Eliminate "Top Posting"

Hi Gerard,

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Kindly elaborate ‘There is also the problem that Outlook has no idea how to handle a "signature delimiter".’

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I'll start off by saying I don't like top posting, either.

> I do a lot of posting in various email forums. A constant problem is MS Outlook's

> insistence on "Top Posting" when replying to a message.  Top Posting is contrary to

> how people actually read messages; i.e., top to bottom.

You're getting into a "religious" area here. I've been on USENET (i.e., NNTP clients and servers) for a long time and it has been a debate for as long as I can recall. Many people prefer top posting because they've already seen the material from prior posts. They want the new stuff at the top so that they don't have to so scrolling through all that previous material in order to find the new stuff. I can see the point. I myself believe in "selective posting" - selecting only the relevant material from the prior posts so as to target the specific thoughts being addressed. Soft of like I've responded to your post.

> Also, Outlook sticks a lot of superfluous garbage at the top of every replied to

> message. More advanced MUAs allow the user to configure what is printed at the

> top of a reply.

What garbage to you mean? Outlook doesn't insert any garbage at the top of a reply. The insertion point is above all the material in the reply.

> here is also the problem that Outlook has no idea how to handle a "signature

> delimiter".

Considering there is no standard (other than defacto) for signature format, I don't consider this as a valid complaint.

From the appearance of your response, it is clear that what you are using is called "inline reply", "point-by-point rebuttal". A very common method and one that I use myself from time to time. Nothing wrong with this, unless the number of replies becomes extensive. Then it can become a quagmire to decipher. In any case, both "inline" and "bottom posting" styles are used extensively on email forums, as you indicated you were aware. The easiest way to get "Flamed" is to start "Top Posting", or even worse, the habitually use of HTML.

This is an example of the fallacy of "Top Posting"

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

You might be interested in this: http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html

Now, this is the sort of garbage that Outlook places before a reply:

From: Danny <*** Email address is removed for privacy ***>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 10:01 AM
To: Jim <*** Email address is removed for privacy ***>
Subject: RE: Job

Now, that is just ****. I already know who the message is from, I AM REPLYING TO IT. The date it was sent is relevant, and I include that myself when using more advanced MUAs that allow the end user to customize the data placed in a replied to message. The "To:" is another huge waste of space. I KNOW who received it, ME. The "Subject:" is another huge waste of space. It is already in the "Subject" line of the email.

A very common Attribution line pattern used by other MUAs is this:

At 10.01am Wednesday, Danny wrote:

By prefixing the start of every new reply, the reader is able to easily decipher who wrote and the time it was sent, the response he is reading.

Finally, the standard signature delimiter: "-- " (two dashes followed by a white-space character) on a line by itself, is a very common and often used in mail forums. As you undoubtedly know, it indicates to the MUA that all text following this "delimiter" is to be ignored in replies; i.e., not included. There are few things in life more annoying than trying to read through an HTML based email, replied to a dozen times, all in "TOP Posting" style with each one having its own signature.

Finally, I did not include this before, but it would be nice if Outlook allowed a user to convert a message to "plain text" prior to responding to it. By doing so, hopefully (and this is asking a lot from MS Outlook) the Reply level indication would be set correctly.

In case you are wondering, I use "Claws-Mail" for my personal MUA. It has tricks that MS Outlook has yet to learn. Unfortunately, I work in a government environment that insists on Microsoft. Personally, I use FreeBSD on my home network. I offered to install the Windows version of Claws-Mail on my office machine, but they said "NO". Pathetic.

I doubt is you'll ever see anything but a reply being above the included message. My opinion is that it's pointless to wish for what you'll never likely get.

> Finally, I did not include this before, but it would be nice if Outlook allowed a user to convert a message

>  to "plain text" prior to responding to it.

Easily done. When you open the reply, click Options and set the message format to Plain Text.

> Finally, I did not include this before, but it would be nice if Outlook allowed a user to convert a message

>  to "plain text" prior to responding to it.

Easily done. When you open the reply, click Options and set the message format to Plain Text.

Except, that Outlook does not prefix the reply with the proper Reply Level Indication symbol. I use "> " which is the most common, but some users prefer others. Seriously, every other MUA I use handles this correctly. Why is MS Outlook so frigging lame?

It is my opinion that until the percentage of use by users drops to 50% level, Microsoft will never improve any of its products. It let Internet Explorer fall hopelessly behind Firefox before it even began to think about improving it. Microsoft's share of the Office market is slowing dwindling. However, it probably has to drop to around 50% before anyone will do anything about it. The Internet already runs on *nix, Linux, FreeBSD or some other FOSS product. Every major corporation I know of has Postfix or a similar solution BEFORE an MS Exchange server. The quality of MS Products suffered terribly under Balmer, and I see no sign of it improving.

The real beauty of "open source" software is that the end user can actually communicate with the developer(s). If Microsoft were really interested in user satisfaction, they would make their developers, or at least someone with from each project group, available at least once a week to communicate with the audience they are developing their products for.

Name one open source equivalent of Outlook. To be equivalent, it can't simply be a mail client. It has to support the same functions Outlook does.

1) Mozilla Thunderbird
2) Evolution
3) Claws Mail
4) Mozilla SeaMonkey
5) Zimbra Desktop (Bonus)

All are available for Windows. They all have add-ons that add calendars, scheduling, etcetera. Plus, they all handle PGP natively. I might also add that they are "FREE" and you can communicate with the authors.

From my experience, most users do not use all of the extra features, or what ever you choose to call it, that Outlook includes. PLUS, they are all infinitely more customization. Rules can be written using "regular expressions", aka "Regexps".