Proposal

This has come up in 2 other contexts so far.

Whilst view/etc are skinnable, currently mailnotify's output can only be changed by changing mailnotify.tmpl. Allowing mailnotify to be skinned independantly would make alot of sense - the default distribution could include the following formats:

1. Plain text
2. Standard
3. Spam assassin friendly.

RemoveWebNotifyTopicBodyHack discusses a need for 1 - mail clients that handle MIME poorly. SimplerMailNotification discusses the problems SpamAssassin has with TWiki mail notification.

The two templates needed are essentially done - attached to SimplerMailNotification. (RemoveWebNotifyTopicBodyHack describes changes but doesn't attach an example)

I would suggest that the 3 formats would be:

• plain
• standard
• terse

Looking at the source for mailnotify this looks like a trivial change:

    my $skin = TWiki::Prefs::getPreferencesValue( "SKIN" );

Would become:

    my $skin = TWiki::Prefs::getPreferencesValue( "MAILNOTIFYSKIN" );
    $skin = TWiki::Prefs::getPreferencesValue( "SKIN" ) || unless ($skin);

Or similar. If this is wanted/viewed suitable I'll do this and produce the necessary patch.

-- MichaelSparks - 12 Jul 2003

Discussion/Comments

Why isn't the current skinning approach suitable?

• AFAICT the current skinning approach is sufficient to implement this. This code change isn't necessary to get what people want. However rather than skinning I suspect the majority of users would prefer a "this", "that", "other" option in the case of email, unless they're prepared to create their own templates. Currently doing this "simple" thing is relatively difficult for new twiki administrators. Given this is now an issue for people (spam filters being the biggest problem) I think this is worth consideration.

-- MichaelSparks - 12 Jul 2003