A note on newsgroup signatures

[Tom]

I recently started reading the Java newsgroups on my PDA and
noticed that several people (including several of the regulars)
are not using the correct separator for their signature. The
convention is to use "-- "; 2 dashes followed by a space. They
are missing the space. This convention allows people to strip
your signature. Reading news on my PDA it is helpful to remove
signatures.

I started to email individual offenders but there were enough
that I thought a general post was in order.

This is the first that I've heard of it. Maybe I didn't pay attention
since I don't use a signature. Thanks for the info.

 

[Roedy Green]

he
convention is to use "-- "; 2 dashes followed by a space. They
are missing the space. This convention allows people to strip
your signature. Reading news on my PDA it is helpful to remove
signatures.

That is a ridiculous convention. Trailing spaces are routinely
stripped from lines. -- on a line by itself should suffice.

 

[Manolis Wallace]

Hi Roeady,

you are absolutelly right on the ridiculous part. But conventions should
not make sense, they should just be known to all.

And this one is. Netscape and Mozilla, for example, will automatically
detect and shade differently signatures based on the "-- " signature.
And most mail programs will add the "-- " part by themselves when
inserting a signature on an email.

Manolis

That is a ridiculous convention. Trailing spaces are routinely
stripped from lines. -- on a line by itself should suffice.

--
Manolis Wallace
http://www.image.ece.ntua.gr/~wallace/
Image, Video & Multimedia Systems Laboratory
Department of Computer Science
School of Electrical & Computer Engineering
National Technical University of Athens

 

[Lutz Horn]

Hi,

Trailing spaces are routinely stripped from lines.

By what program? Why does the programmer of any component taking part
in the *transfer* of news or email thinks it wise to alter the body of
a message in any way? Let the user decide if he wants to strip or add
spaces.

Lutz

 

[Thomas Weidenfeller]

That is a ridiculous convention.

No, it worked for maybe two decades. There is only one widely used
broken "newsreader", who (or more precisely who's programmer's) don't
get it: Outlook Express. This is one of the many reasons why OE is so
much hated by long-time news users.

Preserving trailing whitespace is also an essential feature used if you
use a Content-Type with a format=flowed specification. See RFC 3676
(this posting should have such a Content-Type).

Trailing spaces are routinely stripped from lines.

Any newsreader or news server doing so is significantly broken and
should be taken out and shot. See RFC 977. The same holds for mail, see
RFC 2821.

-- on a line by itself should suffice.

Why don't you familiarize yourself with the established standards?

/Thomas

 

[Andrew Thompson]

By what program?

I received complaints from folks in HTML/CSS
groups that my OE was doing that.

For the life of me I could not get it to
_not_ strip the spaces, so I changed to
using a diferent newsreader.

The new newsreader warns me against replying
to posts that..
a) Cross-post to more than three groups
b) Request a 'reply to' the OP
c) F'Ups are set to a different location
then the original post
d) The group/s are not listed on the local server.

I will not name it, for the simple reason that
(I _suspect_) it installed 'free' software on my
PC that was most unwelcome, which I then had to
'hunt down and kill with extreme prejudice'.

But just thought I should point out that
there are alternatives.

 

[Alex Hunsley]

No, it worked for maybe two decades. There is only one widely used
broken "newsreader", who (or more precisely who's programmer's) don't
get it: Outlook Express. This is one of the many reasons why OE is so
much hated by long-time news users.

I'm pretty sure netscape (or any older version of mozilla?) composer used to
strip trailing spaces as well, as I changed to another newsreader/writer for
the very reason that I couldn't post proper signature delimiters.

alex

 

[Tim Van Wassenhove]

No, it worked for maybe two decades. There is only one widely used
broken "newsreader", who (or more precisely who's programmer's) don't
get it: Outlook Express. This is one of the many reasons why OE is so
much hated by long-time news users.

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/

 

[Andrew Thompson]

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/

Interestingly, I tried that (to fix the problem
Thomas mentioned - see my post above) but even
that did not seem to correct the problem.

I began to suspect that it merely corrected
incoming messages but had no control over how
they were posted.

Out of curiosity, do _you_ use OE with quotefix?

[ I notice your sig. _does_ have the trailing
space, as it should. So if you use OE/quotefix,
it blows my theory out of the water. ;-) ]

 

[Gordon Beaton]

So if you use OE/quotefix,
it blows my theory out of the water. ;-) ]

He uses slrn, which is apparent if you look at the User-Agent header
in his postings.

By the same token, there was little point in keeping your own
newsreader (40tude_Dialog/2.0.10.1) a secret in your earlier post.

/gordon

 

[Andrew Thompson]

So if you use OE/quotefix,
it blows my theory out of the water. ;-) ]

He uses slrn, which is apparent if you look at the User-Agent header
in his postings.

By the same token, there was little point in keeping your own
newsreader (40tude_Dialog/2.0.10.1) a secret in your earlier post.

(chuckles) Good point.

I will stress then, that I was downloading
and installing a _lot_ of software at the time,
and I am not sure where the unwelcome additional
software originated.

 

[Stanimir Stamenkov]

/Andrew Thompson/:

Interestingly, I tried that (to fix the problem
Thomas mentioned - see my post above) but even
that did not seem to correct the problem.

I began to suspect that it merely corrected
incoming messages but had no control over how
they were posted.

OE-QuoteFix doesn't fix the sig' delimiter problem, itself, but on
the download page there's an additional patch for it:

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/downloads.php

Note, more recent versions of OE has this already fixed (no patch's
needed).

 

[Andrew Thompson]

/Andrew Thompson/:

OE-QuoteFix doesn't fix the sig' delimiter problem, itself, but on
the download page there's an additional patch for it:

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/downloads.php

D'uhhh! (makes note to kick self later)
I should have looked more closely..

Note, more recent versions of OE has this already fixed (no patch's
needed).

Do you know which version it was fixed in?
[ I was using 6.00.2600.0000 (xpclient.010817-1148) ]

 

[Tim Ward]

Do you know which version it was fixed in?

FSVO "fixed".

In my opinion, which you aren't going to be able to change, any language in
which the spelling of white space is significant is broken. (Apart from that
joke language, whose name I forget, which consisted entirely of white
space.)

Thus the spec for news signatures is broken, because it matters whether a
particular piece of white space is spelt "space" "newline" or just
"newline", and it is utterly astonishing that this piece of broken language
exists in the same universe as Unix makefiles (where it matters whether a
particular piece of white space is spelt "space" or "tab").

Why is it astonishing that they both exist in the same universe? Well, one
of these disastrous design ****-ups must have been made first, and that
should have been enough to stop whichever idiot it was perpetrating the
second.

 

[Stanimir Stamenkov]

/Andrew Thompson/:

Do you know which version it was fixed in?
[ I was using 6.00.2600.0000 (xpclient.010817-1148) ]

I think it is the one mentioned on the same page: "Not relevant for
OE 6.00.2800.1123 and above.". I have 6.00.2800.1409 and the sig'
delimiter is sent fine.

 

[Stanimir Stamenkov]

/Tim Ward/:

In my opinion, which you aren't going to be able to change, any language in
which the spelling of white space is significant is broken. (Apart from that
joke language, whose name I forget, which consisted entirely of white
space.)

May be just because of that the sig delimiter is meant to end with a
space - to be easily recognizable by the software application and
not misinterpret with any of the real message content, while having
an "ordinary" look.

Thus the spec for news signatures is broken, because it matters whether a
particular piece of white space is spelt "space" "newline" or just
"newline", and it is utterly astonishing that this piece of broken language
exists in the same universe as Unix makefiles (where it matters whether a
particular piece of white space is spelt "space" or "tab").

Why is it astonishing that they both exist in the same universe? Well, one
of these disastrous design ****-ups must have been made first, and that
should have been enough to stop whichever idiot it was perpetrating the
second.

I don't mind if one puts his/her signature with "invalid" or with no
delimiter at all, but it surely is more convenient when the
application recognizes the signature and automatically strips it off
(on reply) or highlights it differently (to distinguish it when
reading) which would be not possible if there's no convention.

 

[Andrew Thompson]

"Andrew Thompson" <[email protected]> wrote in message

....
(Stanimir S.)

FSVO "fixed".

Quick check ..'for some values of'. Aha!

In my opinion, which you aren't going to be able to change,

I wouldn't ..dare try. ;-)

..any language in
which the spelling of white space is significant is broken.

BTW, I admire your courage at informing
people quietly via email, that must
produce some classic responses!

 

[Andrew Thompson]

On Tue, 04 May 2004 15:43:22 +0300, Stanimir Stamenkov wrote:

/Andrew Thompson/:

Do you know which version it was fixed in?
[ I was using 6.00.2600.0000 (xpclient.010817-1148) ]

I think it is the one mentioned on the same page: "Not relevant for
OE 6.00.2800.1123 and above.".

Ahhhh. So basically I would not have needed
to ask such a stupid question if I'd RTFL
(read the ..flaming link).

Note to self. RTFL _before_ asking stupid
questions! Hopefully that will lower my
DQQ (dumb question quotient), ..hopefully. ;-)

 

[Mark Preston]

I'm pretty sure netscape (or any older version of mozilla?) composer
used to strip trailing spaces as well, as I changed to another
newsreader/writer for the very reason that I couldn't post proper
signature delimiters.

Nope, 'fraid not. The poster was correct - its just Outlook that is
broken... well, OE at least.

 

[Chris Smith]

That is a ridiculous convention. Trailing spaces are routinely
stripped from lines. -- on a line by itself should suffice.

It is kind of silly, and the cause of a lot of problems. Unfortunately,
a good bit of existing software doesn't agree that "--" by itself should
suffice. Until it does, it's best to abide by the existing convention,
rather than willfully causing hardship for others.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way to Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation