top2bottom is a command-line tool that converts top-posted email messages to bottom-posted.

Building requirements

To build top2bottom you need:

• the meson build system
• a C++14 compiler

Building and installing

top2bottom uses the meson build system.

To configure top2bottom use:

$ meson build

This will create a top2bottom build configuration in the build directory.

To see/set the full list of available options use:

$ mesonconf [-Dopt=val] build

To build use:

$ ninja -C build

To install use:

$ [DESTDIR=...] ninja -C build install

Run the tests with:

$ ninja -C build test

Running

You can run top2bottom with:

$ /path/to/top2bottom < top-posted-file [> bottom-posted-file]

Supported top-posting flavor

top2bottom supports a particular flavor of top-posted messages that looks like:

aaa

B wrote:
> bbb
>
> C wrote:
>>
>> ccc

top2bottom also supports conversion of messages which were originally bottom-posted or interleaved-posted but at some point continued as top-posted:

aaa

B wrote:
> C wrote:
>>
>> ccc
> bbb
>> ccc
>
> bbb

Messages that are already properly bottom-posted or interleaved-posted are returned unchanged.

If top2bottom cannot convert a message, then it returns the message unchanged in stdout, and a warning with information about which line caused the conversion to fail in stderr.