[Mailman-Users] Total personalized Mails

[Brad Knowles]

At 1:29 PM +0200 2004-06-25, Frank Simon wrote:

>  Why are you so unfriendly ?   I only ask a question. There are some
>  mailling software, with this features, other not. If mailman dont have
>  it, no prob. Mailman is a good software, or we dont want to use it.

	I'm not being unfriendly.  If I was being unfriendly, believe me, 
you'd know it.

	This is a case where this type of question could have been pretty 
easily answered by looking at the documentation and reading the FAQ.

>  In a technical way - if is a feature like VERP and individuel bounce
>  managment, than this have technical implications - for example, that
>  the mails dont send mails as a block. If there is a block sending,
>  than you have no chance to implement individual mails.

	It has nothing to do with sending messages individually or as a 
group.  Mailman already has the ability to send messages individually.

	This question has everything to do with what sorts of 
personalization magic that Mailman is capable of performing on mail 
messages as they are being sent out.

	The answer here is that there is very little.  We can stuff a 
little bit of data into the templates that are pre-defined, but 
beyond that, there is nothing.


	Mailman is a mailing list management system, and not a mail-merge 
system.  If you want the features of a mail-merge system, you need to 
look elsewhere.

>  If this is the situation, its a very logic question to ask, is there a
>  way to do individual content and if not, where the best point to start
>  to programmed a addon.

	You'd probably need to rewrite everything that touches any of the 
templates, or modifies the content of the message in question. 
That's large chunks of the entire Mailman system, which is why I 
suggest that you should instead look for a product that is designed 
to do what you're asking for.

>  It could be, that my bad english is a reason, to send unfriendly mails,
>  but i think you have no reason too.

	Indeed, I think that this is precisely the problem.

	I am trying very hard not to take personally the sorts of things 
you've said here, and to stick to the facts of the case which led up 
to this point.


	Being an American living in Belgium and having tried (and failed) 
to learn both French and Dutch, I am acutely aware of linguistic 
problems that can occur when people ask questions in a language that 
is not native for them.

>  THis is a question from one developr to another. Or dont exist there
>  a development community ?  Or is it forbidden to programmed addons to
>  mailman ?  Or its impossible to get starting hints for programming
>  addons ?

	There is a development community.  If you wanted to address them, 
you should have sent your message to mailman-developers instead.

	However, I will warn you that if you had posted the same message 
to that list, you would almost certainly have gotten a much more 
unfriendly response.


	If you're interested in programming extensions to Mailman to add 
these kinds of features, as Richard Barrett said:

		There is. MM is free, Open Software; so go for it. I am sure
		a well implemented enhancement will find other grateful users.

	In that case, I would encourage you to subscribe to 
mailman-developers, and to post a question on that list.



	What I interpreted from your original message was "Here's what I 
want, it's your responsibility to tell me how to make Mailman do this 
for me".  That kind of thing will not fly on mailman-users, and it 
most definitely will not fly on mailman-developers.

	Instead, if you state what it is that you'd like to see, show 
that you've already done the research necessary to prove that you 
know that Mailman can't do this, and then ask for guidance as to 
where to start, that will be much better received.

	In particular, when trying to show that you've done your 
homework, it would be helpful if you could point out specific pieces 
of the documentation, FAQ entries, and messages from the archives 
that others might think are related to what you want but which you do 
not find helpful.  The more you demonstrate to us that you've done 
your homework in this area, the more likely you are to get a positive 
response.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.