[Mailman-Users] mailman/lynx HTML mail conversion bug

Sat Jun 5 01:14:52 CEST 2004

Hello, mailpersons.

There is a bug in Mailman and/or Lynx regarding Hotmail/MSN rich text emails.
(My setup: Mailman 2.1.5, Lynx version 2.8.4rel.1 (RH7.2, Sendmail 8.12.10))
Replication instructions (that require only a telnet client) are included below.

The Hotmail rich text editor shows up in the Hotmail mail editing facility
for Internet Explorer/Windows users. It allows the generation of HTML mail
with fonts, paragraphs, etc. When such a mail is sent to a Mailman list
with HTML->text conversion set, such mails are sent out totally blank,
and appear blank in archives. The following appears in logs/error:

Jun 04 15:39:42 2004 (4122) HTML->text/plain error: 256

This error message appears to be generated in Mailman/Handlers/MimeDel.py.
The 256 appears to be the HTML->text conversion handler's returned error code.

The handler is defined in Defaults.py or mm_cfg.py as follows:
HTML_TO_PLAIN_TEXT_COMMAND = '/usr/bin/lynx -dump %(filename)s'

When the handler is changed to /usr/bin/links, the problem does not occur,
which points to lynx being the problem. But, if you meddle with the HTML
content of the message, the problem continues to occur. This suggests that
there is something strange about the way the message is presented to Lynx,
rather than with the message itself.

I would be interested to know if anyone else is using an alternative HTML->
email conversion program. I could change over to Links, but I'm not sure
how robust it is, either.

Cheers,
-- Chris Whip

Replication instructions, as promised:
Telnet to your list server's port 25
Paste the following into the telnet session, after changing
subscriber at domain.com to the email address of a list subscriber
domain.com to that email address's domain name
testlistname at lists.domain.com to the email address of a test list with 
                              HTML->text conversion turned on

helo domain.com
mail from: subscriber at domain.com
rcpt to: testlistname at lists.domain.com
data
From: subscriber at domain.com
To: testlistname at lists.domain.com
Subject: testing rich text mail
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="richtext.html"

<html><div style='background-color:'>Funky Rich Text email with .sig.<BR>
<DIV>This is my <FONT color=#ff0099>hotmail</FONT> .sig. There are many like it
but this one is <STRONG>mine</STRONG>. </DIV></div></html>
.