Re: How to increase/decrease quote level in mail/usenet message?

[dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs)]

In article <barmar-65BDF3.10535727042012@news.eternal-september.org>,
Barry Margolin  <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>In article <jne9e4$2t0$1@reader1.panix.com>,
> Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 2012-04-27, XeCycle <XeCycle@Gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:
>> >
>> >> In mail or message mode, how do you increase/decrease the quote level
>> >> of a region?
>> >
>> > M-;  In case you want more options, do C-h k M-;
>> 
>> Ah.  It never occurred to me (and never would have) to look for
>> commands starting with "comment-".  I looked for indent, quote, level,
>> increase, decrease, and about five other keywords. I have absolutely
>> no clue why a command to increase/decrease a quote level would be
>> called "comment-dwim".
>
>Seems like they just took advantage of the fact that commenting is done 
>in most languages simply by adding a prefix to the line, which is 
>exactly the same as Usenet-style quoting.  So rather than write a new 
>function, they simply co-opted the existing one, since it's not needed 
>for its original purpose in email/news.
>
>-- 
>Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
>Arlington, MA
>*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***

Perl, I recall, has an optional quoting scheme with things
like qq<char>jljljljljlkjlkjkl<same-char>.

I may have the qq-name wrong, but perl has several of these things.
Seem pretty useful to me!

David