[Mailman-Users] Mailman-Users Digest, Vol 33, Issue 44

[CHARLOTTE COLLINS]

I would like to know where auditions are posted. please, help! 

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Approve subscription requests via mail (Barry Warsaw)
2. Re: text-only versus graphical (Patrick Bogen)
3. creating list defaults and filters? (Tim Tyler)
4. Re: text-only versus graphical (Brad Knowles)
5. Re: text-only versus graphical (Patrick Bogen)
6. Re: text-only versus graphical (Daevid Vincent)
7. Re: text-only versus graphical (Larry Stone)
8. Re: text-only versus graphical (LuKreme)
9. Re: text-only versus graphical (Daevid Vincent)
10. Re: text-only versus graphical (Daevid Vincent)
From: Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org>
CC: Georg Sauthoff <gsauthof at TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE>,
mailman-users at python.org
To: Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 08:18:42 -0500
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Approve subscription requests via mail

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On Nov 19, 2006, at 11:50 PM, Brad Knowles wrote:

> At 5:02 PM -0500 11/19/06, Barry Warsaw wrote:
>
>> What he said!
>
> Sorry, guy. I wish there was a way to un-ring that bell.

Can someone check to see just how badly broken our urls are? I'd 
start with the FAQ. Since many bugs that broke reproducibility have 
been fixed for a while, maybe we got lucky, at least with newer 
archive messages.

If not, perhaps we should consider asking XS4ALL to restore the 
archive from backup?

- -Barry

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From: "Patrick Bogen" <pdbogen at gmail.com>
CC: mailman-users at python.org
To: "Dr. Scott S. Jones" <scott at fyrenice.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 12:23:59 -0600
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] text-only versus graphical

Most of us don't, for a couple of reasons:
Mailman's HTML support is fairly dumb, which means that the vast
variation in MUAs make it difficult to craft HTML (and message
structures that contain such) that will be presented in a regular way
to the users.

Mailman's primary purpose is as a discussion-oriented mailing list
manager, not for distributing newsletters and/or announcements (though
it is easily converted to this purpose).

Lastly, for a lot of folk (or, at least, myself), HTML is a
four-letter word when it comes to email.

On 11/20/06, Dr. Scott S. Jones wrote:
> I need to find out what others on the list use to produce graphical based
> newsletters. I have been mailing out lots of text only based letters to my
> lists and I get minimal response...what do some of you use to create
> graphical newsletters to mail out?
>
> Scott
>
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>


-- 
- Patrick Bogen

From: Tim Tyler <tyler at beloit.edu>
To: mailman-users at python.org
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 12:58:44 -0600
Subject: [Mailman-Users] creating list defaults and filters?

Mailman users,
I have two questions. We are running Mailman 2.1.5 on Redhat.

1. Is there a way when creating lists to have it automatically set 
certain fields with certain defaults such as Archives off, mail size 
limit 40k, etc.; instead of having to manually set them?

2. Is there a way to set a filter for a list such that all messages 
are automatically rejected or discarded if they don't have a 
particular subject header string such as [announce] in it? I see 
that one can accept [announce] in the filters, but how does one wild 
card reject all the rest? Also, I presume that order matters, correct?



Tim Tyler
Network Engineer - Beloit College
tyler at beloit.edu 



From: Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
CC: mailman-users at python.org
To: "Patrick Bogen" <pdbogen at gmail.com>,
"Dr. Scott S. Jones" <scott at fyrenice.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:12:57 -0600
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] text-only versus graphical

At 12:23 PM -0600 11/20/06, Patrick Bogen wrote:

> Most of us don't, for a couple of reasons:
> Mailman's HTML support is fairly dumb, which means that the vast
> variation in MUAs make it difficult to craft HTML (and message
> structures that contain such) that will be presented in a regular way
> to the users.

Mailman will transmit whatever you send, and you can configure it to 
avoid munging your HTML. The problem is that most MUAs have limited 
ability to properly interpret HTML, and most programs for creating 
HTML output have wildly different ideas of how that content should be 
interpreted by the other end.

In this kind of environment, there's relatively little that Mailman can do.

> Mailman's primary purpose is as a discussion-oriented mailing list
> manager, not for distributing newsletters and/or announcements (though
> it is easily converted to this purpose).

True.

> Lastly, for a lot of folk (or, at least, myself), HTML is a
> four-letter word when it comes to email.

Yeah, HTML e-mail is pretty evil.

-- 
Brad Knowles, 


Trend Micro has announced that they will cancel the stop.mail-abuse.org
mail forwarding service as of 15 November 2006. If you have an old
e-mail account for me at this domain, please make sure you correct that
with the current address.

From: "Patrick Bogen" <pdbogen at gmail.com>
CC: mailman-users at python.org
To: "Brad Knowles" <brad at shub-internet.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 16:17:55 -0600
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] text-only versus graphical

On 11/20/06, Brad Knowles 
wrote:
> At 12:23 PM -0600 11/20/06, Patrick Bogen wrote:
>
> > Most of us don't, for a couple of reasons:
> > Mailman's HTML support is fairly dumb, which means that the vast
> > variation in MUAs make it difficult to craft HTML (and message
> > structures that contain such) that will be presented in a regular way
> > to the users.
>
> Mailman will transmit whatever you send, and you can configure it to
> avoid munging your HTML. The problem is that most MUAs have limited
> ability to properly interpret HTML, and most programs for creating
> HTML output have wildly different ideas of how that content should be
> interpreted by the other end.
>
> In this kind of environment, there's relatively little that Mailman can do.
>

No judgement meant on Mailman for this. I have at least a cursory
understanding of the issues. By 'dumb' I was referring to the
amount/nature of processing that Mailman does on HTML, absolutely not
the intelligence of the good folk that implemented such processing. :)

-- 
- Patrick Bogen

From: "Daevid Vincent" <daevid at daevid.com>
To: <mailman-users at python.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:24:42 -0800
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] text-only versus graphical

I don't know why everyone is all down on graphical HTML email. The way I see
it, I would much prefer HTML if it's a newsletter or something. It's
cleaner. Easier to read with formatting. Links aren't these huge URLs. And
adds a certain amount of professionalism (assuming it looks good and isn't
crappy circa 1988 looking).

The only time HTML email is "evil" is when it's from an unknown source that
is most likely a phisher, or it is coded so horribly that it's painful to
read.

If someone has joined a list, then that list should be trusted to some
degree, along with the members of said list.

I think this "plain-text" only mentality is antiquated and fostered from
die-hard zealots who still use, nigh, prefer the command line over GUI tools
which take most of the tedious guess-work and fat-fingering out of
administration of a server.

...but that's just my opinion.

DÆVID 


From: Larry Stone <lstone19 at stonejongleux.com>
To: mailman-users at python.org
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 16:30:38 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] text-only versus graphical

On Mon, 20 Nov 2006, Daevid Vincent wrote:

> I don't know why everyone is all down on graphical HTML email.

> I think this "plain-text" only mentality is antiquated and fostered from
> die-hard zealots who still use, nigh, prefer the command line over GUI tools
> which take most of the tedious guess-work and fat-fingering out of
> administration of a server.

In my case, it comes from valuing speed and size over bells and whistles.
HTML tends to be large and in every mail reader I've used, much slower to
render than plain text. When I'm working through a backlog of 100
messages, I value speed.

And from what I can see, the larger the message is and the slower it is to
render, the less likely it is to be something I want to read since those
are more often than not marketing messages trying to sell me something.

-- Larry Stone
lstone19 at stonejongleux.com

From: LuKreme <kremels at kreme.com>
To: mailman-users at python.org
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 16:52:06 -0700
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] text-only versus graphical

On 20-Nov-2006, at 15:24, Daevid Vincent wrote:
> I don't know why everyone is all down on graphical HTML email.

Because everyone thinks they are a grapahic designer and most people 
have the design sense of a 4yo ADHD kid. Not to mention turning a 
10K newsletter into a 500K mess of HTML that is, frankly, unlikely to 
come through unscathed anyway.

> I think this "plain-text" only mentality is antiquated and fostered 
> from
> die-hard zealots who still use, nigh, prefer the command line over 
> GUI tools
> which take most of the tedious guess-work and fat-fingering out of
> administration of a server.

Oh, there's certainly some of that. But that's not all of it. For 
example, I don't like having my mail window be the width of my 
screen, and the pane I read mail in is only about 600px wide. Most 
HTML-ized email assumes that I will be giving it at the very least 
800px, and more like 1200px. This makes most HTML email immediately 
unreadable for me.

I get some HTML email (AMC channel, BBCAmerica) but I usually just 
read the plain text alts because there's nothing in the HTML I care 
about. If I do care, I can view the html easily (and quite well, 
Apple's Mail.app does HTML better than any other MUA I've ever seen).

The other big issue is I can zip through 50 emails in less than 50 
seconds if it's all text. With HTML, the rendering alone will slow 
me down considerably (I often do this to scan a thread I think I am 
not likely to be interested in... just to see if anything pops up).

-- 
You know, in a world in which Bush and Blair can be nominated for the 
Nobel Peace Prize, "for having dared to take the necessary decision 
to launch a war on Iraq without having the support of the UN" I find 
myself agreeing with Tom Lehrer: satire is dead. - Neil Gaiman



From: "Daevid Vincent" <daevid at daevid.com>
To: <mailman-users at python.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 15:54:31 -0800
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] text-only versus graphical

> And from what I can see, the larger the message is and the 
> slower it is to
> render, the less likely it is to be something I want to read 
> since those
> are more often than not marketing messages trying to sell me 
> something.

Agreed. However the statements were about users who have purposely
subscribed to a list. And should that list send in HTML or plaintext. My
point being that in that case, HTML is fine because the reader WANTS to read
what you've sent them, and (at least in my opinion) prefers to have a nice
page layout than just courier font text.

Spammers. Phishers. Etc. those are another story entirely.

This is why God invented procmailrc files... Sort your mail at the server
into folders and you're winning half the battle.

D.Vin


From: "Daevid Vincent" <daevid at daevid.com>
To: <mailman-users at python.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 15:57:15 -0800
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] text-only versus graphical

Furthermore, it's just basic common sense, that if you you're going to send
your email in HTML, you had better be considerate of bandwidth, size,
formatting, etc. Otherwise, you are risking loosing your audience. But the
same could be said if the person typed in all capitals, and swore like a
sailor using plain-text.

DÆVID 


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