Without reading further... which of your recent postings is this a reply to? Obviously you already know, because you said you don't need to see the text to know the context... Nope, it wasn't the one about how things became quoted text. On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 13:36:38 -0500, bzs@theworld.com said:

I use Emacs/VM for email. It's quite good at, for example, splitting the screen so I can look ahead (or behind) in the message if I've lost track of some context, or even opening multiple related msgs (even if already filed) simultaneously to go back and review what's been said already, or forward even to see if one is about to say something which has already been adequately addressed.

And how many times did you have to hit control-alt-meta-cokebottle to trace out which one this was really a reply to?