[Mailman-Users] Preserve HTML format while scrubbing file attachments

[Brad Knowles]

On 3/9/08, Darrell Burkey wrote:

>  I've read the FAQs until my eyes are square and I can see some discussions
>  in the mailing list archives but no definitive answer to essentially this
>  post in 2006:
>
>  http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/msg40147.html
>
>  which asks if there is a way to preserve html formatted messages while still
>  having file attachments scrubbed? I don't think the replies to the above
>  message really understood what was being asked as I'm not worried about the
>  archives at this point in time, rather I just want a message that a user
>  sends that contains html formatting to retain that formatting and have any
>  file attachment sent converted to a link (scrubbed).

Yes, we did understand.  Given the highly variable nature of the way 
that mail clients generate and interpret MIME/HTML formatted 
messages, there simply isn't a general way to do this sort of thing. 
What works for one client is likely to break others.  The archive 
scrubbing stuff that Mailman can do for digests can also be applied 
to regular messages passing through the list, but the effect is the 
same.

Teach them not to post in HTML, or teach them to live with HTML being 
converted to plain text, all the while their attachments can either 
be completely stripped from the message, or they can be scrubbed as 
appropriate.  But any time you go mucking about with the internal 
structure of a mail message, the output is not likely to be as 
attractive as the sender would like.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>