[Mailman-Developers] trimming extra headers; footer info in digests

[Brett Dikeman]

So, after our switch off majordomo, I've received feedback from users.

First, digest users complained that a lot of extra headers were 
making it tough to see the separation between messages.  I also 
personally noticed that a -lot- of bandwidth is wasted by not 
stripping the footer of each message from the digest version(so the 
digest ends up with 20+ copies of the list's footer, with the list 
name and all.)

Our list ballooned in bandwidth requirements when we went to mailman, 
and we're limited to an ISDN line.  Alternatives like handing mail 
off to another server for expansion+delivery are not options at the 
moment; neither is a faster line(DSL is not available yet in the area 
where the server is.)

I'd also like to know if there is a way to strip a lot of unnecessary 
headers, to save bandwidth and to make posts easier to read.  Mainly, 
I don't see why we need listers(and especially digest users) to get 
much more than from, subject, to/cc, date, and reply-to if it's 
defined by the sender.

Now, granted, there are strange setups, and it probably isn't 
compliant with some RFC thus-and-such to just hose headers, so it 
could be a non-default feature.

However, I think that stripping each message of the mailman-addred 
footer -before- it is put in the digest would be great(just as how 
this is done with Pipermail archiving.)  I would settle for this 
alone...

Make sense?

I've considered some kind of pre-processor program/script that takes 
a message and does stuff like:
-remove unneeded headers
-remove MIME/attachments
-remove HMTL

I'd guess that it's probably been done before, but a quick(and I do 
mean quick) search did not find anything.

Brett
PS:I should mention that people commented to me that they like the 
options/preferences, the archives, and
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Brett Dikeman				Systems Engineer
CFN(formerly iClick, Inc)			914-872-8043
120 Bloomingdale Rd.			914-872-8100(fax)
White Plains, NY 10605			http://www.iclick.com
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