- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@sidar.org>
- Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 08:16:46 +0100
- To: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@comcast.net>
- Cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
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 02:19:03 UTC