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> Reference: Steven Owens's comments about including text.
> I feel I have to defend myself.
You don't, although I do appreciate the points you
bring up below.
> for those of us with less-than-adequate mail interfaces,
> replying is an all-or-nothing situation.
Good point. Can we have a show of hands? Who uses what
mail interface? What editor? What system (UNIX used to be the
most common answer, but it appears a lot of people here are using
Mac or DOS based stuff)?
> I have seen ELM, and it is sweet. I only have Pathworks Mail
> and vi available to me, and they are not.
ELM is elegant. I remember when I was first introduced to
it by a friend who dismissed the standard UNIX "mail" program as
"barbaric." These days I use emacs RMAIL, which allows me to use the
powerful EMACS search, buffer, and window commands to view my mail.
> Because I find vi confusing, I use the other, but because I cannot
vi IS confusing. Very poorly designed. I favor EMACS, but
that's because I know it well, and I have a use for the incredible
array of extended capabilities it provides. There are simpler editors
out there on the net. PICO, for example.
> Recently, however, when I included none of a post to which I
> had referred, another subscriber asked for clarification.
Generally the best solution is a simple summary of the
previous message, unless you need to reply to specific words for
whatever reason.
> Here's another netettique pet peeve of mine: power typing
> (long paragraphs).
Traditionally, good use of formatting and whitespace is
encouraged on the net. When your only display mechanism is a 25x80
window with no fancy fonts or effects, you want the posts you're
reading to take maximum advantage of what you DO have for
ease-of-reading.
> ps: I also don't currently have news access.
How many people don't have news access? If there's enough
demand, I'll post some of the Emily Postnews articles.
