Re: [Evolution] Evaluating Evolution- some basic questions

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Sun, 2009-02-22 at 12:51 -0500, Rob wrote:
> > One thing I hate -- and it is Outlook driven -- is an email that
> > quotes every word of every previous email in the thread, including
> > every signature and every list tag below each signature.  The hyphens,
> > with every standards compliant mailer, provide, at minimum automated
> > trimming of that redundant info.
>
> Interesting, I couldn't disagree with you more.  Perhaps our industries
> differ, but in my company's industry (Architectural and Engineering
> Services) it is sometimes very important from both an administrative
> and legal standpoint to be able to document an entire conversation.
> Being able to prove that Bob the Client told Dave the Engineer to
> modify the spec for Project Y to include items A, B, and C on [date] at
> [time] as well as showing the conversational context that led to and
> followed that communication is vital to us.

This is exactly the point I made earlier about quoting style. You know
best what works in your business environment, but on mailing lists such
as this one the style you describe is anathema.

Furthermore, I don't understand what you mean by "Being able to prove
that Bob the Client told ...". The only way you could carry out an audit
of a conversation is by copying the entire thread, *including all the
headers* (and in fact signing each message cryptographically on the
way), but in fact all you're doing is copying the message body. As a
matter of convenience I can (just) understand it, though assumes your
mailer doesn't do any reasonable version of threading, but as a matter
of "proof", it's completely meaningless.

poc