Good grief David, you could make some money publishing an e-book on this
subject.  I'd pay at least $5 for it!  I can envision one of those 20 page
promotional Websites with all the highlighting and calls to action . . .

Stuart
Stuck in the mud with Outlook

-----Original Message-----

Subject: Re: Trimming replies on iPhones

At 10:01 AM 3/6/2013, JRodgers wrote:
>I use Gmail as my primary mail server - but I also have Mozilla
>Thunderbird on my computer as my e-mail client software. With it I can
>download my e-mail from Gmail, redirect it into folders by subject, and
>then reply in the manner in which you describe - in the message of
>interest just select the text of interest and click reply. Only the
>selected text will be forwarded from the old message in the new message
>with the new text.

Yes, that's Thunderbird doing it.  You're using gmail the way I do, as a set
of servers to talk to remotely.  We get our choice of MUA/mail user
agent/email client software to do the dirty work and would prefer that gmail
stick to simply providing incoming and outgoing servers and be as little
helpful as possible.  As a certified ancient flatulator, I've been using
Eudora since it were a pup, and with two hundred or so filters set up I
haven't got any great motive to change, though I hear it's considered very
old-fashioned these days.  Eudora has worked that way for as long as I can
now remember.

However most folks use gmail by way of a web page which pretends to be an
MUA, and it's very helpful indeed.  As of this week, when you reply to a
message using that web page, gmail quotes the entire message you're replying
to, vanishes the quoted text under an ellipsis at the bottom left of the
composing window, and leaves you with an apparently blank window with a
cursor ready for your input above the invisible quoted text.  To do any
trimming, or to bottom post, you have to click on the pale-shaded "..." at
which point everything springs up in fully quoted glory and you can actually
get to work.  Highlighting text ahead of time is just a waste of electrons.

Yrs,
d