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Re: patch: signin & signoff feature (1.5.18)



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On Wednesday, October  8 at 06:02 PM, quoth Christian Brabandt:
>Why can you set sig_dashes, if you could set it via signature?

... ahh, I think I get what you're saying. But I think you're looking  
at it backward - the better question (which is more accurate, given 
the default value of sig_dashes, and helps point out the answer, I 
think) would be to phrase it like this: "Why can you DISABLE 
sig_dashes, if you can disable them via your signature file?" It 
probably started as "mutt always inserts hyphens before the 
signature", and you *couldn't* disable them via your signature file. 
Then the ability to skip the hyphens was added later. Mutt's 
developers work hard to maintain backwards compatibility, so it's 
rather unlikely that they would say "okay, well, since you can add 
hyphens to your signature file, we're just going to stop inserting 
them completely".

> You might also need to unset sig_dashes. It looks too complicated. 
> Do you think this is an /easy/ solution just for setting the 
> greating?

Yes. I admit, it is a bit roundabout, but it is *easy*. It requires no 
difficult leaps in logic or long study.

Compare this to solutions to other problems, such as the problem of 
choosing whether to send pgp-inline or pgp-mime messages based on the 
recipients of the message, and getting mutt to choose the right one 
even as you change the list of recipients in the compose menu. (hint, 
it uses mutt's group-matching feature, 'push', several send2-hooks, a 
script, and a temp file to store previous state) THAT is a difficult 
solution. This signature business? This is easy.

<soapbox>
Mutt is powerful because it is flexible, not because getting it set up 
is as simplistic and direct as possible. The question to ask with mutt 
is "can it be made to do X without digging into the source code", 
whereas other mailers cannot even hope to do X without touching their 
source code to make a special "does X" feature (how many email 
programs allow you to alter the type of pgp signature based on the 
recipients? I haven't found any). Mutt is not a mailer for the faint 
of heart looking for a quick, easy way of reading email. Mutt is a 
mailer for people who are very particular about their email, but who 
are willing to invest a little work to get it just so.
</soapbox>

~Kyle
- -- 
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
                                          -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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