[OFB Cafe] Cafe List

[Timothy Butler]

> I suspected it was because I use HTML email only and included a .gif  
> image smilee emoticon in the one that didn't post.  My email program  
> (Windows Live Mail, which is the replacement for Windows Mail in  
> Vista, which is the replacement for the old Outlook Express in  
> Windows XP and prior), formats replies by changing the quoted text  
> to italic and coloring the quoted text light blue - I notice Mailman  
> seems to remove all that formatting as well.  It's been quite awhile  
> since I ran Mailman, but IIRC there's a setting in the admin panel  
> that doesn't allow HTML posting at all, and it reformats any HTML to  
> plain text.

	Mailman defaults to de-HTMLing, it seems. I didn't realize that. My  
personal preference is for that, I'll confess, both because it keeps  
everything looking clean and it also means I won't have the archive on  
the server grow quickly as it loads up with WYSIWYG junk HTML code.  
But, I *can* turn it off. How does everyone feel about that?

	The problem more likely is that Mailman rejects mail over 40kb in  
size, in deference to those with lesser connections. Really, larger  
stuff ought to be linked to, in my opinion. On a smaller list like  
this one it isn't that big of deal, but larger lists make it totally  
impractical for everyone to be attaching 1 meg files to their  
messages. My inclination is to boost this to, say, 256kb, which would  
be enough to send one appropriately downsized image (or more, even)  
while still keeping some sanity to things. That sound fair?

> I won't go back to plain text email because not all email clients  
> handle format=flowed text properly, I hate reading 80 character wide  
> messages that keep getting increasingly mangled by plain text email  
> clients when people post and don't edit out unneeded quoted text on  
> messages that have been replied to several times, and virtually  
> every word processor I've ever used allows the use of bold, italic  
> or underlined text, and changing font size or color, as well as  
> inserting images inline and many other things that are very handy if  
> composing an informational document.  An modern email client is  
> nothing but a word processor that interfaces with an SMTP server.   
> While plain text email may be good enough for some, it's not for me.

	I never have trouble with plain text. I'll often use whatever the  
person I am replying to uses. I like italics and such as much as the  
next guy, but I don't like some of the excesses, in which peoples' e- 
mails start to look about as bad as their MySpace pages (why I won't  
use MySpace, but will use Facebook). I don't like Microsoft's default  
to Word's rich text format, I'll note, because it makes life bad for  
those who actually like standards. Winmail.dat files and everything  
that goes with them are really awful, and given that plenty of people  
use e-mail solutions incompatible with it, it is a serious annoyance  
(and not just for alternative OS users).

> BTW - I tried to repost the message I sent in reply to Don's post,  
> and it still got rejected by Mailman - it doesn't bounce, the BCC I  
> sent to my personal archive came thru OK, Mailman evidently just  
> dumps it because it has HTML content, with a .gif image inserted  
> inline, that it can't convert to plain text.

	Well, if Windows Live Mail is doing a proper job of sending HTML e- 
mail, it ought to include a plain text version along side the rich  
text. It's only if it is totally standards inept that it wouldn't work  
at all.

	Still, it should go into my moderator bin, so I'm not sure why it  
isn't coming through.

	-Tim


---
Timothy R. Butler | "Turning and turning in the widening gyre
tbutler at ofb.biz   |  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
timothybutler.us  |  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
uninet.info       |  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..."
                                                 -- W. B. Yeats