I'll make one more comment on this and then go back to lurking on this subject.
When I have a number of email conversions with a client on how to perhaps
implement something or where changes are needed we usually reply to the
question at the top of the email. We're way too busy to go searching for all
the replies within a long string of messages some indented and some not.
So if the email comes in and we are asked,
"Should we add a CANopen PDO that has the battery temperature?"
The answer to that will be at the top of the email reply. If it's a running
thread and we've forgotten something we just scroll down until we find what is
relevant and then scroll up slowly reading the replies.
However, if the previous email was a list of items or involved a number of
points we might answer at the top with a short summary or comment and then
state: "See below". That tells our reader that the initial information is
right at the top of the email and they spend no time looking for the answer.
But also that if they want more extensive information they can scroll down.
Time is money I guess.
What makes that even easier is to enable HTML email and then not only change
colour but also font.
For example although I've changed this email to HTML it will be returned to the
antiquated text mode and the formatting that was added to make things more
readable and therefore more comprehensible will have been removed. For some
reason some email lists want to stay in the dark ages even if readability and
comprehension suffers.
In the program fragment below the comment is in green, the typedef and enum are
in bold dark blue the {,}, characters are in light blue, the #define in red and
the decimal numbers in a darker yellow. The whole works is in Courier fixed
pitch font with tabs removed so spacing is symmetrical and it's a bit smaller
than the conversational text with a font size of 8. All of this done with
CodeWright by Borland that I started using back in 1991. Now long discontinued
it still runs on WIN-7. Yet I can copy it to the clipboard and paste it into
an HTML email.
// EventReport,h -- Definitions for the Event Report Thread
typedef enum _eventreportstate {
EVNT_INIT,
EVNT_START,
EVNT_LOG,
EVNT_WAIT,
EVNT_REPORT
} TEVNT_REPORT_STATE;
#define EVENT_LIST_SIZE 8
#define EVENT_LIST_MASK (EVENT_LIST_SIZE-1)
What you'll really see is the same text font as the conversation and your mind
will take an extra few seconds to process. And the more modern eclipse based
NetBeans as shown in the example below can't even transfer the syntax
highlighting with a copy and paste. Maybe there's a parameter to set that
allows this?
// Create a CMSGSID data type.
typedef struct {
unsigned SID:11;
unsigned FILHIT:5;
unsigned CMSGTS:16;
} rxcmsgsid;
Reminds me of what my Expository Writing Prof said in 4th year university.
When the something is wrong with writing often a reader continues on for a few
sentences before they even realize comprehension has been lost. It causes what
he called an "imperceptible pause", and then a reader has to move back through
the text to try and pick up the meaning.
Who cares right? I do. Others probably don’t. Others are running software
that can't do it so they don't miss it because they never see it.
I'll stop here. How replies are formatted seems to have become a religion with
many people and it's pretty well impossible to change someone's religion. But
once you've traded emails with colours and syntax highlighting the systems that
don't support it become the butt of jokes because they are so clumsy. I doubt
anyone writing software would like to have only a black proportional font in
their program text editor. Yet we tolerate it for emails.
I'm done. I think I've shown where I stand on this.
John
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