[Mailman-Users] Attachments AND no-attachments...

[Richard Troy]

Hello everyone,

I've been using mailman a while, but it's not my primary thing, and I'm a
little lost on how I can configure things to get what I'm looking for. I
strongly suspect that configuring things the right way can accomplish my
goals.

Up until now many list participants have been clammoring for attachments,
but in deference to some, we've prevented them. Now that the server has
had its hardware upgraded and a new O/S installed (Fedora Core 14 with
Mailman 2.1.13, and Postfix 2.7.1), I thought it'd be a good time to solve
that problem. In sum, it would be _fantastic_ if list subscribers have an
option to receive or not receive attachments on a per-user basis, much as
users can now elect to recieve digests. But, as that option doesn't appear
to exist, I was thinking I could facilitate the same effect by using two
lists - maybe three.

The "obvious" thing seemed to be to create a second list for no
attachments, have it filter out the attachments, and have the post-to
address subscribed to the main list - with the reply-to also set, of
course. This is VERY cumbersome, though, as the people on the no-attach
list need to be authorized to post on the primary list, and visa versa
because it wouldn't be welcome to lose the original poster's information
from the mail header. ...It would be great if any subscribe / unsubscribe
events could cascade to the other list, but the only way I found how to do
that is to follow the basic direction on this page:

http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/solutions/umbrella.html

... in particular the section on "parent-lists" except tailor it to this
circumstance. In a word, it sucks, because a cron-job is a waste of
resources and introduces an ugly time delay, but it's better than not
being able to do it.

Another issue has cropped up, too: I can't seem to get _any_ posts through
with attachments intact! I think I've screwed the whole thing up with all
the permutations in trying to get it working at all, that I'll have to
drop the lists and start over. However, ANY insight into what it is
exactly that's filtering out, for example, .jpg or .gif images, would be
very welcome.

...It also seems to me that the ability to choose to reveive or filter out
attachments on a per-user basis would be a grand feature - anyone else?


Thank you so much in advance for your insights, suggestions, etc,
Richard

-- 
Richard Troy, Chief Scientist
Science Tools Corporation
rtroy at ScienceTools.com, http://ScienceTools.com/