Alan Stebbens wrote:
[most snipped]
If there were a global convention which all users would agree upon, we
could apply a rule to follow the convetion. Such a convention might be
to begin signatures with a blank line, followed by a line of
underscores, then arbitrary text.
There *is* a "rule"; unfortunately, it's more widely observed in
Usenet than in email. This probably has more to do with newsreaders
vs. mailreaders than the awareness of users themselves.
A line consisting of just the three characters '-- ' preceeds a
signature. Note the trailing blank. I don't think it's in an RFC
though.
Getting *users* to agree upon a convention is probably hopeless.
Getting software to agree on it takes time, but can evolve in the
right direction (although *somebody* will always be running broken
software somewhere). Maybe an RFC is indicated.
Cheers,
Stan Ryckman (stanr(_at_)tiac(_dot_)net)