At 19:05 2005-07-31 +0530, Ligesh wrote:
I have configured all my mailing lists to munge the 'Reply-To' header
and add the mailing list address there, so I always end up pressing just
'r'. I cannot understand the logic behind the other way, since most often
the person would want to reply to the mailing list, rather than to the
sender. I guess I have a problem with rules and practices which doesn't
make logical sense to me.
One logical rule I have is to use sensible subject lines. Another is to
not use replies to other messages (including list-s*bscription welcome
messages) to springboard a new message to the list because I'm too lazy to
type the list address and a proper subject on my posts. Besides having
subject lines which are nonsensical to the content of the message, the
"References:" and "In-Reply-To:" headers are inserted by modern mailers to
manage threads, and you end up having a thread relationship with an
unaffiliated topic.
But I'm sure YOUR "logic" makes sense to you. Somehow.
Of course, badly written softwares will screw up; but that can't be helped.
Uhm, don't use badly written software? From most accounts here, it's
_your_ posts that are messed up, not everyone elses'.
- A single line paragraph will work in all circumstances. (You can
configure your display software to wrap the line at whatever you wish.
And it will work very fine in PDAs, and also will look good in forums.
Not if that software expects to render the message AS SENT. There are
plenty of usenet posts and forum messages which require scrolling endlessly
to the right because they weren't wrapped by the sender.
FTR, the Eudora MUA has a reasonable way of formatting paragraphs and
sending them with hard coded line breaks - the ends of lines in a paragraph
have a trailing space. If a receiving program wants to re-flow the
paragraph, they can do so by reconstituting the paragraphs. I do this in
my blogger tool (to which I submit entries via email), which allows the web
representation to utilize the width and font style and size to
effect. Messages with this line wrapping style have a header like so:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Despite being flagged as "flowed", the message DOES CONTAIN LINEBREAKS
WITHIN THE PARAGRAPHS. IOW, the software sends it as it expects to be
viewed, but provides hints for smart agents to be able to reflow it if they
so choose.
Further, since reply attributions are marked as attributions in so many
different ways, how 'zactly is the receiving software to know how to WRAP
the continuation marker (esp. if it doesn't KNOW that the line was a
quote)? If the SENDER has broken it into widely recognized "reasonable"
line lengths and tagged the beginning of each with an attribution marker
(historically ">", but there are others), then EACH LINE OF A PARAGRAPH
will properly have an attribution marker. When you get a long paragraph
without any linebreak, I can assure you that 99% or more of email clients
and forum programs which are tacked onto the back end of conventional
mailing lists, will render the message without any indication of quoting
added to the wrapped lines.
- 75 char word wrap will screw up entirely in a lot of situations.
Not if the sender word wrapped WHAT THEY SENT.
80 char is simply a historical relic from the days of the dumb terminals.
I view mail in a fixed width font, because proportional width fonts lose
ASCII ART characteristics (text diagrams, following line emphasis, etc),
commonly employed by technical types who've been using the internet since
before you were born.
It is not only difficult to edit at the sender end, it will screw up the
display unless the screen width is more than 75 chars.
I've never had a problem editing a message.
Perhaps - and I'm going way out on a limb with my logic here - since in the
early days, internet mail was edited on computer terminals with 80 columns,
and nowadays, so many computers can display much more than that (using
graphic displays instead of strict text displays), perhaps dumbed down
devices like PDAs and cellphones could be the ones to add logic for
reflowing text to meet their SUBSTANDARD DISPLAYS. You can't actually surf
the REAL web on your cellphone or PDA, why should you expect email would be
the same?
---
Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering
Procmail disclaimer: <http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies. I'll get my copy from the list.
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