Randomly selects signature quotes for email and newsgroup postings
The “signature block” following my newsgroup postings and email includes a randomly selected quote, and I am often asked where I got the quotes, and also how I make them randomly change. To answer the second question first, I use a program called "Pick-a-Tag" which combines a specified signature (eg your name) with a randomly selected line from a specified file. It is a free download from http://home.wanadoo.nl/jeroen/software.html.
Pick-a-Tag uses three separate text files:
1. taglines.txt
This is the file with all your taglines in it - one per line.
2. source.txt
This is the source file. It contains the text which remains constant in your signature as well as the instructions that make pick-a-tag grab a random tagline from taglines.txt.
3. signature.txt
This is the destination file - the file Pick-a-Tag dumps the result of adding a tagline to the source file into, and which E-mail programs and newsreader programs (in my case Outlook Express) call on to use as a signature block.
Step one: install and run the program
The direct link to the self-extracting file of the latest version of Pick-a-Tag is: http://home.wanadoo.nl/jeroen/files/pat160b1.exe. It will install by default into C:\Program Files\Pick-a-Tag (see Figure 1).
When it has finished installing, run Pickatag.exe from the directory C:\Program Files\Pick-a-Tag (see Figure 2 for how the program will look).
Figure 2 – Pick-a-Tag when it is first run.
Step two: settings
The Destination file requires the signature.txt file, but it doesn’t exist yet. So create a blank text file called signature.txt and save it in the Pick-a-Tag directory (or elsewhere if you wish). The easiest way to do this is to navigate to the Pick-a-Tag directory (C:\Program Files\Pick-a-Tag) in Windows Explorer, go to the File menu, select New, select Text Document and name it signature.txt (see Figure 3).
Figure 3 – creating the signature.txt file.
Now go back to Pick-a-Tag (double click on it in the system tray) and click on the Settings tab. For each of the three file options, click the Select button, browse to the Pick-a-Tag directory (elsewhere for the signature.txt file if you created it in a different directory) and select the appropriate file (see Figure 4).
Figure 4 – selecting the text files.
Step three: personalise the signature
We need to amend the source.txt file that comes with the program to personalise it. Click on the Source File tab, and edit the text there to your taste. Note that when posting to newsgroups, most programs will add the "-- " line automatically, which is a standard part of signature identification.
So all you need is a line which you wish to appear in every signature, followed by the code to pull in a tagline: %tag% (see Figure 5 for an example).
Figure 5 – the source file open for editing within Pick-a-Tag.
You can have as many lines as you wish, but good netiquette would suggest that you keep it to no more than three or four.
Click on the Save button, then the Yes button when it asks you to confirm the save. And then the OK button after it tells you it has saved it (it really is making sure, isn’t it!).
Step four: your taglines
Pick-a-Tag comes with a taglines.txt file with some sample quotes, viewable under the Taglines tab (see figure 6 with taglines that I’ve added).
Figure 6 – viewing the taglines.txt file from within Pick-a-Tag.
You can either edit the file within Pick-a-Tag, or using a text editing program. If you’re planning to use any of the taglines provided with Pick-a-Tag, it’s a good idea to go through and delete the ones you (or people you might be sending them to) might find offensive, or just not interesting.
To edit the taglines.txt file from within Pick-a-Tag, click the Edit button and type directly into the program. You can also paste your clipboard contents (if you’ve ‘copied’ text via another program such as MS Word). When you’ve finished, select the File menu, then Exit, and click the Yes button when asked to confirm.
To edit your taglines file using your favourite text editing program, just open up the taglines.txt file from within your chosen program. If you use a program like MS Word to edit it, don’t forget to “Save As” a plain text file, with the extension .txt.
If any of your taglines require a forced line break, you can insert code into the tagline itself (in the taglines.txt file) to make it start the following text on the next line. Eg (as per the example Pick-a-Tag gives):
Captain Picard:%LINE% "Fire at will, Scotty"
will be converted to:
Captain Picard:
"Fire at will, Scotty"
Note that this is only done within the taglines.txt file, not in sourcefile.txt.
Step five: setting up your E-mail program
Outlook Express needs to be instructed to use the signature.txt file as the signature block. Open Outlook Express, go to the Tools menu and select Options. Select the Signatures tab, and then under Edit Signature click on File. Click on the Browse button, browse to the Pick-a-Tag directory (C:\Program Files\Pick-a-Tag) and select the file signature.txt.
If you have more than one signature set up (eg for different e-mail addresses, or a different account for your newsgroups), you’ll need to select it for each one of those you want to use it with.
For the Mozilla mail client, go to the Edit menu, select Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings, choose the appropriate news or mail address and in the resulting window labelled “Identity”, check “Attach this Signature” checkbox and use the “choose” button to navigate to your “signature.txt” file. Repeat for your other accounts, then click OK.
Using Pick-a-Tag
Put a shortcut to the Pickatag.exe file in your Startup folder, and it’ll run in the background all the time.
If you don’t like the signature it has chosen (or there’s some reason that one is not appropriate for the message it’s attached to), you can quickly change it by double clicking on the Pick-a-Tag icon in the system tray, clicking on the first tab (if it’s not already selected), and clicking on the Pick-a-Tag button. Keep clicking until you find one you want (see figure 7).
Figure 7 – select another random signature by clicking on the Pick-a-Tag button.
Or you can go to the Taglines tab, click on the tag you want and then click on the Select button.
Pick-a-Tag defaults to selecting a new tag every five minutes, but you can change that under the Settings tab.
Note that if you click on the cross in the top right-hand corner, the program will minimise to the system tray, not close. To close the program, either click on the Exit button under the first tab, or right click on the icon in the system tray and select Exit program.
When Pick-a-Tag closes, the last signature selected will remain as your signature until it's changed again.
Finding tags
Pick-a-Tag comes with some of its own taglines, but you will probably want more! One source is of course other people’s taglines. There’s no real sense of ownership over taglines as they tend to be public domain quotes and sayings, so feel free to grab any you find and add them to your taglines.txt file either via the Pick-a-Tag program, or in a text editor. If you use a quote, it’s a good idea to include the author of the quote.
There are lots of sources online, easily found by searching on terms such as: tags, tagfile, signature, quotes.
Note: I know that Scotty was not Picard's weapon's officer (that was Worf), he was Captain James T. Kirk's Engineer…
Some signature examples
--
Katharine
You know you've spent too much time on the computer when you spill milk and the first thing you think is, 'edit, undo.'
--
Katharine
witlag, n.: the delay between delivery and comprehension of a joke.
--
Katharine
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. - Thelonius Monk
