[Mailman-Users] MM-2.1.12 Bug (non critical)

[Carl Zwanzig]

J.A. Terranson wrote:
> On Fri, 15 May 2009, Mark Sapiro wrote:
>> Please let me know specifically what you would like to see instead.

> Really, I'd prefer a button to select from regex or text search.  That 
> aside, a note at the top of the box stating this is *not* a text search, 
> see "help" for more informatoin on how to search" or something like that.
> 
> Its just very counterintuitive to have a box that says search for members, 
> and to be unable to insert a members actual address and get a hit.


I've run into this with countless applications- the programmer uses a 
regexp since it's so powerful, but the user expects to enter "zba*" 
and get everything starting with "zba". Ditto on not finding something 
you can see in a listing.  Remember that while many list admins are 
either programmers or system managers, many are just users, and 
wouldn't know a regexp if it bit them.

IMHO, some options (in order of my desirability)...
radio buttons to select regexp or glob behavior (default to glob?)
text around the box that says "it's a regexp"
make the search use a glob

If I had the time at the moment, I'd think about developing a patch 
for this, but I don't, so I won't.

 > On Fri, 15 May 2009, Mark Sapiro wrote:
 > The page currently says "Find member (help):" followed by a text box
 > and a "Search..." button. The "(help)" is a link to a page documenting
 > Python regular expressions.

However, the average user -knows- that "zba*" should match "zbang". 
They don't think they need any help.

z!