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Confusious (John Esak) say:
> This message is even more scattered than the first one... Does anyone know
> what is adding the "extra lines" everywhere?

Certain mail clients (at least one version of Outlook based on known
MS-house clients I have, also Hotmail) doublespace the blank line between
paragraphs.  I -detest- this bug/feature and have no clue how it gets past
QA at Microsoft.  And it's an exponential problem, as any blank lines are
doubled originally, then the doubles are doubled, then the resultant quads
are doubled, etc., to infinity.  Usually only purists like me will kill the
additional blank lines while replying, but I'm sick as all hell of having
to do the extra work.

Additionally, the line drawing crap was line-wrapped by someone in the
thread, which expanded the line count further still.  Worse, it was
originally included as high-end cp437 graphics characters, which iso-8859-1
readers and emulators really don't like.

Then there's the complete lack of snippage by at least one party in the
thread, if not more.  Ken Brody is the only person in the thread that I
remember trimming decently, offhand.

It all adds up.

> Doesn't it bother all of you on the whole? To have to peruse hundreds and
> hundreds of lines you've already read just to see if anything has been
> *inserted* somewhere?

Immensely so when it's interspersed half-assedly.  But I've given up
complaining because nobody bloody listens, opting to continue doing
it their way, or worse--flaunting decorum like Wayne Smith does in a
juvenile, snide fashion at every turn.  (If I had my way, he'd be banned
permanently--and if he ever pisses Bill off once and for all, he's
completely screwed, cos I sure won't defend Smitty after all his BS and
abuse; I'll be handing Bill nails at the crucifiction, with a smile on my
face and a song in my heart.)

It's a little less frustrating for me than for you because I'm not tied to
JAWS or similar, so usually a glance is ok per screen (or pipe to less and
inverse search on the quote character) to find non-quoted lines--IF the
person is using quote characters.  Posts like Richard's (sorry Richard,
it's the truth) are a bloody nightmare to follow after three exchanges
though.  Even fully sighted, I have to multi-pass many times to find the
new signal in the quoted noise.  No quote characters, interspersing usually
at the end but sometimes seemingly random.  Nightmare.

> I belong to many other forums, many... Not one of them does this. They
> are all professional, thinking people, and they manage to communicate
> their responses without interspersing them with the original.

Guilty as charged on that one, I am.  Interspersed is how I learned email
ettiquette and form.  It used to be the norm before GUI clients took over
the market.  GUI editors aren't good at line insertion/deletion to the
degree of convenience that vi or emacs are, and top/bottom-posting really
took off then, I feel.

But I have made efforts to top-post for you before.  Good example though,
in this one, I'm replying conversationally, not providing technical data.
My reply would need to be not just reformatted but rewritten grammatically
to make sense without quoted context in this case--or I'd have to parrot
your questions anyway, thus defeating the purpose.  So in some cases it
still makes sense to intersperse even when I'd like to top-post.

But interspersing can be done well, with big trimming, clear quote
characters, etc.--or it can be done completely hellishly.  Not all
interspersing is equally offensive, IMNSHO.

mark->