From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Aug 12 12:06:55 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E64A916A4CE; Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:06:55 +0000 (GMT) Received: from lorna.circlesquared.com (host217-45-219-85.in-addr.btopenworld.com [217.45.219.85]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 03EF243D53; Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:06:47 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from peter@circlesquared.com) Received: from circlesquared.com (localhost.circlesquared.com [127.0.0.1]) i7CC5qx0022913; Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:05:52 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from peter@circlesquared.com) Message-ID: <411B5D20.40402@circlesquared.com> Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:05:52 +0100 From: Peter Risdon User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040611 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" References: <20040810222032.GI19643@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20040810222032.GI19643@wantadilla.lemis.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: FreeBSD Questions cc: JJB cc: Kevin Stevens Subject: Re: Top posting solution X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:06:56 -0000 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.