Re: [VM] Email dangers portrayed in media

[Tim Cross]

On 1 November 2012 10:00, James Freer <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Gmail's lacks what seems to be the most basic e-mail: you can't
>> get e-mail message out of it uncorrupted:
>>
>>    - There is no way to forward a message as an attachment. So
>>      you can't have someone join a thread just by forwarding the
>>      message to them.
>>
>>    - There is no way to save messages to a file.
>
> I use Alpine and one can save an email as text with/without headers.
> With the gmail UI one can print to pdf... but i don't think you mean
> that. I'm switching to VM as soon as xubuntu gets emacs 24 on board.
> Just joined the VM list in advance.
>
>> That said, gmail is a great imap server for VM :-)
> I use it as i was so disappointed with yahoo, aol and others. Gmail
> does seem to be the best unless one is setting up a mail server.
>
> james
>

I find it best to decide either top post or bottom post, depending ont
he context. I'm not convinced there is a one fit for all occasions.
For a lot of my work email, top posting seems more suitable. For
longer dicscussion threads involving multiple recipients, bottom
posting is often more suitable.

I would also echo the sentiment that for blind and vision impaired
users, bottom posting is a significant burden. However, emacs can help
to some extent as you can use buffer narrowing or overlays to have the
quoted text hidden. Then the quoted text can be read if necessary and
chronological order is maintained.

I get frustrated by programs which enforce either top or bottom
posting and make it difficult to change/select what you want to do per
message. I get even more frustrated by programs which automatically
include the quoted message and provide no easy way to chose between
including and not including the text at the time of starting the
reply. I find Outlook so annoying I've so far refused to use it. This
is a battle I'm going to lose (at least in the work environment), but
will fight as long as I can. Exchange and Outlook are an email cancer
and combined with the growing trend towards the misguided belief that
the solution to all of IT's problems is a standard operating
environment (SOE), individual choice re: platform and tools is
disappearing within the workplace.

Tim


-- 
Tim Cross