Does anyone know how to remove the > characters from replies?

Example:

I get an email and I hit the reply button. The previous persons email is line by line, prefixed by > characters. Is there an option to turn those off?

I notice that other email clients do not use them and I find that they make following an email conversation difficult.

Thanks.

You can select the lines that are quoted (prefixed by >) and type Ctrl+[, or change the default action to attach the original message instead of quoting. There may be a hidden way to change the quote character from '>' to a blank (I know newsreaders generally have the option of changing the quote character).

FYI this method of quoting makes it very easy to follow a conversation, provided everyone follows some simple practices like trimming everything except the very little bit that's being replied to, replying below the quoted section, etc. Usenet tended to use this style heavily - it seems that e-mail has changed everyone's preference to top-posting and quoting every single prior message in the thread leading up to the last... And I agree, when you do this then it does get unwieldy.

Thanks for the reply. I think I may have not clarified like I should have:


I meant to say that I find the > characters annoying. They are what makes following long conversations hard. I also do not want to modify the original emails in any fashion whatsoever as the emails I deal with are likely to be sent to others within the organization or outside organizations (I do tech support).

I made a similar posting to the Gentoo forums a while back and recently updated it when I got so frustrated with the mess that is created from the use of > everywhere.

I understand the historical significance of the quote marks and how they can be handy but I haven't come across an option to turn them off. :|

Novell seems to follow the Gnome way of doing things - very simple configuration dialogs with few real options, or at least hiding some of the more advanced configuration options many layers deep. This is one of those options that is more likely to be removed, rather than added with a new release.

I think your best bet is Ctrl+a Ctrl+[ as soon as the compose window opens. Or have you tried "Attach original message" reply style? If it attaches inline then it should function well enough.

It as an old thread, but I thought nevertheless to reply on it.
The way I got rid of the > character (I am using evolution v2.28.3):
edit > preferences > composer preferences
and set forward style and reply style to inline