🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm bothered by the choice made in the message separator (EB) as
described in this document.  Most digests currently do hold quite well
to a standard of using either 70 or 30 hyphens alone on a line,
with a blank line on either side.  This is specific enough to avoid
confusing user text with separators.  Defining a hyphen in the first
column of a line, with no other restrictions, as a separator seems
like asking for ambiguity.  Most front end programs will not be changed
to "stuff" mail being sent for the first time, nor will most mail
reader software "unstuff".

As a proposal, may I suggest a line which starts with 5 hyphens in
sequence followed by a space and an asterisk, ends with the reverse,
and has a total length of 68.  This is much harder for a user to hit
randomly, would be easy for the user to avoid, and yet still allows
for some text field within the separator.

I think it would be worthwhile to define the standard in such a way
that mail reading programs could tell, almost without ambiguity, if
a message contained embedded messages.  Then, depending on the user
interface and the user's desires, the system could either break such
messages automatically or on user command.  Using the single hyphen
separator it will be too likely for a single message to get broken
at a list bullet or just above a "signature" (notice my own, which
I've used this way for ages - if "unstuffed", this hyphen will disappear
-and if I forget the space, the file gets split).

- Dave

     David Alpern
     IBM San Jose Research Laboratory, K65/282
     5600 Cottle Road, San Jose, CA 95193
     Phone: (408) 284-6521
     Bitnet: ALPERN@SJRLVM4
     CSnet:  ALPERN@IBM-SJ