Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: appending .signature file
Message-ID: <1991Jun25.203817.11346@looking.on.ca>
Date: 25 Jun 91 20:38:17 GMT
References: <1991May30.220430.5778@analog.com> <9106120620.13@rmkhome.UUCP> <10968@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <1991Jun25.171513.23761@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 35

Perhaps we should get down to it and add a new header line to the RFC in the
next revision.

"Trailer" would be a header that was a trailing comment.   The newsreader
would be expected to display the trailer, if the user desires, at the
end of a read article.

In fact, one might expect that the newsreader would display the From line,
Organization line and Trailer at the end of a message, with the From also
appearing at the top.

Indeed, a reader could let the user control which headers appear at the top
and which at the bottom.

Formalizing this would eliminate the problem of duplicated signatures, and
some of the other problems with them -- such as the fact that they get searched
by kill files and filter programs and have no real definition.

Such a commonly long header item would strain or break some software, I guess.
That's not necessarily evil, either in that it forces people to fix the
software or keeps sigs down.

We could go even further, and formalize parts of this trailing comment,
so that readers could read just what they wanted.

So in a less serious vein we could have headers like:

	Redundant-email-addresses:
	Cute-Aphorism:
	Postal-Address:
	Ascii-graphic:
	Favourite-ball-team:
	Strange-distribution-rules-in-the-name-of-freedom-of-information:
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473