set to 76-- for two levels of quoting and a space to fit into 80-cols without wrapping-- to actually compose ASCII text than anything else. oe-quotefix behaves very much like what M-q (fill-paragraph) does in Emacs. -- -Chuck ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Top posting solution
On 2004-08-10 22:02, Chuck Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Giorgos Keramidas wrote: On 2004-08-10 18:14, JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [ ...badly quoted stuff... ] I apologize in advance if I jump in in what might sound like a knit-picking manner. However, if this fix produces messages like the one above, where all the usual mutilation of Outlook regarding quoting and wrapping the text is clearly visible... it's not a fix :-( Giorgos-- it would be reasonable to assume that JJB was using the tool he speaks of, only that would not be correct; oe-quotefix doesn't work with Outlook itself: ] From: JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] Subject: RE: Top posting solution ] Message-id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409 ] X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) [ Only someone condemned to support Windows users would want to understand the relationship between Outlook and OE in more detail, so suffice it to say that the two are much more different than one might expect from the shared name. ] Thanks for the clarification! I was sleepy when I replied and somehow missed the important yet subtle detail. I do know the differences of Outlook and OE. I regularly have to read email formatted [or should I say unformatted?] by Outlook 2003 for my $realjob and I've used both Outlook and OE in the past. I just felt it was a bit funny to find a message in support of Outlook that exhibited exactly the sort of malformed output that Outlook is known for. What I wrote wasn't meant to be an offense to JJB who's one of the regular posters and *does* contribute a lot to helping others :-) ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Top posting solution
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 2004-08-10 22:02, Chuck Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Giorgos Keramidas wrote: On 2004-08-10 18:14, JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [ ...badly quoted stuff... ] I apologize in advance if I jump in in what might sound like a knit-picking manner. However, if this fix produces messages like the one above, where all the usual mutilation of Outlook regarding quoting and wrapping the text is clearly visible... it's not a fix :-( Giorgos-- it would be reasonable to assume that JJB was using the tool he speaks of, only that would not be correct; oe-quotefix doesn't work with Outlook itself: ] From: JJB [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] Subject: RE: Top posting solution ] Message-id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409 ] X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) [ Only someone condemned to support Windows users would want to understand the relationship between Outlook and OE in more detail, so suffice it to say that the two are much more different than one might expect from the shared name. ] Thanks for the clarification! I was sleepy when I replied and somehow missed the important yet subtle detail. I do know the differences of Outlook and OE. I regularly have to read email formatted [or should I say unformatted?] by Outlook 2003 for my $realjob and I've used both Outlook and OE in the past. I just felt it was a bit funny to find a message in support of Outlook that exhibited exactly the sort of malformed output that Outlook is known for. What I wrote wasn't meant to be an offense to JJB who's one of the regular posters and *does* contribute a lot to helping others :-) ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Final closing comments on this thread. I like many people who are FreeBSD users in one form or another have to use the MS/Windows email clients in the process of earning a living. This is just the reality of working today in the IT field. I have always top posted to this list because that's how office outlook worked. I had previously seen the fix for outlook express and did not find out about the office outlook fix until the fix author replied to my questions about his web site today. I just though there might be more office outlook users on this list who did not know about the bottom posting fix and posted the start of this thread just as an innocent information transfer kind of thing. I was not implying any preference to top or bottom posting. I personally prefer reading a thread composed of all bottom posting or all top posting. When they are intermixed the flow is very hard to follow. Since the majority of posts to this list are bottom posted I though that now that I have a fix for my office outlook to bottom post, I would start using it to do my part to make the threads I post into easier to read and follow the flow of the conversation. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
