[program-l] Re: Formatting of email replies
- From: Soronel Haetir <soronel.haetir@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 11:58:29 -0800
Top posting vs quoted posting in my experience is much more a time
online thing, rather than sighted vs blind. Top posting has become
the norm for just about everyone who got online after the early 90s.
I believe a great deal of that stems from what the email clients do.
Outlook express for instance, the quoting style makes interspersed
quotes visually pretty ugly.
Only those online before that early 90s time point are at all used to
pure plain text email (even modern plain text the client will still
look for hyperlinks and e-mail addresses and such). For a different
example, consider the gmail interface (which I am using right now).
To do a quoted post requires more effort, in that you have to hit an
extra button, scroll down and so on. Even before I started needing a
screen reader I used gmail's quick reply (which is just an edit box
under the mail thread display) with some very basic recipient choices.
On 5/21/10, Jamal Mazrui <empower@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The debate about indentation reminds me of the topic about formatting of
> email replies. I know that others do not agree, but I think indentation
> is generally a visual benefit, and that other ways of denoting code
> structure such as braces or keywords tend to be more productive than white
> space for a screen reader user. I think another area where sighted and
> blind interests diverge is how email replies are formatted. In general,
> blind users prefer the style that is often called top posting, where the
> reply is placed above the prior material. Sighted users, on the other
> hand, seem to prefer what might be called quoted posting, where parts of
> the prior message are quoted and the reply is broken up and interspersed
> among these quotes.
>
> I have found that it is not uncommon to get attacked on some technical
> lists for top posting. I find this frustrating because quoted posting is
> much less efficient for me in following an email list. This is enough so
> that I will sometimes immediately delete a message if I discover the
> author is using quoted posting, because I do not want to have to hear
> again what I have already read in prior messages.
>
> As I understand it, quoted posting is highly visual in nature, where an
> email client makes use of indentation and color changes to show who is the
> author of what part of the conversation. I am not aware of a good screen
> reader method of reading quoted messages efficiently, one that gives me
> enough context without unnecessarily repeating what I heard before, and
> one which skips repetitive material but not new material.
>
> The argument about saving bandwith is often used when criticizing top
> posting, but I find this a weak one. In the Internet of today, text
> messages do not consume much bandwith. Also, one can top post and still
> delete parts of the reply chain that are further down, e.g., just
> repeating the prior message below one's reply. It can also be a benefit
> to have the complete correspondence in a single message so that one does
> not have to piece it together from separate messages.
>
> Another argument against top posting is that the correspondence is not in
> a natural reading order. I think this has merit when someone is reading a
> message thread for the first time. If one has been following the thread,
> however, then I think it is efficient to have the most recent contribution
> at the beginning, where it is easiest to find.
>
> What thoughts do others have on this? How can sighted and blind interests
> be better harmonized in this area?
>
> Jamal
>
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--
Soronel Haetir
soronel.haetir@xxxxxxxxx
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