[Mailman-developers] List entry indexing

[Robin Friedrich]

Barry A. Warsaw wrote:

> >>>>> "RF" == Robin Friedrich <friedrich@pythonpros.com> writes:
>
>     RF> In a prior round of email, Ken mentioned that we would need to
>     RF> key the mail list entries to something other than the person's
>     RF> actual email address in order to implement the flexible user
>     RF> information editing capability of the web (changing one's
>     RF> sendto address, etc.). I agree that this is needed, sooner or
>     RF> later. Since I haven't seen the code yet, how difficult is it
>     RF> to just make a unique key for each subscriber and key the
>     RF> database off that with address as just one value?
>
> I haven't looked at the code either, but you could default to using
> the mailbox as the name key to start with, and then just append unique
> numbers to this if there are duplicates.  I wonder if there should be
> some way that a user can change keys, or specify different defaults,
> say if their mailbox is Some.Really.Long.Name@mean.com.

The key should be invisible to the subscriber and therefore she shouldn't
care. Is there something wrong with just having mailman generate a key for
every subscription like "uniq42" and go from there? I also encourage
people to enter real names somehow and use these on the info page.  I also
like the (admittedly extreme) option of using PIL to generate a gif of the
address for placement on the individual subscriber's info page. Call me
whacky but it just might be thought of as a kewl feature for the list
manager consuming public to drop their archaic majordumo.


--
Robin K. Friedrich     Houston, Texas
  Python Professional Services, Inc.
      friedrich@pythonpros.com
     http://www.pythonpros.com