On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 02:29:33PM -0400, brett holcomb wrote:
And top posting makes things much more readable so we
don't have to wade through reams of text (even with good
snipping). When you read hundreds of posts that's a
consideration - in fact some bottom/inline posts have
become so unreadable I don't even bother to look at the
thread anymore. It's more efficent to look at the reply
on top and then if I want to review more I'll read the
rest of the text. All I hear from those who want to force
bottom posting is that it's not "the right way to do it"
and "it's always been done that way". I know various
references are quoted sometimes but they aren't any more
valid or invalid than top posters.
The bottom line is that either works and I should have the
choice to turn of a warning I consider misguided. In
something like this shouldn't be forced to adhere to
someones definition of right. I understand what I'm doing
and don't want to have to keep telling any newsreader to
shutup and send the post.
On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 19:17:22 +0100
Brian Morrison <address@hidden> wrote:
On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 10:15:07 -0700 in
address@hidden Anthony
<address@hidden> wrote:
However, when one is developing an argument or train of
thought which
isn't directly a reply to something previously written,
and one wants
to keep the previously written material for context,
top posting is
appropriate. References in papers are footnotes, not
headnotes, and
similarly, top-posting draws the attention to the new
content, while
leaving the old content available for reference or
context.
While this type of use is acceptable it is a small
percentage of the
total Usenet experience. Hence the warning is justified
because it means
that people are forced to be sure that's what they mean
to do.
This article is already a good example of why top-posting doesn't
work well, as its flow goes from the middle (Anthony's message),
then the lower middle (Brian's), then jumps to the top (Brett's),
then to the bottom (mine).
Either top-posting or bottom-posting works, but only if it's the
same convention that everyone else is posting. Since the vast
majority of posters use bottom-posting, that's what Pan enforces.
Anyway, I'm not going to get into an argument about the virtues
of top- or bottom- posting. That's been discussed many, many times
before and the conclusions are available to anyone via Google.
If you insist on writing annoying messages without having Pan annoy
you back, the code to comment out is in check_top_posting() in
pan/base/message-check.c. I'm happy that you're using Pan, but
I'm not going to put in a preferences button to disable these warnings.