How do I remove signature divider

[Angaros]

When I compose a mail, there is this annoying little divider showing up before my account signature, making it look like this:

*Mail body*
--
John Doe
www.nowhere.com

How do I remove the line with the "--" without having to edit individual mails? The divider isn't part of any signature.

[Hellmark]

You can't and shouldn't. That's there because most news and mail readers will recognize the area below that as being a signature to automatically crop it.

also, its actually "-- ".

[Angaros]

Perhaps I shouldn't, but I still delete those annoying characters when I compose the mail so if it is as important as you say, it ought not be possible even to edit the divider when composing. Besides, it seems to me that few people use clients with this divider feature, at least when looking at the mails I've received over the last years. Ofc, that's no reason not to use it, but still... Also, isn't it kind of dangerous to use "-- " as a divider when some people use "--" instad of an en dash when composing messages in plain text? Wouldn't it be better to use something else which would be harder to mistake for something else than a signature divider?

[newbie]

The divider is not necessary. Other clients don't use it, so why should Thunderbird use it?

Get rid of it.

[amano]

There is a great featur built in in Thunderbird, tip the back button two times. Not so much work.

[Angaros]

No, it's not so much work hitting backspace. It's not much work writing your sig every time either, but it's convenient to have it autoincluded. The app (which I really love -- don't get me wrong) adds characters to my mails that I don't want, it would be nice if I could tweak it so that those chars didn't appear. I'm not requesting a feature, rather something to put or change in a .js file so that the divider doesn't appear. Because it's convenient and how I like it.

[loosegroove]

The "-- " (two hyphens followed by a single space) spacer is a commonly used delimiter to signify a signature. The reason it is text that you can edit rather than uneditable is because even though it's a general guideline it is not a standard.

I don't believe there is a standard that relates to signatures at all. The closest is RFC 1855, but it
discusses netiquette guidelines, not standards.

[Hellmark]

Newbie, shows how little you know. Most actually use it, although not all add it in automatically (although they still treat the delimited area as a sig and remove it when replying.)

As far as it being dangerous, people have been doing it that way for 20+ years without a problem. If Tbird were to change to use another delimiter, no other programs would support it (thusforth making it pointless)

[newbie]

One thing I know. The divider should not appear.

I've used Incredimail and the divider doesn't show up there.

Angaros has a point.

[Angaros]

Most actually use it, although not all add it in automatically

When thinking of the thousands of mails I've received over the past five years from pals, university administrators, historians, and various IT professionals, I can't say that "most use it (the delimiter)". In fact, IMHO, most don't use it. When browsing through the mails in my folders, I have a hard time spotting a delimiter looking like TB's. I agree that a delimiter can be valuable but I'd prefer to add in my own in my sig file (which I do).

Searching Google for articles on signature delimiters I mostly come up with stuff referring to "-- " stated as being widely used on usenet. Even so, I've almost never encountered it in my received mails.

I would still have to argue that using "-- " as a delimiter would be a bad move, especially if it was going to be standardized. Mostly because the characters are too common. And, if a standard delimiter was to be used it would be better if some mail tag was created for it instead that a mail client wouldn't show, thus not interfering with the way I want to present information to the receivers. Such a tag would still fill the function of signaling what to crop from quoted text...

[i]

You can get rid of that if you edit file mail.dll. Change "-- " to " " (three blanks) on ONE place (NOT where you find "<!-- ").

WARNING: You must edit in "hex" format (e g with UltraEdit). NOT in some plaintext format !

[henrypijames]

I would still have to argue that using "-- " as a delimiter would be a bad move, especially if it was going to be standardized. Mostly because the characters are too common.

You must be kidding. The "sig-dashes" is only used as signature indicator if it's on a line by itself (in other words, it's actually "newline dash dash space newline"). "--" may be used for en-dash, and even on a line by it's own, but who the hell uses an en-dash <strong>followed by a space</strong> on a line by it's own?

Most mail clients do recoginize the sig-dashes and format the signature accordingly when displaying the message. How they format it is up to the client, it could choose to hide the sig-dashes (maybe it's the case with Incredimail, as claimed by newbie). In Mozilla/TB with default skin, signature is showed in grey (as opposed to black for the main text).

Detailed info here: http://www.zrox.net/Mail/Signature/

Finally, I find it hard to believe that most "university administrators" and "various IT professionals" are <strong>not</strong> using the sig-dashes. I certainly can't agree depending on what I see in my mail boxes. (I'm a "university administrator" myself, for the record.)

[brianlmoon]

1. Why do people get upset when someone wants an OPTION? No one is asking to remove the feature, just to make it an option.

1. Are any of the people getting upset actually developers or just users who border on zealots for the Mozilla products?

[Hellmark]

Ang, I was refering to the programs, not people using it (because like I said, not all add it in automatically). Also, how many of those sig'ed emails were sent from OE? OE doesn't add it in, and doesn't support it (which is rare as being the only email app I've used that didn't recognize the delimiter)

Using the DDS delimiter a bad move? How so? Its the industrial standard for all apps that use a delimiter. Thing is, for using standards, you can't create some, because then the only things that would support it would be your own program.

Also, a tag wouldn't be good for those of us that use Text only email

Henry, the page you gave a link for states that a space is to included, and I quote "This means that the sequence for sig-dashes is (newline)(dash)(dash)(space)(newline)."

Brianl, anag want it changed to something else. If it didn't display it, that'd be fine with me, but why deviate from the standard? Also, I am a developer (not with mozilla, but for other email/network tools, and some extensions for Firebird).

[David James]

The divider is not necessary. Other clients don't use it, so why should Thunderbird use it?

Get rid of it.

Umm, kmail uses it, as do Mozilla and Netscape and probably every other *nix based email client in existence.