Re: Gmail and quotes

[David Kastrup]

Hilary Snaden <address@hidden> writes:

> On 2013-11-14 12:13, David Kastrup wrote:
>> SoundsFromSound <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>>> but if that is correct etiquette outside of tech support, and for 
>>> mailing lists, then I will try my hardest to not top post anymore.
>>> Sorry in advance.
>
> Top-posting was (and may far all I know still be) the default setting
> in M$ Outlook, I suspect a lot of people learned the habit from there.

Even Outlook quoted the entire original message with > quote marks, then
put your cursor above that so that you could intersperse parts of the
original message with your comments.  Outlook was not really working
well for prolonged conversations, though, since it tended to rewrap
lines _including_ previous quote marks (the dreaded "comb quotes").

Anyway, that message buffer setup _is_ useful for inline additions.
Heck, it's almost what _Emacs_ gives me when replying, too (the cursor
is positioned _after_ the attribution line of the original message
instead of completely before the original quoted message, though).

If the intent would have been just to append the original message
unchanged, the > quote marks would be unnecessary.  There were some
top-quoting mailers like that around as well, usually leaving a
considerable piece of the headers as well.  Fortunately, they have
mostly died out.

-- 
David Kastrup