Re: [Evolution] Stripping .sig's in replies

[Rob Walker <rob myinternetplace net>]

On Thu, 2002-04-18 at 14:00, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> We took it out because users complained that it sometimes stripped part
> of some messages (where people put the magic string into the middle of
> the message rather than only using it for their signature).

I can see how that would violate the principle of least surprise.  :-)

However, what if you parsed back from the end of the message to the last
magic string, and then nuke from there to the end?  Wouldn't that keep
from nuking in-between message text?

Of course, this needs to be an option which can be turned on and off at
will.

Oh, wait a second, you said that this was due to people putting the
magic string (which is dash-dash-space "-- ", IIRC) in the middle of
their messages.  Well, that _is_ a problem.  Hrmmm.....

Here are some options I thought of which might alleviate concerns on all
sides.

1.  Do the "nuke-a-sig" routine, but put that into a copy buffer, and
have a compose menu item or icon which is "replace removed text", to put
it back in case of accident.

2.  Make the "nuke-a-sig" routine be something the user has to do by
hand in the compose buffer, with an icon or menu item or hot key.

3.  When "nuke-a-sig" is run, only have it highlight the text to be
removed.  Then the user can click elsewhere in the body to leave it
intact, or type a key (backspace/delete come to mind) to delete it.  Is
it possible to have non-contiguous highlight regions?  If so, this
option could highlight many copies of signatures, ready to be killed all
at once.

4.  When "nuke-a-sig" is run, start at the end of the message, and only
read back <n> (user configurable?) lines to get to the delimiter.

I don't know if any of those are feasable or not, but I think that
"nuke-a-sig" would help to set this mail reader apart from other mail
readers.  I know that the first time I saw that happen (it might have
even been in evolution), I thought, "wow, that's cool, why doesn't
everyone else do this?"

rob