[Mailman-Developers] Re: Dates

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Tue, May 01, 2001 at 11:53:49PM -0500, David Champion wrote:
> On 2001.05.01, in <15087.30907.613868.332848@anthem.wooz.org>,
> 	"Barry A. Warsaw" <barry@digicool.com> wrote:
> > Phew!  A little thing like dates gets us geeks in an uproar.
> > Whodathunk? :)
> 
> Well, we're touching on a matter of fidelity of a record, which is what
> gets me concerned about it.  I guess that's a kind of geekiness, but
> maybe a different kind. :)

Indeed we are.  Both sides, in different ways.

> > Second, /all/ we're talking about is placing the article in the
> > archives.  Ideally, the original Date: header would be preserved in
> > the archive.  But on the other hand, it really doesn't help people
> > find information when a message is placed 8 years into the future.
> > 
> > Mailman's current approach is less than ideal, and I think the right
> > thing to do is for the archiver to put some sanity checks on the date
> > for collation purposes.  What Mailman and the receiving MTA can do is
> 
> Here we brush by the unspoken third approach to the problem.  Rather
> than altering the date in the copy of the message fed to the archiver,
> Mailman can feed the "correct" date out-of-band.  The archiver can use
> this altered date, as you say, for collation, but retain the original
> Date: header for the archive itself.

As Barry suggested.

> This is certainly more trouble to implement, and arguably infeasible
> since it could involve modification of the (external?) archiver, but I
> think it best meets all interests.

It does that.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 804 5015