[Mailman-Users] Re: Footer ?

Thu Aug 28 23:36:56 CEST 2003

At 11:33 AM -0700 2003/08/28, Ben Gertzfield wrote:

>  Remember that HTML is structured, so if we directly append the footer
>  after the HTML body, we get:
>
>  <html>
>  <body>
>  My Message Body
>  </body>
>  </html>
>
>  --
>  Mailman Footer Here

	With HTML, you would have to parse the HTML and understand where 
the logical end is to the content, and then place the HTML-formatted 
footer "at the bottom" of that context.

	Problem is, each HTML-enabled MUA will display that somewhat 
differently.  So, your header may appear fine for some subset of the 
users, but not for all the others.  Moreover, the HTML generation 
engine originally used or your HTML recognition engine, might create 
inappropriately formatted content, so that the result after 
modification is completely unreadable to anyone.

>  If you have any suggestions as to how Mailman can safely append
>  footers to HTML email, I'd love to hear any ideas!  This is
>  obviously a problem that's been solved before,

	Are you sure?  Do you have proof?

>                                                 but to go whole-hog
>  and parse all the HTML in every message to try and stick the footer
>  in the right place seems to be a little heavy-weight to me.

	I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  This is a much, much 
tougher problem to solve than it looks like.  Indeed, I believe that 
it is impossible to solve this problem.

	This is why there is no "HTML footer" option.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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