Klarinet Archive - Posting 000408.txt from 1998/12

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] good posting
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 13:53:30 -0500

On Tue, 8 Dec 1998 10:16:30 EST, LeliaLoban@-----.com said:

[snip]

> I prefer to compose mail in my word processor anyway, because it's got
> much better editing tools, and because I can read and write off-line
> instead of tying up the phone.

I don't know how people manage to post online. I find that I need to
keep revisiting what I want to write. And because local calls aren't
free here, that's too expensive, quite apart from tying up the phone.

One thing that I find very useful is that I have a text editor, Zap,
with an email mode, as you can see in the header. This is clever, and
reformats other peoples post to my default width whilst retaining the
quote structure. So, for example, if the two paragraphs above were
heavily quoted, too wide and messy, as in:

> > > > I prefer to compose mail in my word processor anyway, because it's go
t
> > > > much better editing tools, and because I can read and write off-line
> > > > instead of tying up the phone.
> > >
> > > I don't know how people manage to post online. I find that I need to
> > > keep revisiting what I want to write. And because local calls aren't
> > > free here, that's too expensive, quite apart from tying up the
> > > phone.

...then I just do Control F6 twice at the beginning, and it soon turns
into:

> > > > I prefer to compose mail in my word processor anyway, because
> > > > it's got much better editing tools, and because I can read and
> > > > write off-line instead of tying up the phone.
> > >
> > > I don't know how people manage to post online. I find that I need
> > > to keep revisiting what I want to write. And because local calls
> > > aren't free here, that's too expensive, quite apart from tying up
> > > the phone.

...which is reformatted to my default width of 72 characters. It
reformats nicely if I want to interrupt it too:

> > > > I prefer to compose mail in my word processor anyway, because
> > > > it's got much better editing tools,

Yay, right!

> > > > and because I can read and write off-line instead of tying up
> > > > the phone.

Zap is freeware, but only on Acorn RISC OS, which is a nonstandard
operating system (incidentally the one for which Sibelius was originally
written), but I'm sure there must be something similar for the Mac and
for Windows.

Anyone?

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE
tel/fax 01865 553339

"Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot."

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