Re: [Evolution] top versus bottom posting and the "control-L" function

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 14:32 -0400, Ben May wrote:
> All this discussion of top versus bottom posting got me thinking. If
> there's ALREADY a function in evolution specifically for replying to
> mailing lists, couldn't we add configurations where you set:
>
> For regular reply or reply-to-all: {Use top posting / Use bottom
> posting}
> For reply-to-mailing lists (ie: control-L): {use top posting / use
> bottom posting}
>
> Just a thought. :)

That's actually an interesting idea. The arguments about top/bottom
posting are less persuasive in a one-to-one exchange. On lists however
it's much more important to try to encourage community standards.

I had a brief discussion with some of the devels a while back on this
topic. I took the view that Evo encourages top-posting because it places
the cursor at the top of the reply. They responded that that wasn't
really the idea, since the poster is meant to edit the quote (removing
irrelevant material and inserting comments) and that's easier to do from
the top down. Nevertheless they did agree to include a Preference option
to place the cursor at the bottom. See "Preferences->Composer
Preferences->Start typing at the bottom when replying".

The odd thing is that the option is grayed out in 2.26.3. The even odder
thing is that I've only just noticed this! Sometimes what looks like a
great idea turns out not to be that useful in practice.

However I do like your proposal of doing this for list replies. Maybe
you should request an enhancement at http://bugzilla.gnome.org

poc