Re: OT: Top Posting
-----Original Message-----
From: gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: OT: Top Posting
Date: 05/14/24 10:54:50
On 5/14/24 10:09, Richard wrote:
Just because something isn't an official ISO standard doesn't mean
it's
not standard behavior. And how it relates to this mailing list? It's
called a setting.
No its not, its your refusal to use the down arrow in your reply editor
to put your reply after the question. It really is that simple. If your
choice of email agents cannot do that, its time to switch to an agent
that can. There are dozens of them.
DISCLAIMER: I just realized above portion might not quote properly. My
apologies in advance if it does not. That's one glitch I haven't located
a fix for, yet.
The rest of the email: I think Evolution has finally fixed my own latest
issues with tech reply emails just since Gmail forced all users onto its
more dynamic release. My biggest issue is, hopefully "was," line length.
This email is only my second reply sent in maybe 2 months so am about to
find out how things are progressing.
Accidentally just this second was reminded there's a setting for
avoiding top posting by lunging to bottom of reply emails. That setting
is found by going through the now classic 3-line settings "hamburger"
then:
Edit > Preferences > Composer Preferences > General (tab)
There's a simple toggle on/off checkbox that says, "Start typing at the
bottom." The setting for word wrapping is just a few lines above that.
Regarding line length (word wrapping), that's an even less spoken
"standard" that has merit at its base. I think I've seen it mentioned
maybe one time in more than a decade++ on Debian. That "standard" is
about usability.. readability.. aka conscious consideration for fellow
list members.
Best as I was able to discern from the Net [0], 72 characters is the
magic number for line length because 4 extra characters are added to
both ends when e.g. git processes submissions. Makes good common sense
to me.
PS I thought it was 80. Guess it was about those extra 8 characters.
Or.. Maybe whoever I saw write that over ten years ago almost understood
that "handshake standard" but not quite. That's one scary part of
trusting strangers on the WWW. :)
Again back to the concept of tech listserv standards, the source I'm
referencing after randomly finding it via search this morning says, "The
50/72 Rule is a set of standards that are pretty well agreed upon in the
industry to standardize the format of commit messages."
"Pretty well agreed upon..." That's implying that unspoken list
standards are really not users "picking on each other." Listserv
standards is a concept that has evolved over decades for rational
reasons as Developer and User communications evolved.
Am not embarrassed to say Evolution has kicked my backside k/t its
learning curve versus a user's level of cognitive ability. This
experience ended up touching on "frightening" a couple times, e.g. I
sent 2,000 online emails to (online) trash when that was not intended.
It's easy to mess up badly while moving emails around between desktop
folders because that activity directly affects the linked online email
provider if a user approves those access permissions.
For what it's worth as a huge selling point for me, I have a massive
online email account. There are hundreds of thousands of emails from the
last 20 years. Evolution said whatever, bring it on.
Evolution appears to do some form of maybe symlinking instead of
downloading so everything is available almost immediately seconds after
the first time Evolution is ever fired up. Other email software I've
used only seems to work by downloading. That difference is huge for
anyone using a data download limiting Internet provider. NOTE: Evolution
appears to possibly offer related tweaking if one prefers working
offline.
In the other email software cases I attempted, the software could only
reach back a limited time span into history before I a-sume Gmail cut
off access to touching older emails. If there's a work-around for that,
I never found it. I simply (and immediately) purged the email software,
instead.
With Evolution, I'm instantly looking at emails I haven't seen in ~20
years. I was having a horrible time accessing those same emails in Gmail
itself online. Talk about mind blowing nostalgia overload...
Cindy :)
[0]
https://dev.to/noelworden/improving-your-commit-message-with-the-50-72-rule-3g79
--
Talking Rock, Pickens County, North Georgia
* runs with birdseed! *
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