[X Newbies] Mac Mail Question

[Vincent Cayenne]

At 9:00p -0400 2003.06.18, Florin Alexander Neumann wrote:
>>Fortunately cricket's reading of plain fact is as on point as your 
>>re-interpretation is not. The statement advanced was:
>>>On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, at 8:23 PM, TheMacintoshLady wrote:
>>>>Um hello?? View as link, view as file.
>>
>>...to which cricket responded:
>>At 8:02a -0700 2003.06.18, cricket wrote:
>>>We're talking about Mail, the built-in Mail application for Mac OS 
>>>X. There is no such preference.
>>
>>...which is absolutely correct. The preference you refer to is NOT 
>>"View as link, view as file" by any syntactical, semantic or 
>>comprehensive contortion.
>
>(Why "fortunately"? Did you have money riding on this?)

Fortunately for the elucidation of others who are better served by 
correct information than by completely erroneous offerings.

>  I'm not a great one for post-modernist claptrap

I'm sure I have no idea how to go about the post-modern part. I'm 
barely up to looking forward to my views being regarded as 
antediluvian. I _can_ do claptrap but unlike some I'm not sure that I 
can grace it with cultural adjectives. I only do plain claptrap.

>, and, anyway, I'm not sure this is the place for semantic analyses 
>-- or even semiotic ones, however interesting and revealing they 
>might be. But -- given that we are all subject to making mistakes -- 
>this might be the place for a little courtesy and common sense.

And calling an erroneous statement just that without adding any 
subjective analysis of the misstatement, without bringing out any 
evidence of similar utterances, without making out as though one were 
party to the development of the application - that seems as though 
reasonable courtesy and common sense was proffered. A simple "that's 
wrong" sufficed. To do more obviously required some discernment of 
just how the incorrect conclusion was derived.  It was really in 
question whether that erroneous statement was even referring to 
Apple's Mail.app. Sometimes its hard to backtrack a completely 
incorrect statement to where it left the tracks.

>  So TheMacintoshLady made a mistake.

Yes.

>  The initial reply was actually:
>
>>This is a setting in your mail accounts prefs to show it as a link or a
>>file. No it will not show up to people who use text, and some have it
>>turned off or only use text apps so they will just get it as an attachment.
>
>But it was well meant

However it was meant, it was both wrong and the type of statement 
that would lead one on a fruitless search.

>, and cricket, instead of jumping with both feet (er, beg your 
>pardon, all six feet, of course) on it could've said, "That's not 
>quite correct

But is was not "not quite correct", but completely and 
in-no-way-related-to-the-query incorrect.

>; perhaps you mean this preference", etc., etc. You know, being 
>helpful (let alone mature)

ad hominem in making this point is rather ironic, isn't it?

>, which is the point of this list, ain't it?

The point would be giving answers such that relative newcomers to a 
topic get a useful answer and maintenance of an environment that both 
encourages the questions and the answers. Totally incorrect 
information defeats the "point of the list"

>  Because, after all, that was the part of the issue of the original 
>post. And our estimeed entomologist and Samaritan was neither 
>entirely helpful

He was extremely helpful in diverting any reader who would have no 
reason to know better away from pursuing a wild goose chase.

>, nor entirely correct.

He was definitively correct. And boy do I mean "definitively"!

>  "There is no configuration required", quotha.

See original query, pray.
-- 
You have the right to express yourself in any manner you please, but 
if you wish to communicate effectively, you should use nonstandard 
English only when you intend to, rather than fall into it because you 
don't know any better.
- Paul Brians, Professor of English at Washington State University, 
from his Common Errors in English.