-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, 15 Dec 2023 15:33:12 -0600 Bret <[email protected]> wrote:
> You may subscribe to weewx-development by email but you'll have to > either use a Gmail account to subscribe (and you could forward that > to a non-Gmail account) or create a Google account with your > non-Gmail email address. See the end of this article for more > details: https://support.google.com/groups/answer/1067205 > Otherwise you can always read and browse the group without signing > into any Google account at: > https://groups.google.com/g/weewx-development Last night, I received a visitation from the Ghost of CompuServe Past, and it told me — to tell you (contributors to Weewx-users and WeeWX-development) — that plain-text mail readers are not dead — either — and to commend to you a resolve to do better in the New Year to post with **more meaningful context quotes**. Context quotes — to be sure we're all on the same page — are when you reply in a (threaded) discussion such as occurs on Google Groups. Most people will intersperse their thoughts among quotations from previous posters to the thread. Typically, these quotes show with special indentation and a marginal symbol. In Þe Olde Days, the symbol was the greater-than (>) character. + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diple_(textual_symbol) + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater-than_sign You don't believe in CompuServe Past; do you? No doubt you're thinking that a post here about netiquette during this Festive Season of the Year is heedlessly self-indulgent and snobbish. Well, that may be so, but posting with badly formed context quotes is only slightly less self-indulgent and snobbish. > Why is this an issue? Doesn't GMail handle all that quoting stuff > automagically? Perhaps. I can confirm that, using the Web interface at Mail.Google.com, when you copy from the "Trimmed Content," and paste into a reply, the context quoting shown in the "Trimmed Content" is preserved. However, using the Web interface at Groups.Google.com, it is not. Using the mobile GMail Android App interface, it is not. To add to the confusion, the GMail Android App preserves the indentation — just not the quoting, so what you see pasted into the compose window (in both cases) looks identical to what you copied from the "Trimmed Content," and, in fact, the recipient can see the indentation in markup — just not in plain-text from the App. This is because, although quoting involves actual marginal symbols which are visible in plain-text, mere indentation is just formatting which is invisible in plain-text. I did a little study on traffic to **weewx-users** and **weewx-development** discussion groups since Sep. 2022. > | | Group A | | | Group B | | | > |-------|--------:|-----:|----:|--------:|-----:|----:| > |Month | Replies | NoQ | | Replies | NoQ | | > |-------|--------:|-----:|----:|--------:|-----:|----:| > |2022/09| 217 | 10 | 5% | 50 | 8 | 16% | > |2022/10| 184 | 6 | 3% | 32 | 3 | 9% | > |2022/11| 250 | 2 | 1% | 99 | 13 | 13% | > |2022/12| 119 | 5 | 4% | 28 | 5 | 18% | > |2023/01| 239 | 4 | 2% | 84 | 29 | 35% | > |2023/02| 171 | 7 | 4% | 51 | 19 | 37% | > |2023/03| 219 | 8 | 4% | 63 | 25 | 40% | > |2023/04| 164 | 8 | 5% | 47 | 15 | 32% | > |2023/05| 222 | 4 | 2% | 49 | 12 | 24% | > |2023/06| 220 | 7 | 3% | 43 | 16 | 37% | > |2023/07| 369 | 11 | 3% | 63 | 24 | 38% | > |2023/08| 272 | 13 | 5% | 61 | 26 | 43% | > |2023/09| 240 | 13 | 5% | 63 | 23 | 37% | > |2023/10| 316 | 7 | 2% | 80 | 19 | 24% | > |2023/11| 232 | 9 | 4% | 59 | 20 | 34% | > |2023/12| 283 | 24 | 8% | 119 | 55 | 46% | I didn't count original posts, only replies. Posters were divided arbitrarily into frequent contributors (Group B containing eight) and everyone else (Group A containing over 500). The number of replies containing some kind of blockquoting but no marginal symbols is counted as "NoQ." These, in my humble opinion, are posts that are difficult to read in plain-text. They may contain context quotes, but nothing gives that away except the presence of formatting in markup. There is a much higher percentage of replies without context quoting visible in plain-text coming from those in Group B than in Group A. Presumably this is because frequent contributors are more likely to quote to begin with. A couple of things jump out. I expected to see changes in Dec. 2023 because of the single very deep thread titled "V5.0 release candidate available," and, in fact, the NoQ percentage in Group A did experience a jump. So did the NoQ percentage for Group B where nearly half seem to include some kind of context quoting without marginal symbols. Group B experienced a jump to about double the ratio of NoQ replies beginning in Jan 2023. There was a mandatory change to GMail about this time: + https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2023/01/ I'm guessing the Ghost of Christmas 2022 Present handed around a lot of new Chromebooks and iPads and people switched to posting from mobile apps rather than deal with the new look and feel of GMail's Web interface. Be that as it may, how ought one to post while including context quotes that stand out in plain-text? The quick answer is, "You can't." I've been buzzing around the Internet for several days, looking for something (anything) that would give away the secret, and I haven't stumbled upon a way to do it without getting rid of the GMail mobile app altogether and forswearing the use of Groups.Google.com Website. **You can do it** from the Mail.Google.com Website. There you have to click to expand the compose window to full screen to see the complete edit toolbar, including the quote (") tool. **You can do it** with the FairEmail Android App, not available in the Apple ecosystem. I tried serveral Android eMail apps ostensibly competing with GMail that didn't do context quoting — either — before I encountered FairEmail. I am under the impression that the Apple Mail app **does facilitate context quoting**. I don't think CompuServe Past realized what it was asking for, as I'm sure both of these suggestions are non-starters. And, anyway, why would WeeWX Users and Developers change their posting habits to accommodate one reader who happens to be enamored of plain-text? There is of course always the Ghost of Cross-Site Scripting Yet to Come. I fear this specter more than any I have seen, and, to avoid crossing its path, I keep my mail-readers tuned strictly to plain-text as this old post from LWN proposes: + Corbet, Jonathan. "The Trouble with Text-Only Email." 12 Oct. 2017. _Linux Weekly News_. 31 Dec 2023 <https://lwn.net/Articles/735973/>. - -- .. Be Seeing You, .. Chuck Rhode, Sheboygan, WI, USA .. Weather: http://LacusVeris.com/WX .. 31° — Wind S 6 mph — Sky overcast. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iF0EARECAB0WIQT+MY/5I/LMPSswTbVg2/xipKOWUgUCZZh9iAAKCRBg2/xipKOW UkSOAJoCbSfQyiZvuVoo5nKvQUI17abJWgCfUluyvf0qMz2IFTKsfNmMK51f1+k= =ukwX -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "weewx-development" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/weewx-development/20240105160704.7827f876%40BigTimber.LacusVeris.com.
