[PLUG] top posting vs. bottom posting

[Aaron Burt]

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Carla Schroder wrote:
> > On Monday 03 November 2003 2:48 pm, Felix Lee wrote:
> > > yeah, text formatting is a sucky issue that's never going to get
> > > better until anti-html bigots (like me) finish dying off.
> > I would support a "perty display" email format, if it did away with
> > executable code in messages.

Better-designed MUAs (including Pine) display sanitized HTML already.

> It'd be pretty cool if you could edit how much of each previous post you'd
> like to quote in your message, but not alter how that is displayed on the
> other end.  Then other folks would do the same and each would view it in
> their own way/direction.
>
> However, that'd take a massive email overhaul and it wouldn't be terribly
> backward compatible<snip>

How 'bout a QuoteInfo header or attachment saying,
 Lines 3-5 and 12-14 are oldest, indented with '>> ' and written by Alice;
 lines 7 and 15-20 are next-oldest, indented with '> ' and written by Bob;
 the rest are the sender's.
Heck, that way quoted text would even wrap nicely.

But if this info were lost because Alice replied again and her MUA didn't
include it, my mailer would have to regenerate it when I replied to her.
So until everyone supports QuoteInfo (IE never), it'd be no different from
having an MUA that just reformats email for the reader.

Huh.  Another instance of David Isenberg's Stupid Network/Smart Periphery
paradigm winning out.