Ambiguity through inappropriate message layout

[Francesco Peeters]

On Mon, September 18, 2006 5:08, Mark Newton said:
> If the authors of the very first mail client which supported quoting had
> made it top-post by default, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
> Or, perhaps we would, we'd just be berating those clueless fools who use
> bottom-posting MUAs like Emacs.
>
I honestly doubt that! For the majority of the world, the normal reading
direction is top to bottom, even for those that read right to left,
instead of left to right!

Even those languages that use(d) vertical orientation for text primarily
read top-bottom, even though sentences are next to eachother instead of on
top of eachother, the top-bottom approach seems to be the most universal
of written language conventions.

Why then would we think it normal to change that once we use a digital
medium like email?

Therefore I still think that the top-bottom approach would still be seen
as the most logical, even if the initial MUA's did otherwise...

I have that same problem with web based BBS's that put the most recent
entry of a thread first. (Please note I do not have an issue with putting
the most recent thread or blog entry on top, having the most recent Topic
first makes sense, but for me, a logical conversation always starts at the
beginning and finishes at the end, and not start with the end and finish
with the beginning...)

The root of this all is, IMHO, that people are just too lazy and
disinterested to change that behavior, as it is different from what their
MUA 'dictates', and thus means an effort to either manually change it, or
replace the MUA...

Just my €0,02

-- 
Francesco Peeters
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