usefor-article-04 April 2001

4.3.2.  Body Conventions

   A body is by default an uninterpreted sequence of octets for most of
   the purposes of this standard. However, a Mime Content-Type header
   may impose some structure or intended interpretation upon it, and may
   also specify the character set in accordance with which the octets
   are to be interpreted.

   It is a common practice for followup agents to enable the
   incorporation of the followed-up article (the "precursor") as a
   quotation. This SHOULD be done by prefacing each line of the quoted
   text (even if it is empty) with the character ">" (or perhaps with
   "> " in the case of a previously unquoted line). This will result in
   multiple levels of ">" when quoted content itself contains quoted
   content, and it will also facilitate the automatic analysis of
   articles.

        NOTE: Posters should edit quoted context to trim it down to the
        minimum necessary. However, followup agents Ought Not to attempt
        to enforce this beyond issuing a warning (past attempts to do so
        have been found to be notably counter-productive).

   The followup agent SHOULD also precede the quoted content by an
   "attribution line" (however, readers are warned not to assume that
   they are accurate, especially within multiply nested quotations). The
   following convention for such lines, whilst not mandated by this
   standard, is intended to facilitate their automatic recognition and
   processing by sophisticated reading agents. The attribution SHOULD
   contain the name or the email address of the precursor's poster, as
   in
      Joe D. Bloggs <jdbloggs@foo.example> wrote:
   or
      Helmut Schmidt <helmut@bar.example> schrieb:

   The attribution MAY contain also a single Newsgroup name (the one
   from which the followup is being made), the precursor's Message-ID
   and/or the precursor's Date and Time. Any of these that are present,
   SHOULD precede the name and/or email address. However, the inclusion
   or not of such fields Ought always to be under the control of the
   poster.

   To enable this line, and the Message-ID and the Email address within
   it, to be recognised (for example to enable suitable reading agents
   to retrieve the precursor or email its poster by clicking on them),
   the following conventions SHOULD be observed:
     o The precursor's Message-ID SHOULD be enclosed within <...> or
       <news:...>
     o The precursor's poster's Email address SHOULD be enclosed within
       <...>
     o The various fields may be separated by arbitrary text and they
       may be folded in the same way as headers, but attributions SHOULD
       always be terminated by a ":" followed by CRLF.

   Further examples:

      On comp.foo in <1234@bar.example> on 24 Dec 1997 16:40:20 +0000,
         Joe D. Bloggs <jdbloggs@bar.example> wrote:

      Am 24. Dez 1997 schrieb Helmut Schmidt <helmut@bar.example>:

   A "personal signature" is a short closing text automatically added to
   the end of articles by posting agents, identifying the poster and
   giving his network addresses, etc. If a poster or posting agent does
   append such a signature to an article, it MUST be preceded with a
   delimiter line containing (only) two hyphens (ASCII 45) followed by
   one SP (ASCII 32). The signature is considered to extend from the
   last occurrence of that delimiter up to the end of the article (or up
   to the end of the part in the case of a multipart Mime body).
   Followup agents, when incorporating quoted text from a precursor,
   Ought Not to include the signature in the quotation. Posting agents
   Ought to discourage (at least with a warning) signatures of excessive
   length (4 lines is a commonly accepted limit).

--- ../usefor-article-03/Body_Conventions.out          February 2000
+++ ../usefor-article-04/Body_Conventions.out          April 2001
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
    articles.
 
         NOTE: Posters should edit quoted context to trim it down to the
-        minimum necessary. However, followup agents SHOULD NOT attempt
+        minimum necessary. However, followup agents Ought Not to attempt
         to enforce this beyond issuing a warning (past attempts to do so
         have been found to be notably counter-productive).
 
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@
    from which the followup is being made), the precursor's Message-ID
    and/or the precursor's Date and Time. Any of these that are present,
    SHOULD precede the name and/or email address. However, the inclusion
-   or not of such fields SHOULD always be under the control of the
+   or not of such fields Ought always to be under the control of the
    poster.
 
    To enable this line, and the Message-ID and the Email address within
@@ -67,15 +67,7 @@
    last occurrence of that delimiter up to the end of the article (or up
    to the end of the part in the case of a multipart Mime body).
    Followup agents, when incorporating quoted text from a precursor,
-   SHOULD NOT include the signature in the quotation. Posting agents
-   SHOULD discourage (at least with a warning) signatures of excessive
+   Ought Not to include the signature in the quotation. Posting agents
+   Ought to discourage (at least with a warning) signatures of excessive
    length (4 lines is a commonly accepted limit).
-
-        NOTE: It is undesirable to have more than one personal signature
-        in an article body (even though the rule above admits the
-        possibility by recognising only the last one). If, for some
-        reason, a second signature is considered necessary, it MAY be
-        preceded by a different delimiter (e.g.  "--- ").
-[That is Clive's suggestion. Not to be included without further
-support.]