OK, this is just a random semi-rant. Over at Hawk Wings, they're doing a series of interviews with various Mac developers about their opinions on Mac OS X Mail, and I hit upon John Gruber's interview. I don't think it comes as a secret to anyone that I really love the writing that this guy does over at Daring Fireball, so I was interested in what he had to say.

I got off-topic by following the link to his Daring Fireball entry that discusses the nomenclature of Mac OS X Mail's name. (Short version: "Mail" is an awkward name because it's too generic, so people have taken to saying "mail dot app". Gruber objects to this, because the application extension is not part of the name, and he says "Apple Mail" is the logical name. I'd agree, but I just don't like the sound of it. "Mac OS X Mail" sounds better for me.) In this entry, Gruber also links to a rant about top-posting.

I've seen many people who are infuriated by the practice of top-posting. Top-posting is when you reply to an e-mail message or any other kind of forum or bulletin board message, and you place the reply to your message above the original, quoted message. And I'm very baffled by this frustration. The main reason why top-posting is frowned upon is because it disrupts the logical flow of the conversation. That is, when you read from top to bottom, the conversation goes in reverse if you top-post.

But that's the point! If there are four levels of quoting in an e-mail message, the earliest quoted message is the least important message. That's WHY it's at the bottom! The most important part of the message is at the top. I don't want to wade through an initial bunch of stuff I've already read in order to get to the message. That's stuff I already know about!

It's funny, because bottom-posting (which is supposedly the correct thing to do) must go hand in hand with another e-mail practice: e-mail trimming. Typically, when responding to e-mail messages, I'm only responding to a specific question or request. The rest of the e-mail is background filler -- stuff that I need to know, but that the sender doesn't need to know again. If you follow good netiquette practice, you trim out all this unnecessary information when you quote e-mail messages so that the original sender quickly knows to which question you're responding.

This practice is not necessary if you top-post, but it is incredibly necessary if you bottom-post. It goes back to my original point: if you don't trim your quoted e-mails and you bottom-post, then the receiver has to wade through his entire original e-mail. I hate doing that, and I know a lot of people probably hate doing that.

What I think is ironic about this is that the whole practice of quoting e-mails is superfluous. I hereby present, "iPods and Illogicalities".


iPods and Illogicalities
Act I

[At an Apple store. Simone comes in to replace his Mighty Mouse. As he's walking to the Genius Bar, he bumps into Fred.]

SIMONE: "Oh hey Fred. What's up?"

FRED: "Oh I dunno, I was thinking about getting a new iPod. You know, I really like these fifth generation iPods that support playback of video, but you know -- that screen, it's just too small! I'm having trouble deciding between whether to just splurge now and satisfy my inner desire to watch TV on the train, or to be patient and wait for an iPod that has a touchscreen and a 3.5" or 4" display. You know, it's always hard to tell whether the rumor sites are accurate, and that there is going to be a true video iPod coming out on Apple's 30th birthday, this April 1st."

SIMONE: "Hmm, that's a good question. Personally, I try not to base decisions on rumors, because then I get my hopes up and inevitably get deceived and disappointed when Apple's products finally come out."

FRED: "Yeah, that's true. I guess you're right, I'll buy the 5G iPod now. Thanks!"

SIMONE: "Sure, no problem. Now to replace this damn mouse..."


Act II

[At Stanford, in the Main Quad. Simone is eating some food from the Thai café. Fred walks up.]

SIMONE: Oh hey Fred. Remember our conversation at the Apple store the other day? Let me remind you what you said. *ahem* "Oh I dunno, I was thinking about getting a new iPod. You know, I really like these fifth generation iPods that support playback of video, but you know -- that screen, it's just too small! I'm having trouble deciding between whether..."

[Fred walks off, annoyed and bored]

SIMONE: "... to just splurge now and satisfy my inner desire to watch TV on the train, or to be patient and wait for an iPod that has a touchscreen and a 3.5" or 4" display. You know, it's always hard to tell whether the rumor sites are accurate, and that there is going to be a true video iPod coming out on Apple's 30th birthday, this April 1st." Fred? Fred? ... Where'd he go, I just finished quoting his comment in our previous conversation!

[curtain. applause. intermission.]


Act III

[At the Coffee House. Fred is getting a coffee. Simone is preparing to chew out any random employee for not serving good chai tea lattés, when he bumps into Fred.]

SIMONE: Oh, hey Fred!

FRED: Hey.

SIMONE: Regarding our conversation the other day at the Apple store about deciding between getting a 5G iPod or waiting for the 6Gs, I've had second thoughts about what I said. You know, I bought an iMac G5 two weeks before they introduced the ones with Front Row. If I hadn't been lucky enough to fall within the "upgrade protection" window, my machine would've been obsolete really quickly, and that would've sucked! Well... heh, it turned out to suck anyway because new iMacs were introduced just three months later anyway. But nevertheless, I think you should wait. It's best to get the best bang for your buck, I think.

FRED: Oh, damn you. I went ahead and bought a 5G like you said. If new 6G iPods come out April 1st, I will be breaking down your door!

SIMONE: *gulp*

[curtain. massive applause. applause fails to die. Simone and Fred come out, bow again, return behind the curtains. audience continues to applaud. Simone and Fred return to do one more bow. Exit.]


The whole point of that stretched analogy is that when you quote someone, you rarely (unless you were trying to drive the point home) ever quote someone verbatim. Why should that be any different when sending e-mails? If you really wanted to be polite, you'd remove any references to the original e-mail, and you'd weave a paraphrasing of the original message into your own message. So realistically, e-mail trimming is a bad practice in itself.

So if bottom-posters want to make a big stink about us top-posters, I have three things to say to you:

1. Put the most important things on top. I don't want to re-read what I wrote you. I already know that!
2. You're not being polite. You're just being annoying. If you really wanted to be polite, you wouldn't quote at all!
3. Seriously, it's called pressing the end key and then using the up arrow key a bit. You don't hear us top-posters getting all huffy when you bottom-post, and trust me, it's really annoying going through all the previous messages just to get to the new stuff.

It also occurs to me that there shouldn't even be an argument about this at all. When you quote a message, you simply add greater than signs to the beginning of all the lines of that message. You have multiple levels of quotation by having multiple greater than signs at the front of the lines. There is no other way of quoting of which I know, and all e-mail clients follow this rule religiously. (BTW, Mac OS X Mail uses the magic colored lines which I absolutely adore -- and again am baffled why people hate this feature -- but when it sends messages, it replaces them with greater than signs. So Mac OS X Mail follows this rule too.)

So wouldn't it be trivial to have a preference in your e-mail client as to whether messages display bottom-quoted or top-quoted? I mean, it's simple text manipulation, and it's very structured. It could reformat any incoming messages to the format you want, and it could automatically reformat outgoing messages after you've composed and sent them. The default when sending could even be bottom-posting, so that those huffy people out there will be satisfied even if they're not using an e-mail client with this feature.

Why bicker about something you can easily solve with technology?