[Mailman-Developers] Feature Request - Interactive HTML Digests

[Tanstaafl]

Thanks for chiming in Barry... :)

On 2/20/2010 9:08 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> On Feb 17, 2010, at 08:33 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
>> I'm really excited about the developments ongoing with MM3... :)

> Great!  If you're at Pycon, come sprint with us.  If you're not here, we're
> going to at the very least be active on #mailman for virtual sprinters.

I'd be happy to join in if I was capable of contributing anything of
value... but I'm not a programmer - really - anyone who saw any of my
shell scripts would run away screaming... ;)

So, the only way I can contribute is test things, make feature requests
- ie, make more work for you guys... ;) - and do GUI mockups...

> I think it would be nice to have a rich HTML-based digest format,

:)

> If you look in mailman/interfaces/member.py you'll see that there's a
> DeliverMode enum with a summary_digests flag. This is really a
> placeholder for essentially what you're suggesting.

Ok... I'm capable enough of finding the code in question, but you
really, really don't want to see what I'd put there... it'd be something
like:

"Do: make my pretty HTML fully interactive Digest NOW!;
OnError: Scream-n-yell"

>> a) separate button/links for: 'Reply to Sender', 'Reply to List' 
>> and maybe 'Reply to all' (that last one could be optional?), and
>> b) little 'Back to top' links to scroll back to the top of the
>> message summary

> Would these require JavaScript? Hmm, maybe they can be done with
> mail:to links.

Dunno, but even if it did (require JS), would that be all that bad?
Don't most GUI mail readers that do HTML email do JS too?

>> 3. When replying to a message, preserve the message subject *and*
>> all of the individual message references so that replying to
>> messages from the HTML digests doesn't break threading - basically
>> so it looks as if it was replied to individually and separately,
>> not from the list digest.

> I have no idea how you'd do this in a cross MUA way. That to me is 
> the biggest risk with something like this. For those who choose 
> HTML/Summary/Rich digests, I'd like to see broad MUA support, but I
> honestly have no idea of the state of HTML and JavaScript support
> across mail readers.

Maybe the best thing to do then before going any further would be to
figure out what would be needed to accomplish the goal and test the most
popular mail clients?

I imagine pretty much all web browsers would work fine, so that covers a
lot of people who only use cloud/webmail...

So, that leaves, what... TB, Outlook/Windows Mail, Apple Mail? Any others?

I don't think this idea should be scrapped just because *some* clients
won't work... just include the list of supported mail clients in the
description for this Digest version, then leave it up to the users to be
able to intelligently select the digest version they want/need...

Thanks again Barry... and even if all of the features in my original
request can't be initially supported, apparently at least some of them
can, and then maybe someday a way will be found to accomplish the rest... :)

-- 

Best regards,

Charles