[Pan-users] Re: Skip quoted text when scrolling

[Duncan]

Benjamin Esham <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:41:29
+0000:

> I think that the "mute quoted text" option would be a cruder way of
> doing this.  It would prevent you from having to scroll through a lot of
> quoted text, but it would also prevent you from peeking back at the
> quoted text for context, as is sometimes necessary. 

Well, ideally, positive peer pressure would be exerted to persuade the 
person quoting such huge amounts of text at once to edit it down to only 
the portion he's replying to, then reply inline, as I'm doing here.  In 
the cases where one's reply is to a longer segment than normally fits on 
an average display window, the quote should be excerpted or paraphrased, 
with the rule of thumb being never have a point at which a portion of the 
new text (reply) isn't visible.  With a few exceptions for technical 
groups or discussions, where it may be necessary to quote multiple pages 
of output (and think if it really is before doing it) without any inline 
replies, if there's ever a point in the reply where one can't see reply 
because it's all quote, it's a very strong indication the quoting isn't 
being done correctly, and needs to be edited either to only the point 
being replied to, or paraphrased/summarized, in a rather less verbose 
manner.

That's how it's /supposed/ to work.  Peer pressure is supposed to cause 
violators of that netiquette to either change their ways, or end up on in 
the killfile of most regulars.  Of course, if one isn't seeing that huge 
quote, one isn't likely to exert that peer pressure, thus ultimately 
causing the problem to get worse and worse over time, as fewer and fewer 
posters feel compelled to follow common netiquette, because no one they 
have reason to respect is doing the compelling.

Thus, the mute quoted text compromise seems a decent one.  It's easy 
enough to toggle, once one learns the hotkey or assigns a different one 
they are comfortable with, yet provides enough of a hassle to be a gentle 
prod, both not to do it one's self, and to be a gentle prod as well, to 
those consistently abusing the quote feature.

> Additionally, when
> reading near the middle of a large post, toggling 'q' will royally screw
> up your vertical position in the post, requiring you to scroll around to
> get back to where you were.

You do have a point there.

All in all, however, given the mute quoted text feature that's already 
there, I don't believe it's worth bothering with.  Or, putting it 
differently, yes it'd be nice, but there are IMO much more useful and 
high priority things (attachment posting, scoring that works on the 
entire post, not just the overview headers, group categories, auto-
download/mark-read/delete, to name four major ones) that should come 
first.  Thus, if it were me, I'd mark it "target 'bluesky'", if I didn't 
simply close it as WONTFIX or NOTABUG in the first place.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman