On 1/4/2016 3:00 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
Hector Santos <hsantos(_at_)isdg(_dot_)net> writes:
I don't like the idea of trying to standardize a "-- " tag although this
character sequence seems to be popular among "some" IETF users, but not
outside.
Use of "-- " for a signature delimiter is ubiquitous on Usenet and has
been for decades, for whatever that's worth. I suspect many of us who use
this convention in email are either old Usenet users or are using software
that understands both email and Usenet and treats them similarly (or both,
as in my case).
Of course. Software that used all formats, like fidonet/echomail and
internet/newsgroups all supported various forms and some even have
user-definable signature fields.
But do they use "-- " automatically or is it user-defined (added)?
In email, it's also reasonably common as a delimiter for the footers added
by mailing list software. I believe Google Groups uses it, for instance.
It's always been a wart, and it's certainly not the sort of thing that one
would design today in an intentional standard for a whole host of reasons,
but it has a *very* long established history.
I just did a quick sample of the last 10 people in the IETF list,
counted at least 2 people with "-- " -- 20%, pareto's ratios.
Yes, the history is long there but also for other formats or even no
"tag" formats at all, e.g.; just with a tab and name, perhaps.
Hector
_______________________________________________
ietf-822 mailing list
ietf-822(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-822