Subject Re: Delete (all) in a form From Mervyn Bick <invalid@invalid.invald> Date Thu, 16 Aug 2018 15:48:18 +0200 Newsgroups dbase.getting-started On 2018-08-16 9:56 AM, Andy Taylor wrote: > That may be the convention but it really gets my goat. :-) > If I'm reading a reply I want to see that reply first rather than having to wade through stuff that I've already read before. One man's meat ..... :-) If one can play multiple Chess games blindfolded one can perhaps keep all the different threads separate in one's mind.  I can't. :-(  And "thread drift" often means the message heading has no relevance to the point being discussed anyway.  (This message serves as an example. :-) ) It helps me if I can have a quick review of what the message is going to cover before I read the reply.  The key here is "quick review".  To put it in plain English, having to page down umpteen pages of a previous message (which may include quotes from several earlier messages and code from attached programs) to read a couple of lines at the bottom pisses me off. How much trouble can it be to delete all the extraneous guff and only leave the part one is going to comment on?  If one is commenting on more than one point in a message intersperse the replies in the quoted message after each point.  Again, delete quoted text which is not relevant to the reply. Back in the days when Alan Katz owned dBASE he had a set of rules which didn't permit excessive quoting, off-topic comments or even levity in the newsgroups. This message would have brought him down on me like a ton of bricks.  The present day powers-that-be have a far more "laid back" attitude in that there seem to be no rules at all.  :-) Mervyn.