Re: [Pan-users] Re: how to see quoted text

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:00:37 am Joe Zeff wrote:

> What I want to know is why anybody ever thought that muting quoted
> text was a Good Idea in the first place?

When you're reading the seventh reply to a post, each of which quotes 
the entire body of that post only to add "Metoo!" at the end, you 
rapidly wish there was a way to hide quoted text in posts.

However, the current functionality is less useful. In my opinion, to be 
more useful it should:

(1) be easier to turn on/off (say, by clicking on the quoted text block, 
but beware of interfering with selecting text);

(2) more difficult: be smarter about what it hides.

By "smarter", I mean something like the following:

- perhaps it should only hide the second and subsequent level quotes, 
not the first (that is, hide text starting with two > not one).

- perhaps it should show the first line of any quoted block, hiding the 
rest;

- perhaps it should have an in-built AI that can read and understand the 
post for you, hiding the quoted test that you don't need to see and 
showing you the bits you do. (Well, I can wish can't I?)

Really, it's a work-around for human error: people don't quote sensibly, 
and that annoys readers. Since people differ in their annoyance, and in 
their idea of what is sensible quoting, no technical solution is going 
to suit everybody.


-- 
Steven