On the one hand, majordomo does not care about the content of a
message, whether HTML or anything else. Like most elist technologies it
receives messages and it distributes them. Plain and simple.
On the other hand, there are two times when it (and most elist
technologies) should care and sometimes create problems depending on how
successsful they are at dealing with them.
1. Digests - if digests are forwarded as MIME multipart/digests, then
most MIME-aware email clients will have no trouble with HTML-based
messages. I don't know what majordomo2 does, but older versions of
majordomo did not do this and thus by default HTML messages in a
digest will be unreadable. Of course, the recipient could take steps
to put the message in a separate file and then view it. After all,
majordomo does pass the content through, it only "messes up" the
headers.
2. Administrative messages - Here again I don't know about majordomo2,
but older versions would not parse the following:
<HTML><BODY>subscribe</BODY></HTML>
Most things that send HTML actually send a multipart/alternative
which has text in front, so this is not as much of a problem as it
could be.
In any case, how much all of this matters depends on your subscriber
community. Therefore, your mileage may vary.
Jim
On Mon, 6 Nov 2000, Allan Newsome wrote:
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 19:27:52 -0600
From: Allan Newsome <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: HTML Based Email with Majordomo Digest?
I'm talking to the admin folks at the host of my Majordomo
mailing list and they said the following.
<<There wouldn't be anything to stop someone from posting a
message <in HTML format> to a majordomo list. All it does is
forward the message. The only thing I could possibly see is
if an HTML email was sent to a majordomo list and the email
reader receiving the message doesn't understand html. They
would still get the message, but it would contain the html
coding as plain text. If AOL 6.0 doesn't support plain text
email as you suggest, it would not only affect
majordomo...but every email program out there that is not
set to send out emails in html format by default. If you can
point me to where you found out this information, i can do
some more research. >>
My question to the list is, does Majordomo support HTML?
Does is support HTML in the Digest version of mailing lists?
My answer to the tech support guy was that he was wrong
about the HTML being forwarded straight through in the
Digest format. I need to find somewhere that has the "real"
answer and you guys are the best source of places to find
that information. GreatCircle.com doesn't seem to have it.
Thanks,
Allan Newsome
