Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Adam Sjøgren]

  Hi,


Has anyone written a function to convert (wash?) an email with
(potentially many layers of) TOFU?


What would it do? Convert something like:

    Attribution A
    > A
    > A
    > A.signature
    > Attribution B
    >> B
    >> B
    >> B.signature
    >> Attribution C
    >>> C
    >>> C
    >>> C.signature
    >>> Attribution D
    >>>> D
    >>>> D
    >>>> D.signature

to:

    Attribution A

    >>> Attribution D
    >>>> D
    >>>> D

    >> Attribution C
    >>> C
    >>> C
    >>> C

    > Attribution B
    >> B
    >> B

    > A
    > A

Further editing would of course be needed to make sense of it, but I
think something that did that transformation automatically would make it
much easier (translating into much more likely) to do so.


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "I carry it over my shoulder like a lance                    Adam Sjøgren
  A pole with a banner sayin'; T-To-Tolerance!!"         asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Eric S Fraga]

On Saturday, 29 Dec 2018 at 20:36, Adam Sjøgren wrote:
>   Hi,
>
> Has anyone written a function to convert (wash?) an email with
> (potentially many layers of) TOFU?

I cannot help, unfortunately, but I also would love to see something
that could do this.  Trying to read (& reply to) emails from work
colleagues which consist of a thread of top-posted answers is a
nightmare.
-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.14 on Debian buster/sid

Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Adam Sjøgren]

Eric writes:

> On Saturday, 29 Dec 2018 at 20:36, Adam Sjøgren wrote:

> I cannot help, unfortunately, but I also would love to see something
> that could do this.  Trying to read (& reply to) emails from work
> colleagues which consist of a thread of top-posted answers is a
> nightmare.

Yes, exactly! I'm making a new years resolution to not TOFU, even under
email-ignorant colleague pressure.

Doing the transformation does seem to be error-prone and fiddly,
especially when HTML-emails come into play.


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "I mean, what a disappointing 21st century this has          Adam Sjøgren
  been so far, you know?"                                asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Alexandre Garreau]

Why not just removing quotations when they are followed by 
nothing?

People doing top-posting usually don’t really dare removing 
unrelevant excerpts from mails they’re answering to.  I began to 
think the good thing so far would be to stop having common bad 
mail software put quotation of answered mails by default.  So why 
not just doing on our, receiver, side, what they should anyway do 
on the emitter side: remove it?

Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Adam Sjøgren]

Usually people actually reply to a subset of the quoted text, I think.

-- 
 "I mean, what a disappointing 21st century this has          Adam Sjøgren
  been so far, you know?"                                asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Adam Sjøgren]

Also, the excuse I usually hear for doing fullquotes is "then the
conversation can be forwarded to someone easily, including the context".

If you actually quote the relevant parts, that excuse is moot.


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "Kom nu jag är kroniskt låg                                  Adam Sjøgren
  Bara mörkret hörs"                                     asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Eric S Fraga]

On Thursday,  3 Jan 2019 at 06:38, Adam Sjøgren wrote:
> Also, the excuse I usually hear for doing fullquotes is "then the
> conversation can be forwarded to someone easily, including the
> context".

A lazy excuse that has also been used on me.  I do wonder if anybody
that uses this excuse has ever actually tried to read a conversation
consisting of top posted messages?  It's an up&down back&forth scrolling
nightmare.

I will not and do not top post.  I extract whatever is necessary and
reply below.  One of my colleagues complained to me that my emails
didn't have sufficient context.  Turns out he didn't know he would show
threads in his MUA...

Happy new year to all!

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.14 on Debian buster/sid

Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Adam Sjøgren]

Eric writes:

> On Thursday,  3 Jan 2019 at 06:38, Adam Sjøgren wrote:

>> Also, the excuse I usually hear for doing fullquotes is "then the
>> conversation can be forwarded to someone easily, including the
>> context".
>
> A lazy excuse that has also been used on me.  I do wonder if anybody
> that uses this excuse has ever actually tried to read a conversation
> consisting of top posted messages?  It's an up&down back&forth scrolling
> nightmare.

If everybody does TOFU, you just read from the bottom to the top.

I think the valid point they have is that you can only get the entire
history if the person who forwards the emails has been in on the
conversation from the beginning, and that person has to forward all the
emails, not just the latest.

That will still be fixed by quoting, trimming and answering below - but
not by skipping quotes altogether.

I really like Tom Lanes explanation:

  "It's about having minimal courtesy to your readers by not forcing
   them to re-read stuff they just read."

    - https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/18450.1518845005%40sss.pgh.pa.us

> I will not and do not top post.  I extract whatever is necessary and
> reply below.  One of my colleagues complained to me that my emails
> didn't have sufficient context.  Turns out he didn't know he would show
> threads in his MUA...

I've had people think I forgot to write anything, because they could not
see my reply before the quoted text.


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "If you don't run, you rust."                                Adam Sjøgren
                                                         asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Brent Busby]

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Adam Sjøgren <asjo@koldfront.dk> writes:

> I've had people think I forgot to write anything, because they could not
> see my reply before the quoted text.

This happens to me constantly also.  And that really is the problem --
not the debate about whether traditional quoting is functional or not,
but the user astonishment when they see it for the first time.  They
think it's you who does not know who to use email, and yes, one common
form of that is to think that you sent them an empty reply.  Even
trimming the message down to only the relevant parts makes them think
you're some kind of screwball.

It doesn't help that aside from Thunderbird, there do not seem to be any
commonly used GUI mailreaders that even allow you to traditional quote
without doing a lot of hand-editing, and even Thunderbird doesn't do it
by default.  It's become almost entirely something people using terminal
based mailreaders like Gnus, Alpine, Mutt, etc. do, because only they
have software that gives you much of a choice about it.  What are we
supposed to tell the vast masses of people that will only use a large
GUI mailreader?  You must use Thunderbird (with a non-default reply
quotes setting), because it's the law?

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ Sr. UNIX Systems Admin +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ James Franck Institute +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ Materials Research Ctr +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky

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Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Eric S Fraga]

On Thursday,  3 Jan 2019 at 14:19, Adam Sjøgren wrote:
> Eric writes:
>> A lazy excuse that has also been used on me.  I do wonder if anybody
>> that uses this excuse has ever actually tried to read a conversation
>> consisting of top posted messages?  It's an up&down back&forth scrolling
>> nightmare.
>
> If everybody does TOFU, you just read from the bottom to the top.

Yes except that if any previous email is longer than a screen's worth,
you page up to find start of that message, page down to read, then page
up to find start of next message, etc. ad nauseum.

> I think the valid point they have is that you can only get the entire
> history if the person who forwards the emails has been in on the
> conversation from the beginning, and that person has to forward all the
> emails, not just the latest.

That's just an excuse for a possible shortcoming in whatever MUA is
being used as you should be able to mark all desired emails and send
these on as a bundle.

Anyway, on this list, we're all pretty much on the same page...  Hope
somebody gets motivated enough to write some elisp to create a TOFU
specific washing function!

And I liked the quote you gave.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.14 on Debian buster/sid

Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Eric S Fraga]

On Thursday,  3 Jan 2019 at 07:42, Brent Busby wrote:
> What are we supposed to tell the vast masses of people that will only
> use a large GUI mailreader?  

I don't tell them anything as I understand why it happens.  I stopped
tilting at windmills many years ago now. :-)

However, I do continue answering my old-skool way.  I do make sure that
I only quote the minimum amount necessary so that they should always see
my response below whatever material I have quoted.  Only one colleague
has ever commented on the format of my emails (same colleague that was
not aware that you could thread email conversations in the GUI).

But having gnus make reading those tofu emails easier would be very
welcome.
-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.14 on Debian buster/sid

Re: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable

[Adam Sjøgren]

Eric writes:

> That's just an excuse for a possible shortcoming in whatever MUA is
> being used as you should be able to mark all desired emails and send
> these on as a bundle.

Not if the person who wants to forward them was not included in the
entire previous discussion.

However, I agree wholeheartedly with you, we are all preaching to the
choir here:

> Anyway, on this list, we're all pretty much on the same page...  Hope
> somebody gets motivated enough to write some elisp to create a TOFU
> specific washing function!


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "Tabloidtidningen representerar för mig ytterligare          Adam Sjøgren
  ett område av tillvaron som har lidit                  asjo@koldfront.dk
  snuttifieringsdöden."

[gnus-article-outlook-deuglify-article] (was: Converting TOFU into something less unreasonable)

[Uwe Brauer]

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>>> "Adam" == Adam Sjøgren <asjo@koldfront.dk> writes:

>   Hi,
> Has anyone written a function to convert (wash?) an email with
> (potentially many layers of) TOFU?


gnus-article-outlook-deuglify-article
does something of that sort, but not completely I am afraid

Uwe Brauer 

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Re: [gnus-article-outlook-deuglify-article]

[Adam Sjøgren]

Uwe writes:

>>>> "Adam" == Adam Sjøgren <asjo@koldfront.dk> writes:

>> Has anyone written a function to convert (wash?) an email with
>> (potentially many layers of) TOFU?
>
> gnus-article-outlook-deuglify-article
> does something of that sort, but not completely I am afraid

Yeah, the "many layers" was the important part - I shouldn't have buried
in a parenthesis.


  :-),

   Adam

-- 
 "Vegetarian progressive grindcore"                           Adam Sjøgren
                                                         asjo@koldfront.dk