[Elecraft] QTH.Net versus Yahoo Groups

[David Woolley (E.L)]

Jim Garland wrote:
> I subscribe to the Elecraft email digest on QTH.NET,  and also the FT-2000
> digest on Yahoo Groups. Maybe nobody feels the same way, but I find the
> Elecraft digest very hard to read. Each Elecraft digest comes with many
> email attachments, each of which has to be opened individually. The lead

The Elecraft list can be configured to operate in two different ways, 
neither of which should give you an anonymous list of messages with any 
reasonable modern email reader.  The one I think you are describing is 
the current best practice for list digests.  A good email program will 
display the messages inline, automatically switching to account for 
character set changes and people who insist on using HTML.

Its big advantage is that it makes it completely clear to the email 
reader that it is dealing with a mail digest, so any failure to handle 
it well is the responsibility of the reader.

The alternative is just to string the plain text versions into one long 
email.  The problem with this option is that you need a high level of 
technical skill to reply to an article without breaking the threading.

With the first format, even if the mail reader doesn't expand the 
articles in-line, it should display the titles.  Microsoft Outlook even 
allows you to copy the articles, on masse, into an email folder, and 
then treat them exactly like individual emails.

> email shows the number and title of all the postings (the last one had 54),
> but the numbers aren't given in the subject for the other attachments, which
> makes finding them problematic. I'd like to read the postings, but doing so
> is too time consuming under the current setup, and I don't want to load up
> my In Box with individual postings.

Get a better email client!
> 
>  
> 
> By contrast, the FT-2000 digest lists all the postings as links and one just
> clicks on the desired posting to read it.  I find it much easier to follow.

I can only think of two ways of doing that. One is to not send the 
emails at all, requiring that you be online when reading them, and the 
other is to use HTML format with CID: links, which will bloat the 
download size and limit the use of simple email clients (providing that 
people stick to plain text, the standard digest format can still be read 
quite easily in a mail reader that doesn't understand MIME at all.

> I might have a wrong setting somewhere, in which case just ignore this
> message, but if by chance many other people are having the same problem,
> then perhaps Elecraft should consider moving the reflector to Yahoo Groups.


-- 
David Woolley
"The Elecraft list is a forum for the discussion of topics related to 
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