tech-userlevel archive
[
Date Prev][
Date Next][
Thread Prev][
Thread Next][
Date Index][
Thread Index][
Old Index]
Re: the alternative to stupid email wars (was Re: hpn_buffer_size)
On Mon, 7 May 2012 18:34:52 -0500
David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost> wrote:
> It seems to me that the time spent having these arguments would be
> better spent designing or writing filters that do helpful things such as
>
> * re-wrap lengthy emails at whichever width one prefers,
>
> * convert a discussion thread consisting of top- and bottom-posted
> replies into one style or the other
>
> * processes an mbox-format file containing a lengthy discussion thread
> containing quotes, and quotes of quotes, and re-prints the entire
> discussion as one document without any duplicate text
Using client-side tools, we can indeed preprocess mail as we want/need,
but someone should also be able to simply use mutt or the client of
their choice to read the mail...
Unfortunately, tempering with mail content can also be problematic,
although I commonly see it on archive http frontends... Among the
problems (especially problematic if done server or transit-side):
- It should be able to distinguish between lines that should be wrapped
and those that shouldn't, both of which commonly occur in the same
message on tech lists (format-flowed apparently allows that but few
clients support it correctly or allow to tag lines to be flowed and
those which shouldn't; moreover some clients supporting it will
output unreadable quoted-printable source). Hence we'd need something
like a text markup convention (I'll avoid mentioning HTML! :))
- It could inadvertently temper with inline diffs/patches, or ones
attached in text/plain 7-bit format
- It would make signatures unusable, unless they're verified prior to
processing, and if that occurs server-side one has to trust that
server and verify the server's signature
But all the above problems are simply solved by using explicitely
<80 columns wrapped paragraphs among other unwrapped lines (which is
also tradition on tech mailing lists anyway)? I think most clients can
do this, except one notable one... :)
--
Matt
Home |
Main Index |
Thread Index |
Old Index