Re: framebuffer refresh

> I fail to see how it is inconsiderate of the reader to top post.  How
> does the reader take more time to read less?

Because it's not necessarily reading less.  Perhaps this isn't true of
you, but I know that I am used to reading linearly.  Jumping back and
forth between two relatively widely separated pieces of text, such as a
message quoted in its entirety below and a top-posted response, slows
me down significantly.  It slows me even further to have to try to
figure out what is being responded to and what is being ignored.  This
last is not, strictly, an aspect of top-posting; it's failure to trim
quotes back to relevant fractions - but, at least in my experience,
top-posted responses *invariably* fail to trim the quoted message down
to relevant excerpts.

> If top posted, the reader only needs to dive down into the old text
> if they haven't followed the thread.

Perhaps you get less mail than I do.  I typically have a least a dozen
threads going that a new message could belong to; providing relevant
context is a substantial help.

> Bottom posting requires the reader to read all the way to the bottom
> in every message.

So, don't bottom-post.  Do as nearly everyone else on the list does, as
I'm doing here, and (a) cut stuff you aren't responding to, (b) mark
quotes as quotes, and (c) place responses inline, after the text being
responded to.

> While I am arguing the merits of top posting, I am not telling any of
> you how to post, as others of you are.

You are welcome to top-post all you like - elsewhere.

You can, of course, persist in top-posting here too.  You will,
however, be demonstrating a wilful - no longer excusable as ignorance -
disregard of the established culture, at an absolute minimum; many
people, such as me, will further see it as a (now wilful) display of
the attitude that your convenience is more important than your
readers'; this will lead me, for one, to consider your messages
substantially less worth bothering to read than those that demonstrate
that the writer is actually willing to put time and effort into
creating a message that is easy to read.

In passing, you also mangled my message when quoting it - you converted
each paragraph to a single line - and your response _also_ used
paragraph-length lines.  These too impair readbility and violate
established convention.

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