I use Pine to send and read email. Here I highlight the use of a program (sigrand) which allows you to use a random signature per pine session from a preselected set.

The program essentially rewrites a named file periodically, and hence could be used with any mail reader which reads the signature from a file.

1. Create a file called ~/NEWS/SIGNATURES (the name is configurable)
   
2. Populate it with lines/paragraphs separated by %%, thus:

   Signatures are a waste of bandwidth.
   %%
   Help stamp out signatures.
   %%
   'Calm down -- it's only ones and zeros.'
   %%
   According to my calculations the problem doesn't exist.
   %%
   

3. Run sigrand.pl. It keeps running in the background and uses FIFO. Thus you have to run it everytime you reboot.
4. Use an alias to read the named pipe viz. r to write to your signature file and use it in the mail program e.g.:

   alias mail      'cat ~/r >! ~/.signature;pine -i -f INBOX;date'
   

The program can do much more and is all yours to explore. Good luck and drop me a line if it works out. I could be a little slow in replying queries, but will get back to them.

Ah, and a word of advice: keep the total length of each of your signatures below four 80 character lines. Please.

And of course, the program will work sensibly only on sensible OSes viz. *N*X

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Ashish Mahabal
Last Outdated: Nov 15 2001