[Pan-users] Re: Doubled signature

[Duncan]

Joe Zeff <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Tue, 20 May 2008 16:11:59
-0700:

> Using cat isn't acceptable, because that means I only have one sig, not
> the hundred or more I've moved over from Windows.  (You'd be amazed how
> many quotes you can find when you've been doing it for over a decade.)
> The sigmonster I found doesn't put a delimiter on, it just outputs what
> goes below it.  It's possible, of course, that Pan is calling the
> sigmonster twice, as there are several blank lines between them.  Is
> there any way to test?

Well, the cat line is about the simplest executable solution you could 
get, so at least for a test, try it and see if it dups that.  Similarly, 
you can try a text file (what I'm using with no problem) and see if it 
dups that.

As for checking the double-call, you can use strace, which hooks in at 
the system-call interface and traces that.  You can check all file opens, 
for instance, or all forks (forking the executable).  I use it a lot for 
stuff like trying to figure out where an app is getting its config from, 
if it's not obvious.  The down side is that you'll very likely need to 
filter its output down to something reasonable before you even start to 
sift thru it.  Not only limiting it to (say) file opens only, but 
ignoring system library paths, system icon paths, etc.  You may also wish 
to start pan normally, then attach to the running pan process using its 
pid.  This is a somewhat advanced tool, difficult to get to output the 
info you want without outputting huge amounts of haystack for the needle, 
but it's a very useful tool in the hands of a power user with some 
patience.  Of course, such a user will already know... see the manpage.

I did forget to mention... I do get a double sig for /mailed/ replies, 
but that's simply pan doing one sig and then sending it to the mail 
client, which does its own sig.  That's slightly irritating on the one 
hand as I have to delete one or the other or look stupid, but now that I 
know about it, I think of it as a feature, since it gives me the choice 
of which sig I want to keep in that case.  My news sig will be more 
familiar for those that see my news posts normally, but the mail sig 
works a bit better for mail, especially for those that don't know me from 
news already, so the choice is nice... once I figured out it was doing 
it, at least.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman