--On Monday, August 13, 2001 11:51 AM -0400 Charlie Summers
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 6:24 AM -0400 8/13/01, Tom Neff is rumored to have typed:
>> Rather than make people jump through hoops at all, I recommend running
>> your incoming list mail through demime. Solves a multitude of
>> annoyances, not just AOL but bogus "winmail.dat" attachments, etc.
>
> This may eventually be necessary, but right now I see no reason to
> waste a bunch of bloated perl processes on every inbound mail when users
> can still send plain text (albiet with difficulty from certain
> brain-damaged systems).
I have not found demime to be terribly inefficient, and it does not cost a
"bunch of... perl processes on every inbound mail," just one Perl process
per inbound mail. You can easily use Procmail or something similar to
route only the messages that need it into demime.
Alternatively, you can install the non-text-plain bounce filter as
described, but route the bounces through demime, again only invoking it
where needed.
I can tell you this, once it's installed, you simply forget about that
otherwise annoying problem for the list in question.
> I may eventually be forced to use something like this (and hopefully
> find the time, or find it's already been rewritten in more efficient C
> code), but I am not yet ready to give into the idea that HTML-mail is
> inevitable, and I have to waste my resources to fix it. (Can you tell I
> don't much like the idea of running a huge perl instance for every email
> I get? This might also explain why I won't use majordomo.)
You can also hack demime into a coprocess that loads Perl just once. Or
code it in C, or what have you, but I'm sorry, HTML mail is here to stay.
Some of us can rail against the tide if we want, but others of us just want
to get on with running our lists.
