Mail formats

Charles McCathieNevile wrote 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2003AprJun/0982..html>:

>Tina: I apologise for putting my responses first, but often people 
>have read/heard the thread.

Then delete it.

>In accessibility efficiency is incredibly important, and I haven't 
>met a mail client that allows you to skip to the interesting bits.

Eudora's speech settings can be configured not to read quoted text, 
among many other features.

>  So for now I will continue to leave the original context until 
>after my message,

Top posting is harmful, unnecessary, and difficult to defend except 
in highly unusual cases. There's *nothing* beneficial about it. 
Generally, the people who cling to it are lazy. We already read the 
damned message you're quoting.

>On lists where the majority of people are using assistive 
>technologies people complain if you put old stuff first - it takes 
>too much time to find the interesting stuff.

There is no proof that a "majority" of people are using such 
technologies. Anyway, they need better assistive technologies, or 
they can use real mail programs that can handle quoted text properly.

Or, if you're so concerned with gobs of previously-quoted text, why 
are you sending 100% of previous messages every time? Just delete it 
and type your message.

See, inter alia:

<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TrimYourPosts>: Trim Your Posts
<http://www.xerez.demon.co.uk/usenet.htm>: Usenet Newsgroups
<http://www.redballoon.net/~snorwood/quote-rant.shtml>: Annoying 
quoting practices rant
<http://www.enabling.org/ia/celiac/netiquett.html#TRIM>: Email 
Netiquette Guidance
<http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?How_to_post>: All My FAQs Wiki: How to post
<http://www.amk.ca/conceit/mailing-list.html>: A Look at a Mailing List
<http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/brox.html>: Bottom vs. top 
posting and quotation style on Usenet
<http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html>: Why is Bottom-posting 
better than Top-posting
<http://homepage.ntlworld.com/g.mccaughan/g/remarks/uquote.html>: The 
advantages of Usenet's quoting conventions

-- 

     Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
     Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>
     Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
     <http://joeclark.org/book/>

Received on Monday, 7 July 2003 19:34:30 UTC