On 3/22/2012 5:48 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 1:09 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry@list.org> wrote:

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If we add something like $archive_url to the decoration interpolation dictionary, what happens when we have multiple archivers that support permalink() enabled? Do we chose one at random (these are unordered)? -1

I agree so -2. I thinking is if you list administrator/owner has not defined an order, make it simple and impose a known order in that case - alphabetize/sort the order and pick the first one.

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Do we add a configuration variable to select a "primary" archiver for this? +1

+2

This would allow the list administrator/owner to define and pick the primary archiver. For any other archivers, people can go to the Archived-At header(s).

If there's *no* archiver configuration variable, we don't know where to point to anyway for Gmane-like archivers (yes, I know, catering to Gmane will give Brad hives, but some people like Gmane). The local archive, if it exists, may seem TOOWTDI, but it might not be the preferred one even if it's the only one configured in Mailman (although that seems a lot less likely than the case where somebody just grandfathers an existing Gmane subscription as the archive URL of choice).

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Do we allow something like $archive_url.prototype as an interpolation variable to select e.g. the 'prototype' archiver? -1

Too complex. If people want alternative archives, they can go to the list FAQ or the Archived-At headers. If we go this way, we'd better have a *really* good comment and a pre-existing entry in the FAQ to save Mark some time. :-)

I agree with Stephen. Too complex and can be confusing without it being well documented with a number of examples.