ANS Bulletin Format Problem
Hello everyone,
We've received several reports that the AMSAT News Service bulletins are arriving in an unreadable, mashed up, no carriage-return/no-line-feed format. The problem is being investigated.
Others have no problem with receiving their bulletins.
In the meantime if you are affected, I'd refer readers to the ANS archive where the format remains normal and readable: http://www.amsat.org/pipermail/ans/2017/date.html -or- http://www.amsat.org/pipermail/ans/
-- 73 de JoAnne K9JKM [email protected]
You need to understand there are two types of email plain text and HTML
The messed up text happens when the sender and client don't mix
What are you using to send ?
Andrew
Sent from my iPhone
On 17 Oct 2017, at 1:20 am, JoAnne Maenpaa [email protected] wrote:
Hello everyone,
We've received several reports that the AMSAT News Service bulletins are arriving in an unreadable, mashed up, no carriage-return/no-line-feed format. The problem is being investigated.
Others have no problem with receiving their bulletins.
In the meantime if you are affected, I'd refer readers to the ANS archive where the format remains normal and readable: http://www.amsat.org/pipermail/ans/2017/date.html -or- http://www.amsat.org/pipermail/ans/
-- 73 de JoAnne K9JKM [email protected]
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
All ANS bulletins are sent plain text. We can't control what end users are reading them with!
On 10/16/2017 9:12 PM, Andrew Rich wrote:
You need to understand there are two types of email plain text and HTML
The messed up text happens when the sender and client don't mix
What are you using to send ?
Andrew
Sent from my iPhone
On 17 Oct 2017, at 1:20 am, JoAnne Maenpaa [email protected] wrote:
Hello everyone,
We've received several reports that the AMSAT News Service bulletins are arriving in an unreadable, mashed up, no carriage-return/no-line-feed format. The problem is being investigated.
Others have no problem with receiving their bulletins.
In the meantime if you are affected, I'd refer readers to the ANS archive where the format remains normal and readable: http://www.amsat.org/pipermail/ans/2017/date.html -or- http://www.amsat.org/pipermail/ans/
-- 73 de JoAnne K9JKM [email protected]
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
That's what I thought Joanne
Then there is nothing you can do
I get them fine either HTML or plain on
iPhone mac windows raspberry Pi
Not your problem
Andrew
Sent from my iPhone
On 17 Oct 2017, at 12:16 pm, JoAnne K9JKM [email protected] wrote:
All ANS bulletins are sent plain text. We can't control what end users are reading them with!
On 10/16/2017 9:12 PM, Andrew Rich wrote: You need to understand there are two types of email plain text and HTML
The messed up text happens when the sender and client don't mix
What are you using to send ?
Andrew
Sent from my iPhone
On 17 Oct 2017, at 1:20 am, JoAnne Maenpaa [email protected] wrote:
Hello everyone,
We've received several reports that the AMSAT News Service bulletins are arriving in an unreadable, mashed up, no carriage-return/no-line-feed format. The problem is being investigated.
Others have no problem with receiving their bulletins.
In the meantime if you are affected, I'd refer readers to the ANS archive where the format remains normal and readable: http://www.amsat.org/pipermail/ans/2017/date.html -or- http://www.amsat.org/pipermail/ans/
-- 73 de JoAnne K9JKM [email protected]
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
-- 73 de JoAnne K9JKM [email protected]
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
On 10/16/17 21:16, JoAnne K9JKM wrote:
All ANS bulletins are sent plain text. We can't control what end users are reading them with!
Hello JoAnne,
A slight clarification: they appear to be a base64-encoded MIME[1] payload. In the headers, we can see:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0
<...>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
Then, in the body, we see the base64-encoded message:
QU1TQVQgTkVXUyBTRVJWSUNFCkFOUy0yODgKClRoZSBBTVNBVCBOZXdzIFNlcnZpY2UgYnVsbGV0 aW5zIGFyZSBhIGZyZWUsIHdlZWtseSBuZXdzIGFuZCBpbmZvci0KbWF0aW9uIHNlcnZpY2Ugb2Yg QU1TQVQgTm9ydGggQW1lcmljYSwgVGhlIFJhZGlvIEFtYXRldXIgU2F0ZWxsaXRlCkNvcnBvcmF0
<...>
Since there is a base64 decoder involved in this decoding process, it might be that some clients are getting it wrong. I have had no issue viewing the ANS bulletins on Thunderbird, to be expected, Android K-9 mail, or mutt.
Now, I'm not entirely sure how Thunderbird decides when it should base64 encode the message, but I have my Preferences -> Composition -> General -> Send Options -> (x) "Send messages as plain text if possible" checked. I have verified that my messages are not base64 encoded.
If you truly want to send text-only messages, and this option is not checked, you might try doing so. Then, send yourself an ANS bulletin and use View -> Message Source to verify that the message body appears as plain text.
Hope that helps!
--- Zach N0ZGO
Hi Zach,
Thanks for your input. I made the recommended changes. The test I ran does indeed show the ascii text in the message source instead of a bunch of jammed together character strings that remind me of satellite telemetry.
On a side note - the news content editors don't have the keys to the server room where the box running Mailman resides. I've heard we'd need to be careful about tweaking global settings ... at the risk of wrongly formatted messages for all users. But I'm willing try a few tweaks external to the server (aka my copy of Thunderbird) to see if we can improve the readability problem.
On 10/16/2017 10:48 PM, Zach Metzinger wrote:
On 10/16/17 21:16, JoAnne K9JKM wrote:
All ANS bulletins are sent plain text. We can't control what end users are reading them with!
Hello JoAnne,
A slight clarification: they appear to be a base64-encoded MIME[1] payload. In the headers, we can see:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0
<...>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
Then, in the body, we see the base64-encoded message:
QU1TQVQgTkVXUyBTRVJWSUNFCkFOUy0yODgKClRoZSBBTVNBVCBOZXdzIFNlcnZpY2UgYnVsbGV0
aW5zIGFyZSBhIGZyZWUsIHdlZWtseSBuZXdzIGFuZCBpbmZvci0KbWF0aW9uIHNlcnZpY2Ugb2Yg
QU1TQVQgTm9ydGggQW1lcmljYSwgVGhlIFJhZGlvIEFtYXRldXIgU2F0ZWxsaXRlCkNvcnBvcmF0
As a follow up to the message I sent Zach previously. It appears that the Mailman system is changing that Transfer-Encoding ...
Message header of a local copy I sent to myself with Thunderbird and amsat-bb Mailman server: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Hi Zach, Thanks for your input. I made the recommended changes. The test I ran does indeed show the ascii text in the message source instead of a bunch of jammed together character strings that remind me of satellite telemetry. <snip>
So, I waited for amsat-bb to send me the message I just sent ...
Message header of that message received via the amsat-bb Mailman server: Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
SGkgWmFjaCwKClRoYW5rcyBmb3IgeW91ciBpbnB1dC4gSSBtYWRlIHRoZSByZWNvbW1lbmRlZCBj aGFuZ2VzLiBUaGUgdGVzdCBJIHJhbiAKZG9lcyBpbmRlZWQgc2hvdyB0aGUgYXNjaWkgdGV4dCBp biB0aGUgbWVzc2FnZSBzb3VyY2UgaW5zdGVhZCBvZiBhIGJ1bmNoIApvZiBqYW1tZWQgdG9nZXRo <snip>
This gives me a little more information to send to the volunteers running the mail system. Something along the route changed the listserve message to base64.
I have noticed that the mailing list software seems to insert carriage returns every 76-78 characters before resending the plain text format, where I did not do that.
For those of us who primarily or frequently consume email via mobile platforms, the text ends up looking like this. The smaller screen will automatically reflow text but the mailman software introduces hard carriage returns and makes the text look more like a haiku or a weird poem. It is very difficult to read properly. And to be clear, this is not a problem with my email client on my mobile device, but it is a problem caused by the mailman software combined with the small screen of a mobile device.
It is very annoying.
JoAnne, in your raw email, I see the following fields:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed"
Hopefully that will help in troubleshooting as well.
Thanks,
Jeremy / KO6RM
On October 17, 2017 at 08:00:47, JoAnne K9JKM ([email protected]) wrote:
As a follow up to the message I sent Zach previously. It appears that the Mailman system is changing that Transfer-Encoding ...
Message header of a local copy I sent to myself with Thunderbird and amsat-bb Mailman server: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Hi Zach, Thanks for your input. I made the recommended changes. The test I ran does indeed show the ascii text in the message source instead of a bunch of jammed together character strings that remind me of satellite telemetry. <snip>
So, I waited for amsat-bb to send me the message I just sent ...
Message header of that message received via the amsat-bb Mailman server: Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
SGkgWmFjaCwKClRoYW5rcyBmb3IgeW91ciBpbnB1dC4gSSBtYWRlIHRoZSByZWNvbW1lbmRlZCBj
aGFuZ2VzLiBUaGUgdGVzdCBJIHJhbiAKZG9lcyBpbmRlZWQgc2hvdyB0aGUgYXNjaWkgdGV4dCBp
biB0aGUgbWVzc2FnZSBzb3VyY2UgaW5zdGVhZCBvZiBhIGJ1bmNoIApvZiBqYW1tZWQgdG9nZXRo
<snip>
This gives me a little more information to send to the volunteers running the mail system. Something along the route changed the listserve message to base64.
participants (5)
-
Andrew Rich -
Jeremy Turner -
JoAnne K9JKM -
JoAnne Maenpaa
-
Zach Metzinger