Re: [Evolution] Signature

[Cliff Wells <clifford wells attbi com>]

On Sun, 2003-06-15 at 04:28, Marck Robinson wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-06-15 at 00:53, Cliff Wells wrote:
> > > There is no harm done.
> > >
> > > It's in your head.
> >
> > Perhaps this is the only mailing list you read.  I subscribe to around a
> > dozen.  I get close to 500 emails a day.  Trust me, it makes a
> > difference.  But it's rather moot, since you are asking for Evolution to
> > offer users the option of breaking a standard.  It won't happen.  YAGNI.
>
> I would have to respectfully disagree.  Having the '--' line there to
> flag what part can be stripped off by news readers is great and I agree
> with it.  But you go on to assume there is only one _right_ way to use
> signatures and that it should be enforced by crippling evolution, making
> users repetitively enter any of their closing that comes before the
> '--'.

I appreciate your position.  Unfortunately I still disagree.  

> How many times do you finish off an e-mail with 'Regards,' with other
> stuff before '--'?  Shouldn't you be able to add that to your signature?

If you like.  And my newsreader/mua should be able to strip it off when
I'm replying to you.  

I'd also suggest that having a machine add "Regards" or "Sincerely"
automatically kind of strips those words of any meaning they might have
left.  Why even put them in at all?  And if you're allowed to add them
automatically, why can't I be allowed to remove them automatically?

> You claim this flexibility could be harmful, I think that is bogus.  Any
> signature can already be entered manually, what harm is there in having
> Evolution append it just the way it would have been manually entered?

Because most people don't manually enter in 6 line signatures on every
email they send.  If they are willing to type it manually and leave out
the "-- " (which is the correct form, incidentally, not "--") then I'm
willing to manually trim my reply.   When you allow people to
automatically append a handful of junk to their mails then its nice to
allow others to automatically remove it.

> In addition, there is no standards issue at odds with this.  Standards
> do not _require_ that a '--' line exists, they only define what is meant
> by it when it does.  The fact that I can select "None" for my signature
> already means Evolution supports not using the '--' line.

You misunderstand.  True, there is probably no RFC associated with
this.  There is definitely a consensus that this is the "standard".  If
you select None for your sig then you don't need a sig marker.  Clear? 
The fact that people in this thread keep confusing "--" with "-- "
suggests that perhaps you are overstating your knowledge of the issue a
bit.  

Further, if you thought about it for a bit, you could figure out how to
get the behavior you desire (I accidentally did so, but of course fixed
it).

> The case with "None" for my signature where I type in or paste in a
> signature is functionally _equivalent_ to allowing signatures to not use
> '--'.  So in effect, evolution already allows this behavior, it just
> doesn't allow users to leverage its tools to make that easy.

You are correct.  But please refer to my above paragraph regarding the
ability to manually annoy others vs having Evo do it automatically.

> Regards,
> Marck Robinson <marck powerdata com>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> evolution maillist  -  evolution lists ximian com
> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/evolution

Consider this little bit of unnecessary junk above.  Now imagine this
thread going on for another 10 messages with no trimming going on (many
people don't adequately trim).  It suddenly gets difficult to follow the
conversation.  If you had "-- " before your sig then Evo would have
automatically trimmed it.

In any case, this is a really boring argument.   If the Evo developers
want to add this brain-damage to Evo, whatever.  I doubt they will but
it certainly isn't worth arguing over for another minute.

Regards,

-- 
Cliff Wells <clifford wells attbi com>