It appears that a digest is formatted as:
list:member:digest:masthead
- Thread 1 ... N. Thread N
foreach thread list:member:digest:header thread list:member:digest:footer
A number of my testers are complaining about the formatting:
- it's hard to visually identify each of the threads (the TOC numbers them, but the numbers aren't shown next to each thread, for example) and
- it's hard for a novice to know how to reply to a digest thread
I'm wondering how other admins have customized their digests to make them more useful. For example, if there was a way in list:member:digest:header to display a link to the archived thread, that would be a good start. list:member:digest:header could emit a horizontal line to separate each thread, but it would be nice to be able to show the number of the thread, etc. Yahoo! Groups used to send out HTML digests that had the thread titles nicely distinguished, live links to the thread, and links to Reply to sender, Reply to All, etc.
Thanks for any suggestions!
mailman@manygoodideas.com writes:
I'm wondering how other admins have customized their digests to make them more useful.
It sounds like you have the digest format set to "plain". If you set it to "MIME", many email clients will format the display in such a way that you can click on individual messages. This is also possible with the plain format, but in my experience fewer clients implement that, because it's more fragile and painstaking to do. That might help.
In general, this problem is really hard to address because the capabilities of clients vary so greatly.
Perhaps your subscribers would be better off with single-message mode rather than digest mode. I'm not really clear on why anybody subscribes in digest mode any more. Digests still make sense for individual collections of messages, eg, "Your Honor, here are all the emails in which the defendent libeled my client." But for an ongoing stream such as a mailing list, I would think you would be much better off to receive the individual messages and let your modern client do its own thing with grouping threads and folders, and threading and ordering posts. Obviously, people like their own ways of doing things, but that suggestion might be useful for some of your subscribers.
I hate to ask you to ask your subscribers to learn how to use their clients, as that frequently doesn't go over well, and they'll probably ask you to teach them with a client you've never used yourself :-/. However, if that's an option, most email clients provide a way to "burst" the digest into individual messages, which will then be threaded in the normal way for that client. This provides the user with the "download all the recent messages periodically" benefits of the digest, as well as the threading capability of the client. Also, a *good* email client will provide a way to view a digest "as a folder", without bursting it into individual messages. The latter is closest to what your users want, I think. (I still think that for most of them switching to regular mode is best.)
Yahoo! Groups used to send out HTML digests that had the thread titles nicely distinguished, live links to the thread, and links to Reply to sender, Reply to All, etc.
Dealing with HTML email requires the resources of a billion-dollar company, unfortunately. It's a real mess. (For us old-timers, our favorite Mailman options are "strip HTML parts" and "convert HTML to plain text." ;-) For a small organization like Mailman, it's a "throw up your hands in distress" size problem. On the other hand, if you use a MIME-format digest, it's quite easy (but unfortunately not universal) for the client to implement that formatting itself. So that's the route we had to take.
Hope this helps. If it inspires more questions, please ask!
Steve
In general, this problem is really hard to address because the capabilities of clients vary so greatly.
Have tested many clients and its a total mess. For text only emails its not too bad but attachments break things in strange ways. The only ones working correct are outlook and Mail on iOS. Though display is not the most convenient. They both enable reply to original message and thats a great improvement compared to MM2
Perhaps your subscribers would be better off with single-message mode rather than digest mode. I'm not really clear on why anybody subscribes in digest mode any more. Digests still make sense for individual collections of messages, eg, "Your Honor, here are all the emails in which the defendent libeled my client." But for an ongoing stream such as a mailing list, I would think you would be much better off to receive the individual messages and let your modern client do its own thing with grouping threads and folders, and threading and ordering posts. Obviously, people like their own ways of doing things, but that suggestion might be useful for some of your subscribers. I hate to ask you to ask your subscribers to learn how to use their clients, as that frequently doesn't go over well, and they'll probably ask you to teach them with a client you've never used yourself :-/.
yes, yes, yes full ack. Thats what I am doing. But its extremely hard to convince users to change what they have done for a long time.
However, if that's an option, most email clients provide a way to "burst" the digest into individual messages, which will then be threaded in the normal way for that client. This provides the user with the "download all the recent messages periodically" benefits of the digest, as well as the threading capability of the client.
Can you list clients that can do that? I’d like to have options to recommend if users insist on digest.
Apollinaris Schöll writes:
yes, yes, yes full ack. Thats what I am doing. But its extremely hard to convince users to change what they have done for a long time.
Yes, I sympathize with you.
However, if that's an option, most email clients provide a way to "burst" the digest into individual messages, which will then be threaded in the normal way for that client. This provides the user with the "download all the recent messages periodically" benefits of the digest, as well as the threading capability of the client.
Can you list clients that can do that? I’d like to have options to recommend if users insist on digest.
Not offhand. Besides Emacs-based clients (which all can do it, but I doubt you're going to be recommending those ;-), the ones I'm familiar with are the text-based ones like mutt and mh, and open-source implementations like Thunderbird (burst requires an add-on). Gmail does *not* seem to handle bursting, although Google Groups provides digests. Outlook 2011 had a "burst" filter that automatically burst all incoming digests, not sure if you could do it on-demand at mail reading time, and I don't know about Outlook365. There doesn't seem to be a built-in feature for handling digests in Apple Mail, but there are plug-ins.
On 11/5/20 8:45 PM, mailman@manygoodideas.com wrote:
It appears that a digest is formatted as:
list:member:digest:masthead
- Thread 1 ... N. Thread N
foreach thread list:member:digest:header thread list:member:digest:footer
The absence of a Message: n header at the beginning of each message
was a bug <https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman/-/issues/764> that is
fixed for the 3.3.2 release of Mailman core.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
I have 2 more digest questions, which I'm hoping to get insight on:
Is there a way to trigger a digest for a user (for testing purposes)? Specifically, is there a function that can be revealed via the REST api to an interface like Postorius and Affinity?
I have customized list:member:digest:header, but am not seeing the custom text where I thought it should be. The documentation seems to imply that both list:member:digest:header and list:member:digest:footer surround each message in the digest, with the digest starting with list:member:digest:masthead. What I'm seeing is list:member:digest:masthead, which is followed by list:member:digest:header, then the TOC, then all the digest entries.
Thanks.
Jay
mailman＠manygoodideas.com wrote:
I have 2 more digest questions, which I'm hoping to get insight on: list:member:digest:header and list:member:digest:footer surround each message in the
- Is there a way to trigger a digest for a user (for testing purposes)? Specifically, is there a function that can be revealed via the REST api to an interface like Postorius and Affinity?
- I have customized list:member:digest:header, but am not seeing the custom text where I thought it should be. The documentation seems to imply that both
digest, with the digest starting with list:member:digest:masthead. What I'm seeing is list:member:digest:masthead, which is followed by list:member:digest:header, then the TOC, then all the digest entries.
I also have a feature request (I didn't see it in the docs), consider creating list:member:digest:mastfoot – a chunk of text that could be at the end of the digest. Thanks.
mailman@manygoodideas.com writes:
- Is there a way to trigger a digest for a user (for testing purposes)? Specifically, is there a function that can be revealed via the REST api to an interface like Postorius and Affinity?
You can't trigger a digest to an individual member (unless they're the only active digest subscriber to the list, of course, so you can experiment on a test list if it's not specific to a particular list).
I thought there was a way to trigger immediate distribution of a digest immediately, but I guess I'm remembering that from Mailman 2. Neither the Postorius management interface nor the core documentation suggests there's such a trigger in Mailman 3.
- I have customized list:member:digest:header, but am not seeing the custom text where I thought it should be. The documentation seems to imply that both list:member:digest:header and list:member:digest:footer surround each message in the digest
Which documentation do you mean? As far as I know (Mark will have authoritative information if I'm wrong), the digest header and footer appear at the top and bottom of the *whole* digest message (ie, once each per digest), not surrounding or in the bodies of the component messages.
On 11/7/20 9:08 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
I thought there was a way to trigger immediate distribution of a digest immediately, but I guess I'm remembering that from Mailman 2. Neither the Postorius management interface nor the core documentation suggests there's such a trigger in Mailman 3.
There is nothing in the web UI or REST, but the mailman digests
command can send accumulated digests for one or more named lists or all
lists unconditionally or only if the list's digest_send_periodic is set
to True. see mailkman digests --help for details.
- I have customized list:member:digest:header, but am not seeing the custom text where I thought it should be. The documentation seems to imply that both list:member:digest:header and list:member:digest:footer surround each message in the digest
Which documentation do you mean? As far as I know (Mark will have authoritative information if I'm wrong), the digest header and footer appear at the top and bottom of the *whole* digest message (ie, once each per digest), not surrounding or in the bodies of the component messages.
Steve is correct. The layout is as follows
The masthead from the list:member:digest:masthead template. The digest header if any from the list:member:digest:header template. The table of contents. The individual messages. The digest footer from the list:member:digest:footer template.
For the MIME digest, these are all separate MIME parts and the individual messages are message/rfc822 parts within a multipart/digest part.
For the plain text digest, the digest is one text/plain part containing the above formatted par RFC 1153
And in another post, mailman@manygoodideas.com wrote:
I also have a feature request (I didn't see it in the docs), consider creating list:member:digest:mastfoot – a chunk of text that could be at the end of the digest. Thanks.
This already exists, it is list:member:digest:footer. Your confusion seems to be because you think the list:member:digest:header template and list:member:digest:footer template are prepended/appended to each individual message in the digest which would not make sense and is not the case.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
participants (4)
-
Apollinaris Schöll -
mailman＠manygoodideas.com -
Mark Sapiro -
Stephen J. Turnbull