[Mailman-Developers] Feature Request - Interactive HTML Digests

[Mark Sapiro]

Tanstaafl wrote:
>
>A really dumb question - is there no way to (reliably, or even at all?)
>'interact' with just the headers of messages that are attached? Ie,
>consider an HTML digest, with the individual messages as attachments,
>with mailto: hyperlinks in the digest *body* that interact with the
>headers in the *attached* messages... it seems it would eliminate the
>issue of having to break down and deal with the individual parts of the
>messages in the digest... but I'm probably just displaying more
>ignorance for you all to laugh about (no worries, my skin is pretty
>thick, and I know I'm totally ignorant about a lot of this stuff).



I think you were doing better when you first proposed what you wanted,
i.e. a digest like Yahoo Groups "fully featured" digest with the
addition of the 'reply' and 'top' links at the top as well as at the
bottom of the message and 'threading' for the reply links.

I even know how to do that, including in MM 3 at least, the link back
to the message and/or thread in an archive.

The part I don't know how to do well is the dealing with HTML messages
and message attachments. Yahoo deals with them by converting HTML
message bodies to plain text and pretending the attachments don't
exist. I don't think pretending attachments don't exist is a proper
solution. Converting HTML to plain text is something I can do with
lynx or elinks, and in fact, Mailman already has a setting for
HTML_TO_PLAINTEXT_COMMAND used by content filtering, so it could be
used for digest conversion too, but it isn't the 'nicest' solution.
I'e', if a list allows HTML in the first place, the list members
probably want to see all the colors and fonts, embedded images and
background stationery.

I think possibly a better approach might be to take the present MIME
format digest and convert the 'contents' part to an HTML part where
clicking on a message subject would cause the MUA to open that message
in a separate window/tab from where it can be viewd in it's full
richness and replied to. I don't offhand know if such a thing can be
done or if so, what MUAs might support it.

Now you are trying to ask in technical terms about things about which
you are admittedly ignorant, and your questions wind up not making
much sense.

I think this thread would be better off if you would concentrate on the
features you want and let those who might implement them figure out
how or if they can be provided.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan