Michael Talbot-Wilson wrote:
>
> At 2000-11-27 13:21 -0600, Dan Liston wrote:
> > "James B. Byrne" wrote:
> > > On 24 Nov 2000, at 16:55, I received this message:
> > >
> > > > In the last couple of weeks we've had two people on the ABCD mailing
> > > > list who upgraded to AOL 6.0 and discovered that the new version of
> > > > AOL is HTML only. They cannot switch to plain text, so they are
> > > > unable to post to the list.
> > > >
> > > > I can tell that this is going to turn into a major headache.
> > > >
> > > > I thought I'd write you and let you know what we've run into. Other
> > > > administrators on other lists may be encountering the same problems.
> > > > Or they're about to.
> > >
> > > 1. Is there actually no way to turn off html formatting from the AOL
> > > mailer?
> > >
> > > 2. If this isn't true then how do you do it?
> > >
> > > 3. If it is true then how can majordomo handle it? Anyone out there
> > > with a pre-processer to strip of html tags and reformat incoming
> > > messages as text?
> >
> > Don't know if #1 is true or not, I would suspect not, but not being an
> > AOL user, (no version for linux released yet) have no idea how it would
> > be done. As for #3, majordomo will pass HTML messages through the list
> > as long as you are not adding fronters/footers to the messages and
> > breaking the MIME encoding. This does not solve the problem of people
> > with pine, elm, mutt, or other text only readers from seeing garbage
> > in their mailbox though.
> >
> > Your best choice would be to implement demime to convert the HTML into
> > plain text before it gets to the resend script.
> > http://scifi.squawk.com/demime.html
>
> The questions are, (a) is it a real problem?
This depends on how many aol subscribers you have. My favorite response
is, if you can't post in plain text, you can't post. One warning, and
the second time you go in the taboo list.
(b) is it a problem for
> the list server, or is he gratuitously taking on the woes of the
> world?
It is a problem, unless you "demime" the messages going to majordomo
or the list-request address.
(c) is it either a pressing or a strategic problem for list
> servers, or something that he has unnecessarily anticipated?
If there really is NO way to disable html formatting from aol users,
the early warning does help. We can prepare our policies, can our
support responses, figure out how to use demime, and prepare to start
removing or filtering names from our lists.
(d) is
> alteration of the message by the server forgery, should a declaratory
> X-header be added, should the algorithm by published on his Web page?
If the font, color, or size change, but the character does not, is the
message content altered? Does makeing text big red and bold really
emphasize NOT to do something? My favorite response to this argument
is all messages distributed through my list servers imply permission
to copy, archive, digestify, and modify as necessity demands.
> (d) is it a problem for the server that can't be solved by the usual
> sane administrative response, which is to unsubscribe the offending
> subscribers?
nope.
>
> The bare technical issue seems minor. He could pass the messages
> through lynx. But if he needs to ask, he shouldn't be doing it.
I have not used lynx for a couple years. Could you provide an example?
Dan Liston
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