Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] outlook express

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Wed, 12 Feb 2003, Rick Buford wrote:

> Uhm, why is a reply at the top qualified as a (horrors)? I've always 
> preferred the reply at the top since then you don't have to dig thru the 
> message for the reply, but the previous message is available for reference?

This has been done to death before so I'll be brief.  Once upon a time, in
news postings and in email, the long-standing convention was that people
would *edit down* the message they were replying to.  This saved
bandwidth, but also provided an opportunity to make your reply to the
specific points you were commenting on in a style that was at least
quasi-conversational.  It certainly made clear what it was that you were
replying to, and put your reply after the original, which makes sense if
you think about it.  In any case, the idea took off and the Golden Age of
Usenet depended on this convention.  

Then email clients started being written by people who did know about (or
care about; I'm not sure) these conventions, all replies went to the top
and were 3 lines long, and (in my opinion) the dumbing-down of email had
begun.  Of course, I qualify as a class "A" curmudgeon these days, being a 
person who refuses to accept the usage "emails" in the sense of "email 
messages".

jking


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