blewett@RESEARCH.ATT.COM (C. Douglas Blewett) (09/08/90)
I think a lot of application supplied ``automatic'' features are broken. Automatic features that modify the buffer are the worst. next-line (AKA C-n) inserts blank lines when it is called at the end of a buffer. I think Kernighan would explain it in terms of good programming style. Each operation should have one well defined function. For this reason, I really do not like the notion of automatic signature insertion. And a global string for holding the signature sounds like more complexity. This seems to be a feature that would best be handled by some object oriented scheme that is under end user control. It is a shame that the rmail-hook cannot be used to handle this. If the .signature file contains something like the following: To: Subject: --text follows this line-- Your Name Here then an insert-file in ones rmail-hook will pretty much implement this feature. A side effect of having the mail template reside in some dot file is that it allows the end user to customize the entire mail format, not just the signature. So my vote is for a less automatic, less complex (no more global strings or variables), and more object oriented approach. In lieu of writing an object package for emacs, I would vote for doing this sort of customization from a single dot file that includes all of the mail formatting information. Doug Blewett (201) 582-6496 AT&T Bell Laboratories research!blewett office 2c470 blewett%research.att.com@relay.cs.net 600 Mountain Avenue blewett@research.att.com Murray Hill, NJ 07974