usefor-article-09 February 2003

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.

   The following conventions for quotations, attributions and
   signatures, although not mandated by this standard, describe widely
   used practices. They are documented here in order to establish their
   correct usage, and the use of the words "MUST", "SHOULD", etc. is to
   be understood in that context.
   It is conventional 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 is intended to facilitate their
   automatic recognition and processing by sophisticated reading agents.
   The attribution SHOULD contain the name and/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 recognized (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 2001 16:40:20 +0000,
         Joe D. Bloggs <jdbloggs@bar.example> wrote:

      Am 24. Dez 2001 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. Whenever a poster or posting agent
   appends such a signature to an article, it MUST be preceded with a
   delimiter line containing (only) two hyphens (US-ASCII 45) followed
   by one SP (US-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-08/Body_Conventions.out          August 2002
+++ ../usefor-article-09/Body_Conventions.out          February 2003
@@ -11,7 +11,6 @@
    used practices. They are documented here in order to establish their
    correct usage, and the use of the words "MUST", "SHOULD", etc. is to
    be understood in that context.
-
    It is conventional 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
@@ -24,6 +23,7 @@
         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