Top Posting Question

[Karl Larsen]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Jonathan Allen wrote:
>
>   
>> Dear List,
>>
>> Given that the preference on this list is trimming and
>> bottom/mid-posting, and that Thunderbird is one of the principle
>> mail agents used in the Fedora and Linux world, why does it always
>> open incoming emails at the top, and compose new emails with the
>> cursor at the top immediately ready to top-post?
>>     
>
> the evilness of top posting is covered nicely here:
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines#head-21931671219f9e2ecd6ec8655a3d582326699379
>
> but, regardless of whether or not your email client can be configured
> to automatically go to the bottom upon reply, there's nothing
> inherently wrong with positioning you at the top initially for a
> simple reason:  your mail client clearly has no idea where you want to
> start inserting reply text (what you would call "mid-posting").
>
> it might be that you want to add some reply text immediately after
> the first line, so it's your job to move there before typing.
>
>   
>> I am trying to persuade a colleague of the evil of top-posting and
>> he has just beaten me up on exactly this point - *if* the Linux
>> community is to keen to discourage bottom posting, why don't the
>> standard tools work that way.
>>     
>
> because "bottom posting" doesn't necessarily mean *exactly* bottom
> posting -- it simply means adding your reply text *after* what you're
> replying to.  and it's perfectly acceptable for something like that to
> happen near the top of the message.
>
>   
>> I was flabbergasted to find that he was right.
>>     
>
> you need to train yourself to be less easily flabbergasted.  :-)
>
> rday
>
> p.s.  i might go so far as to say that most people who whine
> incessantly about having to move their cursor alllllllllllll the way
> to the bottom of the message before typing in their reply are
> precisely the same people who should be trimming the included text so
> that they don't have that much to skip over in the first place.
>
>   
    By the way Thunderbird can be set for bottom comments. It might even 
come with that :-)



-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.