Re: [WAI-IG] list policies (top posting for vision impairments)

Chaalls wrote in part:
I now have a graphical rendering of quoting, except that it isn't
all that accurate, and I still find it hard without more context
markers than Dave used in his interleaved contribution to this thread.

[dp]  What would have been better?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Charles McCathieNevile" <charles@sidar.org>
To: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@comcast.net>
Cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 2:16 AM
Subject: Re: [WAI-IG] list policies (top posting for vision impairments)



As a top poster...

I find, in simple threads, that top posting is much easier to
understand, because
  - quoting isn't standardised (however much we would like it to be)
  - in a list I read regularly it is easier for me to keep a rough idea
of context over the list than have to drill through each message
  - it is what I am used to. (I spent the 80's using /usr/ucb/mail,
which being a line-mode tool made quoting generally difficult).

I suspect this is a matter of individual preference. Sometimes I do
interleaved posting, sometimes I appreciate it when others have done
it. I now have a graphical rendering of quoting, except that it isn't
all that accurate, and I still find it hard without more context
markers than Dave used in his interleaved contribution to this thread.

I have noticed a general preference among blind users for top posting,
but not so strong that one or other would be standardised. I suspect
this is because tools are trying to work with a standard (RFC822) which
is too simplistic in its functionality for what we really want it to
do, so they don't make it easy to work with quoting. (Many tools
auto-wrap at an arbitrary 72 characters, although users now almost
universally work on systems that have flexible-size windows and
window-wrapping. It seems many of these tools don't manage to preserve
">" quoting marks properly over that wrapping.)

So I think this is an interesting question. I don't believe there is a
standard answer.

just my 2 cents worth

Chaals

On 29 Feb 2004, at 05:59, David Poehlman wrote:

> Alright I'll speak to the issue which I have already been doing in a
> way,
> but the truth is that it is no different for a visually impaired
> person than
> for anyone else for the same rasons.  Lots of it has to do with how
> visually
> impaired are you, how skilled are you, what do you use to email with,
> how
> long have you been at it, how well do you know the conventions and how
> much
> do you care about them.
>
> Being visually impaired has little to do with my preference for top
> posting
> since I can do any kind of text posting.  My preference has more to do
> with
> what seems simplest and least complex which we have already covered.
--
Charles McCathieNevile                          Fundación Sidar
charles@sidar.org                                http://www.sidar.org

Received on Sunday, 29 February 2004 09:12:13 UTC