[Bug 77901] One should be able to disable the addition of dash-dash-space to signature

[Michael S.Olsen]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77901         
michael.s.olsen us army mil changed:

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                 CC|                            |michael.s.olsen us army mil



------- Additional Comments From michael.s.olsen us army mil  2008-07-28 22:32 -------
I must concur with the many who find being forced into using the "-- " convention both awkward and violating.  While the convention was of reasonable importance 10 years ago, especially on Unix based systems, it has generally out grown its effective use and purpose today.  Today, many of us have not only a simple closing and our name, but an entire block of information that we routinely add at the bottom of email (e.g. Sig Block with office number, hours, office address and email).  Forcing the use of this very old convention is pointless and greatly detracts from a professional appearance.

More important is the concept behind the action. Open source software is supposedly meant to be configurable to the end users needs; however with the current methods of distribution and the need to be able to maintain and upgrade with reasonable ease, forcing a nearly outdated and meaningless convention on people is essentially an ethics breach. It makes you no different than the unresponsive Microsoft Corp. and other closed source software producers.

My suggestion is simple. Give a simple checkbox option below the field for signatures allowing for the convention. If you wish, make it active by default. This still allows the end user to create a custom ending to THEIR emails, but allows them to choose whether or not to follow the "-- " convention.  

Personally, I handle about 50 military and US Government emails a day.  All are required by regulation to have and use specific signature block formats.  In the US Gov & Mil, the "-- " convention is specifically forbidden.  Your enforced use is actually on major reason that KMail, along with Evolution and others, is not being installed.  MS Outlook has become a defacto standard do to your unwillingness to provide your users the options that matter to THEM.  I am exceptionally diss appointed in the KMAIL and KDE teams for their lack of attention to and respect for the customer's needs.  This is the simplest wish to address and fix KMAIL has had and it has not been fixed after 5 years of being addressed