Disclaimer Attachment- ONLY ONCE

Tue Oct 26 20:19:27 IST 2004

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You would be best doing this by writing a Custom Function attached to
the "Sign Clean Messages" option.

Working from the top of the entity tree, look in the first entity and in
any multipart/alternative entities. I would advise
1) Replace all HTML tags with a single space.
2) Look for consecutive lines containing the text of the email signature?

But given that you need to look for the HTML signature and the text
signature, as well as any sigs that have been converted to/from
plain/html, it is going to be very awkward to make sure you have found
them all. You need to look for the text of the HTML and text signatures
in both of the multipart/alternative sections.

This is a very easy thing for humans to do, but very awkward for a
program to do. You have to aim to catch as many permutations as you
possibly can, in order to stand a chance of getting a usable system.

Venkata Achanta wrote:

>Thanks for all your replies.
>
>Julian,
>
>       I have a request for you. I want to try to get this feature added
>(atleast as a separate plugin) and I am ready to devote developer time in
>order to get this done.
>
>I am looking for your directions on the design of the module to ensure
>forward compatibilty with future versions of MailScanner.
>
>I completely agree with with you about the MUA's adding html tags.but i am
>thinking of a module that can be customized to
>-What disclaimer text to look for ?
>-What type of encoding to look for ?
>etc
>
>I know it will not be completely possible to detect whether every message
>has a disclaimer attached to it or not(given the variance in the behaviour
>MUA's) but still the purpose will be served for most of the e-mails i
>believe.
>
>just want you comments on this.
>
>Anyone intrested to team up ?
>
>Many Many thanks for this excellent piece of software,which is saving the e-
>mail world from spam.
>
>Thanks much,
>Venkata Achanta
>
>
>On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 18:57:26 +0100, Julian Field
><mailscanner at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Marco Benton wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Matt Kettler wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>At 09:01 PM 10/25/2004, Marco Benton wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>alot of companies use the <...barf...> disclaimers and MailScanner has
>>>>>an easy way to add it, although not what inteded for.  not every
>>>>>company
>>>>>has gurus and pointy-haired managers want certain things even tho they
>>>>>dont make sense.  but is it right to *not* add that feature because of
>>>>>l-users?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>IMO, yes, but I think so because the feature only serves l-users.
>>>>
>>>>If there was a redeeming value to it beyond lusers, I'd say add it.
>>>>But it
>>>>doesn't. It only serves those adding clueless disclaimers to their
>>>>mail. It
>>>>doesn't aid those using the feature for virus sigs. It doesn't aid
>>>>mailing
>>>>lists because mailing list management packages have their own signature
>>>>tools. It really doesn't aid anyone in a useful valid way.
>>>>
>>>>I'll leave it up to Julian, but quite frankly I think it's a waste of
>>>>his
>>>>time to implement a feature that does the internet community as a
>>>>whole a
>>>>great disservice, and only serves to comfort clueless PHBs.
>>>>
>>>>If the PHBs want disclaimers, fine, but I don't think they should get
>>>>that
>>>>for free from Julian.
>>>>
>>>>There's plenty of other useful things for him to be doing.. Like
>>>>enjoying a
>>>>pint of ale/glass of wine/ beverage of choice :)
>>>>
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>>>>'leave mailscanner' in the body of the email.
>>>>Before posting, read the MAQ (http://www.mailscanner.biz/maq/) and
>>>>the archives (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/mailscanner.html).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>i do agree.  i'm just playing the role of the l-users and pointy-haired
>>>managers.
>>>
>>>if Julian does decide to do this in a fully compatible way, it *will* be
>>>painfull!  i remember writing that disclaimer milter and having to deal
>>>with  email clients that didnt fully comply with MIME standards...never
>>>mind the raw message bodies that came from brain-dead MTA's or email
>>>clients (most likely spammer servers).
>>>
>>>
>>I'm inclined to go with the "no" vote here. Once you start considering
>>MUAs that have turned the original text into HTML, it gets very hard
>>indeed. You have no idea how it might have done it, so you can't even
>>just search for the sig in the text. Spaces and line breaks are likely
>>to have been played with.
>>
>>
>>
>>>as long as he enjoys the good stuff and not a pint of stomach burning
>>>acid made in the backyard.  ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>Stomach acid, now there's a long story I'll spare you...
>>Not had any stomach acid since operation number 4 back in 1991. You can
>>do without all sorts of bits of your insides, I'm living proof :-)
>>
>>Anyone fancy buying me a Mac laptop? I've just got an iMac G5 at work,
>>and my PC is starting to gather dust already. Hopefully I've got one of
>>those lovely little OQOs on the way (see www.oqo.com) so I can work on
>>the move more easily. Built-in Bluetooth combined with my phone =
>>productive train trips. They look dead cool, I'll report back once I've
>>had it a while.
>>
>>--
>>Julian Field
>>www.MailScanner.info
>>Professional Support Services at www.MailScanner.biz
>>MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support
>>Buy the MailScanner book at www.MailScanner.info/store
>>
>>PGP footprint: EE81 D763 3DB0 0BFD E1DC 7222 11F6 5947 1415 B654
>>
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>>To unsubscribe, email jiscmail at jiscmail.ac.uk with the words:
>>'leave mailscanner' in the body of the email.
>>Before posting, read the MAQ (http://www.mailscanner.biz/maq/) and
>>the archives (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/mailscanner.html).
>>
>>
>
>------------------------ MailScanner list ------------------------
>To unsubscribe, email jiscmail at jiscmail.ac.uk with the words:
>'leave mailscanner' in the body of the email.
>Before posting, read the MAQ (http://www.mailscanner.biz/maq/) and
>the archives (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/mailscanner.html).
>
>
>

--
--
Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
                            Southampton SO17 1BJ

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Before posting, read the MAQ (http://www.mailscanner.biz/maq/) and
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