Mailman 3 May 1999 - Mailman-Developers

Re: [Mailman-Developers] In-Reply-To vs. References
by Harald Meland 14 May '99

14 May '99

[Aahz] > We've been having a discussion on comp.lang.py about Mailman's handling of > headers in the context of (not) threading messages, and Barry Warsaw > suggested that I continue the discussion here. > > Summary: > I propose that in the mail-to-news gateway (but not the other direction), if > the In-Reply-To: header exists but the References: header does not, copy > In-Reply-To to References. (Not having read c.l.p,) I don't understand how such a proposition could generate much of a discussion :) If an email contains an In-Reply-To: header, I'd guess it is due to it being a reply. If this email is gated to news, the fact that it is a reply, and preferably what message it is a reply to, should be indicated somehow. If such an indication can only be given by having the news-gate muck around with the headers of the message, _and_ such mucking won't destroy any of the _original_ headers of the message, I don't really see the harm. Of course, in an ideal world, every mail client would use the (IMHO) superior References: mechanism, and this wouldn't be an issue. However, as the world is slightly less than ideal, Mailman should strive to make the _appearance_ of the world as ideal as possible. Having threading broken when gating to news does not do much for composing an ideal appearance :) However, as I can see that this might be a slightly religious matter :), I'll wait for other opinions (and read the discussion in c.l.p) before trying to actually implement it (as this is something I _don't_ think should be made optional). -- Harald

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In-Reply-To vs. References
by Aahz 14 May '99

14 May '99

We've been having a discussion on comp.lang.py about Mailman's handling of headers in the context of (not) threading messages, and Barry Warsaw suggested that I continue the discussion here. Summary: I propose that in the mail-to-news gateway (but not the other direction), if the In-Reply-To: header exists but the References: header does not, copy In-Reply-To to References. Background: In a large fraction of e-mail programs, the In-Reply-To header contains the Message-ID of the message being responded to. According to RFC822, both In-Reply-To and References are valid for this purpose. However, newsreaders only recognize the References header (RFC1036). The absence of a References header frequently breaks the ability of newsreaders to thread messages together. (Most newsreaders can still do Subject-based grouping, but that's not the same thing as threading.) Much of the discussion on comp.lang.py has revolved around the fact that it's a Bad Idea to muck around with headers (a philosophy I generally agree with). However, it seems to me that in this case there is a clear translation issue between the domain of e-mail messages and the domain of newsgroup postings (as specified by the appropriate RFCs) and that the potential negative consequences are minimal. (I foresee some possible oddities if someone replies to a private e-mail message and cc's the mailing list -- but that problem already exists if an e-mail program uses References instead of In-Reply-To.)

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] small fix for admindb
by Harald Meland 14 May '99

14 May '99

[Gergely Madarasz] > Hello, > > There were already some comments about the problems with <> characters on > the admindb pages... here is a small fix, I hope it doesnt break anything > else :) but I don't think it could :) > > --- Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py~ Sat Apr 3 18:55:45 1999 > +++ Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py Wed May 5 23:04:46 1999 > @@ -247,7 +247,7 @@ > FontSize("+1", Bold('Contents:')) > ]) > form.AddItem(t) > - form.AddItem(Preformatted(val[2][1])) > + form.AddItem(Preformatted(Utils.QuoteHyperChars(val[2][1]))) > form.AddItem('<p>') Thanks for the patch -- however, I suspect this should be fixed at a lower level. Is Mailman (or anyone) ever likely to want unquoted special-HTML-chars in a "Preformatted" item? If not (which is what I suspect to be the case), then overriding htmlformat.Preformatted.Format() would be better. Opinions, anyone? -- Harald

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admindb features
by Ricardo Kustner 13 May '99

13 May '99

Hi, Here are some Moderate features I think would be really usefull in mailman: 1. an option to resend / forward a message held for approval to a certain e-mail address. why? sometimes you don't want to accept a post on the mailinglist, but you want to be able to show it to others (fellow moderators for example) 2. filter html... s/</</g (forgive me, i'm a perl programmer :) ) why? html messages with background, plugins, javascript and other crap mess up the pending message page. Which makes me wonder if it's any kind of security leak for people to be able to write javascript that will be run on *your* site. 3. only show attachment filenames / types instead of the MIME base64... why? if somebody sends a 1mb attachment to the list, it takes quite a while to view the pending page... and small attachments just mess it up... oh and plain-text digests aren't getting any better with attachments :( 4. the TODO says : "allow the admin to edit posts in the database (put a header in the post noting that it was edited by a moderator, however!) " what would be a better alternative IMHO is to allow the admin to add a comment on top of the message to be send to the list... the adimdb page could have a "add comment" textarea with every post held for approval... accepting a post with a non-empty comment could then add it to the post before it is send out to the list... example: ======== From: wimp(a)email.com To: mailman-users(a)python.org Subject: blah blah >****COMMENT FROM MODERATOR******* > >Read the INSTALL file in the source tree! > >****END OF MODERATOR COMMENT***** Hi, how can i install mailman on my redhat linux system? Thanks. ======== i'm going to try to make these changes in my running mailman myself, but i dont have much experience with python yet so i probably won't Do It The Right Way (tm) ... but hopefully some of the features will appear in a future release of mailman. Ricardo. --

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] suggestions regarding announce only conf igurations
by Ken Manheimer 08 May '99

08 May '99

On friday, Matteo wrote: > i'm using mailman both for general lists and announce-only. i can > approximate a good announce only > configuration by editing html to hide things like the list submit > address, etc, after turning them off > but it would be wonderful to be able to semi-automatically create a list > that has this already done, by having the html turn off automatically > when you deselect an option. another possibility would be to have Mailman tends to emphasize configuration options for these kinds of things. For instance... > the piece that was the most problematic was the subscriber list- we dont > want people to see a list of subscribers (or the possibility of a list, > even if they cant use it) it on an announce list, but if we hide the > html, we need to create an html stub that contains the form post code. Why not set the "Who can view subscription list" privacy option to "List admin only"? (It's on http://<site>/mailman/admin/<list>/privacy .) Ken Manheimer klm(a)digicool.com

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GNU GIF problems - was [ANNOUNCE] Mailman 1.0rc1
by Benjamin B. Thomas 08 May '99

08 May '99

bwarsaw(a)python.org writes: <snip> > ...this will be the final 1.0 release. > The next step is to create the GNU web pages. <snip> > Mailman will now display Dragon's small logo on (most) generated > pages; <snip> > You need to read the instructions in the INSTALL file for putting > mailman.gif in a place... ^^^ Hi there! Since Mailman is a GNU project, won't there be problems if it makes heavy use of GIFs? I personally do not care if GIFs are used or not, but I suspect that Stallman will be quite displeased if Mailman itself or the Mailman pages at the GNU site use GIFs. I just wanted to point this out before too much work was invested. >From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html > There are no GIFs on the GNU web site because of the patents (Unisys and IBM) > covering the LZW compression algorithm which is used in making GIF files. > These patents make it impossible to have free software to generate proper > GIFs. They also apply to the compress program, which is why GNU does not use > it or its format. Cheers, benjy 1975 Cahaba Valley Road (205) 988-4268 Indian Springs, AL 35124 benjy(a)alum.mit.edu

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suggestions regarding announce only configurations
by matteo 07 May '99

07 May '99

thanks for the great program! i'm using mailman both for general lists and announce-only. i can approximate a good announce only configuration by editing html to hide things like the list submit address, etc, after turning them off but it would be wonderful to be able to semi-automatically create a list that has this already done, by having the html turn off automatically when you deselect an option. another possibility would be to have multiple default configurations, so that once you configured one, you could duplicate it. ( i guess there are probably some files that you could copy over to do that but im not sure which) the piece that was the most problematic was the subscriber list- we dont want people to see a list of subscribers (or the possibility of a list, even if they cant use it) it on an announce list, but if we hide the html, we need to create an html stub that contains the form post code. if you included the subscriber-list control to the admin page, when you hide the html in the listinfo page, it still is available to the listadmin. (perhaps the cgi could ask for the posting fields or use existing admin auth info if called directly?) thanks again matteo

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small fix for admindb
by Gergely Madarasz 05 May '99

05 May '99

Hello, There were already some comments about the problems with <> characters on the admindb pages... here is a small fix, I hope it doesnt break anything else :) but I don't think it could :) --- Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py~ Sat Apr 3 18:55:45 1999 +++ Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py Wed May 5 23:04:46 1999 @@ -247,7 +247,7 @@ FontSize("+1", Bold('Contents:')) ]) form.AddItem(t) - form.AddItem(Preformatted(val[2][1])) + form.AddItem(Preformatted(Utils.QuoteHyperChars(val[2][1]))) form.AddItem('<p>') -- Madarasz Gergely gorgo(a)caesar.elte.hu gorgo(a)linux.rulez.org It's practically impossible to look at a penguin and feel angry. Egy pingvinre gyakorlatilag lehetetlen haragosan nezni. HuLUG: http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/

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Translation of admin interface
by gumi＠IPN.de 05 May '99

05 May '99

Berlin, May 5, 1999 Hello developers, as a German ISP we provide Mailman as our basic mailing-list software. We have translated most of the documents in the /template directory into German language to make them usable for our customers. As far as we discovered there are no templates for the admin interface and the Pipermail package. We like both Python and the Mailman software and would like to translate these parts also as soon as the v1.0 release is out. Of course we don´t like to reinvent the wheel if somebody else did this already. Is there any solution around that I just did not see? How can we contribute? Gunter -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Gunter Mintzel - IPN-Berlin - http://www.ipn.de - Tel. +49-30-5360 2222

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Suggestion: script to fix permissions
by Brian Ryner 04 May '99

04 May '99

Would it be difficult to implement a script that would make sure the ownership and permissions are right on all of the mailman files? I inadvertently removed all of the setgid attributes on the directories and had to redo them by hand... ("make install" wouldn't set the mode because the directory already existed) -Brian Ryner bryner(a)uiuc.edu

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