Xref: utzoo comp.mail.misc:4410 news.misc:5770 comp.emacs:9648 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!linac!uwm.edu!caen!sdd.hp.com!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!cerritos.edu!arizona.edu!arizona!amethyst!rsm From: rsm@math.arizona.edu (Robert S. Maier) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,news.misc,comp.emacs Subject: separator for .signature? Message-ID: Date: 1 Dec 90 00:05:14 GMT Organization: University of Arizona Mathematics Department Lines: 28 It's traditional in some quarters, when sending a E-mail message or posting a news article, to precede the signature (especially if included from a .signature file) by the string "-- \n" i.e. two hyphens, a space, and a newline. The standard mail and news posting packages for gnuemacs, for example, do this. So does rn. I recall hearing that this was originally for the benefit of some early Unix mail-reading programs, which displayed the signature only if requested (and in the days of 300 baud dialups, that wasn't very often). Can someone verify this, and/or supply more details? If the story is true, is there any mail- or news-reading software still out there that has this feature? If not, is there any point in maintaining the old signature separator, or should it be considered obsolete? |-------Do we still need this? v -- Robert S. Maier | Internet: rsm@math.arizona.edu Dept. of Math. | UUCP: uunet!arizona!amethyst!rsm Univ. of Arizona | Bitnet: maier@arizrvax Tucson, AZ 85721 | FAX: +1 602 621 8322 U.S.A. | Voice(POTS): +1 602 621 6893 / +1 602 621 2617 Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com