The following message was sent by Patrick Gundlach on Sat, 27 Sep 2003 07:32:02 +0200.

> Steffen Wolfrum writes:

...

Hi,

...

Gibt es etwa B¸cher zum Thema ConTeXt?

come on, guys. Posting in a wrong language can happen. So what. Answering (an obviously private mail posted in the ML) here in the same language on this mailinglist is not the best thing, but this can happen, too. But we should not keep up this german thread. It is not polite for the other non-german speaking people out there, that get completely bored. So I'd suggest:

\if\language\en\postonthismailinglist=1 \else \dontexpand & \keepitprivate \bye \fi

Patrick -- You are your own rainbow!

Hi Patrick, Somehow I really felt like walking on thin ice when I wrote the email you mention. Well, I knew it will be difficult to serve the different aims of communication: - politeness and - political correctness I asked some friends, and we discussed on this topic, trying to find a suitable way, to get the message transferred, and not to hurt anybodies feelings - as the later is very quickly done, and it's a pity, cause often quite unnecessary. So finally, after carefully looking at the pro and cons, I decided to write a bi-lingual answer, exactly one sentence each:

Gibt es etwa Bücher zum Thema ConTeXt?

(Did you ment editing books *on* ConTeXt?)

Sure, I have to admit that I used brackets for the second sentence. Btw.: Why didn't you quote that second sentence? So it might have given you the feeling that I made a *main* answer and a less important. But my intention was only to stay in the logical structure of the mail I was answering to: - Jörg once started a threat in German - ok, as you told him this was an initial mistake. - Willi (a typical multilingual Dutch) also answered in German So I wrote my contribution also in the main language of this thread, AND, to stay in the rules of the mailing list, I translated it, as best as I could, into a kind of international English. Obviously my mistake were the brackets. I knew I am walking on thin ice ... and so I forgot to look on my orthography carefully. Thank you Patrick for pointing me to that. Steffen P.S. Who got bored?