What is probably a long while back now, I found it interesting to try and
collect all of the different short-code signature scenes attached to forum
members' posts, and render them to see what they looked like.

A somewhat recent conversation with a Federal agent, and, recalling some posts
by Chris Cason in some older threads, made me think that there's got to be a way
to scan the entire newsgroup and collect all of the unique signature scenes.

Maybe if someone has some sort of Javascript foo, Google foo, or some kind of
network software / scripting that could do this, it would be a fun project to
render all of the signatures and somehow attach the poster's forum handle, and
possibly the message number.

Any ideas?

- BW

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On 27/02/2025 18:24, Bald Eagle wrote:
> What is probably a long while back now, I found it interesting to try and
> collect all of the different short-code signature scenes attached to forum
> members' posts, and render them to see what they looked like.
> 
> A somewhat recent conversation with a Federal agent, and, recalling some posts
> by Chris Cason in some older threads, made me think that there's got to be a way
> to scan the entire newsgroup and collect all of the unique signature scenes.
> 
> Maybe if someone has some sort of Javascript foo, Google foo, or some kind of
> network software / scripting that could do this, it would be a fun project to
> render all of the signatures and somehow attach the poster's forum handle, and
> possibly the message number.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> - BW
> 

Nice project :)

I think that with a few lines of Perl(*) code, it's easy to retrieve all 
the groups on a server and, for each group, the messages and for each 
message extract le SDL in the signing.


The code principle could be (untested but with some comments) :
——— CODE START
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

# https://perldoc.perl.org/Net::NNTP
use Net::NNTP;
use constant NNTP_DEBUG => 0; # 0/1

# connection to the nntp server
my $NNTPServer = Net::NNTP->new("news.povray.org",'Debug' => NNTP_DEBUG)
	or die;

# retrieve newsgroup list
my $GroupsList = $NNTPServer->list()
	or die "Couldn't fetch group list\n";

# for each group in the list
foreach my $ThisGroup (keys %$GroupsList) {
	# informations of this newsgroup
	my ($NbArticles, $first, $last) = $NNTPServer->group($ThisGroup)
	    or die "Can't select $ThisGroup\n";

	# for each message in the group
	foreach my $artnum ($first..$last) {
		my $art = $NNTPServer->article($artnum) or next;
		print "===== article $artnum =====\n";
		print @$art;
		}
     }

# close and quit
print "\n--- close and quit ---\n";
$NNTPServer->quit;

——— CODE END (35 lines)
————————————————————————————————————————————————




Okay. Now comes the hard part: recognizing the signature AND recognizing 
that it contains SDL POV code.

Perl(*) contains powerful recognition operators (regex) but (I haven't 
thought much about this) I can't see what would be significant for 
signature and SDL code.



(*) : Perl, Why Perl ? because I know this language well, because it's 
present by default on *nix distributions, because regexes can be 
manipulated easily. But nothing prevents you from adapting it to another 
language, of course.





-- 
kurtz le pirate
compagnie de la banquise

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On 2/27/25 12:24, Bald Eagle wrote:
> Any ideas?

Years ago when I was more regularly testing clipka's parser updates I 
started collecting signatures as I did searches for other stuff. I 
thought they'd be good parser test cases. No automatic scan used.

Attached are 36 of them. A few with alternate versions where they work 
or do not work with particular parser versions. Attributions probably 
there only if the signature itself includes a comment - IIRC.

Bill P.

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Attachments:
Download 'signatures.tar.gz' (5 KB)

hi,

"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> What is probably a long while back now, I found it interesting to try and
> collect all of the different short-code signature scenes attached to forum
> members' posts, and render them to see what they looked like.
> ...

I'm sure that _somewhere_ I have a small collection of sigs, found/find them
fascinating, but where ... </frown>.  two "city" themed examples attached.


regards, jr.

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Attachments:
Download 'citysigs.zip' (5 KB)

kurtz le pirate <kur### [at] freefr> wrote:

> Okay. Now comes the hard part: recognizing the signature AND recognizing
> that it contains SDL POV code.
>
> Perl(*) contains powerful recognition operators (regex) but (I haven't
> thought much about this) I can't see what would be significant for
> signature and SDL code.

So, I would think that one would start with the obvious:

The signature would be at the very end, would perhaps be separated by
whitespace/NL/CR
and perhaps be preceded by some separator like
--
or sig:

In one thread, someone replied that someone's signature was really just a small
scene.  Because it "didn't fit into the typical sig size.
https://news.povray.org/2q9m9u4d4ltskajs3a0mjvhsnr4gq5o94e%404ax.com

So, I'd say that any compact block of text in less than 4 lines, that has any
pov-ray keywords in it, is a good candidate.

The idea is really just to grab them all and then we can hand-sift-out the
not-sig stuff.

Rejecting identical blocks of code makes the hand-sifting even easier.  How many
could there possibly be?

- BW

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Thanks WFP and jr.

I have some in a collection somewhere as well, though I know it can't possibly
be complete.

- BW

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"BTW: It is a common sport in this forum to shorten other people's sigs"

:D

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"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:

> In one thread, someone replied that someone's signature was really just a small
> scene.  Because it "didn't fit into the typical sig size.
> https://news.povray.org/2q9m9u4d4ltskajs3a0mjvhsnr4gq5o94e%404ax.com

Oh, the weird things you find, when playing with this stuff:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/McQuary_limit

Also:
The McQuary limit is a netiquette rule that limits the size of a Usenet
signature line to four lines, each no longer than 80 characters. The limit is
named after George F. McQuary, a frequent contributor to the newsgroup
alt.fan.warlord.
Explanation
The McQuary limit was sometimes still used on Usenet as the maximum acceptable
size of a sig block, even after the bandwidth explosion of the early 1990s.
Before this explosion, long signatures cost money for people who ran Usenet
servers.

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Let me tell you, this one from Warp, with the modular arithmetic, is a tough nut
to crack.  I have some macros and a spreadsheet to implement the overall
principles, but there's still some funny business / fudge factors that I need to
use to correct for when thing start going off the rails.
Hopefully I'll get a chance to rigorously figure it all out and get it to work.

I'm assuming that he may have learned some of these things in a computer science
or networking class - but the way it's all put together is devilishly clever.

#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -


- BW

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So, I have so far managed to backtrack my way from the beginning, all the way to
the first number: 11117333955
But I need to add a 10-decimal place "correction factor" at each step.

I understand some parts of what he's doing, but others are so convoluted that
they are completely opaque.

And 10 decimal places seems very specific and - sensitive.

But maybe the point was to thread it all through the very tiny eye of a crooked
needle.

I'm also wondering if there's any significance, if it's just a random residual
value, or if it somehow plays into the specific values of the modular
arithmetic.

0.0311342675

- BE

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