[Users] marking reply text within a message

[Rich Pieri]

On Tue, 5 Feb 2013 15:39:40 +0000
Richard Bown <richard at g8jvm.com> wrote:

> Most mailers mark the part they are replying to by adding a ">" at
> the beginning of the line. I am getting mail from someone whose
> mailer does not. "

That's a pain. While there are several defacto standards for mail
citations (">", "> ", "   ") there is no formal standard. I suggest
that the best solution is to inform said someone that his messages are
confusing to read and please restore the citation marks in his MUA.

To address the question, I have an idea of how I'd go about trying to
identify cited material in the absence of citation marks. Operative
word there being "trying". It's roughly the same logic as a statistical
spam filter: use message(s) you author to build a hash table and then
find matching hashes in the message being displayed. I'm not sure how
reliable this would end up being in face of rewrapped citations and the
kinds of crazy line breaks that smartphones generate.

-- 
Rich P.