Carolyn Vander Schee wrote:

I am wondering if you could help me with a problem I am having regarding a list serv that has recently been set up.

First, a mention that "listserv" is trademark for -another- mailing list manager, it's not a generic name for any mailing list manager.

It seems as though some members of the group are receiving a very messy post (ie., characters do not all turn out and spaces are missing). This, of course, is making it difficult for our members to read. Some members however are receiving the message as it was sent (no problems).

This sort of thing usually isn't a problem with mailman, but rather with the sending and receiving mail programs (AKA "mail user agent" or MUA), so you're probably better off looking at the MUAs than mailman. That said, to get anywhere we'd have to see exactly what they're getting and to know about which sending and receiving programs are working properly. Also look at the content encoding message headers. If you haven't taken a spin through the mailman docs and FAQ, please do so.

When I compose the messages, I am careful to take all the formatting out (using word) and then paste the unformatted announcement in my email (novell email).

IMHO ms-word is a terrible tool for removing formatting. Better to use a plain text editor (even notepad) and paste from there into groupwise. Also, check your GW settings to send only plain text email.

z!

Hello all,

How odd? I can potentially answer another question.

By "novell email", I am going to guess you are referring to either the Novell GroupWise client or Novell's GroupWise WebAccess client (email via the web).

Let's start with the GroupWise client. Depending on your settings, you will be sending your message as plain text or as an html message (this is actually like Mark said - a multipart/alternative message with text/plain and text/html - and I am simplifying). It is best to send your message to Mailman as a plain text message. To do so with the client when composing a message, click on "View -> Plain Text" (my version of the GroupWise client is v7.0.3). Compose the message and send it.

As for the GroupWise WebAccess client, I don't know of any way to switch to plain text - either in the options or while composing a message. I would recommend the GroupWise Client. However, if you must use WebAccess, I would recommend you save your Word document as a "Plain text (*.txt)" document first, then open it with Notepad to cut and paste to the WebAccess compose dialog. Hopefully, that will strip out any Word anomalies which may affect your message.

Or, you can do like I do, use a mail client that allows you to chose if you want to send your message as html, plain text, or both. I use Thunderbird, others may use something else.

Chris

Mark Sapiro wrote:

Carolyn Vander Schee wrote:

...

I am wondering if you could help me with a problem I am having regarding a list serv that has recently been set up.

If you are really asking about a Listserv(r) list, you've come to the wrong place.

<rant> I know that use of Listserv(r) as a generic term to refer to an email list or email list management software is ubiquitious, and I'm just pissing in the wind to fight it, but Listserv(r) is a registered trademark[1] owned by the developer of a particular email list management product, and it shouldn't be used generically.

My personal interest in this is not to protect the Listserv(r) trademark, but rather to avoid confusing Listserv(r) email list management software with any other email list management software including GNU Mailman of which I am a developer.

[1] <http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/trademark.asp> </rant>

...

It seems as though some members of the group are receiving a very messy post (ie., characters do not all turn out and spaces are missing). This, of course, is making it difficult for our members to read. Some members however are receiving the message as it was sent (no problems).

When I compose the messages, I am careful to take all the formatting out (using word) and then paste the unformatted announcement in my email (novell email).

Perhaps you could offer a few suggestions. Would it be better, for example, for me to use g-mail to send out the messages?

It is very difficult to know what might be happening without seeing a sample raw message including all headers and MIME parts.

What I am guessing is happening is your novell email is composing a multipart/alternative message with text/plain and text/html alternative parts. Some clients will actually create an HTML message as you type, paste, etc. and then convert that HTML to plain text for the text/plain part and some are notoriously bad at converting the HTML to plain text.

This could be happening in your case such that the text/html part is a fairly faithful representation of what you entered and the text/plain alternative is somewhat garbled. Then those users whose mail readers display the html part see what you entered and others whose mail readers display the plain text part see the garbled message.

As I said though, this is only a guess, but I can say that if this is in fact a Mailman list, all regular (non-digest) members are receiving the same message.