Re: "--" first in lines to indicate start of signature

On 1/4/2016 6:33 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> Yes, the history is long there but also for other formats or even no
>> "tag" formats at all, e.g.; just with a tab and name, perhaps.
>
> I'm probably arguing with something you're not actually saying, so feel
> free to ignore me if that's the case.
>
> But I feel like you're misunderstanding the degree to which this is part
> of the netnews article format.  This is not a random convention that just
> some people use on the netnews side; it's built into every netnews client
> I know of that supports signatures, and is very widely supported on the
> reading side as well.  (For example, my client does syntax highlighting of
> the signature block, greying it out, and supports automatically omitting
> the signature from quoted follow-ups.)  It was commmon for people on
> netnews to point out to others when the signature delimiter was mangled
> (missing the trailing space, for instance), and there are netiquette
> conventions for acceptable length and related issues.  (The Google search
> term is "McQuary limit".)
>
> It may be just one of many conventions in email.  It is an actual,
> interoperable standard in the netnews world, albeit an ad hoc one rather
> than a formalized one.  Insofar as mail and netnews share a common message
> format, "-- " deserves a bit more special attention from the implementor
> than, say, random examples of FidoNet conventions.  Proper handling is a
> quality of implementation issue if you ever touch netnews.

Russ, much of what was done during Fidonet carried on to the 
"internet" -- it was and still is pretty much all the same, 
Fido.Netmail == Inet.Email,  Fido.EchoMail == Inet.NewsGroups, etc. 
Mail is Mail.  You know that.  When you have support for all of them, 
including others, like UTI, QWK, you get a better integrated view of 
it all. Generally, "Netnews" would be just "mail conference type" 
option in a mail hosting product line.

I guess I will wait for an actual proposal. But it sounds more like a 
MUA product enhancement or a BCP for MUAs and End Users.  Why not 
include it with other MUA mail creation "common practices" suggestions 
such as the "> " quoting characters, by far, the most popular method 
across all mail platforms?

** HLS **


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