In article ,
News wrote:

Because he has got the sig separator in the message, rather than down
the bottom above a sig.

I've removed the space that follows the 2 hyphens, so it will now
appear. Many news readers will cut off anything after a properly
configured sig separator (2 hyphens followed by a space) - in order to
not quote the sig. If you have that combination above text you want, it
won't be quoted.

That utter stupidity was sneaked into an RFC on something else by
a loonie with a bee in his bonnet and very little knowledge of the
wider world of Email, and has never been more than patchily accepted
by the Internet community. Inter alia, trailing spaces in Email have
never been specified to be either preserved or not inserted.

Although pedant we're talking of news and nntp, not email here/pdt

You seem to be unaware that news handling is based on Email, and
is often/usually implemented using mail clients. Oh, and the
convention you are referring to was and is specified in the context
of Email.

And imo, its a very useful tool for those readers that take any notice
of it. That said, as you imply, some newsreaders tend to rip off the
space when posting; others know nothing of the convention.

Whatever, I'm not sure why for your invective?

Because it has always caused far more trouble than benefit. Like
the Microsoft idiocy that started this, it is useful only to a
small clique that communicate only among themselves. Inter alia,
Internet protocol Email is not the only form of Email, and was a
relatively small proportion when that RFC was perpetrated.

And, if you don't know why making trailing spaces significant in
a text format is a total idiocy, then I suggest that you look up
Lamport and tabs (which is a similar, but less stupid, misdesign).

Just as the text below won't be quoted

--

Oh, yeah? And I am using the descendent of the de facto canonical
Unix newsreader and mailer (which is used for transport, for the
non-geeks out there).

Well, perhaps I should have qualified that as 'Just as the text below
won't be quoted by many news readers'

More accurately, 'some'.

Besides, I was answering why it was happening, not requesting a debate
on its antecedents.

No, you were asserting a general rule, and I was correcting you.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.