I can't get the number below 3.

BTW - it seems not possible to quote only part of a message being replied to. Quite often I don't need to re-display the entire post. This seems unneccessarily long-winded, and hogging of screen real estate.

I'd be happier with a default where the original message is not reproduced in full. Where only selected elements are quoted, according to what is cut-&-pasted, and prefaced by > in markdown.