The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Adam Bernstein <address@concealed>]

Hi all.  The template editing feature of Sympa is great, but ever since the 
switch to the TT2 system (and somewhat before that), it generates great 
confusion in all of our users when they actually try to change anything. 
There are at least three sources of confusion: the duplication of 
information in text/plain and text/html portions in some templates, the 
presence of many bits of confusing but critical TT2 code in brackets, and 
the fact that what comes out of the system ultimately is often different 
than what's displayed because of the translation through the localization 
system.  (We make it worse by having many instances of rewritten or 
expanded phrasing in the .po file, ie. translating English to English.)  We 
sometimes have to help people who have mistakenly removed some part of the 
TT2 coding, making the template unparseable and the list unusable.

I have a hard time imagining how any interface could incorporate and/or 
hide all of that to make template editing intuitive in a WYSIWYG way for 
all users, but I thought I'd put it out there to see if anyone has solved 
any part of this problem or has any ideas.  Otherwise, making template 
editing available to our users may be more trouble than it's worth for most 
templates.

Thanks!
      adam
      electric embers