Re: Quoting styles, cont (Was Re: Fonts in GTK)

[Craig Dickson <crdic@yahoo.com>]

John Galt wrote:
> Elm predates any microsoft email product...  Try to quote stuff in elm,
> the cursor goes to the beginning of the text.

Where the cursor starts out is beside the point. What matters is the
structure of the message. Most traditional Internet email clients, such
as elm or mutt, give you a document like this:

___cut_here___
John Galt wrote:
> Elm predates any microsoft email product...  Try to quote stuff in elm,
> the cursor goes to the beginning of the text.

___cut_here___

The use of angle-bracket quote marks on the left margin makes it easy to
tell what text is new and what is quoted, facilitating proper replies.
Moving the cursor to the bottom is trivial, and I think it's best that
the client not do that automatically, as it would discourage the user
from cutting out irrelevant material from the quoted message. (In fact,
it is easily observed that most people who reply at the top fail to trim
the quoted text.)

Microsoft's mail clients, on the other hand, give you something like this:

___cut_here___


--- Original message ---
From: John Galt

Elm predates any microsoft email product...  Try to quote stuff in elm,
the cursor goes to the beginning of the text.
___cut_here___

Note that they provide no left-margin quote marks, nor any indication of
where the original message ends, and they leave a blank line or two at
the top, implying that your reply should go there (otherwise, why put
it there?).

Craig