[arch-general] Quoting of E-mails

[Philipp Überbacher]

Excerpts from Ng Oon-Ee's message of Wed Jan 20 13:08:19 +0100 2010:
> On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 04:43 -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 05:12:31PM +0800, Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
> > > Probably because (in my experience at least) top-posting occurs much
> > > more frequently than "me too" posts at least, probably more frequently
> > > than improper quoting as well.
> > 
> > And yet when I see the top-posted mails, most of the time I don't need
> > to read the rest of the previously quoted message - especially if I'm
> > on a roll and am familiar with the current thread.  I guess if one is
> > reading for a historical perspective then it makes more sense to put
> > the reply at the bottom but then I found myself having to read the
> > history over and over again.  If I addopt bottom posting, I plan then
> > to delete all but the most recent post to keep thing conscise.
> > Actually I'm run into *MANY* of these huge long threads in a single
> > message to have a "Mee to" or "+1" at the bottom  That's why I found
> > that style to be so inefficient and wasting of my time.
> 
> Honestly, I just scroll straight to the bottom, Evolution marks all the
> quoted stuff for me anyway so that the real replies stand out. With
> bottom-posting the wasted time is the amount of time taken to scroll to
> the bottom. With top posting the wasted time is having to scroll down
> for perspective. I'd wager a quick scroll is faster than having to
> scroll up and down to read and get perspective.
> 
> However, in the end its more of a consensus thing. MLs generally agree
> on bottom-posting, and so top-posting in that context, whatever its
> merits, isn't good manners. Similarly bottom-posting my replies to my
> relatives "hi how are you" emails is very bad manners. To each their
> own.
> > 
> > Actually when you think about it, most blogs are all in reverse
> > chronical order which to me is the same thing as top-posting and
> > nobody seems to complain about that concept.
> 
> This is slightly off-tangent, but personally I feel blogs are less
> dependent on context, with each post standing on its own, whereas email
> threads are very context dependent as each new mail is a REPLY to the
> one before.
> 
> Honestly, my ultimate solution would look very much like gmail's
> 'threaded view'. Unfortunately no desktop app that I've seen manages to
> get a similar handling =(.

Have you heard of sup?
I've never used gmail but I read sup was inspired by gmail.
Well, I'm very happy with sup, bottom posting is no issue since quotes
take up one line until expanded. Often you can read the original
messages instead of the quotes due to the thread view.
You need external apps for sending and receiving, like alpine, but setup
in general seems to be much simpler.

Imho it bottom posting is the way to go, with replies to paragraphs of a
mail where it makes sense. For me personally it doesn't matter much, thanks to sup.
The only drawback right now is that sup is still very young, it has its
quirks. Never the less it's the best mail client I've used so far (used
only claws mail before), especially when it comes to reading and searching and I
don't regret that I switched.

Regards,
Philipp