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Re: Mail format (was: Re: Free Software is not a gift (was: [ox-en] Oekonux introduction))



Hi all,

This quoting subject is an interesting one for me - so I've decided to
unlurk now.  I personaly find it much more convenient if the text I
read is not interspersed with quotes.  Instead of putting literarily
big chunks of text you can use your own words to describe the points
you are discussing with.  You might lose some prcision - but the
reader would not need to switch context from the original message to
your text.  And for the most part I would say that this is a fair
trade off, I do not propose this as an absolute measure - but rather I
would like to push the balance in this direction.

It is much easier just to quote the original text without translating
it but it is easier to read the text in one chunk and in the era of
information overload we need to be gentle with the reader.

--
Zbyszek


On 11/3/06, Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Hi Michel and list!

Last week (10 days ago) Michael Bouwens wrote:
> [Converted from multipart/alternative]

BTW: I just wanted to remind people that whenever you see the line
above the respective mail was re-formatted and re-send manually by me
as the list admin. This explains why such mails are delayed -
sometimes even for a couple of days. At the moment all mails by Michel
need such manual care :-/ . And I only can hope that I do not overlook
them between all the spam masses directed to this list (which you
don't see because they are filtered out).

> Sorry, but my yahoo-based email seems to have a bug for the citations ...

There are two points which IMHO would make sense to look for. The
first is to check whether it is possible to send plain text mails -
i.e. without an HTML part. These would save me from re-formatting and
re-sending your mail, it would not be delayed, and there is no more
danger that I overlook it as spam. A few weeks ago I say the Lycos web
mail frontend and it allowed for switching to plain text mails. May be
in Yahoo you can do this as well.

The second point is to check whether you can use standard citation
somehow (well, standard until M$ destroyed this useful de facto
standard by its brain-damaged Outlook citation engine :-( ). That is:

* Mark cited lines by a "> " in the first column

  This allows standard conforming mail applications to recognize and
  highlight quoted material making it visually easier to distinguish
  between cited and original material.

  For an example check

        http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg03589.html

  where you can see blue bars on the left side indicating the citation
  depth. This way it is rather easy to recognize who said what.

* Put your comments behind the citation you are commenting

  This makes it easier for people to understand what you are referring
  to.

  Also it is generally a bad idea to simply quote the whole mail you
  are citing (called TOFU in German: "Text oben - Fullquote unten").
  Often there are only a few points you are commenting and it saves
  (mental) bandwidth to make this explicit.

  It is particular bad practice to put the quote below your own text
  because people who want to know what you are referring to then need
  to read the mail bottom-up - which is extremely difficult in
  languages using top-down direction.


                                                Mit Freien Grüßen

                                                Stefan

____________________________________________________
No. It also inflates the mail unnecessarily.
Because it worsens the readability of the text.
Text Oben, Full-Quote Unten.
TOFU.
That's all?
What is wrong with TOFU?
What does TOFU mean?
What is the biggest nuisance with replies?
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_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



--
Zbigniew Lukasiak
http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



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