RE: More user-visible goals

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] 
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Martin Duerst
> Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:57 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: More user-visible goals
> 
> 
> At 11:07 04/02/25 -0500, Bruce Lilly wrote:
> 
> >- users want to be able to see relevant related material in 
> context, in an
> >   appropriate order of presentation, and without having to read
> >   irrelevant parts of  previous exchanges.  [Yes, that 
> means "top-posting
> >   is abhorrent" (possibly excepting languages where reading 
> bottom-to-top
> >   is normal)]
> 
> Sorry for the sidetracking, but there are some very good and 
> some very bad examples of "top-posting", and some very good 
> and very bad reasons for it.
> 
> The worst reason is simple lazyness. The best reason is 
> accessibility; it's much easier for e.g. blind people to 
> start with the new text and go down if necessary than the 
> other way round.
> 
> The good cases are cases where the new text is general, but 
> where the previous mail is left there because somebody may 
> prefer to scroll down to remind them of the context rather 
> than figure out otherwise.

I really hope that mail-NG message content will be structured enough to
be able to drop the "top-posting" and "bottom-posting" altogether. Using
e.g. XML, one could ensure that it is unambiguously indicated which part
of a message is an answer to which part of another message. Then it will
be up to the client to decide which way to structure the information.
This can be used to solve the problem of receivers having really little
control over the structuring and displaying of messages.

Yours sincerely,
-- 
Victor Engmark
Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum viditar - What is said in latin,
sounds profound