[Mailman-Users] not really an umbrella?

[Mark Sapiro]

Brad Knowles wrote:

>On 12/31/07, Gruver, Sandi wrote:
>
>>  How can I set up a new list that sends to multiple existing lists - but
>>  only sends one message to each person - even if the person is a member
>>  of multiple lists?
>>
>>  a.     LSOFT calls this a "superlist"
>>
>>  b.    Can "Mailman" do this?
>
>Not directly, no.  When all you have is the name of the list, you 
>don't know who any of the subscribers are.  Once you've handed the 
>message off to the list (or sublist) itself, it knows who it's own 
>subscribers are, but doesn't know who any of the other subscribers 
>are for any of the other lists.
>
>With some command-line tools to dump the complete set of all 
>subscribers from the selected sublists, then do a "sort -u" on those 
>addresses and then re-import those into another list, you could 
>achieve the same results.  But this is not automatic, and would 
>depend on you regularly running some sort of a cron job.


Mailman 2.1.10 has a new 'sibling list' feature that enables setting up
a list with no members and some siblings, the members of which will
receive copies of a post to the first list without duplication. This
is only one example of the use of sibling lists.

Sibling lists are a much more powerful concept than umbrella lists. The
only drawback is the sibling list features don't work for digest
members or digests, but for individual message recipients, you can do
much more than with umbrella lists and avoid duplicate messages.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan