[Mailman-Developers] Re: [Zest-devel] Re: Pipermail replacement? Zest!

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 03:04:06PM -0600, David Champion wrote:
> On 2002.02.26, in <20020226132634.43759@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us>,
> 	"Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
> > ... and a generic web search engine, running locally on that machine,
> > with access to the messages, will serve that purpose fine, and can
> > still be hidden behind whatever authentication you like.
> 
> Maybe I'm simply unaware of the generic web search engines that will
> run on my web server and subscribe to whatever authentication mechanism
> I like, including checking Mailman mailing list passwords for the
> particular mailing list a user is trying to search.

I believe you've misunderstood me, here.

If you run ht://dig, or something akin to it, *on a machine local to
the mailing-list-archive machine, globally authenticated and authorized
to retrieve messages from the archiver web server*, and then place
*access to that search engine* behind whatever authentication you
require for access to the messages themselves*, you've solved your
problem, no?

> My point is that if the specific authentication I'm looking must be
> devised, there's no functional difference to me between placing it in
> the archiver and placing it in a separate search product that knows how
> my MLM and archiver work, and can talk to them. But the former seems
> like a better software design to me, since the archiver is already part
> of my MLM.

And I disagree, precisely on point: if you have a clean interface to
which the search engine can attach (and you do: HTTP), and there's no
impedance mismatch (there isn't; the search engine needs to be
returning *website* addresses, anyway), then why bundle it inside --
*especially* when there are packaged solutions... and there are.

> I'm in search of the ability to index list archives in a way that does
> not violate privacy and that my users will understand. It matters more
> to me that I can achieve that (without developing the glue myself each
> time Mailman changes its authentication interface) than whether my
> solution is Righteous.

Mailman isn't the issue, so far as I can see; the *archiver* is.

Using a packaged websearch engine relieves you of the tie to Piper
(which sucks) or Zest (which, I gather, sucks less), or whatever...

I can't imagine that hooking the Mailman auth code could be *that*
difficult...

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
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