I've noticed that when I send an email through the mailing list that a lot of formatting is stripped away. Particularly bothersome is lost line or paragraph breaks. As an example, in an original email there may be a space between paragraphs, but when the email gets delivered through mailman those line breaks may be removed and there is no space between paragraphs at all. Even worse line/paragraph breaks may be removed altogether and everything runs on a continuous line with only word wrap occurring. Any thoughts on why this happens?
On 10/10/2014 07:25 AM, Shannon Doane wrote:
I've noticed that when I send an email through the mailing list that a lot of formatting is stripped away. Particularly bothersome is lost line or paragraph breaks. As an example, in an original email there may be a space between paragraphs, but when the email gets delivered through mailman those line breaks may be removed and there is no space between paragraphs at all. Even worse line/paragraph breaks may be removed altogether and everything runs on a continuous line with only word wrap occurring. Any thoughts on why this happens?
There are two things involved here: Mailman's content filtering and your mail client.
In the case of your post to the mailman-users list to which I'm replying, you will note that your original was just two lines, but my reply is better formatted.
When you send a message, you compose it in Yahoo's "rich text" editor. When you send it, Yahoo sends it as a multipart/alternative message with text/plain and text/html alternative parts. The text/html part is HTML which renders (at least approximately depending on the recipient's mail client) like what you composed with all the formatting, fonts, etc intact. The text/plain part is Yahoo's translation of what you composed into plain text. Yahoo's web mail is particularly bad at this.
Then, this list is configured to not send out HTML, so it selects the text/plain alternative to send to the members, and the result is Yahoo's bad plain text rendering of your composition.
The answer is to compose your mail in plain text rather than rich text to begin with when posting to lists. Then you control what the plain text looks like. To do this, click the '<<' icon at the bottom rigjht of the composition window to 'Switch to Plain Text'. Then, you can type what you want to see; it will be sent as plain text, and Mailman will send it as received.
-- Mark Sapiro mark@msapiro.net The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
That makes a lot of sense. I'll create the email in plain text and send it through to the email list that way and see how things go.
I wouldn't have thought simple line breaks would have been that difficult to translate from html to plain text.
From: Mark Sapiro mark@msapiro.net To: mailman-users@python.org Sent: Friday, October 10, 2014 12:06 PM Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Email formatting
On 10/10/2014 07:25 AM, Shannon Doane wrote:
I've noticed that when I send an email through the mailing list that a lot of formatting is stripped away. Particularly bothersome is lost line or paragraph breaks. As an example, in an original email there may be a space between paragraphs, but when the email gets delivered through mailman those line breaks may be removed and there is no space between paragraphs at all. Even worse line/paragraph breaks may be removed altogether and everything runs on a continuous line with only word wrap occurring. Any thoughts on why this happens?
There are two things involved here: Mailman's content filtering and your mail client.
In the case of your post to the mailman-users list to which I'm replying, you will note that your original was just two lines, but my reply is better formatted.
When you send a message, you compose it in Yahoo's "rich text" editor. When you send it, Yahoo sends it as a multipart/alternative message with text/plain and text/html alternative parts. The text/html part is HTML which renders (at least approximately depending on the recipient's mail client) like what you composed with all the formatting, fonts, etc intact. The text/plain part is Yahoo's translation of what you composed into plain text. Yahoo's web mail is particularly bad at this.
Then, this list is configured to not send out HTML, so it selects the text/plain alternative to send to the members, and the result is Yahoo's bad plain text rendering of your composition.
The answer is to compose your mail in plain text rather than rich text to begin with when posting to lists. Then you control what the plain text looks like. To do this, click the '<<' icon at the bottom rigjht of the composition window to 'Switch to Plain Text'. Then, you can type what you want to see; it will be sent as plain text, and Mailman will send it as received.
-- Mark Sapiro mark@msapiro.net The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/s_doane%40yahoo.com
On 10/10/2014 09:39 AM, Shannon Doane wrote:
I wouldn't have thought simple line breaks would have been that difficult to translate from html to plain text.
Nor would I, but Yahoo can't seem to get it right. Only one of the reasons why I don't recommend Yahoo mail. In the freemail world, Gmail seems to do a much better job.
-- Mark Sapiro mark@msapiro.net The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Shannon Doane writes:
I wouldn't have thought simple line breaks would have been that difficult to translate from html to plain text.
It isn't, and in cases where the list supports it and *only* the text/html part is present (ie, no text/plain alternative part), Mailman delegates to an external program (usually Lynx) which does a good job.
I don't know why Yahoo! does it so poorly. Normally it makes sense to use the originating MUA's text/plain version if available (faster and more likely to reflect the author's preference for HTML constructs that can't be represented in plain text easily).
Friends-don't-let-friends-use-Yahoo!-mail-ly y'rs,
At Fri, 10 Oct 2014 16:39:33 +0000 (UTC) Shannon Doane s_doane@yahoo.com wrote:
That makes a lot of sense. I'll create the email in plain text and send it through to the email list that way and see how things go.
I wouldn't have thought simple line breaks would have been that difficult to translate from html to plain text.
It depends alot on how the composer and the html generator work -- whether the composer actually carries over line breaks litterally or if it 'reflows' the text (eg creates a single 'physical' line inside a <p>...</p> tag). And how much the generated html depends on style attributes. When converting from html to plain text, things like style attributes can simply be dropped, etc. Also the original line breaks might be already gone. I guess this is part of what defines a "particularly bad" HTML => plain text translator... :-) Ultimately, it is all the 'victim' of a bad WYSIWYG editor, in that what you see is not really what you get, but some kind of approximation that is implemented in a 'lossey' way (some of the original information is lost).
If you set the composer to compose plain text, many of the issues of the bad WYSIWYG editor are avoided.
From: Mark Sapiro mark@msapiro.net To: mailman-users@python.org Sent: Friday, October 10, 2014 12:06 PM Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Email formatting
On 10/10/2014 07:25 AM, Shannon Doane wrote:
I've noticed that when I send an email through the mailing list that a lot of formatting is stripped away. Particularly bothersome is lost line or paragraph breaks. As an example, in an original email there may be a space between paragraphs, but when the email gets delivered through mailman those line breaks may be removed and there is no space between paragraphs at all. Even worse line/paragraph breaks may be removed altogether and everything runs on a continuous line with only word wrap occurring. Any thoughts on why this happens?
There are two things involved here: Mailman's content filtering and your mail client.
In the case of your post to the mailman-users list to which I'm replying, you will note that your original was just two lines, but my reply is better formatted.
When you send a message, you compose it in Yahoo's "rich text" editor. When you send it, Yahoo sends it as a multipart/alternative message with text/plain and text/html alternative parts. The text/html part is HTML which renders (at least approximately depending on the recipient's mail client) like what you composed with all the formatting, fonts, etc intact. The text/plain part is Yahoo's translation of what you composed into plain text. Yahoo's web mail is particularly bad at this.
Then, this list is configured to not send out HTML, so it selects the text/plain alternative to send to the members, and the result is Yahoo's bad plain text rendering of your composition.
The answer is to compose your mail in plain text rather than rich text to begin with when posting to lists. Then you control what the plain text looks like. To do this, click the '<<' icon at the bottom rigjht of the composition window to 'Switch to Plain Text'. Then, you can type what you want to see; it will be sent as plain text, and Mailman will send it as received.
-- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services heller@deepsoft.com -- Webhosting Services
At Fri, 10 Oct 2014 14:25:09 +0000 (UTC) Shannon Doane s_doane@yahoo.com wrote:
I've noticed that when I send an email through the mailing list that a lot of formatting is stripped away. Particularly bothersome is lost line or paragraph breaks. As an example, in an original email there may be a space between paragraphs, but when the email gets delivered through mailman those line breaks may be removed and there is no space between paragraphs at all. Even worse line/paragraph breaks may be removed altogether and everything runs on a continuous line with only word wrap occurring. Any thoughts on why this happens?
Almost all E-Mail list servers strip off HTML ('Rich Text' or 'Formatted') mail, since most are using Mailman or some variation of Mailman. Most E-Mail clients send a multipart-alternitive type message, with a text/plain and a text/html version of the E-Mail. It is generally possible to set this to 'text/plain' only. And when you compose a text/plain you can put in 'formatting' using typewriter type formatting.
IMHO, HTML E-Mail is evil and seriously bad news. It is a secutity risk, amongst other evils. *I* use an E-Mail client that neither creates nor handles HTML E-Mail.
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/heller%40deepsoft.com
-- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services heller@deepsoft.com -- Webhosting Services
participants (4)
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Mark Sapiro -
Robert Heller -
Shannon Doane -
Stephen J. Turnbull