[META] Changing Digest Format??

Graham Robinson writes:
> Secondly, that the enforced lumping of e-mails into digests is too
> difficult to work with.

I'm a lurker who likes the digest format, but then I always use an e-mail client that can burst the digest into multiple messages. I either delete the digest as a whole or burst it and read individual messages. Is the ability to burst digests so lacking in popular e-mail clients?

I see, for instance, that Mozilla's e-mail client lets the user look at the body of a single part of a MIME digest, treating the individual parts of the digest as attachments, but alas! it has no functionality for replying to an individual part. And it does not understand non-MIME digests. And Lotus Notes e-mail doesn't understand digests at all. I suspect the situation with other popular e-mail clients is similar. :(

I see that the glorantha digest is a Mailman mailing list, and it is possible for each individual subscriber to set the type of digest to recieve to MIME. That may help somewhat, depending on how your e-mail client deals with MIME.

I also noticed that the Mailman option for individual subscribers to receive non-digest mail is disabled, which makes sense considering the original setup of the glorantha digest. However, it would be possible (at least with Mailman 2.1.1, although the glorantha digest is currently running under Mailman 2.0.8) to set the list up so that it defaults to digested delivery but allow individuals to switch to non-digest mode if they so choose. I don't think this would involve any more work on the part of the list owner, and it should appease the individuals whose e-mail clients cannot deal with digests, while not disturbing those who like digests.

-- 
T. Kurt Bond, tkb@tkb.mpl.com


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