[FFmpeg-user] Aspect Ratios: DAR, SAR and Frame Size

[Ed Torbett]

> BTW, according to
> this<http://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-user/2014-
> January/thread.html#19357>
> no
> one was top-posting replies (except the first question post).
> 

I think you may misunderstand the term 'top-posting', so I thought I'd clear this up before anyone gets annoyed. Top-posting doesn't refer to 'top-level' in terms of the tree shown in the mailing list archive (which would occur if you removed the 'RE:' tag, and would also annoy people on mailing lists), but to where your response appears relative to the message you're responding to.

For example, my response is below yours; this is bottom-posting. If I wrote my response above your original email, that would be top-posting.

Top-posting is generally frowned upon in mailing lists because other mailing list users (who are not yet participants in the discussion) will generally start reading at the top of the mail and therefore have no context for what they are reading until they reach the original post, somewhere after all the replies. This forces readers to have to jump back and forth in the mail and makes understanding of both the original mail and the response more difficult.

I am aware that many email clients default to top-posting - certainly mine (Outlook) does and it's not configurable. It's also a work computer, so I can't change client. Gmail and other clients do let you configure the position of the reply, but often it's easier to simply keep in your head that you're writing on the mailing list, and position your response accordingly.

For further information on this, I recommend Wikipedia's article on posting styles, or this article: http://www.idallen.com/topposting.html

Thanks,
Ed