Preventing multiple signatures in email conversation?

[Kai Schaetzl]

Julian Field wrote on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:21:09 +0100:

> I just want to look for the tag. If it's there, I don't add the 
> signature again. Simple as that. So maybe a <span> with an id with no 
> definition would be okay. Is that legal HTML in all the standards?

Don't know what you mean by "no definition".

With my original example I was actually thinking about wrapping the 
signature in the tag like so:

<div id="mailscanner-removeme">

Your signature here

</div>

Then you could remove the whole thing and automatically get everything.

If that is a problem with HTML::Parser I would think about

<span id="mailscanner-removeme-start"></span>
Signature
<span id="mailscanner-removeme-end"></span>

This is also a problem?

Hm. All the other empty tags that come to mind do something, for instance 
<br> or <hr />.
An empty image tag may look weird, though, anyway. Newer mail programs 
(including Outlook) do not automatically download web content. Depending 
on the rendering engine that gets used it may not display at all or with a 
placeholder. Which may not look that nice.
Also the src= might get replaced or the img entirely removed because of 
policy. I think using an img tag is not such a great idea. I understand, 
there wasn't another option ;-)

Kai

-- 
Kai Schätzl, Berlin, Germany
Get your web at Conactive Internet Services: http://www.conactive.com