General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts

In context, I think that was a disagreement. It was not explicit in the text, but I think the context was sufficiently compelling that it's fair to read into the "clarity of..different colours" text above that the colour in question was supposed to be encoded into the on-the-wire form of the email. And, based on that reading, and on the way the screenshot in question shows a coloured display of quotes from a list message that most certainly did not have anything like colours in the on-the-list form of the message, that the reply was pointing out that coloured display of quoted text can be provided as a user-interface option without needing to affect the encoded-for-transport representation of the message at all. This then means that the "I prefer colours" argument has little-to-no relevance to a discussion of how to format quotes in messages - and, indeed, is an argument in favour of standard >-marked quoting, because it lends itself particularly well to such automated treatment (including other forms of display for those who would rather have something other than colours). This is not to say that >-style quoting needs to be what the mail-sending user sees, of course. Just that it needs to be what's put on the wire. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B