mhonarc-users

inverted quoting

2008-11-10 07:14:43
Dear list,

It seems to me that quoted replies in emails are somewhat backwards.
The following as an example:

| > > Instead of having higher levels of indentation for text that
| > > came first
| >
| > it would make a lot more sense to reverse the indentation,
|
| especially when archiving mails that aren't going to be used by
| a MUA to correspond.

I'd say for a web archive, the following would make a lot more
sense:

| Text tha came first does not get indented, but instead serves to
| as the main text and anchor
|
|   for text which is in reply to the email, which is quotes
|
|     which makes it a lot more obvious to the eye.

This allows a reader to easily skip interjections simply by not
following indentation levels, and with the proper bit of
XHTML/JavaScript/CSS, replies could even become foldable.

I had a brief look at mhonarc and found the plugin architecture that
makes mhonarc a really cool tool.

Unfortunately, my Perl-skills are non-existent. Fortunately, my
girlfriend knows the language a bit better, and so she threw
together the attached script yesterday, which takes a message and
outputs HTML which does the inversion. It is proof-of-concept and
several rough edges need to be smoothed out.

Do you think it is possible to write a mhonarc plugin on the basis
of this logic? Would anyone like to give it a shot?

-- 
martin;              (greetings from the heart of the sun.)
  \____ echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:"; net(_at_)madduck
 
obviously i was either onto something, or on something.
                                 -- larry wall on the creation of perl
 
spamtraps: madduck(_dot_)bogus(_at_)madduck(_dot_)net

Attachment: mail2html-invert.pl
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Attachment: digital_signature_gpg.asc
Description: Digital signature (see http://martin-krafft.net/gpg/)

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