> > > Why do Pine *developers* have tabs in their sig and no sigdashes? > Speaking for myself only, this developer doesn't want to be bothered with > keeping up with every latest bit of political correctness, that's why. > I've used "-- Mark --" for 25 years..
I wonder which mailer you used before pine. Pine is not *that* old for sure. Sigdashes existed at least ten years ago. And if you had used elm then you should know about the sigdashes because it made use of them.
> ..and have gotten just a bit too old, > cranky, and set in my ways to change now.
Now, there's a reason - but not reason enough to make a small change to your setup, is it? Come on, it's not too late yet. Use sigdashes!
> I know vaguely what sigdashes are all about, > and I know that Pine does them if enabled. > But that feature has never seemed to me to be > important enough to take the time to look at it.
Sigdashes enable user clients to detect the signature and thus allows for colorization and automatic removal on replies. Many posts on Usenet (especially comp.mail.pine) would look *much* better if the signature was not quoted but removed.
Many pine users do not bother about editing replies. That's probably because the builtin editor (pico) does not have commands poweful enough to delete paragraphs easily.
As signatures should be paragraphs (ie have no empty lines) this can be done with a better editor (eg Vim - use "dip").
However, it would be much easier if Pine deleted signatures on followups and replies automatically. (hint hint, developers)
> Part of this is because I don't work on the user interface at all; my > job is to work on the mail file management and network protocol code. > I hope that you would rather have me worrying about doing > my job right, and not play with space cadet features.
> However, it would be much easier if Pine deleted signatures on > followups and replies automatically. (hint hint, developers)
Sigh.
[X] strip-from-sigdashes-on-reply
> > Part of this is because I don't work on the user interface at all; my > > job is to work on the mail file management and network protocol code. > > I hope that you would rather have me worrying about doing > > my job right, and not play with space cadet features.
> Sigdashes are a "space cadet feature"? Hey, wow.
> I wonder which mailer you used before pine. Pine is not *that* old for sure.
If you really must know...:
On the ITS systems at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in the mid-1970s, I used RMAIL, which was based on TECO.
On the WAITS system at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab in the late 1970s, I used E, a combination mailer and editor. On TENEX systems at about the same time, I used MSG.
On the TOPS-20 system at the Stanford Computer Science Department (where I was the chief system programmer) and various other TOPS-20 systems worldwide in the 1980s, I used MM. I was the primary developer and maintainer of both MM and the TOPS-20 mailer -- I was to TOPS-20 what Eric Allman is to UNIX.
On the Interlisp workstations at the Stanford Knowledge Systems Laboratory in the late 1980s, I used MM-D (which I wrote).
On NeXT workstations at UW and home from 1989 to the present, I use MailManager (which I wrote and which is also based upon c-client).
I also use Pine on a lot of other machines, especially when reading news (I used to use rn).
In that time, I've gotten quite used to editing out irrelevant details when replying to messages.
> Sigdashes existed at least ten years ago. And if you had used elm > then you should know about the sigdashes because it made use of them.
I have never used Elm.
The only time I have *ever* heard an issue being made out of it has been on this newsgroup, once or twice. I'm on various technical mailing lists, and nobody on any of those lists has ever raised it as an issue.
If you feel that sigdashes are of great importance, then by all means I recommend that you get the DRUMS (replacement for RFC 822) specification altered to require it.
-- Mark --
* RCW 19.190 notice: This email address is located in Washington State. * * Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message. * Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
> > However, it would be much easier if Pine deleted signatures on > > followups and replies automatically. (hint hint, developers) > Sigh. [X] strip-from-sigdashes-on-reply
Indeed - I found this just after posting and checking the docs again:
strip-from-sigdashes-on-reply This feature doesn't do anything if the feature enable-sigdashes is turned on. However, if the enable-sigdashes feature is not turned on, then turning on this feature enables support for the convention of not including text beyond the sigdashes line when Replying or Following up to a message and including the text of that message. In other words, this is a way to turn on the signature stripping behavior without also turning on the dashes-adding behavior.
I doubt anyone who does not know about sigdashes and its use will ever understand it without the "trial and error" method. ;-)
> > Sven [call me captain spiff]
> ^ see, it even works :)
Yup. :-)
Wouldn't it be a good idea to both set enable-sigdashes" and "set strip-from-sigdashes-on-reply" by default?
In comp.mail.pine (yes, this newsgroup) Mark Crispin wrote:
>In that time, I've gotten quite used to editing out irrelevant details >when replying to messages.
[snip]
>The only time I have *ever* heard an issue being made out of it has been >on this newsgroup, once or twice. I'm on various technical mailing lists, >and nobody on any of those lists has ever raised it as an issue.
I imagine most people on technical mailing lists can manage to delete signatures on their own.
>If you feel that sigdashes are of great importance, then by all means I >recommend that you get the DRUMS (replacement for RFC 822) specification >altered to require it.
You might as well require that all signatures have a MIME type, so that all mailers can strip them out, whatever the message format. Or you could not bother, and hope that people use sigdashes, just as you hope people don't start piping their signature generator through banner. -- mailto:is...@altavista.net - +44441089921 - Tim Bannister http://www.jellybaby.net/~isoma/ - Spam? What spam? (pats procmail)
> In comp.mail.pine (yes, this newsgroup) Mark Crispin wrote: >> The only time I have *ever* heard an issue being made out of it has been >> on this newsgroup, once or twice. I'm on various technical mailing >> lists, and nobody on any of those lists has ever raised it as an issue. > I imagine most people on technical mailing lists can manage to delete > signatures on their own.
That's entirely beside the point: 1. You *do* *not* *quote* signatures. 2. Because of 1, automatic removal of said signatures is desirable. 3. Sigdashes according to what-might-become-a-standard and their automatic removal are a Good Thing for an MUA/newsreader to have.
In article <radioactive.m3r9kvramf....@socha.net>, Robin S. Socha
<rso...@kens.com> wrote: > * isoma <is...@jellybaby.net> writes: > > In comp.mail.pine (yes, this newsgroup) Mark Crispin wrote: > >> The only time I have *ever* heard an issue being made out of it has been > >> on this newsgroup, once or twice. I'm on various technical mailing > >> lists, and nobody on any of those lists has ever raised it as an issue.
> > I imagine most people on technical mailing lists can manage to delete > > signatures on their own.
> That's entirely beside the point: > 1. You *do* *not* *quote* signatures. > 2. Because of 1, automatic removal of said signatures is desirable. > 3. Sigdashes according to what-might-become-a-standard and their automatic > removal are a Good Thing for an MUA/newsreader to have.
Absolutely. And I could name a good 20 newsreaders that do so (not always by default).
*** Sven Guckes (guc...@math.fu-berlin.de) wrote on Aug 20, 1999:
:) Many pine users do not bother about editing replies. :) That's probably because the builtin editor (pico) does not :) have commands poweful enough to delete paragraphs easily. :)
Adding support for deleting paragraphs is fairly easy. I wrote a patch for pine that does so. Check it out at
