Rated 3 out of 5 stars

by Rich Wales on Aug. 22, 2016 · permalink

I've been using this add-on for several years and have found it indispensable for handling different signatures for different situations.

I have one major complaint, however -- the add-on insists on including the so-called "Usenet signature separator" (a line containing two hyphens and a space) at the top of any signature.

Apparently the author of the add-on was under the (mis)impression that this separator line was mandated by Internet e-mail standards. In fact, it is not -- it is a convention expected only in the obsolescent Usenet newsgroup system, and it has never been mandated for e-mail. However, I was unable to convince the author to consider removing the separator line or even making it optional.

Note, BTW, that a configuration flag (mail.identity.default.suppress_signature_separator) was added to Thunderbird some time ago to omit the separator line before the initial signature included in a brand-new message. However, the Signature Switch add-on doesn't pay attention to this configuration flag -- perhaps, as I said above, because the author may still be convinced (mistakenly) that the separator line is a mandatory Internet e-mail standard which he must follow regardless of how many people want to ignore it. Whatever . . . .

From a technical point of view, it might be more complicated for the add-on to remove or replace a signature block if it isn't demarcated by the Usenet-standard separator line. On the other hand, it might be acceptable to assume that the last empty line in the e-mail body marked the start of the signature block.

Many people have complained that Signature Switch doesn't support embedding the signature before quoted text from a previous message. Accurately identifying an embedded signature block (in order to remove or replace it) could certainly be tricky, but I assume it could somehow be done. An embedded signature block absolutely must not include the Usenet separator line, since e-mail programs which support the separator line would misinterpret the bottom-quoted text after the embedded signature block as being part of the signature.

P.S.: As a kind of workaround, I discovered that if I include my own Usenet signature separator line in my signature file, Signature Switch will see it and will avoid adding its own separator. In the HTML versions of my various signatures, I specify a white colour for my own separator line -- so one of my signature files looks like this (remember the Signature Switch convention of combining both plain-text and HTML signatures into a single file, separated by a line containing only a single equals sign):

Rich
=
<span style="color:#FFFFFF">-- </span>

<span style="color:#800000"><b>Rich</b></span>


When I use the above signature, even though my separator line is enclosed in HTML markup, Signature Switch still notices it and doesn't add a separator of its own. This workaround doesn't help if I am composing plain text e-mail, and the add-on still puts the signature at the bottom of the message even if I'm writing my reply text above quoted material, but at least the separator line is invisible in HTML, so it's not quite so unsightly.