topposting (was: colourization in ls command)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

[Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html]

Irrelevant text trimmed.
Long/short breakage *not* trimmed, but left as an(other) example.

On Friday, 15 October 2004 at 13:33:37 -0600, Tom Connolly wrote:
> Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
>> On 2004-10-15 09:35, Tom Connolly <tomc at cqg.com> wrote:
>>> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, 12 October 2004 at 17:09:29 -0600, Tom Connolly wrote:
>>>>> There is a nice little tool for Outlook users, [...]
>>>>>
>>>>> http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/
>>>>
>>>> Are you aware that your message was formatted with long/short lines?
>>>
>>> Looks ok to me.

This is possible (see below), but you're presumably writing for
others, not for yourself.  To quote
http://www.lemis.com/email/fixing-outlook.html:

 Microsoft "Outlook" might not be the worst mailer available, but the
 results delivered to non-Microsoft mailers certainly make it look
 that way.  This may not worry Microsoft, but it should worry you:
 your mail is one of the ways people judge you on the net. Send out a
 badly formatted message like the ones in the Email format page or
 like Microsoft's own format breakage, and people will often think
 that you are incompetent or careless.

>> Sorry but no; Greg is right.  Your post *did* exhibit the long/short
>> line bug of Outlook.
>>
>> That's the problem with most of the email that Outlook sends, isn't
>> it? It looks ok to the poster but not to the reader.  Long/short
>> lines that Greg referred to is a common symptom of Outlook-formatted
>> (or, to be more precise, `unformatted', if I am excused for the pun)
>> messages.

I've recently had the misfortune to have to use "Outlook" for real
work.  I won't start on a rant about how difficult it is to use, but
I'd like to point out that it reformats text for display, wrapping
lines that weren't wrapped in the original.  That makes it "look OK to
you", but it doesn't solve the problem, and it's a breach of the RFC
standards.

>> I can't even begin to describe how many things are stupid about
>> this format of replying.

Indeed.  I think I'll keep your text and add it to my own rant, if I
may.

>> What is very wrong about the wrapping style of Outlook (or the lack
>> of one) is that Outlook users might never become aware of it.  Just
>> like you didn't know about it until Greg pointed it out ;-)
>
> That's all true but at least it solves the topposting problem which is what
> most
> People seemed to be complaining about. :)

A number of things about this comment:

1.  It still shows long/short.
2.  I'm not sure what you're referring to, because you quoted the
    *entire* message.  It doesn't seem to refer to the immediately
    preceding text.

You'll note that a number of people, myself included, have drawn a
distinction between "top posting" and "bottom posting" on the one hand
and an appropriate interaction of original and reply on the other.
It's the latter that we're hoping for.  Leaving irrelevant text is
always wrong.

Greg
--
When replying to this message, please take care not to mutilate the
original text.  
For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/email.html
See complete headers for address and phone numbers