[R] Replying to digested R-help messages --> get MIME digests!

[Martin Maechler]

Hi Frank,

>>>>> "Frank" == Frank E Harrell <f.harrell at vanderbilt.edu>
>>>>>     on Thu, 26 Aug 2004 09:08:39 -0500 writes:

    Frank> Sorry about non-indenting of quoted text - I haven't
    Frank> figured out a good way to answer mail when receiving
    Frank> messages in digest mode -FH

use a mail client that can "undigest"  (Emacs RMAIL, VM or GNUS all do) ;-)

No, more seriously: 

I'm sure your Mozilla mail reader is capable deal with "MIME
Attachments".  Now there's an option to receive digests either in "traditional
digest format" (called "plain text") (which good ol' 'mailers
*can* undigestify!) or in MIME format: after the table of
contents, the whole bunch is "multipart/digest" and insidere
there, every message is a (nicely encapsulated) 
MIME entity of "Content-Type: message/rfc822"

For traditional reasons, the default digest format is
"plain", since the MIME digests really look horrendous in
non-MIME-capable e-mail clients.
But I do recommend to also choose "MIME" when you choose
"digest".  With the web interface to mailman, you go to your
personal option page (you need the your mailman password for
that which you should get once per month and can get sent again
by clicking somewhere) and the third entry in the option table
is

>> Get MIME or Plain Text Digests?
>> 
>> Your mail reader may or may not support MIME digests. In general
>> MIME digests are preferred, but if you have a problem reading
>> them, select plain text digests. 

There, you can not only select MIME, but also select "[Set globally]"
which sets this for all mailing lists on stat.ethz.ch to which
you are subscribed.

------------

Note that *instead* of the Web / GUI interface to the mailing
 list, you can use email 
 'To: R-help-request at ...'
	    ^^^^^^^^ 
	    (please!)

and on unix like systems, you can even do the following in the shell:

    echo password | mail r-help-request at R-project.org

and you'll get your passwor by e-mail within a few minutes
and then send the two lines
    set authenticate <<your_password>>
    set digest mime
to the same address, or in one ugly shell line (which will
probably be wrapped around before you read it!) :

   (echo set authenticate <<password>> ; echo set digest mime) | mail r-help-request at R-project.org
	 
and to turn off "digest" and revert to regular replace 'mime' by
'off' in the above.

--
Hoping this is of general help,
Martin Maechler