[okfn-help] Beautifying the OKF newsletter (sent out via mailman)?

Tue Nov 8 23:43:34 UTC 2011

2011/11/8 Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org>:> I definitely agree
that we don't want to end up making two copies of> the newsletter if
we can help it.
If a newsletter consists of a collection of "Title" <link> +
"Abstract" (possibly + "Images)" beautifully organized in a HTML page,
wouldn't be easy to have a plain text the HTML version just extracting
its collection of "Title" <link> + "Abstract"?

Which software is OKFn using to send the newsletters?

I am not sure if accessibility is also an issue here - maybe a simple
plain text is easier to blind people?

> Before the days of HTML being ubiquitous on mail clients, what did> people do? Is there some way of displaying a note saying "if you don't> have HTML in your browser, you can view this newsletter by going here> [link]"?

I began to read emails using Pine. Sometimes I simply couldn't view
HTML emails. But in some cases there was a link: if you cannot see
this email, click here.
2011/11/8 Nils Toedtmann <nils.toedtmann at okfn.org>:

> PS: I never understood why newsletter mails are not just one-liners
> saying "Visit http://example.com/news to read our latest news letter."
> You can't reply to them anyway, so no need for a body to quote! Also
> easier to share on social media.

I always prefer to read a Web page than a beautiful page on a Web mail
or my email client. For me titles + abstracts would be fine. Just one
line would force me to click, but it's possible not to be interested
on a particular collection of news. But if there is something I'd like
to read more, I just click the link and go to the fancy page.

T