[FFML] A thought on the future of the FFML

[Adrian Tymes]

On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 8:30 AM, The Wanderer <wanderer at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> The quoting styles which are appropriate in a context where more than
> one post is visible at once (such as is done on probably the vast
> majority of Web forums) are not appropriate in a context where only one
> post is visible at once (such as happens in E-mail), and vice versa.


I'm seeing this entire thread in one page.  It does not change
the appropriate quoting style.


> Since we can't make E-mail be a "more than one post visible at a time"
> context, because the way E-mail is presented depends entirely on the
> user's mail-reader and its configuration, the only way to keep them
> compatible that I see is to make the hypothetical Web forum be an "only
> one post visible at a time" context.


If the email presentation style depends on the user's client,
that would be an argument for making the Web forum have
a user account setting to display one post per page or to
display all the posts in one page - again, so that the
presentation can be just like in email.


> While I would certainly prefer for the chosen requirements to be either
> plain text or something easily convertible to/from plain text (and that
> can be discussed separately, though I'm not going to do it right this
> moment), that's not essential for the type of dual-interface
> compatibility that was being proposed; having the requirements be the
> same in both interfaces *is* essential.


The standard for email continues to be plain text in many
cases, does it not?  Sure, there are an increasing number
of HTML-friendly email clients, but is it a large enough
percent that we can safely abandon the text-only (and
HTML-badly-enough-implemented-that-it-might-as-well-be
text-only) readers?
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