Top-posting

[Gerhard Gaußling]

Hi Tony,
Am Thursday 05 May 2005 10:46 schrieb Tony Arnold:
> 3) somewhere random in
> the middle.
No, there is a 4th Way: To put the mouse cursor under the quoted lines 
like kmail does and a lot of mailers that where aware of RFC1855
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt :
    - If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
      summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
      enough text of the original to give a context.  This will make
      sure readers understand when they start to read your response.
      Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the
      postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a
      response to a message before seeing the original.  Giving context
      helps everyone.  But do not include the entire original!
But keep in mind to edit the quoted lines to a reasonable content. 
Otherwise This might lead the poster to let the whole bunch of quote 
untouched and wrote his short "I agree!" message on the buttom of the 
mail.
> If respondents are to interleave their replies with commented text of
> the original, then the top is best place for the cursor. 
This might or might not to be the best place (see above). This depends 
on the personal habits and preferences.
> Somewhere 
> random in the middle is obviously pointless and at the bottom is also
> silly as the first thing most people will do is scroll upwards to
> somewhere near the top of the message.
Yes, the random method is silly, but directly before the sig it 
shouldn't be that annoying, in particular when the MUA can handle it in 
a smart way. For example kmail quotes only the selected parts of the 
text you want to respond to, and sets the cursor under the quoted part 
of the message. This got some other flaws, if you want to quote several 
different portions of the original message, than you have to switch 
back to the normal behaviour: Don't select any text and reply to the 
message, than edit the full quote to the reasonable content and put 
your mesage in a sensefull way underneath the quotes.

Kind regards

Gerhard Gaußling