Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff From: tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: Signature files (LONG) Message-ID: <14558@bfmny0.UUCP> Date: 16 Aug 89 17:09:25 GMT References: <15046@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <549@buster.UUCP> Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) Organization: Bloomberg LP Lines: 22 Signatures are 4 lines or less because we have to draw the line somewhere (you should pardon the expression). Repetitive noise is expensive to transmit. (I think this should also apply to these various weirdo packages that stick stuff like "X-Favorite-Color:" in the header, but that's another story.) Not only should a .sig be short, it should NOT have a damn box around it! I'm amazed at some of the stuff I see. We really, really *will* recognize something as a signature even if it doesn't have 200 bytes worth of asterisks and equal signs and DASHES (Buster) around it. Last but not least, and I *wish* more people did this -- READ YOUR OWN POSTINGS! Many silly errors can be avoided this way -- like 50 lines of extraneous text that you forgot to delete in the editor, or DOUBLED SIGNATURES (some people think you have to yank them in manually, not knowing the posting software is doing likewise), or EMPTY MESSAGES, or other net.favorites. It also doesn't hurt to see what you wrote as others will be seeing it -- you might learn something. :-) -- "We walked on the moon -- (( Tom Neff you be polite" )) tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET