[Xmca-l] Re: Email Format Conventions

[Andy Blunden]

So much for my theory!
Your message, Huw, turned the coloured lines next to David Ki's message 
that I saw in my reply to him, into grey lines in your reply.
So how do some messages end up with mixtures?
andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


Huw Lloyd wrote:
> Testing 
>
>
> --LongSig
>
>
> This test may be cut.
>
>
> On 18 August 2014 01:57, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net 
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
>     Or just sort your messages in subject/date order and read each
>     message in whatever order you like. ... except for people like Huw
>     who embed their replies. :)
>     But in any case, it is nothing to do with xmca.
>     Some messages put coloured lines on the left, some put grey lines
>     on the left and some put >s on the left. It is hard to tell by
>     looking, but I think it is the email client of the first responder
>     which formats the next layer of indenting, resulting in mixtures
>     of the 3 different modes in any given message on occasion.
>
>     Andy
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     *Andy Blunden*
>     http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>     <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>
>
>
>     Huw Lloyd wrote:
>
>         On 17 August 2014 19:20, David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu
>         <mailto:dkirsh@lsu.edu>> wrote:
>
>          
>
>             David,
>             Thanks for your insightful post.
>             In scrolling down below your message, to recover the
>             context, I was
>             faced--as all of us so often are--with the garbling effect
>             that comes from
>             use of the ">" program that separates out the various
>             generations of
>             response by inserting a new level of ">" for each new message.
>             That formatting option may serve a valuable function in
>             case two or more
>             authors are replying to each other with comments embedded
>             in the prior
>             text. But that kind of communicative format is not used
>             very frequently,
>             and even when it is, the line-break function of the
>             program tends to
>             fragment sentences to the point of incoherence (see below).
>
>                
>
>
>         Hi David,
>
>         Actually embedded replies are used frequently and productively
>         in many
>         technical arenas!
>
>
>          
>
>             I suspect this format continues to be in popular use
>             because people who
>             use it feel a sense of comfort with the tradition of usage
>             that trumps
>             functionality concerns, or perhaps they just don't know
>             how to change
>             formats.
>             Are there other reasons?
>
>                
>
>
>         The email software conventions programmed into email clients
>         (applications)
>         indent the content of email that is replied to.  Overriding
>         this by not
>         indenting old text would be unusual.
>
>         Text formats etc are usually filterable by the mail server. 
>         Additionally
>         the mail server can also perform simple functions such as
>         cutting all text
>         below a specially marked piece of text (e.g:
>         http://www.redmine.org/issues/4409) to help prevent very long
>         trailing
>         messages.
>
>         Best,
>         Huw
>
>          
>
>
>