Re: [Mailman-Users] Digests and HTML-enhanced email
Anne Wainwright writes: > The first is reflected in the users FAQ 3.10 "How to enforce a > text-plain policy". The answer being "with difficulty" because this > option probably (as I read it) ensures that any message with > non-plain-text content is completely, utterly, and totally, rejected, > even if plain-text is present, That's true for Mailman 2.0, which I hope nobody who doesn't have a very good idea of what they're doing is using anymore. For Mailman 2.1, almost all of the time the presence of a text/plain part means the message will get through in tolerable shape given the recommended settings. And assuming you have one of the non-GUI web browsers (usually lynx) available to generate text/plain from text/html, most of the time you should get something usable from text/html, but that is only as good as the conversion tool is. > The second is Content Filtering. I understand that this is to remove > objectionable content types, and steamroller the rest into conformity as > plain-text. It appears not to be 'on' by default. AFAIK it actually only knows how to "steamroller" text/html, although a modest amount of programming (== "Somebody on this list can post a patch with a few minutes thought") should allow pretty much any text/* type to be converted. Other non-objectable content types will be passed through unmolested, on the assumption that the list admin believe the MUAs in use can handle them. -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Digests and HTML-enhanced email
Dear Lindsay, perhaps I can make an input to this thread since I was about to post something similar. If my comments are incorrect, please advise since I have no desire to mislead any one. We, too, have a load of old dinosaurs on one list who always manage to post to wrong addresses and whose posts are of often rejected. Getting the plain-text gospel across is hard. Outside of digests, of which I know nothing, I see two approaches. One aimed at getting plain text conformity from member input and the other at getting plain text readability from Mailman output. The first is reflected in the users FAQ 3.10 "How to enforce a text-plain policy". The answer being "with difficulty" because this option probably (as I read it) ensures that any message with non-plain-text content is completely, utterly, and totally, rejected, even if plain-text is present, rejecting all non-conformist messages and requiring you to drill your recipients into plain-text submission. The second is Content Filtering. I understand that this is to remove objectionable content types, and steamroller the rest into conformity as plain-text. It appears not to be 'on' by default. With a number of lists running I had played about with these items, but we have a residual core of trouble. I have just (read last night) reverted to switching Content Filtering 'on' with the default settings and will monitor results closely. The lists are now set identically in this regard. Text-plain enforcement policies are not in place at present. Anne On Fri, 21 Oct 2011 23:21:09 -0500 Lindsay Haisley wrote: > I host a list for about 700 autoharp musical enthusiasts on Mailman > 2.1.12. The subscribers are by and large somewhat elderly and non > techie, and to most of them an explanation of the difference between > HTML-enhanced email and plain text email would be unintelligible > geek-speak. I recently received the following email from one of the > subscribers: > > > "Scrubbed" messages as they appear in my cyberpluckers DIGESTS: > > This type of problem is perhaps a bit over 6 months old, and evidently > > is caused by the manner in which some people have tried to attach > > their message to their cyberplucker posting. > > > > How can this problem be resolved?THANKS ... Drew Smith > > *** > > > > Message: 25 > > Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2011 08:42:29 -0700 > > From: "foo bar" <...> > > To: cyberpluck...@autoharp.org > > Subject: Re: [CP] Intro > > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > > > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > > URL: > > http://www.autoharp.org/mailman/blah/blah//attachment.html > > > > ... ... other examples > > I took a look at the list archive and indeed the email appears in the > archives also with only a link to the attachment, which is the > HTML-enhanced message, visible as HTML code. There's no plain text > version in the archive. > > I explained to the subscriber, and to the list admins, that this (and > similar) posts were probably HTML-only posts, and that, absent a plain > text rendering in a multipart email, the list server had no way to > generate a plain text version, and that including multiple HTML-enhanced > emails in a digest was problematic and not going to work very well, if > at all. The list admins are aware that plain text is the appropriate > format for posting to a mailing list, but subscribers come and go from > this list, and as I said, many don't understand such things, and it > seems that there are a number of mail programs out there which will > generate an HTML-enhanced email without an accompanying MIME text/plain > version. > > The list is configured with mime_is_default_digest set to MIME, which I > assume sends digests with each post as a separate attachment (I've never > subscribed to the digest for this list, so I don't really know). I had > assumed that this might address this problem, but apparently not. > > One of two things needs to happen. Either the list server should refuse > and bounce posts with no MIME text/plain part, or some more intelligent > configuration of Mailman needs to be available so that posts within a > digest will render properly under these circumstances. Maybe a more > recent version of Mailman can do this, I don't know. Any suggestions > would be appreciated. > > I rather dislike HTML-enhanced email (to put it gently). There's no > fixed standard for it, and what renders one way in one mail reader > renders some other way in another mail reader, and it confuses the hell > out of list servers. But people will use it, increasingly it seems, and > insist on doing so, so somehow this kind of problem needs to be dealt > with. > -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Sear
Re: [Mailman-Users] Digests and HTML-enhanced email
Lindsay Haisley wrote: [...] >> >> Message: 25 >> Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2011 08:42:29 -0700 >> From: "foo bar" <...> >> To: cyberpluck...@autoharp.org >> Subject: Re: [CP] Intro >> Message-ID: >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >> >> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... >> URL: >> http://www.autoharp.org/mailman/blah/blah//attachment.html >> >> ... ... other examples > >I took a look at the list archive and indeed the email appears in the >archives also with only a link to the attachment, which is the >HTML-enhanced message, visible as HTML code. There's no plain text >version in the archive. Stephen and Brad have already replied, and I'm not going to repeat what they said. I'm only going to reply to a few specific technical issues. The above message excerpt is from a plain format digest. This CAN be avoided in the digest by subscribing to the MIME digest, but it cannot be avoided in the archive. All non-plain text parts of a message will generally be scrubbed for the archive. There is some control over how scrubbed HTML is rendered in the archive. See the documentation for ARCHIVE_HTML_SANITIZER in Defaults.py. >I explained to the subscriber, and to the list admins, that this (and >similar) posts were probably HTML-only posts, and that, absent a plain >text rendering in a multipart email, the list server had no way to >generate a plain text version, and that including multiple HTML-enhanced >emails in a digest was problematic and not going to work very well, if >at all. The list admins are aware that plain text is the appropriate >format for posting to a mailing list, but subscribers come and go from >this list, and as I said, many don't understand such things, and it >seems that there are a number of mail programs out there which will >generate an HTML-enhanced email without an accompanying MIME text/plain >version. Content filtering can convert HTML to plain text using lynx, elinks or a similar program. >The list is configured with mime_is_default_digest set to MIME, which I >assume sends digests with each post as a separate attachment (I've never >subscribed to the digest for this list, so I don't really know). I had >assumed that this might address this problem, but apparently not. It only sets the default for new subscribers. The subscriber above is receiving plain digests. >One of two things needs to happen. Either the list server should refuse >and bounce posts with no MIME text/plain part, or some more intelligent >configuration of Mailman needs to be available so that posts within a >digest will render properly under these circumstances. Maybe a more >recent version of Mailman can do this, I don't know. Any suggestions >would be appreciated. Content filtering can remove HTML or convert it to plain text and Discard, Reject (problematic as Stephen notes) or Forward to Owner posts which are empty after filtering. -- Mark Sapiro The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
[Mailman-Users] Digests and HTML-enhanced email
Lindsay Haisley writes: > One of two things needs to happen. Either the list server should refuse > and bounce posts with no MIME text/plain part, Refuse, maybe, but bouncing is a problem (spam-by-backscatter). But refusing such mail is only going to confuse the kind of subscriber who is as "non-techie" as the ones you describe. You can already do refuse such mail, I believe, but the configuration is probably rather arcane. > or some more intelligent configuration of Mailman needs to be > available so that posts within a digest will render properly under > these circumstances. Unfortunately, that's an awful lot of intelligence. > Maybe a more recent version of Mailman can do this, I don't know. > Any suggestions would be appreciated. Disable digests. If that's unacceptable, the list in question might be happier as a web forum, much as I hate to say it. -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
