[access-uk] Re: Top Posting to this list
- From: Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <bhawkeslewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 18:54:18 +0100
Top versus bottom posting is a very old argument, and by no means only
of concern to people with disabilities. The best rule for individuals is
always to follow the practices of whatever list you are on.
Bottom posting does, it seems, raise special problems for screen reader
users, in that they experience difficulty skipping over quoted text. But
this rather begs the question of why this has not been made a feature of
their assistive technology. At first appearance, it's a relatively
trivial technical problem. For plain text email, quotations are
conventionally indicated by prefixing each line with a greater than
sign. Therefore, to go straight to new text, the AT need only skip to
the next line not prefixed by a greater than sign. Working out which
text is quoted and which is new is so computationally simple that, for
example, the Thunderbird email client formats quoted text a different
color and can even handle nested quotations with a different color. If
you inspect the document object model, you'll find Thunderbird is
actually using <blockquote> elements in its chrome, even for plain text
emails.
If current AT does not have such a feature, perhaps it would be worth
requesting them from your vendor of choice? Alternatively, the same
feature could be requested of email client developers like Mozilla and
Microsoft.
After all, not all lists use top posting even if this one tends to do so.
--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
George Bell wrote:
I guess I'll have to put my moderator's hat on here.
Top replying is the preferred here.
With the type of mail programs the majority of us use, such
as Outlook Express and Outlook, when we open up a message,
we are usually placed at the top of it. And when we reply
to a message, again we are usually placed at the top of the
message.
I know that there are some program which are capable of
placing you at the beginning of the most recent message to
read it, and at the end of the last message to reply, but
these are not so commonly used.
There is also special message list software, such as used in
the Microsoft Community lists, where individual message are
displayed in frames and sorted is ascending or descending
date sent order. However, these can be difficult to
navigate - even for some sighted users.
Personally speaking, when I see a message, with many
replies, I don't want to have to read through them all again
to get to the most recent. I've usually already read them
anyway, and perhaps only just want to browse down the most
recent replies.
If I've asked a question, I know what my question was, so I
again I don't want to have to read through it to get to the
reply.
I do take the very valid point that when you are answering
within a message, one should precede your own comment,
perhaps with your initials, especially if chevrons (right
arrows) precede the text to which you are replying, and you
have those filtered out not to be spoken. For example:
Tell me your phone number.
GB - 01604 123456
what operating system do you use.
GB - Windows Vista Ultimate.
And of course there is also the issue of leaving far too
much of the original message. Do try and trim out as much
as possible, especially list footers which unfortunately get
repeated each time a message is sent. I have capped
messages at 10k in size, after which they get referred to
the moderators as being oversize, and a message sent to the
sender to say as much.
Finally spell checkers. If you have one, please try to use
it.
George Bell
Moderator.
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