1 t-prot -- TOFU protection
2 =========================
4 1. What the hell is TOFU?
6 TOFU is an abbreviation which mixes German and English words; it expands
7 to "text oben, full-quote unten" which means "text above - full quote
8 below" and describes the style of so many users who let their mailer or
9 newsreader quote everything of the previous message and just add some
10 text at the top; obviously they think that quoted text must not be
11 changed at all. This is quite annoying as it needlessly sends a lot of
12 data even when it is not required. Some editing of messages is desired.
13 Please point these people to the page http://learn.to/edit_messages -
16 2. What does the script do?
17 It detects, and when demanded hides annoying parts in rfc822 messages:
18 TOFU, huge quoted blocks, signatures (especially when they are too long),
19 excessive punktuation, blocks of empty lines, trailing spaces and tabs.
20 For use inside of MTAs or MDAs it may exit with appropriate libc exit
21 codes, so annoying messages may be bounced easily.
23 3. For what can I use it?
24 There are several possibilities. One is to filter your email or news
25 messages when displaying them in your User Agent. Another is blocking
26 annoying messages entirely from your system - using the script in some
27 sendmail (see the man page for an example) or procmail rule, or even
30 4. Give me some example! What about an example configuration for the MUA
31 mutt(1), or the NUA slrn(1)?
32 An example is included in the distribution. Please see the man page for
33 further details on the activated features.
35 5. And what about other User Agents?
36 I just use mutt and slrn, so I do not know how to filter messages in
37 other User Agents. If you know how to incorporate t-prot e.g. in Gnus,
38 please just drop me a note. ;)
40 6. Where did the idea come from?
41 Many thanks to Gerhard H. Wrodnigg who uses a TOFU protection script
42 in order to keep the responses to his cancel bot reasonably short. The
43 entire inspiration for this hack came from the "TOFU protection" line of
44 his script on many usenet postings.