[Mailman-Developers] Feature suggestion

[Harald Meland]

[Mats Wichmann]

> At 01:55 PM 11/22/1999 -0000, Adrian Eyre wrote:
> >> However, my idea is this.  What if there was some sort of mechanism in
> >> place that stored the file in a different type of archive, and instead 
> >> of mailing the file, it included a link to click on to pick up the file 
> >> instead.
> >
> >Good idea. Could it be generalised to allow all people on the mailing list
> >to specify a maximum attachment size. All attachments below this are
> >attached to the e-mail, and any larger are replaced with links. Or maybe 
> >as a total attachment size for each e-mail, rather than on an attachment 
> >by attachment basis.
> 
> Sure seems like it would be a useful feature.  I'm mostly stuck
> on very slow lines, many times it's a long-distance call to get
> that much. I'd like to be able to defer getting attachments -
> pretty much ALL attachments - until I know at least I've got a
> toll-free connection, even if it's a slow one.  Maybe there's not
> enough of us so "blessed" to be worth a change, though....

I can sympathize with the initial idea (replacing the attachment with
a link for _all_ list members), but the "generalisation" I don't feel
to good about.

If individual list members are allowed to customize what parts of a
list message they want, it means Mailman has to generate umpteen
different versions of an incoming post, and pass the appropriate
version on to the different sets of members.  That would scale rather
poorly...

Of course, if anyone wants this bad enough to code it up, and makes it
possible to turn off site-wide for admins so inclined, it might be
included.


As for the initial suggestion: First step would be to teach Mailman
something about MIME messages, any takers are welcome :)
-- 
Harald