[Mailman-Developers] Problem with Mailman FAQ Wizard

Fri Dec 2 07:33:46 CET 2005

Sorry to post this to the whole list, but I don't know what group of
people can actually make this needed change.

Mailman's FAQ wizard appears to be using the faqconf.py default
definition of PROLOGUE, namely

PROLOGUE = '''
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>%(title)s</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY BACKGROUND="http://www.python.org/pics/RedShort.gif"
      BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"
      TEXT="#000000"
      LINK="#AA0000"
      VLINK="#906A6A">
<H1>%(title)s</H1>
'''

There is a problem with this discussed below. I believe the appropriate
thing to do is override this in faqcust.py with

PROLOGUE = '''
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>%(title)s</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"
      TEXT="#000000"
      LINK="#AA0000"
      VLINK="#906A6A">
<H1>%(title)s</H1>
'''

The issue is that "http://www.python.org/pics/RedShort.gif" is a white
rectangle, 2000 pixels wide by 8 pixels high with a 4 pixels wide by 3
pixels high red rectangle in it's upper left corner.

Some browsers, e.g. MSIE 6.0 and Netscape 7.2 on MS Windows and MSIE
5.2 on Mac OS X repeat the background in 8 pixel high strips, thus
giving a red 'gear tooth' pattern down the left side of the page. I
think this is distracting, but OK.

Other browsers such as Netscape 8.0.4 in both IE and Firefox modes on
MS Windows display just a plain white background. I think this is best.

Still other browsers such as Netscape 7.1 and Safari 1.3.1 on Mac OS X
render the background with a thin, maybe 1 pixel high black space or
border between each repetition of the background. This gives the
appearance of a background of thin, horizontal, black lines spaced
about 8 or 9 pixels apart which makes the text very difficult to read.

I think we should make the change above which will give a plain white
background in all browsers, which I think is the most pleasing
rendition anyway.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       Any clod can have the facts;
San Francisco Bay Area, California    having opinions is an art. -
                                      C. McCabe, The Fearless Spectator