Re: [VM] Email dangers portrayed in media

[Tim Cross]

On 3 November 2012 20:41, Julian Bradfield <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 2012-11-03, Tim Cross <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Surely it's not beyond the wit of text-to-speech programmers to have a
> mode that ignores lines beginning with ">" ?
>

Unfortunately not. Most screen readers and text-to-speech systems are
very 'simple'. They have no understanding of the text they are
converting into speech. This is one area where emacspeak is
fundamentally different. As it is built on top of emacs, it has all
the power of emacs and can do things like use auditory icons or
different voices to provide 'voice locking' - like font-lock, but uses
different voice characteristics to add extra information. It can also
provide customized behaviour based on the major/minor modes etc.

Unfortunately, especially with mobile devices, you have very simple
text-to-speech - it just turns the text into speech in a linear
manner. To make life even more difficult, not all mail clients use '>'
to indicate quoted text, so even if you can do something it all falls
apart when someone uses a different character to indicae quoted text.

With respect to the point concerning most people using graphical
clients, it is still a pain - granted, not as bad, but I still prefer
having a simple reply and reply with quoted text rather than just one
'reply' and then having to remove the text. It would be better if the
default was to present the reply area without any text and have the
text in the clipboard, then you could just add it with a click or drag
and click.

Tim

-- 
Tim Cross