rsm@math.arizona.edu (Robert S. Maier) (12/01/90)
It's traditional in some quarters, when sending a E-mail message or
posting a news article, to precede the signature (especially if
included from a .signature file) by the string
"-- \n"
i.e. two hyphens, a space, and a newline. The standard mail and news
posting packages for gnuemacs, for example, do this. So does rn.
I recall hearing that this was originally for the benefit of some
early Unix mail-reading programs, which displayed the signature only
if requested (and in the days of 300 baud dialups, that wasn't very
often). Can someone verify this, and/or supply more details?
If the story is true, is there any mail- or news-reading software
still out there that has this feature? If not, is there any point in
maintaining the old signature separator, or should it be considered
obsolete?
|-------Do we still need this?
v
--
Robert S. Maier | Internet: rsm@math.arizona.edu
Dept. of Math. | UUCP: uunet!arizona!amethyst!rsm
Univ. of Arizona | Bitnet: maier@arizrvax
Tucson, AZ 85721 | FAX: +1 602 621 8322
U.S.A. | Voice(POTS): +1 602 621 6893 / +1 602 621 2617nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) (12/02/90)
In article <RSM.90Nov30170514@coral.math.arizona.edu> rsm@math.arizona.edu (Robert S. Maier) writes: >It's traditional in some quarters, when sending a E-mail message or >posting a news article, to precede the signature (especially if >included from a .signature file) by the string > > "-- \n" > If you skip the space that's an enclosure-part separator (which would be used by some programs that no how to de-digestify digests). >If the story is true, is there any mail- or news-reading software >still out there that has this feature? If not, is there any point in >maintaining the old signature separator, or should it be considered >obsolete? If it's a valid separator for a new enclosure then the mail app we're writing will treat your .sig as separate from the rest of the message. -kee -- Alphalpha Software, Inc. | motif-request@alphalpha.com nazgul@alphalpha.com |----------------------------------- 617/646-7703 (voice/fax) | Proline BBS: 617/641-3722 I'm not sure which upsets me more; that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's.