Re: [boost] Help please with Boost Discussion Policy

Subject: Re: [boost] Help please with Boost Discussion Policy
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-01-22 18:23:43

On 22 Jan 2014 at 22:13, Fletcher, John P wrote:

> I accept this fully and I am seeking some guidance how to achieve this. 
> At my place of work our email client is Microsoft Outlook 2010 and the
> normal practice is top posting. 

Outlook 2007 onwards is actually an excellent email client producing 
very conformant output to Boost and general Usenet/mailing list rules 
once it's configured correctly. The default config is mainly for 
non-technical users.

> When I am at home I can access the same system via a web email client
> which does the same thing. 

I can't say anything about the web client as I have never used it.

> The Boost policy document reffers to Quote-Fix 
> (http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/ ) which was last
> updated in 2006 and does not work with current versions of Outlook. 

You don't need this in Outlook 2007 onwards. Outlook produces 
correctly quoted (i.e. using nested '>''s) if told to.

> Ideally what I want to do is to switch between the styles so that only
> my Boost and related work is in quoted style. 

Here's what I did while I was working for my former employer and was 
posting to this list using the corporate email client:

1. Tell Outlook to only ever show Plain Text email.

2. Tell Outlook to only ever quote using indented >'s with a wrap of 
74? Whatever it defaults to for wrapping was correct anyway.

Both of those options are buried in the menus. One of them may have 
been in default message options or something. On the ribbon in a 
compose email box, there is a button for message options which lets 
you override for that email.

When you want rich text replies, open the email into its own window 
rather than viewing it in the quick view, and hit the wee drop down 
saying the displayed format is incomplete and would you like HTML 
view. Now if you reply, if I remember right, it should reply in rich 
text rather than plain.

I never found a way to configure Outlook to use plain text only for 
some email addresses (i.e. the boost list) and rich text for 
everything else. For me it didn't matter, I simply wrote and viewed 
everything in plain text, top posting at work because no one at work 
ever read more than the top three lines of any email. No one 
complained at work with this approach.

Niall

-- 
Currently unemployed and looking for work in Ireland.
Work Portfolio: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/nialldouglas/