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

[Jonathan Gray]

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 11:43 PM, Everton Zanella Alvarenga
<everton137 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?

We're just using ordinary email clients via a mailing list like the
one we're writing on (mailman). ;-)

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

Not sure - does anyone have experience of this?

>> 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.

Exactly! That is what we want. Do you know how we could do this? (Or
search for it?)

> 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.

If it is in the body of the email I think it makes it more likely that
people will read it. I suspect that if you *have* to click on the
link, lots of people will just archive / file / delete it without
reading. ;-(

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg