.

1. It's possible to automagically render bylines (-- Main.JonathanCline - 29 Aug 2003) in a specific style.
2. It's possible to automagically render different author text in different styles in-line, similar to the way email clients change font color for different authors in a thread. Example:
   • This is a paragraph written by one author. -- Main.AuthorOne - 22 Aug 2003
     • This is a followup to that paragraph. -- Main.AuthorTwo - 26 Aug 2003
       • I will follow up to your comment here. -- Main.AuthorThree - 30 Aug 2003
3. It's possible to use CSS to create a new layer which overlaps the bottom layer and contains bylines in a specific screen position, or draws boxes around author's content. Example: a column on the right contains the author, a column on the left contains that author's blocks of text.
   • For limited numbers of authors, different colors can be used, so that a bar of color on the margin along the text indicates lines written by that author.
4. It's possible to automagically perform style changes for nesting levels on email/news messages. Example:

> In message 123, AuthorOne writes:
>> In message 120, AuthorTwo writes:
>>> In message 114, AuthorThree writes:
>>>
>>> Hello, I am AuthorThree.
>>>
>> Hello, AuthorThree, I am AuthorTwo.
>>
> Hello, both of you, I am AuthorOne.
>

might render as:

Hello, I am AuthorThree. -- AuthorThree, message 114

Hello, AuthorThree, I am AuthorTwo. -- AuthorTwo, message 120

Hello, both of you, I am AuthorOne. -- AuthorOne, message 123

Or, well, you get the idea.

• For colorizing changes to the topic on a by-author basis, a simple bar would be used like so. This is an illustration using tables but a different implementation would be far better! (Hopefully the colors are visible on all browsers; I'm not sure if there are ambiguities in rendering color within empty table cells.) This is a form of showing minimal diffs as part of the topic.
  • cookies could be used to timestamp each user's last view of a topic, which would allow the view to actually correspond to text which is new.

References

• SignatureNetiquette

-- JonathanCline - 29 Aug 2003