hans wrote:
I hope that direct mails get rather through the servers filter than responses:
It's not really a question of direct vs response, but rather how you send those different types of messages. The t-online webmail client that you use for responses does not format html correctly; individual messages do not have an opening html tag. You send direct messages with Outlook, which does provide the necessary tag(although it has plenty of problems of its own).
PS: I don't know, why email sent via the t-online program does not transport the text to your system or gets it stripped away, but if I check my email from the webmail site of t-online from any internet cafe around the world, I get the text. Quite strange.
Not strange at all. The t-online webmail interface in which the messages appear has the proper opening html tag, so the individual messages displayed within that interface don't need it. That's why it works when you view it with the webmail interface in a browser. The t-online server works fine when you only use a webmail interface to read your email, but it doesn't play well with others. This is very similar to the behavior of any number of Microsoft products, Outlook among them. Some large providers tend to think that standards are for others to worry about, and that because of their market share, they can set their own standards. This works fine as long as you use their products only in the way they expect you to, but tends to fail when you try to interact with the outside world.
The horn list server *strips* html to keep message size down. Most html email is sent as MIME "content-type: multipart/alternative", with both plain text and html versions of the message. When it receives messages of this type, the server deletes the html and retains the plain text version. The t-online webmail server sends messages labeled as single part, "content-type: text/html". In this case, the server normally simply strips out the html tags and leaves a plain text version, but as I mentioned earlier, the t-online server *omits the opening html tag.* Instead, it initially sends two blank lines, which the MIME filter on the server apparently interprets to be a plain text message and a boundary between plain text and html parts of a multipart message. Since the rest is clearly identifiable as html because of the tags, it strips out everything up to the closing /html tag, leaving us with the single blank line message that is sent to the list.
Some list members pay for internet access based on bandwidth consumption, and multipart messages created by Outlook and others typically are three to four times the size of their plain text equivalents. That, and the desire to remove any malicious code that could be contained in it, are the reasons for stripping html out of posts to the list.
I'm by no means an email expert; this is based on what I've learned running the email, list and web server that hosts the horn list. I welcome corrections, clarifications, etc.
Dan -- Dan Phillips Associate Professor Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music The University of Memphis 901-678-3781 _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
