[Christian tismer is having problems migrating a bunch of maillists to the new version, specifically because of the skew in customized (and even non-customized!) list web page templates. It brings up what i think is a substantial question about the template mechanism. I want to put the issue out there, see what the prevailing wisdom is. Details below...]

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Upgrade script for old databases? Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 10:19:46 -0500 From: Ken Manheimer <klm@digicool.com> Organization: Digital Creations, Inc. To: Christian Tismer <tismer@appliedbiometrics.com> CC: bwarsaw@python.org, klm@digicool.com

Christian wrote:

Exactly. But extraction is not so much my problem, it is much more how to move to all the new structures and layouts without getting my customers involved.

Ah - the customized-per-list listinfo template, for instance. I'm afraid you're right - the way that mailman provides for customization is not at all amenable to reconciling with new site templates. It's doubly bad because each list gets its own copy of the site templates when the list is created, so it gets locked in even when the list administrator doesn't tailor their templates from the site standard. Fixing this latter would not be hard, but it still wouldn't address the issue of tracking refinements in the site standard when the list has a divergent version. I imagine the solution there is to allow list managers only parameterized customization of their templates - something that dtml would make easier - but that, itself, is a tricky track. Sigh.

At least that, and if possible some more. I can write this myself, and was just hoping that somebody had done so already. The HTML is a different story...

Sorry - i certainly haven't thought of a general solution, so i hadn't implemented anything...

My problem is that I have [a bunch of]u lists which are used by my customers on starship.skyport.net, and I want to avoid masses of conversation and support, when I try to move this to mailman 1.0b7 or such. The situation is even worse, since some changed the html layouts a little, and the new layout is very different, also the attribute names of the inserted variables have changed. That's quite a lot of work, and if somebody had done so already, I could use it as a starter and put more automation in, but my time is so limited.

I have a real migration problem here...

Hmm. A mailinglist is a structure. Our (my) problem is that the structure is no clean structure, but contains implementation details. If there were another level of abstraction, like, say, an XML DTD which defines what a Mailing list is, I could do the move much easier.

Sigh - I fear I have to do it by hand.

Sorry - i agree that it's a problem. In fact, my inclination is to think that the freedom that list-customizable templates offers is not worth the migration issues that it presents. (I do know that some customizability is important - for instance, someone using mailman at cnri needed to simplify the listinfo page to basically just be a subscription page, without the archive and roster links, so offering parameters to turn off sections would probably be the right way to head.

Something that worries me about this is that we've already established the current setup as the precedent, but i'm wondering whether it's worth rethinking. Christian, i'd like to bring the mailman cabal in on the issue - would it be ok if i forwarded this message to them?

Ken