[Mailman-Developers] Templating the interface

[Terri Oda]

On 27-Apr-07, at 4:53 PM, Aaron Crosman wrote:
> That said, I'm not clear where this project stands.  I've been  
> reviewed
> the summary from last summer's SoC work, and while that's given me  
> some
> idea of what was done, I don't have a good sense of how and where  
> to get
> started on helping.  Can you all offer some suggestions about what  
> I can
> do to be helpful and contribute?

I'd also like to know where this stands.  I wasn't too sure what was  
happening after the SoC work finished, but it sounds like we got a  
lot of good analysis but no clear path to a solution that worked for  
us.  Which is good work, but I'd still like to see some simple  
templating available even if we can't solve world hunger in the  
process. ;)

I think there may be some good patches out there that at least made  
our CSS/HTML better.  A search of our bug tracker (and probably this  
list) could turn those up as a potential starting point.  Right now,  
taking a look at the listinfo page for this list turns up a lot of  
BGCOLOR="#99CCFF" and such, and few divs and such to make changing  
the look easier.  I'd like to see something more modern, HTML-wise,  
so that changing could be done with a stylesheet.    If you've got  
some time to find existing patches, Aaron, or to produce some, I'd be  
happy to review and help get these integrated into svn, assuming no  
one has vast objections to this.

Ideally, I think it should be possible to skin mailman just using  
CSS, so I'd say we should start there.  And once that's done, maybe  
someone could sit down and try making a few different skins so people  
can have some enriched examples?  read: examples with some  
documentation inline so people can modify them easily.

I think that could be a good starting point, since no matter what  
further templating we want to do, getting workable (X)HTML coming out  
of the interface seems like it would be a useful step.

  Terri

PS - I'd also like to make our interface more usable, but making it  
easy to use with stylesheets is a good goal even if we don't change  
any of the content. :)