"Douglas" said over a week ago:

> Date:    Sat, 31 Jul 1999 00:08:52 -0500
> From:    Winship <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: NOHTML
>
> Someone, Lydia Fish I think, asked about "preventing" HTML postings.
> [...]  At present NOHTML simply strips the HTML part when you have a
> plain text version and then an HTML version.  What does it do when
> there is NO plain text part, it is ALL an HTML
> attachment/application (I get those, I'm sure others do also)?  And
> what about those whose "enriched text" system puts HTML markup at
> the beginning to control the rest of the text with no further
> markup?  [...]

> Douglas

I'm new to this list and to LISTSERV.

We're running LISTSERV 1.8d beta on an Sun Ultra-2 running Solaris
2.6.  After reading some of the discussion about the NoHTML option for
the "Language= " list header, I tried it out.  I sent approximately 10
pieces of e-mail to a test list with a header line of "Language=
English,NoHTML" and different attachment permutations.  The text of
the message was always preserved.  This was despite trying to fool it
with various combinations of other attachments that had nothing to do
with the text message.  I was able to (in a sense) fool it with a
message with two parts: one plain text, and the other an HTML
attachment with different text.  The HTML attachment was discarded and
the different text message preserved, but I hardly expect LISTSERV to
read the HTML and text parts of the piece of mail to see if they
contain the same message.  That's a pathological condition, and anyone
who sends a message like that out deserves what they get.  :)

Basically, LISTSERV removes an HTML *attachment*.  If the message body
consists of nothing but HTML, I guess LISTSERV doesn't consider it an
attachment, and doesn't remove it.  It still looks like HTML, but it
goes through, and contains the message.  While that's ugly, it's not
so ugly as getting a message with an HTML attachment and having to
read the HTML as plain text along with the plain text message.

I intend to use this list header option widely.  But don't believe me
-- test it yourself.  :)

Joe

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Joseph H. Vilas        [log in to unmask]        1-919-660-6902
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