Lists frequently erupt into flames about posts in HTML.
MUA's will often respond to an HTML message by replying in HTML, perpetuating the problem caused by an initial HTML post.
Even users normally posting plain text often slip up, particularly when mailing from other than their normal host.
HTML needlessly eats up to 3 times the storage space for messages in archives, worse if the message is in both HTML and plain text.
Mailman needs an option to enforce plain text posts by detecting and rejecting posts in non-plain formats, particularly HTML.
The sender should get a polite, canned note to turn off special encoding and re-format their posts in plain text. The note should be customizable so that instructions might be included for how to do so for common MUAs.
Please consider adding this feature.
(I'd asked about this a long time ago, but I never saw any comment on it.)
George Nemeyer Tigerden Internet Services
"GFN" == George F Nemeyer <tigerwolf@tigerden.com> writes:
GFN> Mailman needs an option to enforce plain text posts by
GFN> detecting and rejecting posts in non-plain formats,
GFN> particularly HTML.Adding the baseline mechanism to do this wouldn't be difficult; you'd just need to add a pipeline module that does the desired checks, raising the appropriate exception based on what you find.
It won't be in MM2.1 because the much more complex problem is the u/i to provide all the degrees of control people really want.
If you know what you want and don't mind hacking a little Python to get it, it should be easy to add.
-Barry
Sorry a bit late to the party on this one, but a couple *very* simple things I do to keep HTML/any formatting email off my lists is adding a couple lines "Hold posts with header value matching a specified regexp" textarea box on the 'Privary Options' section of your list administration page:
Content-type: text/html Content-type: text/enriched Content-type: text/x-vcard Content-type: multipart/alternative Content-Type: multipart/related Content-Disposition: attachment Content-Type: multipart/mixed Content-Type: application/octet-stream
those lines catch 98% of formatted messages and attachments from going to the list. as the 'standard' rejection message on the admindb page, i have something like, "Please do not post HTML/RTF formatted emails or include attachments with your post. Please read thelist info and guidelines available at http://foo.org/listinfo.html" and the 'reject with the explanation below' radio button checked by default.
of course, there are better ways to do it which have been mentioned on this list..
again, this is a *very* simple way to go about it and is adequate for small - medium sized lists. ideally, it gets stripped automagically.
hth,
.djc.
On Sat, 5 Jan 2002, George F. Nemeyer wrote:
Lists frequently erupt into flames about posts in HTML.
MUA's will often respond to an HTML message by replying in HTML, perpetuating the problem caused by an initial HTML post.
Even users normally posting plain text often slip up, particularly when mailing from other than their normal host.
HTML needlessly eats up to 3 times the storage space for messages in archives, worse if the message is in both HTML and plain text.
Mailman needs an option to enforce plain text posts by detecting and rejecting posts in non-plain formats, particularly HTML.
The sender should get a polite, canned note to turn off special encoding and re-format their posts in plain text. The note should be customizable so that instructions might be included for how to do so for common MUAs.
Please consider adding this feature.
(I'd asked about this a long time ago, but I never saw any comment on it.)
I've written a patch for Mailman 2.0.x which strips non-text attachments from posts. (It is also smart enough to convert HTML-only posts to plain text.)
See http://sf.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=413752&group_id=103&atid=300103 for more information.
participants (4)
-
barry＠zope.com -
Daniel J. Cody -
George F. Nemeyer -
Jeff Dairiki