Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 04:07:40PM -0600, John Galt wrote: * You are not expected to understand this. --comment from Unix system 6 source, credited to Lions and Johnson Who is John Galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who: finger me for GPG key Since you're such a fan of jeopardy style quoting, why is your sig always at the bottom? Seems hypocritical. I think the sig said it all You really aren't expected to understand. Wow, your rapier wit is amazing to behold. I'm always impressed by people who raise a big fuss and then obfuscate the issue when asked a direct question. *plonk* -- Nathan Norman - Staff Engineer | A good plan today is better Micromuse Ltd. | than a perfect plan tomorrow. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Patton pgpt7QdU2JPF7.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
Ahhh. So the brokenness lies in the lack of quotation definers and the implicit one line open (BTW, pine/pico leaves two, but angle-brackets things in pretty well). I just figured that the brokenness was an artifact of where the cursor gets put, not having dealt with Lookout (personal reasons, I know of the guy who wrote it and have nothing good to say about him--if I was stuck in windoze, I'd prolly use a third party app). So the top-posting coupled with the microso~1 stuff is really a no-op, since the non-quotation quotation can be dealt with in the process of editing, since a bottom poster has to cursor through the old message, there should be no problem adding in an angle-bracket on every line. Perhaps in light of arguements like this, where the other side gets demonized by micros~1 unfairly, there ought to be the Debian equivalent of Godwin's razor: Since micros~1 is the functional equivalent of Nazis in Debian, it follows that for uses inside Debian, that Godwin's razor cuts on mentions of micros~1... On Wed, 5 Sep 2001, Craig Dickson wrote: John Galt wrote: Elm predates any microsoft email product... Try to quote stuff in elm, the cursor goes to the beginning of the text. Where the cursor starts out is beside the point. What matters is the structure of the message. Most traditional Internet email clients, such as elm or mutt, give you a document like this: ___cut_here___ John Galt wrote: Elm predates any microsoft email product... Try to quote stuff in elm, the cursor goes to the beginning of the text. ___cut_here___ The use of angle-bracket quote marks on the left margin makes it easy to tell what text is new and what is quoted, facilitating proper replies. Moving the cursor to the bottom is trivial, and I think it's best that the client not do that automatically, as it would discourage the user from cutting out irrelevant material from the quoted message. (In fact, it is easily observed that most people who reply at the top fail to trim the quoted text.) Microsoft's mail clients, on the other hand, give you something like this: ___cut_here___ --- Original message --- From: John Galt Elm predates any microsoft email product... Try to quote stuff in elm, the cursor goes to the beginning of the text. ___cut_here___ Note that they provide no left-margin quote marks, nor any indication of where the original message ends, and they leave a blank line or two at the top, implying that your reply should go there (otherwise, why put it there?). Craig -- EMACS == Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping Who is John Galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who!
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Wed, 5 Sep 2001, Nathan E Norman wrote: On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 04:07:40PM -0600, John Galt wrote: * You are not expected to understand this. --comment from Unix system 6 source, credited to Lions and Johnson Who is John Galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who: finger me for GPG key Since you're such a fan of jeopardy style quoting, why is your sig always at the bottom? Seems hypocritical. I think the sig said it all You really aren't expected to understand. Wow, your rapier wit is amazing to behold. I'm always impressed by people who raise a big fuss and then obfuscate the issue when asked a direct question. No, YOU obfuscated the issue with a nonsensical question. *plonk* Surprise! bad logic and bad taste go hand in hand. -- EMACS == Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping Who is John Galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who!
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
Note that they provide no left-margin quote marks, nor any indication of where the original message ends, and they leave a blank line or two at the top, implying that your reply should go there (otherwise, why put it there?). That's a configurable setting in Outlook Express. I use it every day... I believe it's also configurable in regular Outlook. I'll check it tomorrow. Outlook (98 here) also has an option for prefixing the message you're replying to with fill in what you want to use here. I have mine set with , hopefully like a good netizen. Hall
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 06:11:03PM -0700, Eric G. Miller wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 03:10:27PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: but this practice is strongly deprecated. ^^^ Hell does that mean? Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say... dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2. DEPRECIATE I strongly mildly dissapprove of that quoting convention! Huh? deprecate is a common technical term (hang out at the IETF for a while). When a standard is trached, it is marked deprecated so people know that though they might have to put up with it from others, they shouldn't implement or use it themselves. Perhaps Karsten should have used discouraged rather than deprecated, but close enough. -- Nathan Norman - Staff Engineer | A good plan today is better Micromuse Ltd. | than a perfect plan tomorrow. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Patton pgpdqreECEGm0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
Well that's the problem, isn't it? Karsten (and yourself, variously) isn't really putting up with it, now is he? On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Nathan E Norman wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 06:11:03PM -0700, Eric G. Miller wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 03:10:27PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: but this practice is strongly deprecated. ^^^ Hell does that mean? Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say... dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2. DEPRECIATE I strongly mildly dissapprove of that quoting convention! Huh? deprecate is a common technical term (hang out at the IETF for a while). When a standard is trached, it is marked deprecated so people know that though they might have to put up with it from others, they shouldn't implement or use it themselves. Perhaps Karsten should have used discouraged rather than deprecated, but close enough. -- * You are not expected to understand this. --comment from Unix system 6 source, credited to Lions and Johnson Who is John Galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who: finger me for GPG key
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
Eric G. Miller wrote: but this practice is strongly deprecated. ^^^ Hell does that mean? Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say... dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2. DEPRECIATE I strongly mildly dissapprove of that quoting convention! Huh? Karsten is using the word as it is commonly used among computer professionals. When some previously-common (or even not so common) practice or standard is superseded and no longer recommended, it is said to be deprecated. One often sees a phrase such as strongly deprecated in reference to something that is not merely no longer recommended, but actively discouraged or considered a Very Bad Thing. Craig
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote: on Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 01:53:24PM -0600, John Galt ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: In case nobody told you, this is a mailinglist, not usenet. Wrong, it's both: news:muc.lists.debian.user mail to news gateways notwithstanding To be more precise, this is a reliable method of ensuring that anything you reply to has already been read, thus you shouldn't need to scroll through the question all of the time to get to the answer. However, for the people who wish to backstop, it's important that the question be in the same message as the answer so that misteaks can be corrected contextually. Thus top posting is more appropriate. My preference is that top posting never be considered appropriate. We've now got a situation in which I'm responding to a top-quoted post, in which prior content is now further down the list. And you somehow are shriveling up? If a long response in which context is largely irrelevant is desired, quoting a line or two of context, and posting beneath it, is far preferable. Unless, of course the line or two are the wrong ones. Needless to say, the best method is to let the replier define how their reply goes, but you really didn't do that to Hall, so I feel justified in correcting you. The problem with suggesting prefix responses are suitable in any context is that this leads almost immediately to bad practices: Yeah, like the free exchange of ideas: can't have that. - Prefix responses including the entire message body, sigs included, of the message replied to. In one recent case, this was up to 600+ lines of a list digest. The *multiple* miscreants were roundly flamed. Better than having to deal with 600+ lines of quote, then the response. What makes you think that appending was going to change their quotation? - Excessive quoting, sigs and all. How does appending rather than prepending change this? - Prefix responses where followups (and hence, mixed pre/postfix responses) are likely. E.g.: present case. So? Did someone hold a gun to anyone's heads to post the way they did? (actually, I kind of got logically forced into at least one prepend response: it's hard to argue a case you don't follow) - Prefix responses in all contexts. As opposed to postfix responses in all contexts? It is much more often the case that a postfixer screws up a nice prefix thread than the opposite: often prefix threads devolve into point-by-point, while postfix threads end up with lost context because of overzealous editing. The poster is requesting the favor of a reply from the readership. This particular reader strongly deprecates prefix response, and tends to skip such posts. THIS one thinks that the message is more important than the form. From NNQ: Quoting Style in Newsgroup Postings WHAT DAMN NEWSGROUP? Mail to news does NOT mean it's a newsgroup, anymore than bit.listserv.coco is a mailinglist, even though Princeton has mirrored it to a mailing list since it's inception. http://www.ptialaska.net/~kmorgan/nquote.html Q7: Why shouldn't I put my comments above the quoted material? When you read your mail with rn, and have to send email over the this message is about to be sent to millions of computers warning of pnews, we'll talk. A7: Keep in mind that you're not writing just for the person whose posting you're responding to. (If you are, you should be e-mailing your response instead of posting it.) Thousands of other people may read what you write. People who aren't directly involved in a discussion themselves, and who are probably following several discussions at once, usually follow the logic more easily when they can read the material in more-or-less chronological order. When you have just a single question and response, and they're both short, and the discussion doesn't develop any further, it really doesn't make that much difference in practice. But it's impossible to predict in advance whether a response will draw another response. So in general, it's best to put your response below the text that you're responding to. From Email Quotes in the Jargon File: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/Email-Quotes.html No, the jargon file (THD) never had anything about posting at all. It was added in TNHD. http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/external/p.dourish/jargon.html Therefore, this is all the personal preference of ESR. Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like this, relevant excerpt 1 response to excerpt relevant excerpt 2 response to excerpt relevant excerpt 3 response to excerpt or for short messages like this: entire message response to message Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will occasionally see the entire quoted message
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 08:43:02PM -0700, Craig Dickson wrote: Eric G. Miller wrote: but this practice is strongly deprecated. ^^^ Hell does that mean? Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say... dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2. DEPRECIATE I strongly mildly dissapprove of that quoting convention! Huh? Karsten is using the word as it is commonly used among computer professionals. When some previously-common (or even not so common) practice or standard is superseded and no longer recommended, it is said to be deprecated. One often sees a phrase such as strongly deprecated in reference to something that is not merely no longer recommended, but actively discouraged or considered a Very Bad Thing. Well, I understand the meaning of deprecated. And I understand it's usage in technology. The point was, deprecate should not be used in the context where a stonger term is appropriate as it means mild disapproval. It ranks with phrases like pretty ugly... Oh, hell! Nevermind... -- Eric G. Miller egm2@jps.net
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
You top posted on purpose. Didn't you? Ahh, you rat bastard! ;) On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 09:34:05PM -0600, John Galt wrote: Well that's the problem, isn't it? Karsten (and yourself, variously) isn't really putting up with it, now is he? On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Nathan E Norman wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 06:11:03PM -0700, Eric G. Miller wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 03:10:27PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: but this practice is strongly deprecated. ^^^ Hell does that mean? Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say... dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2. DEPRECIATE I strongly mildly dissapprove of that quoting convention! Huh? deprecate is a common technical term (hang out at the IETF for a while). When a standard is trached, it is marked deprecated so people know that though they might have to put up with it from others, they shouldn't implement or use it themselves. Perhaps Karsten should have used discouraged rather than deprecated, but close enough. -- Eric G. Miller egm2@jps.net
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
%% Regarding Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK); %% Eric G. Miller egm2@jps.net writes: but this practice is strongly deprecated. egm^^^ egm Hell does that mean? egm Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say... egm dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2. egm DEPRECIATE egm I strongly mildly dissapprove of that quoting convention! Huh? Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary http://www.m-w.com: 1 a archaic : to pray against (as an evil) b : to seek to avert deprecate the wrath ... of the Roman people -- Tobias Smollett 2 : to express disapproval of 3 a : PLAY DOWN : make little of speaks five languages ... but deprecates this facility -- Time b : BELITTLE, DISPARAGE the most reluctantly admired and least easily deprecated of ... novelists -- New Yorker Webster's Dictionary (New Lexicon / Deluxe Encyclopedic Edition, 1988): v.t. To express disapproval of Strongly deprecated makes perfect sense. -- --- Paul D. Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] HASMAT--HA Software Mthds Tools Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional. --Mad Scientist --- These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
on Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 06:11:03PM -0700, Eric G. Miller (egm2@jps.net) wrote:
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 03:10:27PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote:
...
Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will
occasionally see the entire quoted message after the response, like
this
response to message
entire message
but this practice is strongly deprecated.
^^^
Hell does that mean?
Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say...
dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2.
DEPRECIATE
I strongly mildly dissapprove of that quoting convention! Huh?
$ dict deprecate
From WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]:
deprecate
v 1: express strong disapproval of; deplore
2: belittle; The teacher should not deprecate his student's
efforts [syn: {depreciate}]
Roughly a synonym for discouraged as used in technical contexts.
Another dictionary gives express disaproval for (Oxford Encyclopedic).
--
Karsten M. Self kmself@ix.netcom.com http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of Gestalt don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA!http://www.freesklyarov.org
Geek for Hirehttp://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
pgpgNFlItMbYg.pgp
Description: PGP signature
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 03:10:27PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: on Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 01:53:24PM -0600, John Galt ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: In case nobody told you, this is a mailinglist, not usenet. Wrong, it's both: news:muc.lists.debian.user To be more precise, this is a reliable method of ensuring that anything you reply to has already been read, thus you shouldn't need to scroll through the question all of the time to get to the answer. snip I agree, but have found that more or less unconsciously I follow the practise of the previous respondant... While we are on this subject of mailing list etiquette may I make another plea...if people insist on using attachments please make sure that they are of type text and NOT HTML. In fact if at all possible avoid attachments. And the SUBJECT field, the text HELP!!! is not a subject, unless you are failling out of a window and want someone to catch you. I make extensive use of mail filters to sort my mail based on subject, as I sure others do and with many hundreds of messages a day you have to skip some of them. Mailers will get more response I think if they follow a few simple rules. I also subscribe to freebsd mailing lists and there from time to time an advice on mailing is posted. It is sound sensible stuff. Maybe we need such a thing here ? Regards Cliff ps. Keep it polite !
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 18:11:03 -0700, Eric G. Miller wrote:
Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say...
dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2.
DEPRECIATE
The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 5th ed. says to feel and express
disapproval of sth; no mild there.
And dict(1) includes:
From WordNet (r) 1.6 [wn]:
deprecate
v 1: express strong disapproval of; deplore
2: belittle; The teacher should not deprecate his student's
efforts [syn: {depreciate}]
So we have the whole spectrum (mild, neutral/unspecified strength,
strong)... don't you just love the fluidity of natural language?
Ray
--
RUMOUR Believe all you hear. Your world may not be a better one than the one
the blocks live in but it'll be a sight more vivid.
- The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Tuesday 04 September 2001 22:43 pm, Craig Dickson wrote: Karsten is using the word as it is commonly used among computer professionals. When some previously-common (or even not so common) practice or standard is superseded and no longer recommended, it is said to be deprecated. One often sees a phrase such as strongly deprecated in reference to something that is not merely no longer recommended, but actively discouraged or considered a Very Bad Thing. Except that in this case we're not talking about a practice that was not previously common or even not so common. We're talking about a practice that was virtually unknown until Microsoft flooded the market with badly broken mail and news clients that make it very difficult to properly quote or attribute anything. -- Bud Rogers [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sirinet.net/~budr All things in moderation. And not too much moderation either.
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
Bud Rogers wrote: Except that in this case we're not talking about a practice that was not previously common or even not so common. We're talking about a practice that was virtually unknown until Microsoft flooded the market with badly broken mail and news clients that make it very difficult to properly quote or attribute anything. True. In this situation, I wouldn't use the word deprecated. I would just say that putting one's reply above the original message makes one look like an idiot. Craig
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 09:34:05PM -0600, John Galt wrote: On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Nathan E Norman wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 06:11:03PM -0700, Eric G. Miller wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 03:10:27PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: but this practice is strongly deprecated. ^^^ Hell does that mean? Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say... dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2. DEPRECIATE I strongly mildly dissapprove of that quoting convention! Huh? deprecate is a common technical term (hang out at the IETF for a while). When a standard is trached, it is marked deprecated so people know that though they might have to put up with it from others, they shouldn't implement or use it themselves. Perhaps Karsten should have used discouraged rather than deprecated, but close enough. Well that's the problem, isn't it? Karsten (and yourself, variously) isn't really putting up with it, now is he? Putting up with retarded behavior doesn't mean you are prohibited from discouraging said behavior. -- * You are not expected to understand this. --comment from Unix system 6 source, credited to Lions and Johnson Who is John Galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who: finger me for GPG key Since you're such a fan of jeopardy style quoting, why is your sig always at the bottom? Seems hypocritical. Good luck, -- Nathan Norman - Staff Engineer | A good plan today is better Micromuse Ltd. | than a perfect plan tomorrow. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Patton pgpB00bjN0bha.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 08:48:22AM -0700, Craig Dickson wrote: Bud Rogers wrote: Except that in this case we're not talking about a practice that was not previously common or even not so common. We're talking about a practice that was virtually unknown until Microsoft flooded the market with badly broken mail and news clients that make it very difficult to properly quote or attribute anything. True. In this situation, I wouldn't use the word deprecated. I would just say that putting one's reply above the original message makes one look like an idiot. I like that...lol. I remember when I first started using linux I posted to some list, probably this one. I wanted to know how to set Netscape mail to default, like outlook, to appending my text to the top of the message. You can imagine what response I got:D kent -- The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. --Albert Einstein
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 10:13:08PM -0600, John Galt wrote: On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote: The problem with suggesting prefix responses are suitable in any context is that this leads almost immediately to bad practices: Yeah, like the free exchange of ideas: can't have that. Irrelevant. *shrug* - Excessive quoting, sigs and all. How does appending rather than prepending change this? Intelligent people who append are likely to read through the previous text as they move down to compose their reply, and cut as they go. Intelligent people who prepend are, in my experience, more likely to forget. (Naturally, there are bad examples of both practices, but well-snipped prefix responses are rare on both mailing lists and Usenet.) http://www.ptialaska.net/~kmorgan/nquote.html Q7: Why shouldn't I put my comments above the quoted material? When you read your mail with rn, and have to send email over the this message is about to be sent to millions of computers warning of pnews, we'll talk. For about the last two years, I read debian-* list mail with trn, and followed up over that same warning. (I don't at the moment, but that's due to losing much of that environment to a disk crash.) Care to talk? Mailing lists and Usenet aren't much different, when you get right down to it, as long as you stay out of Usenet's more annoying cesspools. [snip flamebait] -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 11:52:27AM -0500, ktb wrote: On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 08:48:22AM -0700, Craig Dickson wrote: Bud Rogers wrote: Except that in this case we're not talking about a practice that was not previously common or even not so common. We're talking about a practice that was virtually unknown until Microsoft flooded the market with badly broken mail and news clients that make it very difficult to properly quote or attribute anything. True. In this situation, I wouldn't use the word deprecated. I would just say that putting one's reply above the original message makes one look like an idiot. I like that...lol. I remember when I first started using linux I posted to some list, probably this one. I wanted to know how to set Netscape mail to default, like outlook, to appending my text to the top of the message. You can imagine what response I got:D kent Did they tell you cannot append something before something else.. (just teasing) Cliff
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 07:27:13PM +0200, Cliff Sarginson wrote: On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 11:52:27AM -0500, ktb wrote: On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 08:48:22AM -0700, Craig Dickson wrote: Bud Rogers wrote: Except that in this case we're not talking about a practice that was not previously common or even not so common. We're talking about a practice that was virtually unknown until Microsoft flooded the market with badly broken mail and news clients that make it very difficult to properly quote or attribute anything. True. In this situation, I wouldn't use the word deprecated. I would just say that putting one's reply above the original message makes one look like an idiot. I like that...lol. I remember when I first started using linux I posted to some list, probably this one. I wanted to know how to set Netscape mail to default, like outlook, to appending my text to the top of the message. You can imagine what response I got:D kent Did they tell you cannot append something before something else.. (just teasing) Got me :) Lets start another definition thread. Kiddingjustkidding:) kent -- The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. --Albert Einstein
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
I agree. See you don't know what part of whose post I agree with. More in readable order follows. On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote: on Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 01:53:24PM -0600, John Galt ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: In case nobody told you, this is a mailinglist, not usenet. Wrong, it's both: I agree. See you now know what part of Karsten's post I agree with. It is obviously more readable to quote then reply. The nature of usenet discourse is interesting to consider. If you watch carefully, you will find repetitious patterns of misunderstandings and waste between the well intentioned. Dialog looping and dialog floods within threads are a couple of simple examples. A flood is when I ask How do I turn on my computer? and 40 well intentioned souls immediately say Hey I know this one and post There's a switch on the front or side. It may have an 'O' and a '-' or 'I' intertwined or side by side labeling it. Despite the fact that the thread already has 20 responses. A loop might happen when the thread broadens to discuss the proper location of power and reset switches and the meaning and history of o- An example: rir message: power reset switches shouldn't be near drive buttons. karsten message: (quote rir or not) also they shouldn't near the bottom where you might kick one by accident john message: true, but they should be away from the drive bays too If one watches for how misunderstandings occur and expand one can write so as to minimize them.
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
Rob Ransbottom wrote: If one watches for how misunderstandings occur and expand one can write so as to minimize them. As someone once said, You sadist! You're asking people to THINK! Much as I agree with everything you wrote, I think you're wasting your breath. Written conversation is not really the sort of thing that most people want to analyze and learn how to do better. In my experience, most programmers can't be bothered to learn how to improve their coding style so as to avoid certain common classes of bugs, and that's their _job_, for which they presumably studied at university level. So how can you expect the average mailing list subscriber -- someone who has not been trained in problem solving -- to appreciate the sort of engineer's-mindset arguments you're advancing? The very idea that communication is a two-way street is strangely foreign to most people, as far as I can tell. The general attitude seems to be, Well, what I said made sense to me, so there's something wrong with you if you didn't understand it. Not everyone with this attitude is an idiot either, at least, clinically speaking. Craig
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Wednesday 05 September 2001 05:45 am, Bud Rogers wrote: Except that in this case we're not talking about a practice that was not previously common or even not so common. That's not a double negative, it's a brain fart. I meant to say We're not talking about a practice that was previously common or even not so common. -- Bud Rogers [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sirinet.net/~budr All things in moderation. And not too much moderation either.
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Wed, 5 Sep 2001, Nathan E Norman wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 09:34:05PM -0600, John Galt wrote: On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Nathan E Norman wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 06:11:03PM -0700, Eric G. Miller wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 03:10:27PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: but this practice is strongly deprecated. ^^^ Hell does that mean? Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say... dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2. DEPRECIATE I strongly mildly dissapprove of that quoting convention! Huh? deprecate is a common technical term (hang out at the IETF for a while). When a standard is trached, it is marked deprecated so people know that though they might have to put up with it from others, they shouldn't implement or use it themselves. Perhaps Karsten should have used discouraged rather than deprecated, but close enough. Well that's the problem, isn't it? Karsten (and yourself, variously) isn't really putting up with it, now is he? Putting up with retarded behavior doesn't mean you are prohibited from discouraging said behavior. -- * You are not expected to understand this. --comment from Unix system 6 source, credited to Lions and Johnson Who is John Galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who: finger me for GPG key Since you're such a fan of jeopardy style quoting, why is your sig always at the bottom? Seems hypocritical. I think the sig said it all You really aren't expected to understand. Good luck, -- * You are not expected to understand this. --comment from Unix system 6 source, credited to Lions and Johnson Who is John Galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who: finger me for GPG key
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
Elm predates any microsoft email product... Try to quote stuff in elm, the cursor goes to the beginning of the text. On Wed, 5 Sep 2001, Bud Rogers wrote: On Tuesday 04 September 2001 22:43 pm, Craig Dickson wrote: Karsten is using the word as it is commonly used among computer professionals. When some previously-common (or even not so common) practice or standard is superseded and no longer recommended, it is said to be deprecated. One often sees a phrase such as strongly deprecated in reference to something that is not merely no longer recommended, but actively discouraged or considered a Very Bad Thing. Except that in this case we're not talking about a practice that was not previously common or even not so common. We're talking about a practice that was virtually unknown until Microsoft flooded the market with badly broken mail and news clients that make it very difficult to properly quote or attribute anything. -- * You are not expected to understand this. --comment from Unix system 6 source, credited to Lions and Johnson Who is John Galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who: finger me for GPG key
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
John Galt wrote: Elm predates any microsoft email product... Try to quote stuff in elm, the cursor goes to the beginning of the text. Where the cursor starts out is beside the point. What matters is the structure of the message. Most traditional Internet email clients, such as elm or mutt, give you a document like this: ___cut_here___ John Galt wrote: Elm predates any microsoft email product... Try to quote stuff in elm, the cursor goes to the beginning of the text. ___cut_here___ The use of angle-bracket quote marks on the left margin makes it easy to tell what text is new and what is quoted, facilitating proper replies. Moving the cursor to the bottom is trivial, and I think it's best that the client not do that automatically, as it would discourage the user from cutting out irrelevant material from the quoted message. (In fact, it is easily observed that most people who reply at the top fail to trim the quoted text.) Microsoft's mail clients, on the other hand, give you something like this: ___cut_here___ --- Original message --- From: John Galt Elm predates any microsoft email product... Try to quote stuff in elm, the cursor goes to the beginning of the text. ___cut_here___ Note that they provide no left-margin quote marks, nor any indication of where the original message ends, and they leave a blank line or two at the top, implying that your reply should go there (otherwise, why put it there?). Craig
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 04:51:20PM -0600, John Galt wrote: | | Elm predates any microsoft email product... Try to quote stuff in elm, | the cursor goes to the beginning of the text. Don't all editors start with the cursor at the beginning? I used vim in elm before I now use vim in mutt. Regardless, vim starts with the cursor at the beginning and I move down, trimming as necessary, when I reply. -D
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
* Craig Dickson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [010905 23:53]: Microsoft's mail clients, on the other hand, give you something like this: ___cut_here___ --- Original message --- From: John Galt Elm predates any microsoft email product... Try to quote stuff in elm, the cursor goes to the beginning of the text. ___cut_here___ Note that they provide no left-margin quote marks, nor any indication of where the original message ends, and they leave a blank line or two at the top, implying that your reply should go there (otherwise, why put it there?). That's a configurable setting in Outlook Express. I use it every day... I believe it's also configurable in regular Outlook. I'll check it tomorrow. The problem is that it's not the default. Hell, the default is to use HTML vs plain-text. Hall
Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 03:10:27PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: [snip] From Email Quotes in the Jargon File: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/Email-Quotes.html Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like this, relevant excerpt 1 response to excerpt relevant excerpt 2 response to excerpt relevant excerpt 3 response to excerpt or for short messages like this: entire message response to message Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will occasionally see the entire quoted message after the response, like this response to message entire message but this practice is strongly deprecated. ^^^ Hell does that mean? Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has this to say... dep-re-cate 1. to express mild or regretful disapproval of 2. DEPRECIATE I strongly mildly dissapprove of that quoting convention! Huh? -- Eric G. Miller egm2@jps.net
