On 10/22/01 10:11 AM, "Dale Newfield" <Dale@Newfield.org> wrote:
I won't be able to get started on this for another month or so, but knowing that someone has thought about it gives me warm fuzzies. Any pitfalls I should be aware of?
It was something I put a fair amount of energy into before I started my sabbatical...
You might look at
<http://www.chuqui.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?tid=74>
<http://www.chuqui.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?tid=51>
<http://www.chuqui.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?tid=82>
For some history of my stuff.
(if you're trying to figure out what the heck I mean by "my sabbatical", look here: <http://www.chuqui.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?tid=103>)
I basically have three long-term 'things' I'm looking at:
an internal list server, currently a custom perl system, that handles all of Apple's internal groups. The management of those groups is fully external to the system. The current system downloads a data dump from the corporate database every couple of hours and does nasty things to it, turning it into a huge sendmail alias file. A future generation will probably replace that with a real-time LDAP interface. I'd really like to avoid writing the whole beast, and add things like digest capability.
taking all my apple list stuff, and moving subscription management into a central access point for all things Apple. Which doesn't exist yet, but the first pieces are there. I'd really like it so that there's a single place to manage everything you do in your on-line relationship with Apple, not zillions of different forms, signups, accounts, passwords and "if you're looking for *this*, go to *that* web site, not here" notices.
and in my non-apple life, I want to build something similar to (2), but for my own uses. If I decide to return from sabbatical. Or maybe grab an existing thing like php-nuke, and wedge mailman onto the side. But it's really clear (to me) that this stuff all has to get integrated down the road, and giving a user site-wide, consistent administration is a key usability issue -- and there's more to life than mail lists. Tools that don't integrate, are going to find themselves marginalized or replaced.
All IMHO (or actually, IMNSHO).