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Re: Signature formatting



On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 12:55:28AM EST, steVe wrote:
> so spake David Yitzchak Cohen [2004.03.10 @ 23:57]:
> > On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 11:14:50PM EST, David T-G wrote:
> > > ...and then Aaron said...

> > > % Is there any way that I can have mutt add a blank line above the '-- '
> > > % of my signature so that when I begin to insert text there is already a
> > > 
> > > Not really, but I have sigdashes turned off and start my sig file with
> > > the blank line above ':-D' and build the rest by hand.  It works out the
> > > same in the end :-)
> > > 
> > > I've tinkered with hooks to add 'HTH & HAND' to list postings, since I'm
> > > usually offering help (but not uncommonly asking for it!), or 'Love,' on
> > > posts to family members, but in the end I'm *way* too lazy to automate
> > > that -- and that's probably a good thing in the long run :-)
> > 
> > Hmm, I think you may've just given me another idea for a new feature.
> > I'll sleep on it, and maybe I'll add it to my address book.  I need to
> > think about how to do it, though.  Should we have signatures by group?
> > Should we have signatures by nickname?  Should we have signatures by
> > email addy?  How about signature components on a group/nickname/email
> > basis?  Maybe we want to change signatures by language (like my mailing
> > list config does)?  Do we want some sort of override mechanism, perhaps
> > using standard hooks?
> > 
> > There are lots of questions, and I need to think.  As always, a listful
> > of brains is better than one, so comments/suggestions/questions/etc. are
> > more than welcome.  Finally, it's important to note that much of my
> > development is driven by requests, so feel free to just push your own
> > agenda at me if you want.  I may not implement what you want how you
> > want, but I'll listen, and offer assistance if you decide to make the
> > modifications yourself :-)

> i do a bunch of sig changing with send-hooks and folder-hooks as it
> is.  granted, it's not the most robust of solutions, but it works...
> just for clarity, are you suggesting that your address book will have 
> a personalized sig entry for each entry in the db?

not necessarily, but the RC file generated will :-)

> i think that would be 
> pretty nice, as you wouldn't have to muck around with mutt's alias
> file...(and tons of send-hooks) which can be hiddeously hard to manage.

That's exactly why I have my address book and list manager.  The list
manager already produces send-hooks to control such things as the
"From:" name, "From:" address (yup, settable individually), signature,
attribution and date format.  It also produces alias entries, and as
of about a week ago does send-hooks too.  For a personal address book,
though, it may be desireable to do things differently.  Currently, my
address book manager generates aliases (of course) for all the different
addresses of each contact both with and without the category as a prefix
(except for some special categories that have special treatment) and
produces save-hooks to store mail from each contact in a reasonable place
by default, but there's an awful lot of other stuff that may be neat to
do, and as always I'm taking suggestions, requests, ideas, etc. :-)

> but you're basically re-implementing a send-hook, no?

Nah, I'm just using a send-hook (or many of them, to be more precise) :-)

> If that's the case, 
> why stop with signatures?  you can add a bunch of other things like
> character encoding, my_hdr's, etc etc...

You bet!

> but then i guess you have to 
> think, where do you draw the line between send-hook and address-book?

My goal is to be able to store all contact information in a single
contact database.  That includes information about those people's
preferences (among other stuff, like birthdays, IM accounts, phone
numbers, fax numbers, comments, todo entries, etc.).  In other words,
a script to convert this information into Mutt RC scripts will need to
employ send-hooks.  You can use additional send-hooks in other RC files
for overriding stuff in particular circumstances and/or changing other
things, but the goal is for anything more than a one-off tweak to be
expressible in the contact database.

If you're curious about how this whole thing works, I'd invite you to have
a look at my list database [1], and the RC file autogenerated from it [2].

 - Dave

[1]
http://www.bigfatdave.com/dave/mutt/muttdir/newlists

[2]
http://www.bigfatdave.com/dave/mutt/muttdir/newlistsrc

-- 
Uncle Cosmo, why do they call this a word processor?
It's simple, Skyler.  You've seen what food processors do to food, right?

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