Yeah, I think it's a cool idea, if not immediately practical as presented.
I see it as being more interesting as "what something like LiveJournal could do" than as "what an email client could do." (Listening, brad?) The first problem is message length - it looks like it'll work best for short messages. Some conversations have individual messages that run for several pages worth of text, which would be much clunkier under that system, or at least it seems like it'd be.
That's already the case with things like LJ, so we know what that looks like... It's a little awkward, but not unbearable. Also, most emails are short, right? rather than the (increasingly standard) reply up top and quote at the bottom.
> > > > Because it messes up the order in which people > > > > normally read text. > > > Why is top-posting such a bad thing? > > Yes. > Is top-posting bad? what happens when you have someone quoting multiple people along the chain in a single email?
True, but "normal" threading systems also don't have any sensible facility for dealing with
( ... )
Oh, trust me, I'm well aware of all of the problems with top-posting. I've given up on trying to convert people, though, too much of the business world have become top-posters by default and when I've tried internal replies, half the time they've been confused and missed some of the replies. I use internal quoting when replying to "real people" who can actually follow it and use top-posting in business correspondence and everyone is more or less happy.
True, but "normal" threading systems also don't have any sensible facility for dealing with that. The References header is an ordered list of ancestors, one parent.
Just because old systems don't handle them well doesn't mean new ones shouldn't attempt to. :) Also, older systems don't try to auto-prune and condense messages; quoting multiple people would absolutely wreak havoc with their system. If it didn't condense the messages like that, it'd be less of an issue.
I hate LJ's threading. On my wishlist is giving people a way to change it between different formats.
The limiting factor with the web is you ideally want the client to be able to dynamically change things around, jump between places, without doing more HTTP requests, and you don't want to make all comments downloaded in every HTTP request... and you can't depend on javascript... and HTML (even with DOM) is very limiting.... just all a pain in the ass.
I think a better plan might be to make a XUL app or something, distribute an "LJ Browser" app using open protocols, and make LJ support that.
I think I just need to give access to comment data and let people start being creative.
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I see it as being more interesting as "what something like LiveJournal could do" than as "what an email client could do." (Listening, brad?)
The first problem is message length - it looks like it'll work best for short messages. Some conversations have individual messages that run for several pages worth of text, which would be much clunkier under that system, or at least it seems like it'd be.
That's already the case with things like LJ, so we know what that looks like... It's a little awkward, but not unbearable. Also, most emails are short, right?
rather than the (increasingly standard) reply up top and quote at the bottom.
> > > > Because it messes up the order in which people
> > > > normally read text.
> > > Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> > Yes.
> Is top-posting bad? what happens when you have someone quoting multiple people along the chain in a single email?
True, but "normal" threading systems also don't have any sensible facility for dealing with ( ... )
Reply
Oh, trust me, I'm well aware of all of the problems with top-posting. I've given up on trying to convert people, though, too much of the business world have become top-posters by default and when I've tried internal replies, half the time they've been confused and missed some of the replies. I use internal quoting when replying to "real people" who can actually follow it and use top-posting in business correspondence and everyone is more or less happy.
True, but "normal" threading systems also don't have any sensible facility for dealing with that. The References header is an ordered list of ancestors, one parent.
Just because old systems don't handle them well doesn't mean new ones shouldn't attempt to. :) Also, older systems don't try to auto-prune and condense messages; quoting multiple people would absolutely wreak havoc with their system. If it didn't condense the messages like that, it'd be less of an issue.
Reply
Reply
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The limiting factor with the web is you ideally want the client to be able to dynamically change things around, jump between places, without doing more HTTP requests, and you don't want to make all comments downloaded in every HTTP request... and you can't depend on javascript... and HTML (even with DOM) is very limiting.... just all a pain in the ass.
I think a better plan might be to make a XUL app or something, distribute an "LJ Browser" app using open protocols, and make LJ support that.
I think I just need to give access to comment data and let people start being creative.
Reply
Yes please already.
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