[svlug] Usenet Quote Reformatting Program?

[Mark S Bilk]

Hi,
 
Does anyone know of a program that can take a Usenet article
(or e-mail message), and within each contiguous block of lines
having identical quotation prefixes (e.g., ">> >"), reformat the
paragraphs to a settable width without altering the prefixes.
 
For example, this:
 
>> >Mary had a little lamb.
>> >It's fleas were white as snew.
 
could be reformatted to this:
 
>> >Mary had a
>> >little
>> >lamb.  It's
>> >fleas were
>> >white as
>> >snew.
 
Fmt will do this only for a single specified prefix string,
but articles may have blocks with various strings.
 
I use slrn, and looked in the manual of the latest version,
and it does not seem to have this capability.  The line
wrapping that it does is only for display, and it neither
reformats the paragraphs, nor replicates the prefixes.
 
Untold millions of person-hours must have been spent doing
this manually with a text editor -- for each block,
column-delete the prefixes, format the text, reinsert the
prefixes with a quick macro.  Seems like somebody would have
written a program to do it.
 
  TIA,
 
  Mark