MIME messages and List archives

[Dan Ellis <dpwe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear AUDITORY list -

I've had a couple of messages lately about the garbled way some
messages appear in the digest, which happens if messages are sent in
MIME or other encodings instead of "plain text mode".  (Some mail
programs don't even give you a choice).

If, like me, you get AUDITORY as individual messages, this is usually
invisible.  But if you've asked the AUDITORY listserv to wrap each
day's message into a single "digest", listserv manages to mangle the
encoding so the MIME messages are more or less illegible.

Listserv has a number of options for digest formats, but as far as I
can tell none of them solves this problem.  Rendering of encoded
messages into plain text digests was fixed in version 16.0, but we are
using 14.5. *

Messages that are unreadable in digests can usually be viewed
successfully via the archives.  There are actually two independent
archives: one that I built at http://www.auditory.org/postings.html
(recently returned to full functionality), and one directly produced
by the listserv at http://lists.mcgill.ca/archives/auditory.html .  So
if you see a garbled message in your digest delivery, you can go to
the archives to read it.   My archive updates every morning at 3:30
(ET), so there may be a slight delay in messages becoming available.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for keeping AUDITORY a vibrant,
high-quality community!

  DAn.


* AUDITORY subscriptions operate via a home-made interface running at
auditory.org that then communicates with the listserv at McGill.  I
have the capability to modify what "digest" mode this selects
(currently "nohtml mime digest"), but I don't think there are better
options.  But if anyone has suggestions about how better to manage the
listserv software, I'd love to be able to fix this.