Although in many ways the least satisfying answer, especially for an old timer (top posting normalised, quoting/threading deprecated. HTML and other markup retained) this has the great beauty of only requiring a change in use of the existing tools, and no other changes. So in the "tractable, workable, achievable" stakes, this one has very good signs. -G (an inveterate top poster since time immemorial. much to the annoyance of many) On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 8:45 AM Christian Huitema <huitema@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Simple proposal: we should move our culture to top-posting. No tool > needed. Don't worry too much bout text/plain versus text/html. > > I think that this thread clearly exposed the problem. Many IETF > participants follow a long established practice of commenting on email > by editing the message and inserting their comments inline with the > text. That practice does not align with the fraction of the participants > who prefer top posting. It also does not align with existing MUA that > follow a variety of conventions for inserting comments inline comments > in response, to the point that after a few replies it becomes very hard > to understand who exactly made what argument. > > As I mentioned in a previous mail, the IETF could in theory enforce that > mail would be sent in text/plain, but this is not realistic, as many > participants either are accustomed to always use HTML or do not have a > choice. Besides, even a return to plain text would not solve the > confusion between inline commenting and top posting, or the formatting > mess caused by different inline conventions of different MUA. > > Moving to top-posting only would solve these issues. It will be a bit > less easy for some commenters, who would have to explicitly copy and > paste the fragments of message to which they reply, but it would > definitely solve the top-posting vs. inline comment issue. It would also > solve the issue with formatting of inline comments, because each "top" > message would stand on its own, and presumably be presented exactly as > its sender intended. > > If participants chooses to write in text/plain, their messages would be > presented accordingly, and if other participants chose text/html, this > would mostly work too. The only ambiguity would be multipart messages > with different content in text/plain and text/html -- but here too, the > solution is probably in the culture. > > -- Christian Huitema > > > > On 8/21/2023 2:51 PM, John R Levine wrote: > >>> It appears that Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said: > >> SMTP email is not the only messaging format in use and it has been > >> gradually losing market share. > > > > I suppose, although people have been predicting the death of e-amil for > > decades and it's still the only messaging system we have that actually > > interoperates. > > > >> Person to person communication is no longer limited to email, there is > >> instant messaging, chat, voice and video all growing in popularity. > >> The EU > >> has decided those infrastructures are going to interoperate no matter > >> what > >> the execs of certain trillion dollar enterprises would like to happen. > >> And > >> they certainly have widespread popular support for that. > > > > Yup. I suppose it would be nice to send messages from Whatsapp to > > iMessage but we all know how hard it is to do that without letting > > everyone in the middle read it. > > > >> So it is a matter of when, not if a mail format is added to those other > >> messaging formats once interop is achieved. > > > > But mail achieved interop forty years ago. It may have its problems, > > but that's not one of them. > > > > Regards, > > John Levine, johnl@xxxxxxxxx, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY > > Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly > > >
