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 02:19:03 UTC