Forum OpenACS Q&A: JANINE: Mail problems

Posted by Simon at TCB on 11/22/02 01:09 PM

Janine,

You email address has been bouncing now for several days. It appears none of my mails over the last few days have got to you.

The error is

Reporting-MTA: dns; mta5-win.server.ntlworld.com
Arrival-Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 11:06:44 +0000
Received-From-MTA: dns; open-msg.com (213.107.207.130)

Final-Recipient: RFC822; <janine@furfly.net>
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: dns; tonkinese.furfly.net (209.202.133.18)
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 5.7.1 Access denied

I don't think its me as everyone else is getting mails ok, just not you ;o)

Let me know when you get this fixed.

2: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Janine Ohmer on 11/22/02 03:42 PM

Just for the record, I wasn't blocking Simon personally. :) Mike has been blocking IP ranges that send us the most spam and apparently he blocked a bit too liberally.

3: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Roberto Mello on 11/22/02 07:45 PM

I'm going to ask this again, echoing what _several_ people in the community (including me) have already asked:

Simon, PLEASE STOP putting html tags in the subject lines! You _know_ they are not supposed to be there. People have asked you to stop that already. They are ugly. They show up badly in e-mail. They are lame and are not meant to be there.

A while ago, when you were first asked to stop this behavior, you said you'd comply. Perhaps we will have to just add a check to forums to strip all tags off the subject.

-Roberto

4: HTML tags in the subject line (again). (response to 1)

Posted by Lamar Owen on 11/23/02 06:16 AM

If HTML tags shouldn't be in the subject line, then the forum software should strip them out.

If the forum software doesn't strip them out, then they are allowed. If it messes up the formatting of the e-mail, then the e-mail sending should strip out the tags.

Basic software engineering -- if it's not allowed, then don't facilitate it. So strip the subject line of tags. Please.

5: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Talli Somekh on 11/23/02 06:21 AM

In the meantime, don't use HTML in subject lines because many people in the community have expressed that it's really friggin' annoying.

Basic software engineering is nice. So is basic courtesy.

talli

6: Re: HTML tags in the subject line (again). (response to 4)

Posted by Branimir Dolicki on 11/23/02 09:30 AM

HTML tags shouldn't be stripped but characters <, >, &, " and ' should be quoted so that they are properly displayed. There is no reason why the Subject (especially in a technical forum like this) shouldn't read, say:

Should I use the <br> tag?

Or:

If x<y then y>x.

7: Massaging HTML in subject. (response to 1)

Posted by Lamar Owen on 11/24/02 04:57 AM

I like this idea. Quote the problem away, and retain the ability to ask a question about a tag. Nice.

As to common courtesy, expecting that on the Internet is ludicrous in this day and age. Sorry, but that is the simple fact -- and I for one think it is unfortunate.

8: Re: Massaging HTML in subject. (response to 7)

Posted by Talli Somekh on 11/24/02 05:43 AM

Lamar Owen wrote: "As to common courtesy, expecting that on the Internet is ludicrous in this day and age. Sorry, but that is the simple fact -- and I for one think it is unfortunate. "

That's true, but it's also why signal to noise ratio in OACS is so high.

I mean, usually. Sometimes. When that Talli guy doesn't post.

talli

9: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Simon at TCB on 11/25/02 12:07 PM

Firstly let me apologise for my error.

Secondly can I point out that I am on numerous mailing lists and bulletin boards, many of which permit HTML (and handle it properly). Therefore, every once in a while, I forget about the crap handling of subject lines on OpenACS and accidentally put a tag.

Oh dear....

What a earth-shattering slip-up that must be....

And now my mail box has five f***ing pointless emails arguing about it. Fix your software and stop bugging me about it.

Someone seems to have time to put on emoti-icons, but can't find the time to fix the header line???

10: HTML quoting in subjects who and when? (response to 6)

Posted by Eduardo Pérez on 11/26/02 09:30 PM

Is anyone working in HTML quoting as Branimir Dolicki stated to allow characters <, >, &, " and ' in openacs forum subjects?

I don't think it's a good idea that a simple <!-- in the subject can block the forums page from being viewed.

I just want to know who are looking into this problem to be able to help.

11: Re: HTML quoting in subjects who and when? (response to 10)

Posted by Jeff Davis on 11/26/02 09:50 PM

I fixed the existing subject lines in the db but have not
had time to fix the code. If you (or anyone else for that matter) fixes it in a 4.6 branch checkout and submit a patch I can apply it (both on 4.6 and on openacs.org).

12: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Stan Kaufman on 11/26/02 11:36 PM

I've posted a patch that fixes the problem with message subjects and quoted html (at least I think it does what is needed -- it's so brain-dead simple that I'm afraid that I'm missing the point).

It's here: http://sdm.openacs.org/sdm/one-patch.tcl?patch_id=509

13: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Jeff Davis on 11/26/02 11:46 PM

html quoting the user input on insert is probably the wrong way to
do it since generally you want to leave user input alone
and quote on output. I would much rather see it quoted in
message-chunk and forum-view and the other places it shows up.

This kind of quoting error is pervasive in openacs and
probably should be attacked systematically.

See this thread for much more detail about the general
problem:
http://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=52555

14: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Stan Kaufman on 11/27/02 01:36 AM

Jeff, thanks for pointing me to that thread. For editable user input, it clearly is preferable to leave their input as is so they don't have all that quoted crap show up in their edit fields.

That said, because of the problem of trying to quote results in a db_multirow, it appears that one has to do really ugly stuff like sticking calls to ad_quotehtml in the adp unless db_multirow gets rewritten or some other more substantial fix gets done like Hrvoje described.

Anyway, I've put together some hacks for the existing 4.6 Forums package that appear to Do The Right Thing. Here's the patch:

http://sdm.openacs.org/sdm/one-patch.tcl?patch_id=510

15: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Stan Kaufman on 11/27/02 05:54 AM

Found a bug in the prior patch. Try this one instead:

http://sdm.openacs.org/sdm/one-patch.tcl?patch_id=511

16: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Bauer on 11/27/02 06:29 AM

Stan, why is there a problem with quoting HTML in a db_multirow? You can just modify they subject text in the code block:

db_multirow messages get messages {
select subject, content from forums_messages
} {
set subject [ad_quotehtml $subject]
}

This example probably doesn't match the actual tables, but is a very powerful way to work with db_multirow. I haven't seen anything it could not do where I needed to put Tcl code in an adp page (yet.)

17: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Stan Kaufman on 11/27/02 07:08 AM

Dave, I'm revealing more about my lack of understanding of the 4.x api than I wish I were. Very nifty solution you provide here!

I guess I misunderstood Hrvoje's writeup (that Jeff mentioned here http://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=52555) as meaning that you had to stick the tcl in adp. I should read more and post less!

18: Re: JANINE: Mail problems (response to 1)

Posted by Stan Kaufman on 11/27/02 05:27 PM

OK, now that I understand how easy it is to do per-row stuff in db_multirow (completely explained in the api documentation if I'd only looked at it), I've now posted what I think is a correct and useful cvs patch for Forums. This inserts calls to ad_quotehtml at appropriate places in tcl and makes no skanky alterations of adp.

The patch is here: http://sdm.openacs.org/sdm/one-patch.tcl?patch_id=512