Re: Thunderbird

From: Howard J. Rogers <hjr_at_dizwell.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 05:28:25 +1100
Message-ID: <41ab6a37$0$26294$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>

Niall Litchfield wrote:
> Howard J. Rogers wrote:
>

>>I'm not sure it's a bug, really. It simply means that if people post
>>where Netiquette suggests they should (at the bottom), any reply you

>
> add
>

>>  will not include their signature. Eminently sensible, if you ask

>
> me.
>

>>It's top posting that stuffs that up... and unfortunately, that's

>
> true
>

>>of Jonathan's sensible 'see below' top posting as well as the less
>>sensible 'stick everything at the top' variety.

>
>
> I'm not sure that I agree that cutting text based on characters in the
> text, is an "eminently sensible" idea. If the placing of a signature
> were some sort of agreed standard rather than a social convention I
> might agree - one could then argue that it wasn't a bug, the original
> message would be at fault. Cutting text because the person who posted
> it was used to different social conventions in related mediums and
> transferred that knowledge across seems to be unexpected behaviour of
> the newsreader to me.
>
> I don't like top-posting, but a program that chomps on messages that
> are top-posted needs work IMO.

Just to be clear: it doesn't have the slightest problem *displaying* all the text in a message. It's what happens when you hit the reply button: it makes the assumption that you want to reply to the actual content of a post, and not someone's signature. For me, that is indeed an eminently sensible thing to assume, though it is predicated on a further assumption that may be less sensible given the real world we live in: that people will sign their posts at the end, and not at the beginning.

I can't actually think of any culture on Earth that believes signing off something first, and then actually including some contents, is the right order of events. Except, of course, top-posting on the Internet, which has nevertheless long been deprecated.

But given that people do indeed top post, then having some control over the behaviour would not go amiss, I agree.

Incidentally, I could be wrong, but I seem to recall Opera's M2 mail and newsgroup client does exactly the same thing.

>
> Niall
>
> p.s. As I don't have Thunderbird installed then this is clearly all
> predicated on an assumption that the program removes all text following
> a pair of hyphens - including the hyphens themselves.

As I say, it only removes anything when replying, not when originally reading.

Regards
HJR Received on Mon Nov 29 2004 - 12:28:25 CST