[OS X TeX] New Macros, new Engines, new TeXShop versions, and all that

[Alain Schremmer]

On Feb 21, 2010, at 7:36 PM, Claus Gerhardt wrote:

> P.S.: I happen to dislike scrolling to the bottom of a message  
> before I can read the new text though it would never occur to me to  
> ask others to top-post their messages.
>
> On Feb 22, 2010, at 0:58, Alan Munn wrote:
>>
>> P.S.  Could those of you replying to things in this thread please  
>> not top-post.  It really does make following the conversation  
>> harder.  (Top posting is adding your comments on top of all the  
>> quoted material, rather than adding them in the appropriate parts  
>> of the commented material.)  Thanks.

I have been sitting for a couple of days on the issue raised by the  
above because I wanted to make up my own mind about it. Here, for  
what it is worth, is the result of my cogitations.

1) Suppose I want to expound a thesis and that, hopefully after  
having thought about it, I boil things down to three arguments A. B,  
C. There are then two kinds of responses:

a)  What you may call the "analytic" kind of response in which you  
want to beat down each one of my arguments separately and which is  
therefore wrapped along my own organization and from my own reduction  
of the issue to A, B, C.

b) What you may call the "synthetic" kind of response in which, in  
the old-fashioned epistolary spirit, you can beat down my thesis from  
you own viewpoint in which you have boiled down to three arguments P,  
Q, R, alluding or referring to my own argument by use of quotes or  
footnotes. (And there is a lot to say in favor of this format.)

2) Bottom posting does have its drawback.

a) For instance, it presupposes that the original post was perfectly  
organized for the purpose. Very often, on an other list in which I  
"debate" quite a bit, I find very often that after having refuted  
Sentence n, the refutation to my own response occurs in Sentence n+1.  
Even if this due to the fact that Sentence n should have be phrased  
differently, that is the way it is and it is not always simple to  
refute both Sentence n and n+1 after Sentence n+1.

b) Another situation is one in which the argument being made and  
which I want to demolish is in three steps, Sentence i, Sentence ii,  
Sentence iii. Sentence i by itself does not address the issue so I  
interrupt and say so. Sentence ii does not address the issue so I  
interrupt again and say so. But sentence iii now weaves the points  
made in Sentences i and ii and crushes me. In military terms, this is  
called a pincer movement. Were the interruptions worthwhile or even  
warranted?

(Please note---this might be a bit OT though---that I do not condone  
the peculiar American habit which consists, when asking a question  
from the floor, to preface it with what sometimes amounts to a  
wholesale presentation of one's entire lifework and I wish there were  
a way to say, as politely as possible "Avocat, passez au déluge"  
which. for those Franco-allergic, roughly translates to "Could you  
please get the hell to the point?")

3) And then, there are those who, indeed, are allergic to a format.  
For instance, my wife, a retired analyst on the border of  
differential geometry, is severely allergic to bottom posting.

My conclusion: I would wish for a bit of forbearance for the  
following reasons:

--- Even if the majority of the people on the list prefer bottom  
posting, I really do not see on what ground we can force the minority  
of the people who prefer top posting to adhere to our preference. To  
begin with, no one is forced to read any message .

--- From a more selfish viewpoint, particularly in the case of people  
whose contributions I value a lot and which I would hate missing  
should the authors get "pissed-off", I would rather they not be. (The  
term is the exactly apt term which the Oxford American Dictionary  
categorizes as "vulgar slang" and which I thus hope is still  
acceptable on this list. If wrong, I duly apologize.)

Regards
--schremmer

P.S. In fact, given that:

	i. My response does not depend at all on exactly what Munn and  
Gerhard wrote and is just about the single issue the two of them  
raised in my mind,
	ii. Bottom posting could be construed as misleading in that it would  
lead the reader to think that I was going to respond to Gerhard's  
particular choice of arguments against Munn,
	iii. Bottom posting my response directly as a response to Munn's  
P.S. would not have corresponded to the symmetry I see in the two views,
	iv. A new thread would probably have been OT,

top-posting would seem to have been by far the better way. Would it  
have been really unbearable had my response been in the top posting  
form below the line?

========== Top posting form of the above =========

I have been sitting for a couple of days on the issue raised by Munn  
in response to Gerhard (*) about what the proper kind of posting is  
desirable on this list  because I wanted to make up my own mind about  
it. Here, for what it is worth, is the result of my cogitations.

Etc

(*)

> On Feb 21, 2010, at 7:36 PM, Claus Gerhardt wrote
>
> P.S.: I happen to dislike scrolling to the bottom of a message  
> before I can read the new text though it would never occur to me to  
> ask others to top-post their messages.
>
>> On Feb 22, 2010, at 0:58, Alan Munn wrote:
>>
>> P.S.  Could those of you replying to things in this thread please  
>> not top-post.  It really does make following the conversation  
>> harder.  (Top posting is adding your comments on top of all the  
>> quoted material, rather than adding them in the appropriate parts  
>> of the commented material.)  Thanks.