[HANASHIR:5670] Problems with Digests on AOL

[Adrian Durlester <durleste...>]

>From the folks at Shamash:

I would like to provide some background on recent problems that AOL users
are having with receiving digests from ListProc.

History:
=======

In the past, AOL  processed ListProc's MIME digests and displayed the
message in the normal email forum, unless the file was "too large". If AOL
felt the file was too large, it would consider the whole digest one large
attachment and make users download the attachment and view it in a text
viewer on their system.

Within the past 2 weeks, AOL began turning ALL listproc MIME digests into
an attachment, making ListProc digests difficult for AOL users to
read.  AOL refused to answer any questions about this matter.

Thankfully, ListProc offers a built-in solution to this problem.  Any user
getting digest mail in one large attachment or as a series of separately
downloaded attachments, rather than in a readable form, can choose to get
mail from the list in DIGEST-NOMIME mail mode.

Solution A: Users fix their own problems reading the list
========================================
If anyone on your mailing list complains of :
1.  Using AOL and getting the mail in a hard to read format
2.  Getting mail which has no content (and appears empty)
3.  Getting mail in an attachment instead of in regular messages

The subscriber can easily fix this by e-mailing listproc (at) shamash(dot)org 
and
having
their message (not subject) read:
set HANASHIR mail digest-nomime



What is MIME?
=============
This calls for a brief explanation of MIME. MIME stands for Multi-purpose
Internet Mail Extensions. It is the Internet standard for sending multiple
part, multi-media electronic mail. It is typically used to send images,
sounds, word processing documents, programs, and even plain text files via
electronic mail and the Internet. For more information that you ever wanted
about mime see this FAQ:
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/mail/mime-faq/.html

In short, MIME email allows for nice attachments to be sent along with
email messages, including HTML text (colored, bold, labeled text),
graphics, and file attachments.  Most of the time, it's best to **not**
send MIME messages to a mailing list, as large attachments are time
consuming to download and read.

If a user sends a MIME message (lets say with an attachment) to the list,
and a subscriber is receiving mail in digest-nomime mail mode, the
subscriber will **not** be able to view the attachment.  This is a
disadvantage of DIGEST-NOMIME mail mode.

On the other hand, DIGEST-NOMIME allows for "normal" messages to be put
together in a simple manner into a nice clean digest which all users
(including AOL users) can easily read.

Hope this helps.

Adrian

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian A. Durlester  -  durleste (at) home(dot)com
http://members.home.net/durleste/
Student, Vanderbilt University Divinity School
http://divinity.lib.vanderbilt.edu/vds/vds-home.htm
Music Director, Congregation Micah, Nashville, TN http://www.micahnash.org/
Home phone (615) 646-9788 Nextel cel-phone (615) 207-2661
You can page me from http://www.nextel.com
List-Owner for hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org; Co-Owner for L-Torah (at) 
shamash(dot)org
http://uahc.org/hanashir
Editor, Bim Bam (for Torah Aura Productions) http://www.torahaura.com/
Alternate Email: aad (at) iname(dot)com  adriand (at) aol(dot)com

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