Re: footer isn't appended to multipart messages (part II: reality check!)

[Mads Martin Joergensen <mmj@mmj.dk>]

* Patrick Bennett <patrick@pebcomputing.com> [Jul 06. 2005 01:37]:
> >Full ACK. I got flooded by them, too. Never mind, everything can
> >be filtered ;)
> 
> This is absolutely true- you (that is to say, *we*, that is to say 
> techie/programmer types) find this stuff very annoying.  However, mailing 
> lists are used by knitting clubs too, and I, for one, DO NOT want the 
> nightmare of administrating a knitting club mailing list that has 
> absolutely no dependable notification of "how to do it yourself".

If your users are that clueless I'm not sure mlmmj is the right list to
use.

> >| That being said, List-Subscribe, List-Unsubcribe, etc. headers
> >| should be present, and they don't appear to be on this list.  Does
> >| mlmmj support them yet?
> >
> >Well, yes and no. Yes: you can add them to Custom headers file,
> >No: they're not added automaticly (maybe this could be implemented
> >but i think it's ok if you run a lot of lists to generate the
> >customheaders file by a script or so ;)
> >
> >
> >| (this is not to say that your feature request/bug report is invalid
> >| - it is in fact useful in some cases and should work as you expect,
> >| but the example you provided should be discouraged and it's also
> >| not the easiest thing to implement due to the varying nature of
> >| what the multipart messages might contain, how the HTML is
> >| structured, etc.)
> 
> not sure which "example" you mean, but if it's monthly nags (a.k.a. mailing 
> list subscribe/unsubscribe howto's), then, yes, it should be discouraged 
> *for appropriate lists and when there is no reliable way to append footer 
> text*.  For other lists, on the contrary, it should be *encouraged* (see 
> above)!

If you want monthly notification mails, please consider using mailman.
mlmmj is not going to have it.

> >correctly. I think the 'append a footer' feature is ok, too. Just
> >disable html mail and stuff and it's nearly fine. The List- Headers
> >should be always present (not hard to implement ;)
> >Implementing appending of stuff for multipartmessages just suck
> >cause you have so many ways clients do 'their' encoding and
> >maybe some gateways who add shitty 'this is confidential mail'
> >footers, too, so you may end up in a 4 or more part mail which
> >only contains a one liner...
> 
> 1)  I haven't found the documentation on how to enforce text-only mailing 
> lists (it's one of the first bits of info i looked for when i figured out 
> what the problem was; 2) not sure what happens on a text-only mlmmj list 
> when a multi-part msg is sent, but whatever it is, for the "knitting club", 
> it *can't* be a reject msg- a mailing list that fits the "knitting club's" 
> needs (and I realize this may never be what mlmmj is, though I wish it 
> could be, because I've very much liked the software otherwise) has to 
> handle the default settings of widespread (though not necessarily popular 
> with us programmer/techies) email clients (eg. outlook express).

One of the very first examples in README.access:

 deny !^Content-Type: text/plain
 allow

Put that in DIR/control/access, and a reject mail will be sent for
everyone not sending a text/plain message. Now whether or not this
reject mails fit the knitting club is up to you. Every list has it's own
text dir, so you can simply modify DIR/text/access to fit what you need.
Might even carry intructions on how to turn off html mail in outlook if
you want. Or a link to a webpage explainging it.

mlmmj allows for heavy customization.

-- 
Mads Martin Joergensen, http://mmj.dk
"Why make things difficult, when it is possible to make them cryptic
 and totally illogical, with just a little bit more effort?"
                                -- A. P. J.