General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts

----- Original Message ----- ----- Reply: Sorry that you also missed the irony; I thought it was obvious that I'd probably fall off my chair if you ever agreed with one of my posts ... I was explicitly replying to (and specifically quoting) Fred's post including the use of colour in the email no-nos like yodelling jellyfish etc., and I think that your screenshot actually does make my point (no doubt unintentionally) that colour can be useful (as opposed to the jellyfish). That Mouse and you obviously chose to ignore the explicit (con)text of my post and instead "*read into*" my post that "the colour in question was *supposed to be* encoded into the on-the-wire form of the email" (*s mine) prompted my ironic, "glad you agree". If I receive an email appropriately and tastefully using colour and/or HTML then I prefer it to the limitations of chevrons, plain-text-only, etc.; if it mattered enough to me to justify installing a reader and/or plugin to convert plain incoming mail then I would. But I don't tell anyone how they are "supposed to" format their email; I'm much more interested in the content than whatever format they chose or had to use. If there's an issue that they may be unaware of I'll ask; otherwise if it matters I'll do what's required at my end in order to read it. Conversely, although I bristle a bit at people telling me how I'm *supposed to* format *my* email and with whatever favourite client of theirs I should replace my obviously defective one, I generally go along with whatever prevailing standards are on mail lists like this one, even when I don't agree with them as in the case of the top-posting 'standard'. And yes, I will occasionally register a vote in support of letting people post however they prefer or have to, without chastising them whenever they top-post (especially when they didn't). With clients that hide the quoted text by default why does it even matter? m