Top-posting, HTML-formatted mail, flaming, shouting and so on, was Re: KUBUNTU

[Peter Lewis]

Hi,

I'm new to this list, so not sure if my opinion will be as valued as those who 
have been longer members, but I have been on several mailing lists and USENET 
groups for quite a number of years now.

On Monday 14 May 2007 at 13:33:35 Melanie wrote:
> When faced with a long "bottom post"  I usually reach for the 'delete'
> button, my life just isn't long enough to plough through all the verbiage
> in search of what may be an inconsequential comment.

From my experience, very few people advocate the idea of simple bottom-posting 
as an alternative to top-posting. Both are difficult to read for reasons 
which have been mentioned previously.

It is far more common (and appreciated) to follow the "interleaved" style, and 
keeping *only* those sections which are relevant to your own comment, 
discarding other bits including greetings, signatures and bits of old 
conversation. If you feel the need to clarify for your readers where things 
have been removed, a simple <snip> can be inserted. Following this approach 
rarely leads to very long emails (indeed they are often shorter than the 
original), and makes things easy to read.

Of course, if you try this and really disagree, then that's at your option. 
Most people on mailing lists appear to prefer it though, and if you're asking 
for someone's time with a question or problem, then I reckon that's a 
sensible approach.

> Is there perchance, a K Mail command to jump straight to the reply added by
> the last poster?

Not sure, but KMail is particularly helpful for interleaved posting as it 
highlights quoted text in another colour for you.

Thanks for reading,

Pete.