Top posting and Outlook Express
I personally don't use Outlook Express except on those rare occasions when I have to, and I'm not very familiar with it. But there are folks on this list, I believe, who for whatever reason are using it to participate. My impression (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that when you're replying to a message using OE, OE doesn't make the text of the original available for editing -- in fact, you don't even see the original when you're composing your reply. So that raises the question, which someone more familiar with OE could usefully answer: is it somehow possible to compose more useful replies, following good quotation practice, under OE -- and if so, how. OE may be a hideous abomination, but it still behooves us to assist OE users, who may have no choice in the matter, in participating usefully on this list. Paul Abrahams
* Paul W. Abrahams <abrahams@acm.org> [01-27-04 15:36]:
OE may be a hideous abomination, but it still behooves us to assist OE users, who may have no choice in the matter, in participating usefully on this list.
Info only. I belong to three linux lists that ban posting with lookout and lookout xpress. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org
Patrick Shanahan wrote:
Info only. I belong to three linux lists that ban posting with lookout and lookout xpress.
Outhouse Excess. -- "The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of governmental power." General Douglas MacArthur Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/
Info only. I belong to three linux lists that ban posting with lookout and lookout xpress. IMHO, they are wrong. We need to be inclusive. Bring people in, and show
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 15:44:23 -0500 Patrick Shanahan <paka@wahoo.no-ip.org> wrote: them that we have better and safer things than what they are using. - -- Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAFvih+wA+1cUGHqkRAj+cAJ9eZSeQZLEEtcWlw9JUS/Icy8akFwCaA9YL vuxk1Vho3nPKQhp1SKSaO30= =Nrgi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Tuesday 27 January 2004 6:47 pm, Jerry Feldman wrote:
IMHO, [the linux lists that ban posting with lookout and lookout xpress] are wrong. We need to be inclusive. Bring people in, and show them that we have better and safer things than what they are using.
Agreed. And when the opportunity arises, let's go the extra mile and politely tell them about how they can tweak OE to do intelligent quoting in their messages. Until they're sending messages under Linux, of course. By the way, the bracketed material above is a paraphrase I used to make the quotation sensible yet briefer. That's a convention commonly used in print, but I haven't seen it mentioned in connection with electronic posting. Paul Abrahams
I frankly don't know what the big deal about top posting is ....... If I am following a thread I know pretty well what is going on and as a reader of posts I find it irritating having to scroll down very far to read the relevant content of the post. Intelligent quoting goes with bottom posting ...... The way most people quote it's a pain in the butt to scroll down trying to find what they are saying, especially when it amounts to a sentence here and a sentence there interspersed within a bunch of quoted material. I will always top post because that is the way I prefer to read a post .... I can always reference the material below if necessary. Guess I have that defective gene! Fortunately the email Nazis are not yet in control to the degree that I have ever been bounced for top posting! ........ If you need reference quotes ..... read all the previous posts on this subject It was not worth the bother of repeating them.... There are a number of superior mail clients for windows. I have tried virtually all of them and find Calypsomail to be the best of the lot for various reasons... mainly because I can shut off HTML and prevent scripts from running..... Send me a post in HTML and it gets trashed without being opened unless I have a damn good reason to open it. As a user in transition I use Windows for my mail to prevent the chaos of having mail saved in a bunch of different programs. Occasionally I use one of the Linux programs if I have downloaded mail recently and the probability of something important coming through is low. I suspect quite a few others do the same. I would dearly love to have a Linux version of Calypso ..... I think I'll try it under WINE tonight. H.W.
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 19:43:36 -0700 "Stone Tool" <owly@ttc-cmc.net> wrote:
I find it irritating having to scroll down very far to read the relevant content of the post.
This is where trimming comes in. The prefered style is:
relevant excerpt 1 response to excerpt
relevant excerpt 2 response to excerpt
relevant excerpt 3 response to excerpt
Charles -- There are no threads in a.b.p.erotica, so there's no gain in using a threaded news reader. (Unknown source)
On Friday 30 January 2004 12:03 am, Charles Philip Chan wrote:
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 19:43:36 -0700
This is where trimming comes in. The prefered style is:
relevant excerpt 1 response to excerpt
relevant excerpt 2 response to excerpt
relevant excerpt 3 response to excerpt
I agree. It's a style I learned not by reading any standard but by imitating practice that I found made it easy to read posts. Personally I'm pretty aggressive in my trimming and even use [paraphrases in brackets] to enable me to trim even more (a common practice in print media). Paul Abrahams
The Thursday 2004-01-29 at 19:43 -0700, Stone Tool wrote:
As a user in transition I use Windows for my mail to prevent the chaos of having mail saved in a bunch of different programs. Occasionally I use one of the Linux programs if I have downloaded mail recently and the probability of something important coming through is low. I suspect quite a few others do the same. I would dearly love to have a Linux version of Calypso ..... I think I'll try it under WINE tonight.
You can use Netscape/Mozilla both in windows and Linux using the same folders, read/write. Documented on the unofficial suse faq. Also posible with some other windows programs, provided they use mbox format. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 03:36:05PM -0500 or thereabouts, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
I personally don't use Outlook Express except on those rare occasions when I <snip>
My impression (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that when you're replying to a message using OE, OE doesn't make the text of the original available for editing -- in fact, you don't even see the original when you're composing your reply. So that raises the question, which someone more familiar with OE could usefully answer: is it somehow possible to compose more useful replies, following good quotation practice, under OE -- and if so, how.
f you are using and must continue to use an MS MUA (Outhouse or Outhouse Express), these free add-on packages can apparently fix them for you: http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/ http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/ -- Gary Sigmund's wife wore Freudian slips.
* Gary <gv-dated-5130434.kcpch@mygirlfriday.info> [01-27-04 15:51]:
f you are using and must continue to use an MS MUA (Outhouse or Outhouse Express), these free add-on packages can apparently fix them for you: http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/ http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/
These should be required modifications of lookout on penalty of ..... -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org
On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 03:56:40PM -0500 or thereabouts, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* Gary <gv-dated-5130434.kcpch@mygirlfriday.info> [01-27-04 15:51]:
http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/ http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/
These should be required modifications of lookout on penalty of .....
LOL .. .exactly... make it monetary, and give it to that author <g> -- Gary Super Time-Saver now loading. Please wait.......
An amusing post appeared a few minutes ago on the procmail list: The human genome project has identified a defective gene which is responsible for ignorance of common netiquette, leading them to seriously overquote. This same gene is often linked to another gene which is found to be present in people who top post. They're still trying to isolate the gene responsible for HTML email as well as sending attachments to lists. --- Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering He may have something there.... -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org
On Tue, 2004-01-27 at 13:36, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
My impression (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that when you're replying to a message using OE, OE doesn't make the text of the original available for editing -- in fact, you don't even see the original when you're composing your reply. So that raises the question, which someone more familiar with OE could usefully answer: is it somehow possible to compose more useful replies, following good quotation practice, under OE -- and if so, how.
I am required to use OE in one of my contracts. When you click the reply or reply all button in OE, it does copy the message being replied to and you are allowed to edit it. I believe, however, there is an option in there somewhere that allows the user to change that behavior. Don Henson
On Tuesday 27 January 2004 8:36 pm, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
OE may be a hideous abomination, but it still behooves us to assist OE users, who may have no choice in the matter, in participating usefully on this list.
Yes, the worst situation is a broken Linux, and every wish to use a Linux program, but your only channel to help being Windows and OE. I sort of hesitate to talk about strategy, but I do feel that a good strategy is to get people to a place where their window$ and Linux coexist in peace on the same pc and then let Linux build their confidence at their pace. For myself, I had email on OS/2 [never on M$] and when I got Linux running, email was the first thing I migrated, but I left it nearly a year before moving anything else. This approach worked for me, and I think we should accept being on the receiving end of OE as part of the price of Linux evangelism. Vince
On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:13:31 +0000 Vince Littler <suse@archipelago.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
but I do feel that a good strategy is to get people to a place where their window$ and Linux coexist in peace on the same pc and then let Linux build their confidence at their pace.
Totally agreed. but we can steer them to better mailers than Outhouse and Outhouse Express, such as Pegasus Mail, Eudora, the Bat!, etc... Charles -- Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix. (Linus Torvalds to Andrew Tanenbaum)
On Tuesday 27 January 2004 22:13, Vince Littler wrote:
On Tuesday 27 January 2004 8:36 pm, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
OE may be a hideous abomination, but it still behooves us to assist OE users, who may have no choice in the matter, in participating usefully on this list.
Yes, the worst situation is a broken Linux, and every wish to use a Linux program, but your only channel to help being Windows and OE.
I sort of hesitate to talk about strategy, but I do feel that a good strategy is to get people to a place where their window$ and Linux coexist in peace on the same pc and then let Linux build their confidence at their pace. For myself, I had email on OS/2 [never on M$] and when I got Linux running, email was the first thing I migrated, but I left it nearly a year before moving anything else.
This approach worked for me, and I think we should accept being on the receiving end of OE as part of the price of Linux evangelism.
Amen ! That is exactly the method via which I changed within more than a year from a totally Linux-ignorant Windows user into an enthousiastic Linux user with (hardly) any need for Windows anymore. Without the peaceful coexistence of the two on my machine I would have stayed in the W. world (I think). Cheers, -- Jan Elders the Netherlands http://www.xs4all.nl/~jrme/ "Home of the Network Acronyms"
From: Paul W. Abrahams [mailto:abrahams@acm.org]
My impression (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that when you're replying to a message using OE, OE doesn't make the text of the original available for editing -- in fact, you don't even see the original when you're composing your reply. So that raises the question, which someone more familiar with OE could usefully answer: is it somehow possible to compose more useful replies, following good quotation practice, under OE -- and if so, how.
Okay, here's some enlightenment about MS OE and MS Outlook for those interested. I use both MS Outlook and Outlook Express for all my email. you can configure them to reply to emails as inline text. I figure most list readers would consider my reply here good quotation practice (hopefully) at least for the body of the message. The top of the message, however, we're SOL. There is no config to do the
From the office of Paul W. Abrahams
kind of quoting, only what you see above
From: Paul W. Abrahams
OE may be a hideous abomination, but it still behooves us to assist OE users, who may have no choice in the matter, in participating usefully on this list.
:) The problem is BY DEFAULT MS Outlook and OE write in HTML. So users who don't bother configuring their MS O[E] will write to the list in HTML (which makes it near impossible to quote correctly). And, it is not easy to get to the part of the MS configs where you tell it to stop using HTML and start using text. (It's not difficult, just takes some rooting around). For anyone who is ambitious enough to learn about linux, configuring MS to write text and quote with a ">" is not difficult at all. However, the difficulty comes when someone writes in HTML. If someone writes me in HTML, I cannot force MS O[E] to respond in straight text, only HTML. In which case believe it or not if I really wnat to reply to the list and it's a short post I'm replying to I cut and paste the post to straight text, add all the ">" in manually, and cut and paste back to the editor. *sigh* Ben Yau
* Ben Yau <byau@cardcommerce.com> [01-27-04 17:23]:
text, add all the ">" in manually, and cut and paste back to the editor.
*sigh*
Your efforts are appreciated and your style is applaudable. thanks, -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org
-----Original Message----- From: Patrick Shanahan [mailto:paka@wahoo.no-ip.org]
* Ben Yau <byau@cardcommerce.com> [01-27-04 17:23]:
text, add all the ">" in manually, and cut and paste back to the editor.
*sigh*
Your efforts are appreciated and your style is applaudable.
thanks,
Thanks :) To my wife my efforts are quite laughable. Just picture me at home replying to email and busily doing my repetitive quoting routine: Type the ">", down key, left key, type the ">", down key, left key, (repeat for as many lines are in the email) And she'll just watch me and laugh. I should look into those quoting extensions posted earlier in the thread. Re: your earlier post about company time, I only subscribe to these mailing lists from my company account and read them on company time. As someone else mentioned, considering the job is supporting debian, I would say this is work related. Interesting thread :) Cheers everybody- Ben Yau
On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:40:08 -0800 "Ben Yau" <byau@cardcommerce.com> wrote:
To my wife my efforts are quite laughable. Just picture me at home replying to email and busily doing my repetitive quoting routine:
Type the ">", down key, left key, type the ">", down key, left key, (repeat for as many lines are in the email)
Wow Ben, I take my hat off for your considerate effort- it must be painful! If I were you I would install one of those Outhouse exxtensions ASAP.:-) Charles -- "Calling EMACS an editor is like calling the Earth a hunk of dirt." -- Chris DiBona on Dirt (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
Hello Ben, Tuesday, January 27, 2004, 5:22:41 PM, you wrote: BY> However, the difficulty comes when someone writes in HTML. If someone BY> writes me in HTML, I cannot force MS O[E] to respond in straight text, only BY> HTML. In which case believe it or not if I really wnat to reply to the list BY> and it's a short post I'm replying to I cut and paste the post to straight text, add all the ">>" in manually, and cut and text, add all the ">>paste back to the editor. I know I ran into this problem some time ago, and continually educate our clients how to dispense with the HTML... OEXP 6: - After clicking "reply" to an HTML message, click on "Format" -> "Plain Text" Outlook 2003: - After clicking "reply" to an HTML message, There should be a little dropdown menu in your toolbar, change "HTML" to "Plain Text" I don't have access to older versions of these MUAs (nor do I use them myself) so I cannot comment on them, unfortunately. However, I do believe converting HTML to plain text was an option in previous versions. Can anyone else shed some light on older MS MUAs? -- Best regards, Brian Curtis
participants (14)
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Ben Yau -
Brian Curtis -
Carlos E. R. -
Charles Philip Chan -
Donald D Henson -
Felix Miata -
Gary -
Gary -
Jan Elders -
Jerry Feldman -
Patrick Shanahan -
Paul W. Abrahams -
Stone Tool -
Vince Littler