-----Original Message----- From: gene heskett <ghesk...@shentel.net> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: OT: Top Posting Date: 05/14/24 10:54:50
On 5/14/24 10:09, Richard wrote: Just because something isn't an official ISO standard doesn't mean it's not standard behavior. And how it relates to this mailing list? It's called a setting. No its not, its your refusal to use the down arrow in your reply editor to put your reply after the question. It really is that simple. If your choice of email agents cannot do that, its time to switch to an agent that can. There are dozens of them. DISCLAIMER: I just realized above portion might not quote properly. My apologies in advance if it does not. That's one glitch I haven't located a fix for, yet. The rest of the email: I think Evolution has finally fixed my own latest issues with tech reply emails just since Gmail forced all users onto its more dynamic release. My biggest issue is, hopefully "was," line length. This email is only my second reply sent in maybe 2 months so am about to find out how things are progressing. Accidentally just this second was reminded there's a setting for avoiding top posting by lunging to bottom of reply emails. That setting is found by going through the now classic 3-line settings "hamburger" then: Edit > Preferences > Composer Preferences > General (tab) There's a simple toggle on/off checkbox that says, "Start typing at the bottom." The setting for word wrapping is just a few lines above that. Regarding line length (word wrapping), that's an even less spoken "standard" that has merit at its base. I think I've seen it mentioned maybe one time in more than a decade++ on Debian. That "standard" is about usability.. readability.. aka conscious consideration for fellow list members. Best as I was able to discern from the Net [0], 72 characters is the magic number for line length because 4 extra characters are added to both ends when e.g. git processes submissions. Makes good common sense to me. PS I thought it was 80. Guess it was about those extra 8 characters. Or.. Maybe whoever I saw write that over ten years ago almost understood that "handshake standard" but not quite. That's one scary part of trusting strangers on the WWW. :) Again back to the concept of tech listserv standards, the source I'm referencing after randomly finding it via search this morning says, "The 50/72 Rule is a set of standards that are pretty well agreed upon in the industry to standardize the format of commit messages." "Pretty well agreed upon..." That's implying that unspoken list standards are really not users "picking on each other." Listserv standards is a concept that has evolved over decades for rational reasons as Developer and User communications evolved. Am not embarrassed to say Evolution has kicked my backside k/t its learning curve versus a user's level of cognitive ability. This experience ended up touching on "frightening" a couple times, e.g. I sent 2,000 online emails to (online) trash when that was not intended. It's easy to mess up badly while moving emails around between desktop folders because that activity directly affects the linked online email provider if a user approves those access permissions. For what it's worth as a huge selling point for me, I have a massive online email account. There are hundreds of thousands of emails from the last 20 years. Evolution said whatever, bring it on. Evolution appears to do some form of maybe symlinking instead of downloading so everything is available almost immediately seconds after the first time Evolution is ever fired up. Other email software I've used only seems to work by downloading. That difference is huge for anyone using a data download limiting Internet provider. NOTE: Evolution appears to possibly offer related tweaking if one prefers working offline. In the other email software cases I attempted, the software could only reach back a limited time span into history before I a-sume Gmail cut off access to touching older emails. If there's a work-around for that, I never found it. I simply (and immediately) purged the email software, instead. With Evolution, I'm instantly looking at emails I haven't seen in ~20 years. I was having a horrible time accessing those same emails in Gmail itself online. Talk about mind blowing nostalgia overload... Cindy :) [0] https://dev.to/noelworden/improving-your-commit-message-with-the-50-72-rule-3g79 -- Talking Rock, Pickens County, North Georgia * runs with birdseed! *
