Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.2.20020421223613.01e54ec0@lancaironline.net>
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 22:47:11 -0400
To: lml@lancaironline.net
From: marv@lancair.net
Subject: Lancair Mail List formatting and other stuff
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There has been a bit of confusion about what's going on with the LML 
recently and I figure it's about time I jump in and set some things 
straight... this is going to be a bit lengthy, but it is important, so 
please bear with me.

First off, a change of venue was announced to the LML last week, and I need 
to put this into perspective.  The old host for the LML was a small ISP in 
Fort Myers called OnLine Services, USA, or OLSUSA for short.  They sold 
their dial-up business to Earthlink at the beginning of April, and this put 
the future of the LML as we knew it in jeopardy.  I had been working on and 
off at setting up a mirror of the LML on servers provided by Rob Logan for 
quite some time, but as it was a low-priority item during that time, 
nothing official was ever done with it.  The pending change at OLSUSA, 
however, moved the relocation of the LML to new servers up to the front 
burner, and so Rob has been helping me tirelessly to get things up and 
running in a way we can all live with.

There are several benefits to having The List hosted on Rob's servers, not 
the least of which is the fact that he, as a Legacy builder, has a vested 
interest in seeing the LML continue as a resource for the Lancair 
community.  While I am quite proud of my online and computer-related 
abilities, I am still just a computer hobbyist, and am fortunate enough to 
know my limitations.  Rob, on the other hand, is a true professional in the 
field, and having him on tap to help with some of the more esoteric aspects 
of running the LML is a benefit that I am truly glad to have available.  We 
will all benefit greatly from his expanded presence in the day-to-day 
operations of the LML.

The listserver software that Rob has implemented on his system contains 
quite a few capabilities that were lacking at OLSUSA, and had I fully 
understood them earlier, I probably would have moved the LML over there 
months ago.  The web-based archives that were provided for the "old" LML 
were hosted on remote servers, and as such, were totally out of my 
control.  The web archive at lancaironline.net, OTOH, is local and can be 
maintained readily by both Rob and myself, meaning that we shouldn't be 
experiencing the outages we had with the old archive site.  Additionally, 
as soon as messages are approved for posting they appear on the new 
archive, and are not delayed as they had been in the past.  (The old web 
archive would sometimes take up to 3 or 4 days to get posts online, and 
that archive has been completely broken since late last year.)  The search 
capability is improved and will be appreciated once you compare its results 
to those you might have had with the old web archive.  (The text-based 
archives (Zipfiles for those of you who used them) are way out of date and 
I will endeavor to get them back in shape over the next few weeks.  The 
creation of each week's textfile is a manual operation, unrelated to the 
general operation of The List itself, and will take a bit of time, so 
thanks for your patience in this regard.)

The next thing is message formatting... this has opened a whole new can of 
worms for us, and I hope that the switches back and forth in the digests 
over the past week haven't caused too many of you anything other than minor 
inconveniences.  As you all know, one of the items that we constantly 
harped on at the "old" LML was that every post be submitted in plain text 
only.  This had little to do with the immediate (feed) mode subscribers, as 
most email programs have enough manners to display email messages in 
whatever format they arrive in.  The problem was, and still is, with the 
digest subscribers, and we're still fighting that battle, trying to come up 
with the format that we all can live with.  In a nutshell, here are the 
considerations...

Most purpose-built email programs (Eudora, Netscape Communicator, Pegasus, 
etc) are able to deal with whatever formatting an email can throw at 
it.  Plain text messages are displayed with whatever font is assigned by 
the user for plain text, multi-part messages are displayed according to the 
formatting included in the post, and pictures are either shown as part of 
the message or accessed through icons or links embedded in the email.  The 
same is true for digest users with these particular email programs, but 
that is not the case for users of Outlook or Outlook Express... and therein 
lies the rub.

I understand that there is a large segment of the LML population who uses 
Outlook to manage their email.  We have had lots of complaints from those 
folks when we sent the digests in an embedded-MIME format because Outlook 
didn't display the messages, but instead presented a series of icons that 
had to be clicked on one at a time to display each individual message in 
the digest.  I can see how this would be a complete PITA, and I don't blame 
you at all for being put off by it.  When we went to plain text digests, 
any photos that accompanied postings were decoded into hundreds of lines of 
garbage text, also a pain to deal with.  Accommodating Outlook users 
required us to send the digests in plain text, and as a result, the rest of 
the LML populace had to suffer once again with the lowest common 
denominator defined by that segment of the membership.  We've been trying 
to accommodate everyone by thinking the solution would be found "inside the 
box" that governed the way we'd been thinking about the LML all 
along.  However, I think we have a better solution, although it's going to 
require you all to consider some new possibilities, and perhaps use some 
capabilities of your email programs that have been heretofore untapped... 
time to think "outside the box" for a change...

You might have noticed that every post sent through the LML now includes 
the same bit of text at the beginning of each subject header, that being 
"[LML]".  We did this so all postings from the LML would be readily 
identifiable, to make segregating LML posts from all others a relatively 
easy task.  If those of you who are receiving the digests presently would 
turn on a filter in your email program that identified each LML posting by 
its [LML] "signature" in the subject line, you could use that filter to 
send all LML email to a separate LML mailbox... even Outlook and Outlook 
Express have that capability.  (You "feed" mode subscribers can also 
benefit from this idea, BTW.) We could then stop sending the digests 
entirely, put everyone in the feed mode, and you would control the location 
of all of your LML email locally.  You wouldn't have a "digest" per se, 
showing up in your regular email box every morning, instead you would have 
all of the LML postings residing in a separate email box, away from your 
usual email stream... thus segregating them, like a digest would, only in a 
slightly different fashion.  This would mean that we could allow 
MIME-encoded messaging, including the sending of photos, and you'd still be 
able to pick and choose the messages you read from within that dedicated 
mailbox.  I have done this with all of my inbound LML email, and it makes 
keeping track of it a very simple task indeed.  If you considered the 
additional possibilities as regard outbound email as well, it would be 
possible for you to keep everything LML related in that one box, all by 
using the filter function available in your email program.  Personally, I 
would prefer that we take this direction, as it does a couple of things for 
us immediately... the elimination of the plain-text requirement simplifies 
the moderation task considerably, as I currently have to sidetrack 
MIME-encoded posts and submit them on behalf of the sender... this tends to 
slow things down a bit.  More importantly, it takes the responsibility for 
getting pictures out on the website out of my hands, and makes them 
instantly available at the archive.  This is a real benefit for everyone, 
as we frequently have photos that folks want to share, and getting them 
online presently is subject to the vagaries of my personal schedule... and 
you all know what kind of delays that can cause.  Identifying the posts 
with photos in the archive is a simple matter, as the size of each posting 
is included in the index.  If you see a message larger than 2 or 3kb it 
obviously has a photo attached to it.  (Stop by the archive and look at the 
few posts with message sizes in multiple KBs... you'll be impressed with 
what you see.)  I will ultimately copy the photos to the "Attachments" area 
of the website, but in the meantime, they would still be available for viewing.

The second alternative, if you're using Outlook or Outlook Express, _and_ 
we keep the digest going, would be to switch to the index mode... this way 
you wouldn't receive any of the complete posts, just an index in lieu of 
the daily digests... once you receive the index you just follow the link in 
the post to the web archive and access the postings online.  I'm not very 
fond of this alternative, as I really prefer keeping the LML totally 
email-based, and this would entail further online time and make the LML a 
sort of hybrid beast for those of you who chose the index mode of 
delivery.  Switching from mode to mode is a relatively simple task... to 
switch from digest to index you would send a blank message to the list 
addressed to lml-index@lancaironline.net.  A complete description of the 
process is on the web at http://lancaironline.net/lists/.

As you can see, I'm trying desperately to veer us off of the plain-text 
path we have been following for the last 4 years, as we now have some 
capabilities that we all can benefit from.  It is counter-productive for us 
to bury our heads in the sand and deny the fact that today's computers are 
faster, both storage space and bandwidth is cheaper, our email programs (by 
and large) have untapped abilities that we need to take advantage of, and 
that it is about time we took the bull by the horns and started using these 
capabilities to our own advantage.  We are all somewhat resistant to 
change, but as a community, _we_ members of the LML are probably better 
equipped mentally to deal with it than 98% of the population out there, 
otherwise we wouldn't be building experimental airplanes now, would we?

If any of you have a problem with managing your LML emails in the feed mode 
via the filter method I've outlined above, please let me know why, and 
perhaps I'll be able to help you find a way to make this a reality.  I'm 
voting for the replacement of the digests with a better way for _everyone_ 
to deal with immediate (feed) mode postings and, ultimately, improve the 
overall quality of the LML as an online resource for all of us.  Please 
send your comments and questions to me at marvkaye@lancaironline.net.  I 
won't make any further changes for now and will let you know what's 
happening in the next few days.

   <Marv>