"JJB" == James J Besemer <jb@cascade-sys.com> writes:
JJB> I recently started running a relatively small mailing list
JJB> using Mailman and am quite happy with it. I am a proficient
JJB> Python developer and the fact that Mailman is Python-based
JJB> was one reason I chose it with entheusiasm. I hope that in
JJB> my spare time I'll be able to make some useful contributions.Cool! Since I'm strapped for time right now, I'm just going to comment briefly.
JJB> Here are some of the areas I was thinking of working in. I
JJB> throw them out in case someone else has already started or
JJB> has ideas:Be sure you're working with MM2.1, and preferrably the cvs tree. Very soon now, MM2.1 will go into beta so that'll mean a feature freeze.
JJB> 1. I would like to implement self.filter_prog, which I expect
JJB> would be a filter on each incoming messages. There are some
JJB> special things I can think of I'd like to do with my list.
JJB> E.g., automatic tallying of poll results.The old filter_prog stuff is gone. A much better way to do this in MM2.1 is to write a handler module. See the Mailman/Handlers directory for examples.
JJB> 2. Along those lines, I would like users to be able to elect
JJB> to filter out HTML from their regular mail, in addition to
JJB> digests. Seems this should be easy.You'd think! I've had a couple of patches contributed that filter out HTML, but I've not been able to whip them into shape for inclusion. I've basically given up hope for MM2.1, but will look at it again for the next release. The problem is that the naive approach isn't difficult, but for it to be robust is much more difficult.
JJB> 3. Longer term, I would like the option of adding some info
JJB> fields to the user database. E.g., I would like to store
JJB> real names, addresses and phone numbers on one of my lists.Not hard to do in MM2.1, but I doubt I'll accept much extension in this area. The whole backend user database will be rewritten in a future version and IMO, such extra information ought to be kept in an external database like LDAP or some such. Then those databases ought to be easily integrated into Mailman's rosters.
JJB> 4. It would be nice to reuse the existing list security as an
JJB> umbrealla to cover other arbitrary, list-members-only web
JJB> pages. E.g., some listers hate large graphics attachments
JJB> (and they are problematic generally). I'd like to remove the
JJB> image from the incoming message, publish it on a secure,
JJB> lister-only web page and forward the mail with an URL
JJB> substituted for the image attachment.Again, not hard to do. The MemberAdaptor API can help you here, and also take a look at the SecurityManager.py. Note also that MM2.1's Pipermail has some code to strip out attachments and store them separately in url space.
Cheers, -Barry