SPUG: dealing with HTML on list

Bill Campbell bill at celestial.com
Wed Aug 13 14:38:52 PDT 2008


On Wed, Aug 13, 2008, Christopher Howard wrote:
> Andrew Sweger wrote:
>> There is an option in this list server to have it convert text/html to
>> plain text. There are also options to remove various attachments (many
>> options).
>>
>> Is there general interest from the members to employ these features? Any
>> questions? Debate?
>>
>> On Mon, 11 Aug 2008, Ryan Corder wrote:
>>   
>>> Secondly, can you please not send HTML email to the list?
>>   
> Hmm, it looks like I inadvertently opened a can of worms.
>
> I love HTML e-mail, and I use it all the time.  I love the ordered  
> lists, unordered lists, tables, and styles.

I do lists and tables with mutt by writing the e-mail in vim with
groff markup, then filtering that to convert to plain text.  I
find this much faster than dealing with GUI editors.

> However, if that many of you hate HTML e-mail, then I would vote in  
> favor of the tool that automatically converts HTML to text.  That would  
> save me (and future new members) the bother of having to remember that  
> we shouldn't send HTML to this list.
>
> I'm not sure how your conversion program works, but the converting tools  
> I've seen on other lists seem to do a fairly good job of representing  
> the authors intentions.
>
> Note: If possible, could you configure the tool to allow attachments?   
> It is rather annoying how attachments get stripped out on other lists.

I don't filter attachments from the lists we host, but do have a
strict 40k message size limit.  I can understand why one would
want to strip attachments since it's impossible to keep people
from using the Microsoft Virus, Windows which is susceptible to
all sorts of nastiness in attachments.

I *REALLY* like the way the IMP webmail client allows one to handle
attachments as URLs in the message, and automatically copies the
attachments to the web server.  This keeps the e-mail messages
small, and the user has only to click on the URL to get the
attachment.

Bill
-- 
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