[vox] Regarding the Subjects & Message List

[Peter Jay Salzman]

hi ohana,

that's what the standard quoting system is for, which is used by most
mail clients.  certainly most unix clients.  i understand there's a mail
client called outlook which is popular on windows.  i have no idea what
it does.

notice the rest of the email has "> " before each line.  that indicates
quoting content.  it's an age old, tried and true method.

for fast replies, many people put their replies up front, like this.


On Wed 07 May 03,  2:15 PM, OH <ohanaloa@frys.com> opined:
> You linux folks are very saavy, and creative. Seems as though
> it would be possible to have a messageboard template, indented
> replies under the main post. I have a difficult finding the actual
> answers, with the redundancies of the way this is listed. Any
> of you programming genius's willing to create something?

but when you want to make a point-by point response, often people will
put their responses after the portion of the quote they want to reply
to.  like this paragraph would've responded to the query "are any of you
programmers willing to create something".

the canonical method is to simply go to the very end of the email and
put the response there.  this can often be the best method, especially
if you feel a thread is going to last for awhile.  for instance, i
probably should've done that myself.   all three response styles have
their method.  i like the first one for "quick and dirty" replying.

for people who use digest mode, like you, it may get a little confusing
because different messages together in the same email.  i would
recommend moving from digest mode to regular "as they come in" mode.
the time constraints on hacking at mailing lists are too great, and i
hardly know a lick of python (which is what our mailing list software
was written in).



also, you should trim portions of what you quote.  for instance, a 5
line reply to 250 lines of quoted material is usually too much signal to
noise.  many people on vox are still on dial-up, and downloading large
emails can be awfully painful for them.

aside from that, almost all of us keep all saved messages on disk.
large emails tend clutter our personal archive and can make using our
archives slower (not to mention disk space).  doesn't seem like much for
a single reply like this, but for high volume email people, it can
really add up.

when you trim someone's response (like i did with yours), it's
customary, but not mandatory) to indicate that you've done so.  often,
people use the word "snip".  like this:


> Ohana
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vox-admin@lists.lugod.org [mailto:vox-admin@lists.lugod.org]On
> Behalf Of vox-request@lists.lugod.org
> Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 12:00 PM
> To: vox@lists.lugod.org
> Subject: vox digest, Vol 1 #680 - 3 msgs
> 
> 
> Send vox mailing list submissions to
> 	vox@lists.lugod.org
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> 	http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> 	vox-request@lists.lugod.org
(snip)



and here's what multi-hierarchial quoting looks like:



On May 06 2003, Mark Kim said:
>
> On May 05 2003, Bill Kendrick said:
> >
> > On May 04 2003, Jeff Newmiller said:
> > >
> > > On Wednesday May 03 2003, Rod Roark said:
> > > >
> > > > Hi my name is Rod, and I'm a Linux user.
> > >
> > > Hi my name is Jeff Newmiller, and I'm a Linux user.
> > 
> >  Hi, my name is Bill Kendrick and I'm a Linux user.
> 
> Hi, my name is Mark Kim, and I'm a Linux user

and this is my reply to them:

Hi, my name is Peter Jay Salzman, and I'm a Linux users.



you still have this on digest mode, but you have to coax your mail
client to follow suit.  i'm sure every windows client can do this.


hth,
pete