* Steven T. Hatton [10-12-02 20:27]:

On Saturday 12 October 2002 09:11 pm, SuSEnixER wrote:

...

I declair this missive true and accurate, but failing to address the other mortal sin in the traditional world of usenet and mailinglist. That sin is "failing to trim inappropriate and/or irrelevant text" from the quote.

Besides detracting from the continuity and accuracy of the conversation, it is rude and selfish. There are still individuals who must pay for time and/or traffic online.

I agree with your position on this, with the qualification that this is a far more subjective matter. Top-posting is a fairly clearly defined matter. Pruning for relevance is very much more a matter of opinion.

Are you saying the opinion that it is acceptable to leave the sig's and headers and tails in quoted text, not remove them and other text not pertinent to your reply is good and only subject to opinion ??? -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org

In a "longish" post - perhaps with a log file included it would mean everyone having to go to the end of this to see the reply or comment. I would be worried that some may not be bothered to do this and skip to the next post. Is top posting that bad ? Brian Marr On Sunday 13 October 2002 10:54, Steven T. Hatton wrote:

On Saturday 12 October 2002 09:11 pm, SuSEnixER wrote:

...

* Steven T. Hatton [10-12-02 19:23]:

...

It is now time to take a stand. Top-posting, that is, posting ones reply above the quoted text, is a symbol of darkness. It represents evil. To knowingly violate the traditional standard of internet decorum is to willingly partake in the darkness. I therefore must declare that, heretofore, all who top-post with full knowledge of the above recounted history will be declared 'Windoze Users' and shall be shunned by all who honor the good and noble traditions which created the Internet.

I declair this missive true and accurate, but failing to address the other mortal sin in the traditional world of usenet and mailinglist. That sin is "failing to trim inappropriate and/or irrelevant text" from the quote.

Besides detracting from the continuity and accuracy of the conversation, it is rude and selfish. There are still individuals who must pay for time and/or traffic online.

I agree with your position on this, with the qualification that this is a far more subjective matter. Top-posting is a fairly clearly defined matter. Pruning for relevance is very much more a matter of opinion.

STH

wolfi wrote:

...

Just like IBM's Lotus Notes, I am "top-posting" as you call it. It's not M$, it's the standard way. Get used to it.

Yes, I know. M$ is the standard way. In 1938, Hitler received 98% of YES votes, so Nazi was the standard in these days. I get damn angry if someone has no better arguments than 'it's the standard way' - Standard is only the average value of stupidity.

Erk, he godwinated. Damn, that means the argument's lost :-P -- Rachel

dsl23212@vip.cybercity.dk wrote:

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 11:31:28AM +0100, Rachel Greenham wrote:

...

Erk, he godwinated. Damn, that means the argument's lost :-P

That's not in the dictionary... explain please? :)

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Godwin's-Law.html http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/ Sooner or later someone will mention nazis. The actual topic under discussion has no bearing on this.

On Sunday, October 13, 2002, at 11:32 AM, Anders Johansson wrote:

dsl23212@vip.cybercity.dk wrote:

...

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 11:31:28AM +0100, Rachel Greenham wrote:

...

Erk, he godwinated. Damn, that means the argument's lost :-P That's not in the dictionary... explain please? :)

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Godwin's-Law.html http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/

Sooner or later someone will mention nazis. The actual topic under discussion has no bearing on this.

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

I think that has been one of the most informative response to date. Entertaining too. will

Great, thanks :) As an aside, I now also know what a godzillagram is... http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Godzillagram.html Jon

Brian Marr wrote:

In a "longish" post - perhaps with a log file included it would mean everyone having to go to the end of this to see the reply or comment. I would be worried that some may not be bothered to do this and skip to the next post. Is top posting that bad ?

Trim it down. Only quote that which is relevant - if too large a block is relevant, snip and summarize instead. -- Rachel

* Doug McGarrett [10-12-02 22:03]:

Just like IBM's Lotus Notes, I am "top-posting" as you call it. It's not M$, it's the standard way. Get used to it.

At 20:11 10/12/2002 -0500, SuSEnixER wrote:

...

* Steven T. Hatton [10-12-02 19:23]:

...

It has come time to state my position on top-posting. In the traditional world of usenet and mailing list, long before the Ring Wraiths of Redmond had spread their darkness over the Internet, it was considered common courtesy to reply to a message by adding ones responses, either in-line, after the comment to which a particular response was directed, or at the bottom of the quoted text.

/snipped for brevety/

It is definitely not necessary or expected to post other than to the list unless it is expressly requested. If fact, it is a damn fool thing to do. Wear the hat, it fits. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org

* Charles Philip Chan (cpchan@sympatico.ca) [021018 11:04]:

Really? For a bit of history and the standard way of doing things please refer to:

Charles, please don't feed the trolls. -- -ckm

* Michael D. Schleif [10-12-02 22:44]:

me, too ;>

It is definitely not necessary or expected to post other than to the list unless it is expressly requested. If fact, it is a damn fool thing to do. Wear the hat, it fits. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org

If you use procmail to sort your mail then you can use this fix for the SuSE list that I've been using for years. :0f * ^X-Mailinglist: suse-linux-e | formail -bfi "Reply-To:suse-linux-e@suse.com" This should make it so you just have to hit reply. It only will effect the SuSE List. BTW..I use Mutt and this works just fine with it. * Carlos E. R. (robin1.listas@tiscali.es) [021013 10:26]: -> ->Pine, which is the mail client I mostly use, can not "email to list". I ->have to "raply to All", then delete everybody from the header except the ->list address. I try not to slip, but I'm sure to fail some time. -> ->Other programs have that, but then, they miss lots of features pine has. -> ->Most unfortunate. :-( -- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org Tell me what you believe.. I tell you what you should see.

* Carlos E. R. [10-13-02 19:26]:

Pine, which is the mail client I mostly use, can not "email to list". I have to "raply to All", then delete everybody from the header except the list address. I try not to slip, but I'm sure to fail some time.

Other programs have that, but then, they miss lots of features pine has.

Most unfortunate. :-(

Have you tried mutt? -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org

Glen, sorry .. I've had to change the Subject and I can't quote your message (long story ;-) Basically, your wlan0 interface doesn't have an IP address. If you can't get dhcpcd to work for you try setting the IP address manually with ifconfig ifconfig wlan0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (e.g. ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.200 netmask 255.255.255.0) Make sure you choose an IP that's not already in use on your WLAN. Best way to do this is find a machine that's working correctly, find out what IP it's using, then try an address close by - try pinging the address you choose from the working machine first to make sure it's not being used. If it still doesn't want to work it may be that the WLAN is using encryption and you need to set the correct key on your card .. iwconfig wlan0 enc xxxx-xxxx-xx HTH sjb

SuSEnixER wrote: <snip />

That sin is "failing to trim inappropriate and/or irrelevant text" from the quote.

Try it -- it really works . . . -- Best Regards, mds mds resource 888.250.3987 Dare to fix things before they break . . . Our capacity for understanding is inversely proportional to how much we think we know. The more I know, the more I know I don't know . . .

WideGlide@MyRealBox.com wrote:

* Michael D. Schleif [10-13-02 12:32]:

...

Try it -- it really works . . .

It is definitely not necessary or expected to post other than to the list unless it is expressly requested. If fact, it is a damn fool thing to do. Wear the hat, it fits.

Will you be flaming people much longer? It's getting a bit old, you know.

On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Carlos just had to get this off his chest:

The 02.10.12 at 20:20, Steven T. Hatton wrote:

...

It is now time to take a stand. Top-posting, that is, posting ones reply above the quoted text, is a symbol of darkness. It represents evil. To knowingly violate the traditional standard of internet decorum is to willingly partake in the darkness. I therefore must declare that, heretofore, all who top-post with full knowledge of the above recounted history will be declared 'Windoze Users' and shall be shunned by all who honor the good and noble traditions which created the Internet.

I'm sorry to disagree. For example, pine, which is not a windoze program, by default "top-posts".

No it doesn't. It places the cursor on top of the quoted text, but that's what Mutt and other MUA's and newsreaders let the editor do aswell. That is *not* so you can start typing at that point, it is done, so that you can start trimming off irrelevant text from that point down. Is it really that hard to do? Delete text to a piece of quoted text where you want to reply to, type your response, delete text down to the next piece of text you want to reply to etc. Ignoring the relevant RFC1855 in mailing lists and usenet posts is just plain rude and totally disrespectful of the people the you might want to get help from. For me it is very simple: topposter and bulkquoters will be ignored, period. Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 8 24N , 4 32 40E. SuSE 8.0 x86 Kernel 2.4.16-4GB See headers for PGP/GPG info.

** This email message from "Theo v. Werkhoven" on Sun, 13 Oct 2002 19:46:13 +0200 Will be delivered via Owl Services Dept **Ignoring the relevant RFC1855 in mailing lists and usenet posts is just **plain rude and totally disrespectful of the people the you might want to **get help from. **For me it is very simple: topposter and bulkquoters will be ignored, period. Well, now that that problem is sorted, <grins> could we please add *my* pet peave wherein folks insist on sending both text AND html .. Using up bandwidth in a most egregiuos form ... I understand that some folks who must use various webmail pages *may* not have much choice, but generally it's simply from a lack of looking or setting the program up properly. No one's messages are so important they need to be sent in both forms <sigh> -- j afterthought Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

The 02.10.13 at 19:46, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote:

...

I'm sorry to disagree. For example, pine, which is not a windoze program, by default "top-posts".

No it doesn't. It places the cursor on top of the quoted text, but that's what Mutt and other MUA's and newsreaders let the editor do aswell.

It also places the signature two lines below the "leader" line, above the quoted text. At least, by default.

That is *not* so you can start typing at that point, it is done, so that you can start trimming off irrelevant text from that point down. Is it really that hard to do? Delete text to a piece of quoted text where you want to reply to, type your response, delete text down to the next piece of text you want to reply to etc.

That's what I usually do :-) But it takes longer, and seems to be against what is customary in most businesses: they claim that a sort answer is easier to see at the top of the message, specially when there are dozens or hundred of emails to process. Also they dislike somebody else trimiming what they said, because the exact meaning can be altered.

Ignoring the relevant RFC1855 in mailing lists and usenet posts is just plain rude and totally disrespectful of the people the you might want to get help from.

Sorry: I didn't know it was required RFC training to write here. No mention of that in the subscription form :-p Anyway, the RFC docs are no longer included with the suse distro.

For me it is very simple: topposter and bulkquoters will be ignored, period.

If it suits yourself... Me, I'm more tolerant. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

The 02.10.14 at 12:16, John Pettigrew wrote:

In a previous message, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

[businesses] dislike somebody else trimiming what they said, because the exact meaning can be altered.

But this is exactly why snipping is so useful. If someone snips your post but has misunderstood you, you can see exactly where and why the misunderstanding has occurred, so can address that issue. Otherwise, you're simply left with a misunderstanding and no clue why they're being so "dim".

You have a point there. But sometimes, specially when it is a "conversation" involving several people that where not following the issue carefully, it is better for them to see the original text intact. What I do sometimes is that I leave the original untouched, at the bottom, and copy the small section I'm going to answer above. Long mails are not a problem in that environment: attachements are. In fact, if I trim the text, quoting, I usually warn that I'm doing so: many people get lost, some even tell you to stop doing that. I have been doing that for years, but it is new stuff for them. So... I adapt :-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Doug McGarrett [14 Oct 2002 19:58:42 -0400]:

Yes, replies at the top are most useful.

Nope, they're the most annoying ones. They only show ignorance to established rules and an unwillingness to adapt (like sending additional answers by mail because it's too hard to edit the header).

At my saltmine--a division of Honeywell--it is a serious offense for anyone to snip anything off an email he is replying to.

A nice example of why common sense is so uncommon (for more hilarious examples see http://computerworld.com/departments/opinions/sharktank/). Do you include photocopies of all previous replies to a letter in your answering letter? No? Then why do it with email?

And, as an aside, I think the emailer we use at my facility, IBM's Lotus Notes, was actually written for a UNIX system before it was ported to Windows, but I'm not sure.

Notes may be many things, but it is among the worst MUAs that I've come across. In fact, calling it a MUA is a deep insult to those programs that actually deserve that name.

It "top-posts."

I've written it before in a reply to you months ago: the fact that those that programmed the Notes client didn't have a clue doesn't make it a standard in a world where the rules are *much* older than Notes. Philipp -- Well, you can put a shoe in an oven but that wouldn't make it a biscuit. -- Pete Seeger

On Thursday 17 October 2002 06:27, jaakko tamminen wrote: (hmmm, I think a lot of the rancour has gone out of this thread, so I'll venture a few opinions.)

In some cases I agree with You.. Like Your answers for this long letter should be in-line answers.

If they're short, then they should be entirely below any trimmed text. The whole point of any trimmed text is to give you (the reader) a quick primer on what the subject is about. Unless you're writing in a Semitic or Oriental language, you read left-right and top-bottom - so the primer should be *above* the new tex, not below it. To do anything else assumes that a) the reader reads anything from the bottom of the page up or that b) they're precognitive, and know exactly what you were talking about before you tell them As such, top-posting is simply *wrong*. People who top post are a menace to life on this planet and should be eradicated immediately for the public good. Not really. It's not exactly up there with the great all-time sins; it's a very minor faux pas, truth be told. However, it is wrong; it is (strictly speaking) incorrect usage of standard English formatting.

With long letter it is a good idea to answer by question as You did.

If it's a massive article, then a point-by-point response is the correct way to go; that's been the tradition ever since the Socratic dialogues were written down 2400 years ago.

But with a single question a top-post is the way to go.

If I follow a thread with a single question, I can then very easy see how the problem solving is progressing by just reading the top-post and clicking on the subject line. No need for scrolling.

Which does assume that you haven't missed any articles in the thread, or that you can remember all of the previous stuff perfectly. If you *can't*, then you may derive a meaning out of context, or miss a point made below, or suffer similar mishaps. If it's not important enough to be used to prime peoples' memory on the subject to date, then it simply shouldn't be there; it's superfluous to the discussion, and should be trimmed. As son-of-1036 says: " Posters SHOULD edit quoted context to trim it down to the minimum necessary." (Yes, son-of-1036 specifically applies to Usenet, but it is built on the conventions of standard English usage.) Similarly, RFC 1855 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt) says: "If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just enough text of the original to give a context." Again, it's advice, not a command; but it is based on standard accepted practice.

As this answer is a "general" reply, it does not neet to be answered line-by-line, top post is better here... People who has followed this thread knows what it's all about... if not, they can then scroll down.

I've answered point-by-point, since I usually answer that way, even on fairly short messages; but if I were replying to a single short message, I'd trim out anything I didn't need and reply below the previous text. I don't think top-posting is a massive life-threatening crime, though! I, for one, am not going to start getting in a massive snit about it, as there are any number of better things to worry about. Gideon.

Hi I do disagree with You. Top-posting is not a bad thing, no matter what You say. If You can't remember, what the previous message was about when following the thread, You are welcome to start reading every message from the bottom up. But for me, if I see a long quote in the beginning, and few lines of answer at the bottom, I'm not ready to read it unless it is really interesting. Even worse is replying here and there without paying too much attention how to make it clear where the reply is, and where the original is. This is not really neccssary when people usually have only 1-2 questions. When reading a top-post, if the answer seems to be interesting, and the thread is new to me, then I will read the rest once to get the idea of the thread. By doing so, I do save a lot of time and effort. If everyone should start mid- and end-posting, reading these e-mails would be horrible and time consuming. Even this post, when someone first reads Your post, then reads this reply, do not need to scroll down and try to find my reply. They will remember the previous in the thread (the message I'm replying now), so why indeed they should be bothered to scroll again and again the same text... The main thing to me, is the ease of reading.. and it really can't be that wrong! Jaska. On Thursday 17 October 2002 11:20, you wrote:

On Thursday 17 October 2002 06:27, jaakko tamminen wrote:

(hmmm, I think a lot of the rancour has gone out of this thread, so I'll venture a few opinions.)

...

In some cases I agree with You.. Like Your answers for this long letter should be in-line answers.

If they're short, then they should be entirely below any trimmed text. The whole point of any trimmed text is to give you (the reader) a quick primer on what the subject is about. Unless you're writing in a Semitic or Oriental language, you read left-right and top-bottom - so the primer should be *above* the new tex, not below it.

To do anything else assumes that a) the reader reads anything from the bottom of the page up or that b) they're precognitive, and know exactly what you were talking about before you tell them

As such, top-posting is simply *wrong*. People who top post are a menace to life on this planet and should be eradicated immediately for the public good.

Not really. It's not exactly up there with the great all-time sins; it's a very minor faux pas, truth be told. However, it is wrong; it is (strictly speaking) incorrect usage of standard English formatting.

...

With long letter it is a good idea to answer by question as You did.

If it's a massive article, then a point-by-point response is the correct way to go; that's been the tradition ever since the Socratic dialogues were written down 2400 years ago.

...

But with a single question a top-post is the way to go.

If I follow a thread with a single question, I can then very easy see how the problem solving is progressing by just reading the top-post and clicking on the subject line. No need for scrolling.

Which does assume that you haven't missed any articles in the thread, or that you can remember all of the previous stuff perfectly. If you *can't*, then you may derive a meaning out of context, or miss a point made below, or suffer similar mishaps.

If it's not important enough to be used to prime peoples' memory on the subject to date, then it simply shouldn't be there; it's superfluous to the discussion, and should be trimmed.

As son-of-1036 says:

" Posters SHOULD edit quoted context to trim it down to the minimum necessary."

(Yes, son-of-1036 specifically applies to Usenet, but it is built on the conventions of standard English usage.)

Similarly, RFC 1855 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt) says:

"If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just enough text of the original to give a context."

Again, it's advice, not a command; but it is based on standard accepted practice.

...

As this answer is a "general" reply, it does not neet to be answered line-by-line, top post is better here... People who has followed this thread knows what it's all about... if not, they can then scroll down.

I've answered point-by-point, since I usually answer that way, even on fairly short messages; but if I were replying to a single short message, I'd trim out anything I didn't need and reply below the previous text.

I don't think top-posting is a massive life-threatening crime, though! I, for one, am not going to start getting in a massive snit about it, as there are any number of better things to worry about.

Gideon.

Hi You seem to be totally right what comes to Your own opinion. There is no room for others.. that is too bad. In Your opinion downloading few kilobytes or even tenths of kilobytes of text is too much.. Then why download anything at all? And at the same time You say one can go and search the SuSE database.. so what is really wasting bandwidth/time/effort? With modem it doesn't take all that long to donwload messages in this list, even with full quotes. But browsing is slow... Getting the list twice a day equals to downloading of one nice picture :-)

Top-posting is a bad thing and is against any normal logic. Of course, it depends on one's definition of normality. So You are saying that everyone else is not normal except the ones that quote excatly as You want then to do?

Even if it means more readable messages?

...

If You can't remember, what the previous message was about when following replying to, I can always find the original message on lists.suse.com. Or order a new copy from this list if I managed to delete it already. So if You don't remember the previous message, then who replies should always quote in the beginning, and make us all scroll and waste our time?

Or even worse as You say, go browsing the net.. and how much kilobytes You need to download them compared downloading the message with quotes?

...

But for me, if I see a long quote in the beginning, and few lines of answer at the bottom, I'm not ready to read it unless it is really interesting.

If quoting is bad and message contains no answers for you, don't read it. Save your time and make your reading easy.

...

Even worse is replying here and there without paying too much attention how to make it clear where the reply is, and where the original is.

Original lines are indented, usually with ">" but still you can make it hard to read.. I don't want to waste my time by editing for someones pleasure. Just a reply, and that's it.

...

When reading a top-post, if the answer seems to be interesting, and the thread is new to me, then I will read the rest once to get the idea of the thread.

By doing so, I do save a lot of time and effort.

You save your time and effort while wasting time and money of the people on dial-up connections paying per kB transferred. Not everybody on this list has cable or DSL, because they simply live in a country where such things do not exist at all. Please think about them a bit Like Your idea to go and search the database wouln't waste bandwidth, bytes, time and nerves....

...

Even this post, when someone first reads Your post, then reads this reply, do not need to scroll down and try to find my reply. They will remember the previous in the thread (the message I'm replying now), so why indeed they should be bothered to scroll again and again the same text...

Why did you include it then? To make phone bills for guys in poor countries even higher? And scare them from this list? In case someone comes in then middle of thread, and want to know what is going on here...

...

The main thing to me, is the ease of reading.. and it really can't be that wrong!

It does not affect my ease of reading if you put full original message at the bottom of your comments. It is pure waste of bandwidth. Please do not leave original message at the bottom.

And lets get back to technical sides of SuSE Linux.

Thanks and regards, -Kastus I agree. And stop nagging of other peoples opinion what is right and what is wrong. There is clearly wrong kind of messages, but they always tend to lead to lack of information, not the way they are written...

You can always put a filter, so that You dowload only the first 80-or so lines from any message. Looking back this message, it is a real mess! This just can't be what people want to read... no way! Jaska

On Monday 14 October 2002 19:58, Doug McGarrett wrote:

And, as an aside, I think the emailer we use at my facility, IBM's Lotus Notes, was actually written for a UNIX system before it was ported to Windows, but I'm not sure. It "top-posts."

Except Lotus Notes is a database with a mail application added on. Sort of like the way solitaire grew to become an OS.

The 02.10.15 at 00:05, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote: [pine]

...

It also places the signature two lines below the "leader" line, above the quoted text. At least, by default.

Then you need to adjust the relevant option in Pine. In Mutt this option has a big warning saying that lot's of folks won't appreciate it, and the default is to put the sig where it belongs, on the bottom.

Unfortunately, pine (nor balsa, kmail, netscape or mozilla) allows me to fully tune behaviour based on mailbox, for example. In this list, I usually preffer not to top-post, meaning I have to cut and paste a few things (not only the signature), but in the rest of my mail I can't, because the rest of my correspondants complain they can not follow me. As I said, I'm tolerant and I adjust.

...

...

That is *not* so you can start typing at that point, it is done, so that you can start trimming off irrelevant text from that point down. Is it really that hard to do? Delete text to a piece of quoted text where you want to reply to, type your response, delete text down to the next piece of text you want to reply to etc.

That's what I usually do :-)

But it takes longer, and seems to be against what is customary in most businesses: they claim that a sort answer is easier to see at the top of the message, specially when there are dozens or hundred of emails to process. Also they dislike somebody else trimiming what they said, because the exact meaning can be altered.

When you're in a I2I conversation you try to be nice, and give polite answers and remarks don't you? You're not trying to mouth off someone just because it would save you a few minutes. Why then would you think your time is so precious in an email conversation that it makes it ok to screw up a logically arranged top-to-bottom discussion by putting ones comment on top of all that's been said before?

It is not my idea to do it that way. I was "forced" to act that way, when I was already used to quote and trim as necesary. The custom of top-posting comes not necesarily from microsoft, but from corporate and bussines mail.

...

...

Ignoring the relevant RFC1855 in mailing lists and usenet posts is just plain rude and totally disrespectful of the people the you might want to get help from.

Sorry: I didn't know it was required RFC training to write here. No mention of that in the subscription form :-p

It's basic politeness and etiquette to learn some "how to get along" rules before you engage in a mixed company. Same thing you do when you start a new job, get to know new friends etc.

Exactly. From the FAQ: | Please read the following frequently asked, frequently asked questions | before posting to the list. As with any mailing list or newsgroup, | it's usually a good idea to read the list for a few days before | posting If you watch the list for some days, you see many flavours. But no mention of the RFC1855 are on the "instructions" :-p

...

Anyway, the RFC docs are no longer included with the suse distro.

And one google click away is too much I'm sure.

If you know that such a thing as the RFC exist: only technically minded people and professionals will know. Any way: why has suse stoped including them, amongst many other things? Of course they can be obtained from some site or another, the same as I can download the full gnu-linux from each source and compile myself. But I may not have the time, bandwith, inclination or training to do it: so I buy a distro.

...

...

For me it is very simple: topposter and bulkquoters will be ignored, period.

If it suits yourself... Me, I'm more tolerant.

Good for you, but my life is way too short, and the number of lists and newsgroups I read way to big to try to keep up with every topposters comment and the context it's suppost to fit in, or to find a 'me too' somewhere on the bottom of a 10k message.

Heh! In such cases, I much prefer to see a top post. If the person doesn't trim and clip, but leave the quote intact, I preffer the "me too" above. Much faster reading X-)

From ~doc/rfc/rfc1855.txt.gz

| - A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and | liberal in what you receive. You should not send heated messages | (we call these "flames") even if you are provoked. On the other | hand, you shouldn't be surprised if you get flamed and it's | prudent not to respond to flames.

Your sig seperator is broken, it should be: <newline><dash><dash><space><newline>

Pine puts the dashes, not me: my ".signature" file contains no dashes. Can't help it, sorry. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

The 02.10.15 at 16:49, SuSEnixER wrote:

...

...

Your sig seperator is broken, it should be: <newline><dash><dash><space><newline>

Pine puts the dashes, not me: my ".signature" file contains no dashes. Can't help it, sorry.

Sure you can. Put <dash> <dash> <space> <newline> as the top line in you .sig file.

You are hard to convince, eh? I tried that long time ago. See for your self: -- -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

On Tue, 15 Oct 2002, SuSEnixER just had to get this off his chest:

* Carlos E. R. [10-15-02 18:04]:

...

The 02.10.15 at 16:49, SuSEnixER wrote:

...

...

...

Your sig seperator is broken, it should be: <newline><dash><dash><space><newline>

Pine puts the dashes, not me: my ".signature" file contains no dashes. Can't help it, sorry.

Sure you can. Put <dash> <dash> <space> <newline> as the top line in you .sig file.

You are hard to convince, eh? I tried that long time ago. See for your self:

-- -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

But it works. I received you sig as a sig. Before it was part of the message text. I have bounced the post to you so you can see for yourself. Maybe others will also acknowledge, or maybe it only works for mutt.

Patrick is right, Carlos's sig seperator works as it should. Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 8 24N , 4 32 40E. SuSE 8.0 x86 Kernel 2.4.16-4GB See headers for PGP/GPG info.

I'm sorry I ever answered the first post. I certainly did not expect to create a 3 day wonder of those who do and those who don't. If the original poster doesn't like the standard (Lotus was designed for Unix, if I remember) then he should just not read these emails. There have been enough examples of why writing first makes sense, that I don't have to add any. Let's stop now, do what we all do in our own way, and stop fussing about it. --doug At 20:47 10/16/2002 +0200, Philipp Thomas wrote:

robin1.listas@tiscali.es [ Mon, 14 Oct 2002 12:59:23 +0200 (CEST)]:

...

Also they dislike somebody else trimiming what they said, because the exact meaning can be altered.

/snip/ /and so on/

robin1.listas@tiscali.es [ Mon, 14 Oct 2002 12:59:23 +0200 (CEST)]:

Also they dislike somebody else trimiming what they said, because the exact meaning can be altered.

Yeah, and they put a photocopy of a letter in their reply mail. What some businesses do because those in charge have no clue is one thing, how you behave on the net where the rules are much older than most business practice is a totally different matter. Philipp PS I'm among those that simply ignore top-posts or fullquotes on a mailing list. -- Philipp Thomas work: pthomas@suse.de Development SuSE Linux AG private: pth@t-link.de

On Sunday 13 October 2002 18:46, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote: Carlos and Theo went just a teensy bit overboard, saying things like:

...

It is now time to take a stand. Top-posting, that is, posting ones reply above the quoted text, is a symbol of darkness. It represents evil.

and like:

Is it really that hard to do? Delete text to a piece of quoted text where you want to reply to, type your response, delete text down to the next piece of text you want to reply to etc. Ignoring the relevant RFC1855 in mailing lists and usenet posts is just plain rude and totally disrespectful of the people the you might want to get help from. For me it is very simple: topposter and bulkquoters will be ignored, period.

Allow me to state an additional fact or three, and then to derive the inescapable conclusion from your posts: The people who top-post -- and I'm one of them, unless I remember to switch styles for the Linux audience (ok, for SOME of the Linux audience) -- DO tend to be Windows users. But, you COULD ask yourself why that is so. Somebody already pointed the way by saying that they tend to be BUSINESS users. It's a simple fact of life that most of the mature computer users in the world tend to be business users. Most of the people who run computers at home have them at work. In fact, if somebody has a computer in only one location, that location is more likely to be work, than home. (I'm discounting all the teenagers who have computers that they didn't pay for...) Now ask yourself why Windoze mailreaders tend to favor top-posting (or TOFU, as the Germans like to call it). Before you answer that, consider that Bill Gates made billions by catering to what people want, and how they like to do things, especially in business. In olden days, before e-mail, I would often receive inter-office folders containing memo packages. The most recent memo was always on top, with the rest stapled/clipped together in reverse order, with the earliest one at the back of the stack. They did it that way because it worked. Most people wanted only the summary or the most recent arguments or decisions on top. If they needed to refresh their memories, they could dig down in the stack. This arrangement got duplicated when office e-mail came along. Sometimes, people respond to a multi-point e-mail by "My comments are embedded, below". Otherwise, they add their two-cents worth at the top, so that busy executives and managers can see the latest at a glance. Therefore, MS Outlook and other Windows mail readers tend to default to that model of message trail handling. Let me say that another way: most of the business mail users in the world a) have learned that method b) prefer that method. Notice that I didn't say it is somehow mystically right. I just said it's the learned and preferred method of the vast majority of users BECAUSE they happen to be in business. Even the legions of students and academics don't keep to the "right and righteous" method, once they finally cut the umbilical, stop sucking at the teat, and go get real jobs. Now, we come to the analysis part. Unless you have spent your entire computer- using life, sheltered in academia, then you were already aware of the preponderance of Windows in the business/commerce world, and that top-posting is the way it's done. So, based on that, what you are saying -- by badmouthing Windows users in general -- is that you prefer to keep Linux in the minority ghetto. You don't WANT it to make its way onto the desktops of the business drones of the world. That would destroy its cachet of "specialness" or whatever. If Windows users actually began using Linux in real life, you'd have to move on to BSD or something. Let's call them names and make them feel like the unwanted scum they are, instead. That said, I agree completely that in a simple discussion (as opposed to a business, decision- making e-mail trail), it is bad manners to reply without editing/trimming. Oh, and I especially liked this bit from Carl:

...

'Windoze Users' and shall be shunned by all who honor the good and noble traditions which created the Internet.

The good and noble traditions that CREATED the Internet? Well, let me see if I can recall... Oh yes... war. Several laboratories and research centers in the US military and weapons-research area were linked together, mainframe to mainframe. Does the name DARPA ring a bell? Then, they hooked up a few university computer centers to their little network, so that they could keep the research and information trading briskly among the military researchers and the academics. The network proved to have utility for those reasons and for other reasons, so it gradually expanded to include other institutions of higher learning. Then, it just sat there for a while, with not a whole lot of improvement, until business came along. Then, it took off until it became a household word. Is that the "noble tradition" of which you speak? I'm nearly 50. I was in university computing rooms in the early Seventies, and I've been associated with computers and comms all my working life. In other words, I was there for most of the life of the internet. Somehow, I seemed to have missed the "noble traditions". Comments? Rebuttals? /kevin

On Monday 14 October 2002 19:17, Anders Johansson wrote:

kevinmcl@magma.ca wrote:

...

They did it that way because it worked.

They also use MS Outlook and make up for its shortcomings by spending literally millions of $$$ on anti virus software. "because it worked" or "because it required the least amount of thought or competence"?

Well, I suppose that's very true. I have been trying for a while, and I still do not have sufficient competence to completely abandon MS Windows and MS Office. Some company documents do not survive the round-trip from Word to OpenOffice Writer to Word again, with formatting and tables intact. I'm sure it's just a failing on my part, but until I figure it out, or fix OpenOffice (I'm not a programmer), I'll have to live with the shame of my incompetence. Before you ask, no, I don't get to re-write other people's controlled documents for them. I have to deal with them as I receive them. Some company spreadsheets do not survive... (see above, but substitute OOo spreadsheet app)... blah, blah, ... shame of my incompetence. I *do* use KMail for my mail, but I have not figured out how to make my Korganizer appointments calendar synchronize with everybody else's Outlook Calendars, nor how to use the voting buttons that everybody else in the office can use in their e-mail replies, nor how to accept other people's meeting invitations within either Korganizer OR KMail, so that the public calendars are visibly updated and synchronized (WHAT public calendars??). Oh, the shame, when other people take care of stuff like that with two mouse-clicks, and I'm taking extra time to do everything by hand. Perhaps if I just took more Garcinia Cambogia, or if I just read that _f***ing_ FAQ one more time, I'd suddenly understand how to make all these things happen. No, Ximian Evolution won't do it, because we have NT servers, and the Evo extension for calendars and scheduling requires Win2K server. Ok. I'll stop. You know, it escapes me how you don't grasp that the above are considered *advantages* of having ugly old MS Office and MS Outlook... by the rest of the people in my company. You know, the people I have to work with every day? Many of those advantages have existed for years. Most of us heathens, who aren't in the inner circle of Linux, were not aware of Linux apps with that kind of functionality several years ago. So, fools that they must have been, they went with: a) the next version of software they already had and that all the staff already knew, b) the only (or one of two only) software that had the functions. Or, do you think it is the fault of those lazy buggers in the IT department? Then, I'm sure you won't mind revealing: 1) the Linux functional equivalent programs that they can implement today and 2) the Linux functional equivalent programs that they could implement eight years ago, when the company started. My friendly, neighborhood IT people have been sufficiently competent to make MS servers and desktop software work 99%+ of the time, despite all its shortcomings. The worse you think MS is, then the better (more competent) you are admitting these people are. But, even as bright and competent as they are, they're still struggling NOW to get working equivalents to the convenience and functionality enjoyed by Windows and Office and Outlook users throughout the company. They're learning this Linux stuff while working shorthanded to maintain the office MS installation. Please don't hold out. Let us know what we should be using, in order to give our staff the sort of (apperently) integrated environment they have enjoyed for the past several years.

...

Oh, and I especially liked this bit from Carl:

...

...

'Windoze Users' and shall be shunned by all who honor the good and noble traditions which created the Internet.

That was written by Steven T. Hatton. Correct attribution is to me the most important part of netiquette.

...

The network proved to have utility for those reasons and for other reasons, so it gradually expanded to include other institutions of higher learning. Then, it just sat there for a while, with not a whole lot of improvement, until business came along.

The www was invented at CERN before business came along. Since

Now that, I readily admit as an error (snipped too early, before beginning reply). I apologize to Carl, and to any who were misled. then

there have been a precious few new inventions. It's mostly been just polish since then.

And I knew that. But Mr. Hatton's remark (sorry again, Carl) as quoted, said "the internet"... not "the web". But, I guess as long as you get the attribution correct, you don't need to address the actual quotation? This netiquette is slippery stuff. /kevin

On Tuesday 15 October 2002 02:23, Anders Johansson wrote: [snip a lot of stuff that proves we both need to be more precise and explicit in our writing :-) ]

Last time I checked the www was a part of the internet. I

as an example of an improvement (and quite a large one at that)

mentioned it that

came before business entered the picture.

Or were you talking about the TCP/IP protocol stack? If so, which particular improvements have we seen since business came into it? ICANN?

Nope. I was talking about the fact that in the early eighties, the e-mail you could send/receive, or the files that you could transfer... traveled among a few dozen institutions and some government departments. By the early nineties, those who wanted to connect to hundreds or thousands of other users, were still dialling to BBSs, with our 2400baud Hayes modems. (I ran a TBBS and a MajorBBS for a while, and spent big bucks to upgrade my lines to 9600baud). Today, hundreds of millions of people can connect to each other from their homes, anywhere in the world. There are far more person-to-person and person-to-company/company-to-company interactions than there are academic exchanges. The web was certainly a driving force, but it could not have grown without the explosive growth of the infrastructure, and that could not have happened without business to fund it and to physically build it. /kevin PS: As somebody mentioned, if I hit "Reply" in KMail, I would have your address only, in the "To:" field. If I hit "Reply to all", then I get your address, followed by the list address. This Linux-only mailer gives what you would call wrong behaviour by default. Or, at least it does when responding to certain types of mail-list handlers. With some others, when I hit "Reply", I'm replying to the list.

The 02.10.15 at 07:15, Graham Murray wrote:

Kevin McLauchlan writes:

...

PS: As somebody mentioned, if I hit "Reply" in KMail, I would have your address only, in the "To:" field. If I hit "Reply to all", then I get your address, followed by the list address. This Linux-only mailer gives what you would call wrong behaviour by default. Or, at least it does when responding to certain types of mail-list handlers. With some others, when I hit "Reply", I'm replying to the list.

That latter behaviour is what gnus would call "Broken Reply To". Put very briefly the problem with setting Reply-To: to point to a mailing list is that it makes it much harder to respond privately to a poster. Whereas if Reply-To does not point to the list, it is simple to reply to either the list or the individual poster.

As Ben Rosenberg sugested in this thread two days ago, if you are using procmail to sort and/or distribute mail, this recipe inserts the Reply-To header: :0f * ^X-Mailinglist: suse-linux-e | formail -bfi "Reply-To:suse-linux-e@suse.com" I'm now using it, with any mailer. Now pine by default mails to the list, but asks whether I preffer to reply to the "From:" header or to all. For me, problem solved :-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

On Tue, 15 Oct 2002 13:30:11 +0200 Anders Johansson wrote:

That is absolutely corret behaviour. Any mail program that does not send to the "reply-to" address when using "reply", or that won't send to all addresses when using "Reply-all" is broken.

...

Or, at least it does when responding to certain types of mail-list handlers. With some others, when I hit "Reply", I'm replying to the list.

On suse-linux-e? Without any pre-processing? Then they are broken.

I'm using the latest Sylpheed-claws8.5 and it has fixed the annoying "reply-to" behavior with lists. It used to be when you hit "Reply-to" you would get the list and original sender in the "To:", and you needed to remove the sender. Now, with suse-linux-e, if I hit "Reply" , only suse-linux-e gets put in the "To:", and I need to "Reply to all" to get both the list and the sender. I don't know if that is "correct behavior", but I like it. -- use Perl; #powerful programmable prestidigitation

On Tuesday 15 October 2002 07:30, Anders Johansson wrote: [...]

In Kmail you should do it this way: set up a folder and in the properties click the "folder holds a mailing list" checkbox, and fill in the list address. Then when you reply, use "l" to get Reply-to-list behaviour.

This is not working for me. Every time I close the KMail program, it forgets the settings. I must have checked the "Folder holds a mailing list" and then filled in a dozen times already. I hoped that it might be a version problem, but I just let YOU update (from KDE 3.0.2 to 3.0.2-1) and there's no change in behavior. I've seen people talk about 3.0.4 and installing it via YOU ... should YaST be making that available to me? I'm still running 8.0, and all that appeared when I started YOU was the 3.0.2-1 update. No mention of 3.0.3, either... Is there a file I should edit somewhere, so that YOU looks for the newer versions? Or is the choice that it presents based on what I've already got installed? I know I can just use direct ftp, but since some other people said they got 3.0.4 via YOU, I thought it should work for me, too. What have I overlooked? /kevin

Update: I've reposted this issue to the SuSE-KDE list. Ignore it here, for now. Thanks.

On Tuesday 15 October 2002 13:48, Kevin McLauchlan

wrote:

...

On Tuesday 15 October 2002 07:30, Anders Johansson wrote: [...]

...

In Kmail you should do it this way: set up a folder and in the properties click the "folder holds a mailing list" checkbox, and fill in the list address. Then when you reply, use "l" to get Reply-to-list behaviour.

This is not working for me. Every time I close the KMail program, it forgets the settings. I must have checked the "Folder holds a mailing list" and then filled in a dozen times already. ============================= Kevin, Check your permissions on your KMail folder or config file as it sounds

On Tuesday 15 October 2002 14:25, Kevin McLauchlan wrote: like you don't have permission to write to the file for some reason. I think someone may have mentioned this on the KDE list also, I couldn't remember though. Patrick -- --- KMail v1.4.3 --- SuSE Linux Pro v8.0 --- Registered Linux User #225206

Op dinsdag 15 oktober 2002 13:30, schreef Anders Johansson:

...

Or, at least it does when responding to certain types of mail-list handlers. With some others, when I hit "Reply", I'm replying to the list.

On suse-linux-e? Without any pre-processing? Then they are broken.

In Kmail you should do it this way: set up a folder and in the properties click the "folder holds a mailing list" checkbox, and fill in the list address. Then when you reply, use "l" to get Reply-to-list behaviour.

Just use kmail filter capabilities they very good! In suse-linux-e case do the following: - settings -> filter settings -> <select suse-linux-e> (or create one) - in the filter area: reply to = SuSE Linux

On Tuesday 15 October 2002 23.43, gilson redrick wrote:

On Tuesday, 15 October 2002 07:30, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

In Kmail you should do it this way: set up a folder and in the properties click the "folder holds a mailing list" checkbox, and fill in the list address. Then when you reply, use "l" to get Reply-to-list behaviour.

I fail to see the advantage/need for another folder.

It makes it a lot easier to keep mails apart. Separate folders and mail threading is the only thing that stops me from going insane.

I find it really simple, when I have in front of me (as now) the -email I want to reply, to point to the "suse-linux-e..." address, *right* click it, then right click "Send reply to." That's all. It never fails.

I'm sure it doesn't, but as far as possible I like to avoid using the mouse for small things like that. I can hit 'l' in the time it takes me to think 'I want to reply to this message'. If instead I had to move my hand to the mouse, pull the cursor to the address, right click, and so forth, it's just a million times slower. In that time I might have forgotten what it was I wanted to say :) Anders

The 02.10.14 at 22:05, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:

Some company documents do not survive the round-trip from Word to OpenOffice Writer to Word again, with formatting and tables intact. I'm sure it's just a failing on my part, but until I figure it out, or fix OpenOffice (I'm not a programmer), I'll have to live with the shame of my incompetence.

Actually, I understand M$ makes Word and the rest of that suite a moving target. Ie, the problem is the file formats are artificially obscured, not published, and changed, so as to make format interchange between program as difficult as they can, if not impossible.

...

That was written by Steven T. Hatton. Correct attribution is to me the most important part of netiquette.

Now that, I readily admit as an error (snipped too early, before beginning reply). I apologize to Carl, and to any who were misled.

Apologies accepted :-) Actually, I believe it wouldn't happen if our software preceded the quote mark with the initials of the original poster, as is customary on some other networks. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

On Monday 14 October 2002 14:43, Graham Murray wrote:

Kevin McLauchlan writes:

...

This arrangement got duplicated when office e-mail came along. Sometimes, people respond to a multi-point e-mail by "My comments are embedded, below". Otherwise, they add their two-cents worth at the top, so that busy executives and managers can see the latest at a glance.

Therefore, MS Outlook and other Windows mail readers tend to default to that model of message trail handling.

NO they did not! What they did is analogous to exchanging letters by post and each correspondent photocopying the previous correspondence, adding their new material and sending it all in the envelope. Passing correspondence files around is fine within an office or even an organisation, but when sending letters it is more normal to put a reference to previous correspondence at the top of the letter. (In business) Both the sender and recipient maintain they own files containing the correspondence.

The traditional email paradigm follows this system. It contains "In-Reply-To:" and/or "References" headers which are analogous to the both the references at the top of (paper) mail and the index in the correspondence file. As both sender and recipient have (local) copies replies should only quote sufficient to give context rather than repeating the whole "bundle". "High Quality" mail readers maintain the thread "tree" and allow the reader to easily refer back to previous correspondence.

Not only is what Graham says correct, but to keep it really simple...Would *anyone* want a business run by a "busy executive" who has no time to make sure his "latest glance" at a post, is following the exact same thread and/or hasn't been altered to show a different point of view (or whatever) by someone else also in the thread? If this is how businesses are run, no wonder all the touble with greedy corporations now beginning to get burned by the law...the "busy executives and managers" didn't take the time to do their jobs properly because they didn't give a crud about time honored and practical traditions. John -- Linux...the freedom to do what *YOU* want, with *YOUR* computer. M$...we'll tell you what you need and we'll bleed you dry doing it you thief!

->Suggestions to correct this with SuSE-supplied ->apps and servers would get another company ->switched over to Linux. Done. Out of the 70 people in my department 59 are using Linux w/ Mozilla or Evolution now. Two years ago when I joined my company Linux was banned as not secure. We have even gone so far as to setup our own lan off the corp. lan. And we share infor quite well. We have a web calendering system based on PHPGroupware SO everyone in every OS can access it via browser. The Outlook/Exchange need is a myth that people have bought into...and please don't talk about being a huge company with 1000's of people and a need for it. My time working for Anheuser-Busch and Monsanto..two very large companies makes very aware of large Exchange environments and how hard they are to maintain. I was also part of the team who took both companies to Exchange from Lotus Notes. The decision wasn't that of the IT dept. or anything technical. It was the PHB's upstairs who got sold on it..it was more of " The guy I play golf with has this so I must have it. " type of decision. They knew nothing about it. I've see these systems go down hard and we had Microsoft people onsite for this shit. I have since (3 1/2 years ago) made a choice not to work with such software. The email systems that we have at my current employer are Sendmail/Solaris and pump out about 1.5B emails a week and haven't been rebooted since Feb 2002 when we patched them one by one. Our PHPGroupware box has been up since January of this year when it was configured. -- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org Tell me what you believe.. I tell you what you should see.

kevinmcl@magma.ca wrote:

Could we get this back to Linux and posting etiquette/utility, and even mention something that relates to SuSE? For example, I and a whole bunch of scum Windows users at my company would really love to know what SuSE-supplied (or Red Hat, cuz some of them like RH) apps we can use to replace the full functionality of:

- MS Office

Is there any functionality in MS Office that is not present in StarOffice 6.0? Aside from the problem you mentioned about the odd mistranslation when handling MS Office docs I mean.

- MS Outlook

I assume you mean the outlook/exchange combo. Most of the functions you mentioned, including the voting, the massive mails resulting from back-and-forthing between various techs and manager, seems to me you could replace immediately and with gain in productivity with a good intranet solution. Say something based on one of the phpNuke relatives perhaps, with a database backend for document handling. There are also ready made products on the net for your synchronised calendar needs. Or if you're a little more "up-market" in your requirements, there are IBM solutions based on Lotus Domino Of course the mailing capabilities can be replaced by sendmail, postfix, qmail or what have you, and kmail handles regular mail perfectly well without the threat of viruses. As a bid for the future you might look at kroupware, which the german government is sponsoring as an Exchange/Domino replacement. It'll probably take a while to mature, but the above should suffice in the meantime. Anders

On Tue, 2002-10-15 at 09:15, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:

I realize that it's probably not a big deal to re-do the offending documents in OOo, so that they would survive round-trips unscathed, but this is a selling job, as much as anything. It's difficult to persuade users in Finance or Engineering that they should abandon MS Office when it means they'd need to re-author many of their existing documents. We want to minimize the resentment when it comes time for the big change.

That's funny, because in my former life as an engineer, I always resented having to redo work that I lost when MS Office crapped on me and locked up the computer....

I think that was assumed (by our IT crew). To succeed with their own selling job, they need to provide our troops with the productivity features of Outlook/Exchange-server -- the shared access to everybody's calendars, the meeting-scheduling and resource-scheduling, the voting and notification, that ties in so smoothly with e-mail.

What's with this "voting" garbage in Outlook/Exchange anyway? It's a business. Votes are cast by the board of directors, not the employees. If your employees are running office polls, somebody's not doing work. (Sorry, that's a whole seperate soap box. I'll get down now.)

In other words, the users don't care about the underlying reasons for a change. They just want to keep working with minimal disruption. So, anything that looked like they were losing useful functionality would be less than attractive.

That's a lark. They resist change. They don't care about productivity. They wouldn't know productivity if it came in the form of a pit bull terrier and locked itself on thier ankle. They're just scared that they'll actually have to learn something. (Oops. there's that soap box again. No wonder I work for myself!) Jody Harris -- Realization Systems, Inc. http://www.realizationsystems.com/

How about we get back to discussion SuSE Linux and take this topic to some other etiquette list? It really doesn't matter how corp. America does their massive tomb like email's with replies from every Tom, Dick and Harry in them. This is a public mailing list that and netiquette should be observed. It makes absolutely no difference in the long run other then people should trim their email to answer the questions posted and be as sharp as possible. Save those whole pay by the minute the time it takes on a modem to download these huge email's. -- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org Tell me what you believe.. I tell you what you should see.

The 02.10.14 at 22:41, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:

I can look back over just the past week and see several examples in my office inbox of exactly the kind of incremental message handling that I described. A request for help comes in to our Customer Support group. It goes back and forth between the customer and our CS people, with the list expanding to include other people on the customer end.

There is a problem there, of course: the wrong person might learn confidential info from answers that were not meant for him originally. That's specially true when those mails cross from one bussines to another (a client, for example). -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

On Monday 14 October 2002 20:54, Dallam Wych wrote:

On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 03:11:07PM +0100, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:

[sniped] (and snipped, too?)

...

The people who top-post -- and I'm one of them, unless I remember to switch styles for the Linux audience (ok, for SOME of the Linux audience) -- DO tend to be Windows users. But, you COULD ask yourself why that is so. People deserve the O/S (and the mailer) that they *deserve* perhaps?

Again, people use the O/S they deserve. I realize that it is to

So, if you manage to get hired at a company, and they are using Outlook for mail and scheduling/calendar updates and voting... then, somehow you "deserve" Outlook and therefore Windows, and you are a bad/lame person for so deserving? Or, in a tight job market, you should throw the job offer back in the scum-bag's face, for *daring* to suggest that you work in such a putrid and undeserving environment? Of course, I'm sure your infinitely superior remark would have been just a tad more impressive if you had said it correctly. Hint: one of those "deserve"s should have been "get". But thanks for coming out... the

various distributions benefit to dumb linux down to attract new users, after all they are profit motivated.

Neat, eh? All those people out there who actually work for a living, and 99.9% of them don't have any choice in the matter of what software they use, but for whatever reason the company uses Windoze. And unfair as it must seem... those scum office workers constitute the biggest software market in the world. The single biggest "dumbing down" that Linux is doing is gui desktops. I'm surprised that you'd be supporting SuSE or any of the others that make GNOME or KDE a big part of their offering. Even worse, the graphical install... woo that must bother you. It's positively Microsoftish. :-)

I just dislike seeing windows users bringing their bad habits into the linux world. I don't think it is right to expect linux to become increasingly more like windows, sorry.

Y'know that old saw: "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door"? Well, instead of complaining that the ways that Windows users do things are bad, why not just show them the obvious increased utility of the way *you* do things, and they'll flock to your way. That is, demonstrate, don't just assert. Or, you could eliminate the need for demonstration by claiming that they must all be too stooopid or too evil to be able to see obvious utility. [... Windows users ] Let's call them names and make

...

them feel like the unwanted scum they are, instead. That's a bit of a reach isn't it?

You mean the original gentle suggestion to "shun" them all? The original suggestion to which I was replying? Bit of a reach all right.

I mean, all is being asked is to respect the proper netiquette isn't it? How about just expecting new linux users to learn new, correct habits.

Well, many of them are bad people. They must be if they use Windows, because you say they get what they deserve. Of course, I hear that the well-paid senior officers of many corporations also use Windows... I forget... if they are deserving, is it because they are bad or because they are stupid? But if there are ANY who are not just inherently evil beings, then maybe you should just demonstrate to them what the correctness is. If it has demonstrated utility, I'm sure they'll all take to it immediately. If it only has asserted utility and correctness... well, they'll probably stick with what's been working just fine for them all their working lives. By the way.... here's a thought that will confound you: I'm a Linux user. I subscribe to nine e-mail lists, most of which are technical in one way or another. Only _two_ of them have anyone claiming that "top-posting" is bad. The other seven all have that as the standard. One of the seven is the local Linux Users Group.

...

...it is bad manners to reply without editing/trimming. Yes, I agree. I think 5.6k emails are excessive.

Well, there wasn't much quoted text in my message, so that sounds like a sleazy way of saying that you disagree with what I wrote. I'll be happy to be proven wrong... /kevin

Dallam Wych wrote:

...

...it is bad manners to reply without editing/trimming.

Yes, I agree. I think 5.6k emails are excessive.

You guy's ain't seen nothing. When I lived in SLC, I was on a wheeling list, where not only did everyone else top post, but no one (except me) trimmed the posts. this was a very active list, and I'd download 2-300 100K messages a day. and I still only have a 56K modem Joe -=-=- ... I wish life had a scroll-back buffer. Http://tigger.tmcom.com/~josad

OK, I'm not "top-posting" altho I think it is usually better. (See previous post.) At 20:54 10/14/2002 +0100, Dallam Wych wrote: /snip/

People deserve the O/S (and the mailer) that they *deserve* perhaps?

I deserve something at least as good as Windows--I paid good money for my computer. The mailer I prefer, I am using--under Windows--Eudora 4.0.

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So, based on that, what you are saying -- by badmouthing Windows users in general -- is that you prefer to keep Linux in the minority ghetto. You don't WANT it to make its way onto the desktops of the business drones of the world. That would destroy its cachet of "specialness" or whatever.

Again, people use the O/S they deserve. I realize that it is to the various distributions benefit to dumb linux down to attract new users, after all they are profit motivated. I just dislike seeing windows users bringing their bad habits into the linux world. I don't think it is right to expect linux to become increasingly more like windows, sorry.

You know, it's like 1965, and CB'ers were bringing their "bad habits" to the radio world. The CB'er was using cop calls (10-20) as against Ham Radio's "qth." We may deplore Bill Gates's business ethics, and how he got to where he is, but the truth is, MS Windows pretty well WORKS! What the LINUX community is trying to do is to make an open operating system that works AT LEAST AS WELL, and NEVER CRASHES, and MULTITASKS EXTREMELY WELL, and SPIT IN BILL GATES'S EYE. I think we have to realize that there is that last component that takes part in all of these messages. Now don't get me wrong. I certainly, under no circumstances, want the computer world to be Bill Gates's backyard garden, but bashing people for using "the O/S's they deserve" is not a way to put his system aside. (And it doesn't hurt to remember that he's trying to get people to run _his_ software on line, and pay him a little bit, via credit card, every time they do. .NET, anyone?) Perhaps the way is WalMarts's? I don't know. I don't think it is, in the end, but anything that puts an end to the monopoly--AND WORKS-- is worth while. The way to compete with--I would never say defeat, because that is ridiculous--the way to compete with Microsoft may very well at the beginning be Lindows. I don't know, I haven't tried it. It costs almost as much for the software as it does for the whole computer. But the way to compete is to have computers that will do what Windows computers do, and in very, very similar ways. Otherwise, nobody will learn to use them. (Yes, I reallize that if someone were to come up with much superior ways, whoever did that, and had a little money behind him, could bury Mr. Gates. But that is a long way away, if I don't miss my guess.) Just as an aside: Who really wants a computer they can talk to, or that talks back? None of us are captains or first officers on a starship, and if I remember, even Mr. Spock only got answers when the captain asked. (For myself, I would break any system that talked to me: "The door is not closed." "The window is open." "Deck door open.") And I work for a company that makes devices that do just those things. But I don't own any. --dm

On Mon, 14 Oct 2002, Kevin just had to get this off his chest:

On Sunday 13 October 2002 18:46, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote:

Carlos and Theo went just a teensy bit overboard, saying things like:

...

...

It is now time to take a stand. Top-posting, that is, posting ones reply above the quoted text, is a symbol of darkness. It represents evil.

and like:

...

Is it really that hard to do? Delete text to a piece of quoted text where you want to reply to, type your response, delete text down to the next piece of text you want to reply to etc. Ignoring the relevant RFC1855 in mailing lists and usenet posts is just plain rude and totally disrespectful of the people the you might want to get help from. For me it is very simple: topposter and bulkquoters will be ignored, period.

Allow me to state an additional fact or three, and then to derive the inescapable conclusion from your posts:

The people who top-post -- and I'm one of them, unless I remember to switch styles for the Linux audience (ok, for SOME of the Linux audience) -- DO tend to be Windows users. But, you COULD ask yourself why that is so.

I know why, it's bad habit someone in Redmond started, and because Windows users try to copy everything their neighbour has and does, it quickly took over the world, just like the virusses their broken software propaGates. Look up above what this great piece of MS software made of my quote when it was finished with it. Isn't it wonderfull that it can't even add a '>' when it reformats the lines? And what about this: begin foutlook.exe ho ho ho Yep, they really know their way around email and such..

Somebody already pointed the way by saying that they tend to be BUSINESS users. It's a simple fact of life that most of the mature computer users in the world tend to be business users. Most of

The Dilbert comic strip is *not* something that came out of the blue sky, sadly lots of managers /are/ really ignorant of how and why things work. That fact that they still manage to move a mouse and click on an attachement is not a great accomplishment. [..]

Now ask yourself why Windoze mailreaders tend to favor top-posting (or TOFU, as the Germans like to call it). Before you answer that, consider that Bill Gates made billions by catering to what people want, and how they like to do things,

Yeah, spend countless millions of dollars on broken software, firstaid- and repairkits.

especially in business. In olden days, before e-mail, I would often receive inter-office folders containing memo packages. The most recent memo was always on top, with the rest stapled/clipped together in reverse order, with the earliest one at the back of the stack.

Wonderfull example, but a stack of memo's is /not/ a usenet/mailinglist discussion is it?

They did it that way because it worked. Most people wanted only the summary or the most recent arguments or decisions on top. If they needed to refresh their memories, they could dig down in the stack.

And if a new junior comes in and needs to be made up to date? Should he/she start reading on top or at the bottom?

This arrangement got duplicated when office e-mail came along. Sometimes, people respond to a multi-point e-mail by "My comments are embedded, below". Otherwise, they add their two-cents worth at the top, so that busy executives and managers can see the latest at a glance.

An office email that is sent and replied once is completely different from a discussion like were're having here. Please, tell me how on earth I should place all my comments on top of yours and keep the context intact?

Therefore, MS Outlook and other Windows mail readers tend to default to that model of message trail handling. Let me say that another way: most of the business mail users in the world a) have learned that method b) prefer that method.

Most email users (or people for that matter) have no opinion or preference of their own, they're just copying what they see and think "that how I should do it too, or people think I don't know how to email"

Notice that I didn't say it is somehow mystically right. I just said it's the learned and preferred method of the vast majority of users BECAUSE they happen to be in business. Even the legions

You seem to think that business people have a special gift for "the right way" that ordinary people don't have. Let me tell you that business people are usually the most narrow-minded people you can imagine, with no interest in culture, history or other opinions (IMHO of course).

of students and academics don't keep to the "right and righteous" method, once they finally cut the umbilical, stop sucking at the teat, and go get real jobs.

And for a "real job' you need to do everything exactly as the other business people of course, have the same 50 line legal statement in your sig, have the same green pasture desktop, with the same flying windows screensaver.

Now, we come to the analysis part. Unless you have spent your entire computer- using life, sheltered in academia, then you were already aware of the preponderance of Windows in the business/commerce world, and that top-posting is the way it's done.

I still like to make up my own mind about how things should be done, if you that's ok with you.

So, based on that, what you are saying -- by badmouthing Windows users in general -- is

Were exactlty was I badmouthing Windows users?

that you prefer to keep Linux in the minority ghetto. You don't WANT it to make its way onto the desktops of the business drones of the world. That would destroy its cachet of "specialness" or whatever.

I don't believe for a minute that 'we' need to copy-cat everything MS does to get ahead on the desktop market. The normal, accepted way of quoting is still very much alive on at least the lists and groups that I see.

If Windows users actually began using Linux in real life, you'd have to move on to BSD or something. Let's call them names and make them feel like the unwanted scum they are, instead.

I don't need to call Windows users names, I do pity most of them for getting themselfs in the trap they're in though.

That said, I agree completely that in a simple discussion (as opposed to a business, decision- making e-mail trail), it is bad manners to reply without editing/trimming.

I got such an email today, with dozens of replies, all on top of another. I couldn't make heads or tails of it (literally). You should try it: save this email in a file and then read it with 'tac'.

Comments? Rebuttals?

You'll have to start reading on top I'm afraid.. Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 8 24N , 4 32 40E. SuSE 8.0 x86 Kernel 2.4.16-4GB See headers for PGP/GPG info.

On Tue, 15 Oct 2002, Kevin just had to get this off his chest:

On Monday 14 October 2002 19:23, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote: [...]

...

Look up above what this great piece of MS software made of my quote when it was finished with it. Isn't it wonderfull that it can't even add a '>' when it reformats the lines? And what about this:

Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

[Filename: foutlook.exe, Content-Type: UUEncoded] The attachment file in the message has been removed by eManager.

Was it the mailinglist manager that did this or was it software on your side? Either one was very wrong. All I wrote was "Begin<space><space>foutlook<dot>exe" No file, no encoding. It did get the Content-type right though, one out of three isn't bad... It is however also the standard behaviour of O[E] when it sees a line like this so I guess I made my point..

I'm sorry. I didn't really understand what you were saying above. Are you saying that *you* are using Outlook (not your choice, maybe all that's available), and it's messing up? Or are you saying that the wrapping and insertion of ">" is being messed up by MY use of MS Outlook?

If you look at the headers you'll see that I'm using Mutt 1.4i, and I can see that you're using Kmail 1.4.2. Something's broken in your version though, because it exibits the exact same buggy behaviour as Outlook(Express), ie, when it re-formats long lines it doesn't place a quote-character ('> ') on the new line preceding the line piece that was replaced. So you get: "> yada yada yada .........................................." "yada yada yada ............................................" "> yada yada yada .........................................." "yada yada............." I thought it was just Outlook that does this, I didn't know that Kmail could be just as bad. [..]

If I've got my settings wrong, just tell me, and gimme a hint as to where I might find the dialog to fix 'em. The only thing I paid attention to when setting up to use KMail was to use plain-text, with no HTML or RTF. For just about everything else, I accepted KMail defaults. I use the KMail internal editor.

Suggestions?

I would if I knew Kmail, but I know nothing about it. If it can be repaired it must be somwhere in the quotation options. Someone else? Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 8 24N , 4 32 40E. SuSE 8.0 x86 Kernel 2.4.16-4GB See headers for PGP/GPG info.

On Tue, 15 Oct 2002, Kevin just had to get this off his chest:

On Tuesday 15 October 2002 14:16, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote: [...] [..]

...

yada yada yada .........................................." "yada yada............."

I thought it was just Outlook that does this, I didn't know that Kmail could be just as bad.

Everybody else in the company is on Outlook, through Exchange Server. Is it possible that my KMail output is being mangled by a trip (or two) through that server?

Yes, that is very possible.

I'll pay a closer attention in future, but I **think** I've seen the broken reformat on incoming messages. Anyway, incoming or outgoing, one of the reasons that I write short lines and put hard returns at the end of each line... is that I was on Outlook for years and wanted to "cure" that problem, pre-emptively (i.e., as a courtesy to other readers).

It seems to work this time.

I know that Exchange Server affects a number of parameters of mail from Outlook itself, even settings that you would think should be set at the client level.

Yeah, and to think at one time people got angry because sendmail would add a '>' before 'From' when it started a line. That was considered wrong because a MTA should not do anything with the mail body. Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 8 24N , 4 32 40E. SuSE 8.0 x86 Kernel 2.4.16-4GB See headers for PGP/GPG info.

On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Joe just had to get this off his chest:

Steven T. Hatton wrote:

...

It has come time to state my position on top-posting. In the traditional world of usenet and mailing list, long before the Ring Wraiths of Redmond had spread their darkness over the Internet, it was considered common courtesy to reply to a message by adding ones responses, either in-line, after the comment to which a particular response was directed, or at the bottom of the quoted text.

Actuyally, now that I think about it. there is one place where top posting is apprpriate, when I forward a message, I place a breif comment at the top

Yes, so do I, but a forwarded message is usually /not/ part of an ongoing discussion. It's more like a post-it note on an internal memo. Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 8 24N , 4 32 40E. SuSE 8.0 x86 Kernel 2.4.16-4GB See headers for PGP/GPG info.

I second this one !-) Well said Derek. Op maandag 14 oktober 2002 10:15, schreef Derek Fountain:

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It is now time to take a stand. Top-posting, that is, posting ones reply above the quoted text, is a symbol of darkness. It represents evil.

Maybe, but it works better. It's easier to use, especially if you're using a small screen like I do at work. I hate clicking on a email header, then having to negotiate keyboard or mouse to scroll down the actual message, only to find that someone has added "me too" at the bottom. Quite often I start scrolling, and if there's too much junk at the top I don't even bother scrolling right down to see what has been written at the bottom. At least I always read what "top posters" have written to a thread I'm interested in.

-- Richard

The 02.10.14 at 19:38, Doug McGarrett wrote:

I am happy to find that a few seem to agree with me. There is another problem which takes more time to solve: most email progs allow reply to sender, or reply to all. Some here get upset when they get the same message as a reply to them personally, and then get the same message on the list.

It is posible to differentiate those with procmail, and perhaps, an alias. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

The 02.10.16 at 00:04, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote:

...

...

progs allow reply to sender, or reply to all. Some here get upset when they get the same message as a reply to them personally, and then get the same message on the list.

It is posible to differentiate those with procmail, and perhaps, an alias.

When the subject stays intact, i.e. with [SLE]i, it's no problem as procmail can easily get rid of doubles. But it /is/ considered bad habit to send an unrequested Cc. We're all reading this list, thus a Cc is normally unneccessary.

I have a trick. I use a separate account for lists. If "^X-Mailinglist" matches, it goes to the appropiate list. Whatever is left, is addresed direct to me, so it goes to another folder. So far it works. I agree that it is a nuisance when I get a dupe, but I get few. I don't care much. I slipped myself sometimes... -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson