[Mailman-Users] The No Attachments Option

[Richard Troy]

Hello everyone,

Up until now many list participants on a list I manage 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 for the attachment opt-out
crowd a second list that's subscribed like a user to the primary list, so
there's only one post-to address. With the right basic settings - like
reply-to - it can appear as if it's one list for most purposes. However,
this is cumbersome 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 permitted-posters setting for 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. It's an effective but poor design 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.

While struggling to get this configured - and thinking there has to be a
better way - I seem to have screwed up the configuration somehow as I
can't seem to get _any_ attachments through 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 ocurrs to me that the ability to choose to receive 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