Chen Xiao Fan wrote:

> No difference here. I see no justification bottom posting is
> any better than top posting, but that IMHO.

I think bottom vs. top posting is not the /real/ question. 

I think we all agree that including the complete contents of all prior
emails in a thread is not only impractical, but also annoying. No matter
whether bottom or top or something else, people should only include the
relevant content from prior messages. 

Here comes in one gripe with top posting: sometimes people seem to
completely forget how many megabytes of text they are replying to, and just
add their few sentences at the top. This probably happens easier with top
posting, because it's easier to overlook the huge amount accumulated if you
don't even scroll to the end.


> I like your posting style: context posting. 

After you have trimmed prior content to the reasonable portions, you often
have more than one issue left. In this case, what you call context posting
(and what generally is referred to as bottom posting, but that's more a
misnomer than a helpful name) is obviously the most sensible thing to do.

So the question is probably not "top or bottom posting", it's two-fold:
"should we trim prior content?" (yes!) and "where should we then add our
comments to the prior content?" (bottom, top, or in context -- my
preference being "in context").


> However the email clients are not making this easier and this is across
> Linux and Windows. 

You can configure Outlook to prefix every line of a message you are
replying to with e.g. ">". (Tools | Options | Preferences | E-mail Options
... | On replies and forwards.) This makes context posting quite possible,
even with Outlook. We need to take into account that while nowadays most
programs come out of the box with some useful functionality, the real
spectrum of functionality comes to light only after reading the manual and
going through all menu and configuration items.

The other option is to use a hammer for nails and a screwdriver for screws
(in other words, the right tool for the job): I use Outlook as my email
program for "normal" email and as a general organizing tool, but I read
mailing lists and newsgroups with a different program (40tude Dialog). In
these days of plenty free email addresses, this is not difficult to set up
at all. So you can use the Outlook-induced top posting for the private
emails, where it more often is not as bad as it is in newsgroups and
mailing lists, and use all the tools a good newsreader provides (like
reformatting citation paragraphs) to context post in newsgroups and mailing
lists.


> Few people are using context posting since it requires more effort on the
> user' part. 

I grant you this, but nothing's free... It costs more effort to write
decent content, but that's rarely heard as an argument against decent
content :)

Gerhard

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