Newsreader citation interface

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Russell B <bigfunchy@databasix.com> writes:
> There is nothing repressive about those rules; they only exist to
> protect all users from a collective action problem, namely that of
> individual users who are tempted to do things--like leaving whitespace
> before the quote marker, or posting responses above the quoted text
> ("top-posting")--that would disrupt the flow of the discussion and
> cause unexpected behavior in standard newsreaders.

I'd think that about 80% of the problem is automatic insertion of entire
quoted posts by the newsreader software during a followup, and many
users being too lazy/clueless to delete it.  Right?

I've often wondered if there's a better user interface for citing the
replied-to post, which would make "proper" citation so easy that
everybody would do it without thinking.

For instance, consider the following:

  * You always start out with an empty body, no quoted text is ever
    inserted.

  * You have some key bound to `insert-next-cited-line', which keeps
    track of the last cited line you inserted.  The first time you use
    this key, it inserts the ".... wrote:" line, and the first quoted
    text line, and each subsequent press inserts one more line, and
    increments the `next-to-be-inserted' line number.

    You can repeat this key to quickly insert regions of quoted text.

  * You have another key bound to `uninsert-last-cited-line' which just
    undoes the effect of "insert-next-cited-line":  it deletes the last
    inserted line, and decrements the `next-to-be-inserted' line number,
    so that you can reinsert that line later (presumably after you've
    typed some text in between).

  * There's a final key bound to `shift-last-cited-line', which deletes
    the last inserted line of quoted text, and then does
    `insert-next-cited-line'.

    This key is for when you want to skip parts of the message that
    shouldn't be inserted.

I'm not sure how this sort of interface would be in practice, but it
sounds very convenient to "scan out" regions of quoted text and be able
to insert your answers in between.  [Unfortunately I suppose any
interface using actual key bindings is unacceptable to a large portion
of the populace... sigh.]

-Miles
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