[Python-ideas] Browser for mailing lists

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

N.B. This is off-topic.  If you really care that much, people who want
to hear about it are over on mailman-developers at python.org.

Cameron Simpson writes:

 >   - the mbox archive URLs (often gzipped) don't come down with a
 >     cool MIME type meaning "UNIX mailbox format"

There isn't one, can't be one at present, and likely won't be one in
the future: http://www.jwz.org/doc/content-length.html.  This still
applies to some extent today despite Jamie's rant being almost 20
years old -- Mailman can't choose the mbox spec being used, that
depends on the MTA.

If you want something that could actually have a MIME-Type, there's
Babyl, MMDF, or (file-per-message) maildir, all of which have
reasonably precise specs -- but aren't in anywhere near as wide use.

Maildir is what Mailman 3's bundled "trivial archiver" uses, as it's
far more robust and easier to handle than mbox.

 > I still content that any change that removes the simple ability to
 > fetch the list archive for use by the end user is a huge step
 > backwards, regardless of the prettiness of whatever replaces it.

It's not a question of "removing".  This has always been a user
choice, and many lists use third-party services (mail-archive.com) or
non-pipermail archivers (MHonArc).  It's just that Mailman 2 with its
bundled mbox-format archiver made it easy to provide by default.

If lots of users really prefer pipermail, for whatever reason, it's
not that hard to add by hand, and could be packaged on PyPI.