FE>> Omit tear line please... if you want tear lines, there's a
FE>> problem with gateways replacing *-origin lines by #-origin
FE>> like in

FE>> ~~~ tear line
FE>> # orlgin: author (z:n/f.p{at}foreign.net)
FE>> * orlgin: gateway (z:n/f.p{at}fidonet.org)

 PE> So you have some gateways totally mangling the message.  So?

errrr... the above is per the original gateway specifications...

FE>> Why do you want to document / enforce tear lines in FTS-
FE>> 0004.002 ?

 PE> As used by 99.999% of fidonet traffic?  Because failure to do so,
 PE> immediately makes tearlines stop being a control line, and start
 PE> being user-text.  Which means those 99.999% of programs need to be
 PE> changed, if they don't want to pollute user-text with crap. It's
 PE> bad enough as it is already.

the tearline MAY have been a control line at one point a long long LONG
time ago... before you came into fidonet? i dunno, but i DO know that it's
use as a control line was going going gone out back in about july of
1990... how do i know this? this is about the time that QBBS sysops came
out with ReTear, a program to alter the tearlines on messages posted on
unregistered boards. why was ReTear developed? because that old QBBS
tearline used to state that the system was unregistered and a lot of people
didn't like that. so... now the tearline is USERtext instead of a control
line... how am i so accurate on the approx dates of this? because RA v0.04
was released then and that's when i picked it and fidonet up
>

)\/(ark