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From: scs@itivax.iti.org (Steve Simmons)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Suggested New Feature For All Newsreaders
Message-ID: <4595@itivax.iti.org>
Date: 7 Dec 89 18:28:30 GMT
References: <4585@itivax.iti.org>
Organization: Industrial Technology Institute, Ann Arbor, MI.
Lines: 26

scs@vax3.iti.org (Steve Simmons) writes:

>Having just suffered for the nth time thru an incredibly stupid
>and verbose .sigfile, I'd really love to see a .sig-filterer for
>all known newsreaders.  The informal (note that word) standard
>seems to that a .sig is anything following '--' on a line by 
>itself, so that'd be good enough for me.

Some additional data and a correction on the '--' form:

A quick survey of 303 articles from rec.arts.comics gives 16 articles
that clearly have no sig whatsoever.  Of the remaining 287, 117 (41%)
use signatures clearly separated from the body by the following pattern:

  '\n--[-]*[ ]*\n'

(which is supposed to mean a '--' at the beginning of the line, zero or
more additional dashes, an optional space, and end of line).  In no case
did this pattern appear twice in an article.  Nobody should take this
data as gospel, tho.

Sadly, ultra-long sigs were somewhat less likely to have such a marker.
-- 
Steve Simmons	       scs@iti.org         Industrial Technology Institute
	'"You're not a big name on Usenet until someone puts
	  you in their .sig file."		-- Anonymous'