[Xmca-l] Re: Email Format Conventions

[Huw Lloyd]

If you want to inspect the email contents you can look at their ASCII.
 e.g. for gmail there is a "show original" option.  The ASCII can contain
special codes to be interpreted by email clients etc.

I don't think the longsig directive is implemented on mailman (the server
xmca uses) but it can be.

Best,
Huw


On 18 August 2014 02:30, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>