Mailman 3 July 2006 - Mailman-Developers

Integrating Mailman with a single sign-on service
by Alisdair Tullo 17 Jul '06

17 Jul '06

Hi, Here at the University of Edinburgh we have a single sign-on service based on Cosign ( http://www.umich.edu/~umweb/software/cosign/ ). I've selected Mailman as the mailing list software for a project I'm working on, and I'd like to integrate it with Cosign if possible. I have a few questions about Mailman, if someone familiar with the code can answer them I'd be very grateful. 1. Is there a top-level design document for Mailman? 2. Cosign gives a username in REMOTE_USER in each HTTP request. My intent is to get users to sign up by entering this username and an email address, then the web interface for Mailman would take the value of REMOTE_USER and map it to the email address. Which area of the source should I be looking at? 3. Would someone familiar with the Mailman web interface be willing to help further and answer more detailed questions as I progress? I've spent some time already looking through the source, but as you can appreciate it's tricky working out where to get started. Cheers, Alisdair | Alisdair Tullo :: - epcc - :: alisdair(a)epcc.ed.ac.uk | | University of Edinburgh :: JCMB 3309 :: 0131 650 5023 |

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Section 508 checklist updated
by Laura Carlson 13 Jul '06

13 Jul '06

fyi...WebAIM's handy Section 508 checklist has been updated. A portion of it is about scripts: http://www.webaim.org/standards/508/checklist.php#two btw...I want to invite anyone interested in receiving weekly news and information about web design and development to join the webdev listserv and receive the Web Design Update newsletter. It is a plain text email digest dedicated to disseminating news and information about web design and development with emphasis on elements of user experience, accessibility, CSS, usability, javascript, web standards and more. I try to send out an issue on a weekly basis. Whenever I link new articles to the Web Design Reference site <http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/Online/webdesign/>, a WEB DESIGN UPDATE newsletter message is sent to the listserv. To subscribe visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist Best regards, Laura ___________________________________________ Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009 http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/

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soc2006-webui updated
by emf 10 Jul '06

10 Jul '06

I've (correctly, this time) merged the trunk to my branch, and checked in a bunch more xhtml. now I'm going to try finishing off the rendering component so people can start seeing what I've done and help me find any bugs/UI issues. As soon as the rendering component is done, I'm going to do some CSS and then work on the glue code. After that is all working I will bring in some of that ominous javascript. ~ethan fremen

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Vacation work committed
by Barry Warsaw 08 Jul '06

08 Jul '06

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I've finished committing all the work that I'd completed while on vacation. Read the NEWS file or commit messages for details and please ask questions if anything doesn't make sense or looks wrong. The changes are fairly extensive and may need some additional testing. On that note, all the existing unit tests now pass! We probably need a lot more though. I'm going to continue to work on the SQLAlchemy stuff and if I get something working, I'll check that in too. - -Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin) iQCVAwUBRK/+O3EjvBPtnXfVAQIGkAP8DhjeHm4kK/f7n+btvCu7varvCsH2L8s/ YRqa1qK9fEsXMtoivm3iza70mBpv7XW+0NObbWGsb5y2doQE/kmkLqZdKAs4BQ9L OsqvbEJwicwUE7TRtC8sZpQqBtBaooAmDRJw2118h+Qqzu+M9kjJi6/McX2rBDDN 2ODV2mE389s= =7iy1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] The Philosophy of Web Use.
by Laura Carlson 07 Jul '06

07 Jul '06

Bryan wrote: > I've seen WAY to much bad scripting (and I'm not implying that the > code you are going to write is going to be bad) to actually want to > implement and Javascript. I've seen a lot of bad, inaccessible scripting too. But if JavaScript is used in a device independent way to *progressively enhance* the user experience, as option, and if it degrades gracefully...all of which Ethan is aware of, then it can be a valuable tool. I'll be eager to test his implementation. Best regards, Laura ___________________________________________ Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009 http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] The Philosophy of Web Use.
by Laura Carlson 07 Jul '06

07 Jul '06

Ethan wrote: >> No in-page form validation? Brad wrote: > I'd rather not, no. I have yet to see a single place on the Internet > that actually does it right, and across all platform/browser > combinations. When using Javascript for form validation, there is a right way and a wrong way. The right way (which I am sure Ethan already knows) is to use Javascript as an optional extra to improve usability. All form submissions are validated on the server. If the reader has Javascript available, an initial validation is done on the client, to check for *simple* errors such as missing information or non-numeric characters in a numeric field. This means the user gets faster feedback than waiting for a response from the server. Javascript validation should be always optional. Since the validation must be on the server anyway, it is silly to insist that the user must have Javascript. Adding Javascript validation should help some readers and hinder nobody. Best Regards, Laura ___________________________________________ Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009 http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/

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What I did on my summer vacation
by Barry Warsaw 07 Jul '06

07 Jul '06

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 If you want to get a taste of the things I'm going to check in soon, please see: http://wiki.list.org/x/vg - -Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin) iQCVAwUBRKwk5nEjvBPtnXfVAQJnOQP+KM/W9bVSRGXmhJkzJOQJHZiMSUNYn4s8 WZ+Dfh6hZGrd2cJRg1Txd7tG+Y8L79Xw0Ln7Y8POFtvFQi5vzl1ni9auPtSJCJa/ 7+Q1ExCCHfrEyBhJO8OBpHvZOHcF8LkGQrfkuj5qshVJbVJNejrfb2xF28tAGXYE Yg2KPopB/8k= =0p35 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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sender-based authentication
by David Lee 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

A few weeks ago I opened a discussion "sender-based authorisation" about something similar to "Approved: password", but where the password would be associated with a person (sender) rather than a list. There seemed to be agreement in principle. (For the history, see that thread.) Being completely new to both Mailman and python programming (though with several years of majordomo and perl behind me!) I thought I'd check that I'm on the right lines. Attached is a shot at a "UserAuth.py" module(?) to maintain the passwords, with ideas borrowed from "Utils.py". Does it seem the right sort of thing? Does it conform to the spirit of Mailman? Or is it hopelessly wrong or idiosyncrantic? I've also written myself a little command-line maintenance program to add, modify, delete, list, etc. entries in the database. (I have no plans to put any user-oriented WWW front end to this at present; I want to get the module and the command-line interface functional. Initially, our local use would be for us, the service, to maintain the entries, not (yet) for users to be able to maintain it.) Thoughts? -- : David Lee I.T. Service : : Senior Systems Programmer Computer Centre : : Durham University : : http://www.dur.ac.uk/t.d.lee/ South Road : : Durham DH1 3LE : : Phone: +44 191 334 2752 U.K. :

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Parsing and Rendering rfc8222
by emf 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

Dearest mail manipulating macaques and perambulating python prestidigitators, I have been blessed by the grace of Google and so am working full-time on improving Mailman's web UI: http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Summer+of+Code In order to provide interfaces to archives, I believe I must perform some intermediary manipulation; my goal is to get the information contained within the .mbox files mailman generates into ElementTrees and other objects so as to represent them via HTML/RSS/Atom/etc. This is slightly out of scope for the web-UI project, as it is mostly about data model rather than actual user interface. In the interest of not reinventing the wheel, I'm looking for existing python (or other!) code that does the things I need. I'm also putting out a call for anybody who likes this sort of thing to help me out (see below). Here's where I'm at, grouped functionally: * Need to convert rfc8222 to xml/html I haven't found anything substantial via searching. My next step is to go spelunking in MailManager code and other python-webmail packages. If anyone knows good trees in this forest, please clue me in. * Want to provide feeds (rss/atom/YourMommasSyntaxFormat) Right this second I'm planning on using pyfeed [1]; is there anything else I should consider? [1] http://home.blarg.net/~steveha/pyfeed.html * mbox thread indexing on messages I plan on using [2] to generate mbox thread indexes for rapid navigation of lists. Any suggestions for more robust variants would be welcome; feedback on how to handle threading for message-id-less messages would also be welcome. [2] http://benno.id.au/code/archiver/jwzthreading.py * full-text indexing pylucene seems to be the obvious choice; anything else I should consider? Anyone know of good pylucene/web UI glue code out there? (eg. something that leverages knowledge of the index to provide suggested keywords/tag cloud and/or tab-completion) As to help, I am first and foremost interested in someone willing to write renderers as above and check it in to my branch. I am also, however, interested in any advice, suggestions, dear-gods-whatever-you-do-don't-do-x comments, critiques of what is already checked in (zero python code, much html so far), pats on the back or other goodies (snailmail address available on request ;) I do ask that you send anything not related to my above question directly to me, bypassing the list; I'd also humbly ask you to read the wiki page before telling me I should do XYZ; I may already be doing it. I'm not actually subbed to python-list because I lack the stamina, so please cc: me on any follow ups. Thank you for your generous assistance, ~ethan fremen

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John Dennis
by Barry Warsaw 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Sorry to go on-list about this but I can't reply to John Dennis; Redhat's mail server is blocking me. John if you have an alternative email address, contact me off-list and I'll forward you the rejection message. - -Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin) iQCVAwUBRK3ZoHEjvBPtnXfVAQKjFQP6AmwsRjpnbwhvPoJ6vghhDzdUXQ5UQc/i 4jjuWJJmnv3LBWu4AJy8jNilQSMTedniFKXfwqPukAjylPth1TFexC/V1rOvOWus Gr/zayl7hnJVBMk+USdRCogKmOLB1//VcbCfaYgAQYTsc9gQNm7ssbSEaNawsz5t t6JTRBv2L+0= =yOS4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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