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EMAIL ?s for screen readability and JFW

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From: Holly Marie
Date: Oct 7, 2001 10:55PM

Hi,
A question I have is on email readability and replies.
which is preferred, and i have been reading quite a few topics on this
out on the Internet and also in the archives at the W3C WAI.

A couple of issues.
Where will the trimmed quoted reply go, or best go for blind email
readers
Top ? or
Bottom ?
In some cases it makes logical sense to put what is being replied to at
the top of the email, yet in other instances if it is one item and there
is a running thread on this topic it may make better sense to go at the
end. I wonder what the preference of the majority is on this issue and
trying to think of how this makes best sense to me, and in many cases it
would seem to be better at the top and not the bottom?
Also when a message is complicated there may be times where the reply
parts and answers need to be broken up individually, which is the best
way to outmark these quoted areas?
The WAI forum messages suggest a few ways and that we do it a bit
differently than default mail programs do, and insert some sort of
punctuation mark or bracket mention the initials of the quoted person
reply only at the beginning of each quoted chunk and not each line and
then make sure to end the quoted chunk when done. There was even a
message that showed a situation similar to below:
they even suggested a format of such
[pb quote]
things that paul bohman may have said in a previous message and this
line goes on and wraps to another but notice there is no mark until it
comes to the end and then it is
[end pb quote]
[my responce]
what I have to say about this particular quoted area, blah blah
[end my response]
[more pb quote]
another item that needs addressing in the paul message might go here
[end pb quote]
[my response]
more ideas on this partcular thing that paul bohman said goes in this
spot
[end my response]

I visited a JFW yahoogroups list - The Jaws for Windows Mailing list
[URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jfwlist/message/25467 ]
and found the following link mentioned in the archives re mail and
replying and how to do mail for groups or a list serve...
For JFW I found this link of message rules and below are their ideas on
reply and quoting replies
http://www.wdev.net/oldjfw/rules.txt
<Quoted text>
4. Quoting replies part 1.
When replying to a message you should trim the original message down as
much as possible without losing enough information to allow other list
members to understand what's happening.
I've had a few people ask about this rule. The reason is more about
taking load off the listserver. The smaller the message, the faster the
listserver will process it.
5. Quoting replies part 2
When replying to messages, place your response at the top of the
message.
I know in some cases its easier to mix your responses in with the
original
message. In those cases, indicate that this is what you are doing.
<END quoted text>
holly
ps
there is a home page for Jaws for Windows links of interest including
FAQs, scripts, and other resources found here. Might be useful -
http://www.wdev.net/oldjfw/


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