Orphaned Response

[ajs]

> Is this a special command, or do people just painstakingly
> insert the > sign in front of mail read into the buffer?

For short text it's easy to insert.  For longer text, it's not hard to
write a filter and pass the text through it from vi (or your favorite
smart-enough editor).  For example, using the adjust(1) program (to be
supported on the next HPUX release), this little filter formats the
"quoted" text and inserts the brokets:

----------

# Script to format a mail response or a C comment block from the editor.

# Usage: <script> [arguments]

# If invoked as "adjcomm", does a comment block, else does a response block.
# Any arguments are passed to adjust, including filenames.
# If any filenames are given, adjust reads them instead of stdin, which
# bypasses the left-alignment done first.
# Formats the text and puts a "> " or " *" in front of each line.

	tab='	'

	if [ "$0" = adjcomm ]
	then
	    indent=" *"
	    script='s/^ \*//'		# remove leading " *".
	else
	    indent="> "
	    script="s/^[ $tab]*//"	# remove leading whitespace.
	fi

	sed "$script"		|	# always read stdin.
	adjust $*		|	# read files if told to do so.
	sed "s/^/$indent/"

---------
Alan Silverstein, Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division, Colorado
{ihnp4 | hplabs}!hpfcla!ajs, 303-226-3800 x3053, N 40 31'31" W 105 00'43"