Re: [Mailman-Users] Avoiding mangling in Mailman 3?

[Allan Hansen]

Stephen et al.,

You’re right that using links instead of a Reply function is unattractive and 
not how email is supposed to work. On the other hand, the same surely goes for 
the To: mangling:

I have set the ReplyTo: as the author, it’s not the immediate replying as such 
that is an issue, and the mangled string is factually correct. The issue comes 
when Apple Mail does auto-completion and hides the email address.

A mangled From: address like this:

"Allan Hansen (han...@rc.org ) via list" 
mailto:r...@mail.rc.org>>

will show up as 

‘Allan Hansen (han...@rc.org ) via list’ 

in Apple Mail with the address hidden by the mail client. Anyone sending to 
that string will assume that it goes to me. It does not. It goes to the list.

So putting “Allan Hansen (hansen AT rc.org )" in the 
description will not help this issue. Using it with auto-completion will still 
send it to the hidden list address.

You’re right that if the author is sending HTML mail, adding a hyperlink to it 
is not likely to be successful at all. So maybe that’s not a good solution. On 
the other hand, if this is the case, it appears that the automatically inserted 
message footer added by Mailman is working fine (see next). Would anything 
prevent adding to this section? Can it be a REPLY button?

--
Allan's mailing list
al...@mail.rc.org 
>


I did the code change for the mangling long ago, on advice from this list. It 
worked for a while, until the auto-completion issue and hiding of the actual 
email addresses messed it up. I’d rather not have the same problems in Mailman 
3, so I’m looking for something, anything - even if it’s not nice, that does 
not cause my subscribers to be confused or to send private messages to 1000 
people without knowing it.

Yours,

Allan



> On Dec 7, 2019, at 6:21 , Stephen J. Turnbull 
>  wrote:
> 
> Allan Hansen writes:
> 
>> 1. Replace the From: address with a no-reply address on the list
>>   server. Don’t add the sender’s address in quotes.
> 
> I believe this requires a change in the Mailman code.
> 
> I guess you want the author's display name, if available, there?  What
> if there is no display name, or it doesn't identify the author?  I
> guess the best play would be the mailbox of the author.
> 
> I guess some nontechnical users
> might just copy that to an address field with less than amusing
> results, but it might be useful in manual lookups in address books,
> since most clients do not display Reply-To.
> 
>> 2. Keep the ‘Reply-To:’ address as the sender’s address (that’s
>>   what I have it set to now - I don’t want people to reply to the
>>   lists).
> 
> I believe this doesn't need a change to Mailman.
> 
>> 3. Put HTML mailto: links for ‘Reply to Sender’ and Reply to List’
>>   at the bottom of the message.
> 
> A mailto link for the list is configurable.  However, the link for
> author would require changes to Mailman code I'm pretty sure.  Also,
> as explained below, it's probably very unreliable and unattractive to
> try to use links to simulate a mail client's reply function.
> 
> First of all, users expect a reply function to copy the text of the
> original.  mailto URLs don't provide a facility for that.  We would
> have to add code to copy the text to the URL.  I'm not sure how
> typical clients would react to that, and if the original is plain
> text, the message's whole text would be visibly duplicated in the
> footer of the message distributed to subscribers, which would likely
> be displayed as is by most clients.  This would be pretty distressing
> to most subscribers, I think.  Also, I expect most clients use the DOM
> they have constructed to display the original mail to populate replies
> they construct themselves, but Mailman can't know about that.  Users
> may not be pleased with replies constructed from a mailto URL; in
> particular, it would not be displayed or transmitted as copied, but
> rather as original text.
> 
> Second, users expect replies to preserve threading.  This would mean
> adding References or at least In-Reply-To header fields to the mailto
> URLs.  This would be straightforward to implement, but would result in
> large, unreadable plaintext footers, if some users are sending
> plaintext mail.  (Though it wouldn't be as bad as if you tried to
> include the original text in the reply's composition window, I imagine
> you'd get complaints.)  Again, I'm not sure how typical clients would
> deal with it, whether they would follow the RFCs or screw up.
> 
> Third, if you mean "links as HTML" rather than "insert URLs
> somehow", this is rather problematic.  HTML mail is a minefield.
> There are standards, but in practice they're all violated by one
> client or another.  Manipulating HTML 

[Mailman-Users] Avoiding mangling in Mailman 3?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Allan Hansen writes:

 > 1. Replace the From: address with a no-reply address on the list
 >server. Don’t add the sender’s address in quotes.

I believe this requires a change in the Mailman code.

I guess you want the author's display name, if available, there?  What
if there is no display name, or it doesn't identify the author?  I
guess the best play would be the mailbox of the author.

How about "mailbox AT domain.com"?  I guess some nontechnical users
might just copy that to an address field with less than amusing
results, but it might be useful in manual lookups in address books,
since most clients do not display Reply-To.

 > 2. Keep the ‘Reply-To:’ address as the sender’s address (that’s
 >what I have it set to now - I don’t want people to reply to the
 >lists).

I believe this doesn't need a change to Mailman.

 > 3. Put HTML mailto: links for ‘Reply to Sender’ and Reply to List’
 >at the bottom of the message.

A mailto link for the list is configurable.  However, the link for
author would require changes to Mailman code I'm pretty sure.  Also,
as explained below, it's probably very unreliable and unattractive to
try to use links to simulate a mail client's reply function.

First of all, users expect a reply function to copy the text of the
original.  mailto URLs don't provide a facility for that.  We would
have to add code to copy the text to the URL.  I'm not sure how
typical clients would react to that, and if the original is plain
text, the message's whole text would be visibly duplicated in the
footer of the message distributed to subscribers, which would likely
be displayed as is by most clients.  This would be pretty distressing
to most subscribers, I think.  Also, I expect most clients use the DOM
they have constructed to display the original mail to populate replies
they construct themselves, but Mailman can't know about that.  Users
may not be pleased with replies constructed from a mailto URL; in
particular, it would not be displayed or transmitted as copied, but
rather as original text.

Second, users expect replies to preserve threading.  This would mean
adding References or at least In-Reply-To header fields to the mailto
URLs.  This would be straightforward to implement, but would result in
large, unreadable plaintext footers, if some users are sending
plaintext mail.  (Though it wouldn't be as bad as if you tried to
include the original text in the reply's composition window, I imagine
you'd get complaints.)  Again, I'm not sure how typical clients would
deal with it, whether they would follow the RFCs or screw up.

Third, if you mean "links as HTML" rather than "insert URLs
somehow", this is rather problematic.  HTML mail is a minefield.
There are standards, but in practice they're all violated by one
client or another.  Manipulating HTML before forwarding to the
subscribers is very likely to have bad side effects for some mail
composed by some clients.

You're also not guaranteed that all the subscribers even use HTML
mail, in which case even if added as HTML, in those messages you'd
have all the ugliness described above.

Steve

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Avoiding mangling in Mailman 3?

[Brian Carpenter]

Hi Allan,

I have successfully installed Mailman 3 on 4 servers now. Please contact me off 
list if you are interested in my installation service.

Thanks,
Brian Carpenter 

> On Dec 7, 2019, at 12:17 AM, Allan Hansen  wrote:
> 
> All,
> 
> One of my main gripes is the From: mangling that we had to use to allow AOL 
> and Yahoo subscribers to send messages without messing everyone else up. I 
> have now been informed that Mailman 3 does not solve this problem, but I’d 
> like to move to Mailman 3 anyway. So what to do?
> 
> How about this:
> 
> 1. Replace the From: address with a no-reply address on the list server. 
> Don’t add the sender’s address in quotes.
> 2. Keep the ‘Reply-To:’ address as the sender’s address (that’s what I have 
> it set to now - I don’t want people to reply to the lists).
> 3. Put HTML mailto: links for ‘Reply to Sender’ and Reply to List’ at the 
> bottom of the message.
> 
> 
> My other solution:
> 
> Require subscribers from AOL/Yahoo and whichever other service with the same 
> misguided policy to get another email address for the lists.
> 
> 
> Is there anyone on this who will be willing to help installing Mailman 3 for 
> me on a Linux system. I have tried and I have had two experts try as well, 
> but we have all run into difficulty. I’ll pay, of course.
> 
> Yours,
> 
>Allan Hansen
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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