[OFB Cafe] Cafe List

[Chris Olson]

From: Timothy Butler 
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 4:32 PM
To: An Open Discussion Forum on Just About Everything,Especially for Techies. 
Subject: Re: [OFB Cafe] Cafe List


> 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

Yeah, right.  Mailman doesn't even de-HTML, then re-HTML properly.  Take a look at this:
http://ofb.biz/pipermail/cafe_ofb.biz/2008-July/000288.html
http://ofb.biz/pipermail/cafe_ofb.biz/2008-July/000294.html
http://ofb.biz/pipermail/cafe_ofb.biz/2008-July/000299.html

What Mailman does is de-HTML the message by parsing it, removing the HTML tags and saving the text.  It disseminates the message to the list subscribers, then converts it back to HTML for the archives.

You're probably aware that I ran various mailing lists for many years and fell out of love with GNU Mailman not too long after I started using it.  I admin'd it on a couple different flavors of linux and Mac OS X Server and on OS X Server even tried compiling some of my own options into it to "fix" it (although I never was a very good Python programmer), and it's still as broken today as it was then (although I don't know what the latest and greatest version is because I haven't looked at it for years).

> 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

You see, that's what I like about Windows Live Mail.  The people in our family, and our friends and acquaintances, send a lot of pictures to each other all the time via email.  Windows Mail makes a "photo email" that sends thumbnails of the pictures which keeps the message size to less than 40Kb even when sending 8 or 10 photos.  When you click "Send" it automatically uploads the full size images to my Windows Live Space and puts a link in the mail to watch a slide show.  You can click on the individual thumbnails to view the full sized image in your browser on an individual basis, or watch the slide show of the entire image collection.  It's actually pretty slick and it works really well - even when sending large collections of photos to persons on 56K dialup internet connections.

I always wanted something like it in Mac OS X Mail, but alas, Apple never did anything that cool with Mail (while I was using it, anyway).

> 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.

I got that option turned off since nobody I exchange email with on a regular basis uses plain text anymore.  This list, and the various linux support groups on the internet, are probably the last plain-text holdouts on the planet.

Fact of the matter is, the email mailing list is a dying breed because it's so limited in what it can do.  The vast majority of internet groups have gone to web-based forums run on software like phpBB and its ilk.  Even bigger than online forums are social sites like Windows Live Spaces or Facebook.  
--
Chris