Dragaera

warning to newbies

Tue Feb 10 15:17:43 PST 2004

>From: John Klein <zarkon at illrepute.org>
>It may help to turn off the "quote messages while replying option" and
>simply copy-and-paste stuff in with a ctrl-click (since I believe there's
>an option on the context menu that says "paste as quotation"). Or you
>could switch mail programs - the Mozilla mail component works decently and
>has many more configuration options than Mail does.
>
>Another option is to just whip out terminal and install pine, like I did.
>Hee hee.
>
>@> However, as a good list citizen, if there is a standard that everyone
>@> agrees to I will do my best to comply.
>
>Basically, which way you do it depends on how steeped you are in net
>culture. As culture-saturation increases, the likelihood that you will
>quote before posting increases. In personal e-mail, it's generally less
>important than it is on newsgroups and lists - top-posting makes it harder
>for new readers to get into the conversation, since they are given the
>least comprehensible message first, and the data they need to understand
>it is buried several screens down. Imagine the movie Memento if this helps.
>
>Also, thanks for making the effort.


Ok, I can get this to work if I jump through hoops.

I use Hotmail because I don't want to send my personal e-mail through the 
company's servers.  I'm not enough of a Luddite to figure out how to invoke 
the Terminal in Win2K and learn yet another e-mail app (especially a non-GUI 
one).

I don't particularly like this system, but it's a work-around.  In my 
current setup, I click Reply to All and then strip out everyone but the list 
itself (first minor quibble), then I make my comments, strip out extraneous 
comments that don't apply, and click Send.

In the proposed system, I'd have to turn off my signature (Hotmail insists 
on sticking it right up there at the top.  To have the Insert as Text 
feature work, I have to click Tools > Insert Original Text.  Two more 
(*@&^$)  mouse clicks that I'd prefer to do away with as a keyboard-centric 
guy.  Then I need to click in the text window to place the cursor and then 
<Ctrl><End> to get to the bottom of the text.  *Now* I can add my comments, 
go back up and strip out extraneous comments, and click Send.

Somebody please tell me there's a better way.

(my identity used to go here)

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