[Mailman-Developers] Feature Request - Interactive HTML Digests

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Tanstaafl writes:

 > Ok... but again (how many times have I said this now??),
 > MIME and plain text digest versions will continue to work as they
> currently do.

And how many times do I have to reply that that is not the point, I am
discussing the design of the new feature?  I'm drawing an analogy: The
fact that users of these other implementations *like* their features
suggests that maybe users of the new one would too.  If people aren't
going to use the new feature, it's a waste of time and energy to
implement it.

I personally would *not* find the HTML digest preferable to dealing
with multiple messages in the design you're implicitly talking about,
and I don't think I know anybody who would; they would likely prefer
to handle it with threading or Google-style "conversations".  If you
know otherwise about the users you are representing, please say so.

 > > "Simple" HTML simply doesn't lend itself to "encapsulating"
 > > structured documents, except with devices like frames.
 > 
 > All I mean by 'simple' is simple enough that most mail clients capable
 > of rendering HTML email won't have a problem with it, and the fact is,
 > most can render fairly complex HTML.

My turn to *sigh*.  I *know* what you mean.  I am telling you that in
my opinion it will require quite a bit of effort to write a program
(or Mailman function) to create HTML that does the job for a wide
enough selection of MUAs.  So far, I think Mark agrees.

I'm not going to work on it myself, because I don't think the benefit
(to others)/cost (to me) ratio is anywhere near high enough.  That's
mostly because I see supporting this feature as an unending time sink
for the next 5 years, because HTML is just not intended to be used for
this purpose.