title: While processing an email reply how can I ignore any email client specifics & the history?
body: <p>I have a rails application which processes incoming emails via IMAP. Currently a method is used that searches the parts of a TMail object for a given content_type:</p>
  
  <pre><code>def self.search_parts_for_content_type(parts, content_type = 'text/html')
      parts.each do |part|
        if part.content_type == content_type
          return part.body
        else
          if part.multipart?
            if body = self.search_parts_for_content_type(part.parts, content_type)
              return body
            end
          end
        end
      end
  
      return false
   end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>These emails are generally in response to a html email it sent out in the first place. (The original outbound email is never the same.) The body text the method above returns contains the full history of the email and I would like to just parse out the reply text. </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>I'm wondering whether it's reasonable to place some '---please reply above this line---' text at the top of the mail as I have seen in a 37 signals application.</p></li>
  <li><p>Is there another way to ignore the client specific additions to the email, other than write a multitude of regular expressions (which I haven't yet attempted) for each and every mail client?  They all seem to tack on their own bit at the top of any replies.</p></li>
  </ol>