Top Posting Question

[Bill Davidsen]

Jonathan Allen wrote:
> Dear List,
> 
> Given that the preference on this list is trimming and 
> bottom/mid-posting, and that Thunderbird is one of the principle mail 
> agents used in the Fedora and Linux world, why does it always open 
> incoming emails at the top, and compose new emails with the cursor at 
> the top immediately ready to top-post?  Moreover, thunderbird appears to 
> have no user options to bottom post and view emails from the bottom (or 
> Usenet articles either).
> 
Top posting isn't evil, it's just frequently misused. Top posting is 
appropriate when you need to say something brief about the posting as a 
whole, rather than any part of it, such that people will be able to 
better choose to read the rest of the post or not.

Example:
   O.P. said UE4831, he actually has the UE4821, an obsolete revision 
not available in the US.

or
   Known error in the chipset, details below.

> I am trying to persuade a colleague of the evil of top-posting and he 
> has just beaten me up on exactly this point - *if* the Linux community 
> is to keen to discourage bottom posting, why don't the standard tools 
> work that way.  I was flabbergasted to find that he was right.  Why 
> doesn't thunderbird open at the bottom by default, with a user-option to 
> open at the top if you really want to ?
> 
They do... you just have your tools configured wrong. Most tools have an 
option to quote the original text and reply below. And possibly compress 
quote material and add a sig, depending on the tool.


-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot