[Mailman-Developers] Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself...

[barry@zope.com]

>>>>> "JJB" == James J Besemer <jb@cascade-sys.com> writes:

    JJB> I recently started running a relatively small mailing list
    JJB> using Mailman and am quite happy with it.  I am a proficient
    JJB> Python developer and the fact that Mailman is Python-based
    JJB> was one reason I chose it with entheusiasm.  I hope that in
    JJB> my spare time I'll be able to make some useful contributions.

Cool!  Since I'm strapped for time right now, I'm just going to
comment briefly.

    JJB> Here are some of the areas I was thinking of working in.  I
    JJB> throw them out in case someone else has already started or
    JJB> has ideas:

Be sure you're working with MM2.1, and preferrably the cvs tree.  Very
soon now, MM2.1 will go into beta so that'll mean a feature freeze.

    JJB> 1. I would like to implement self.filter_prog, which I expect
    JJB> would be a filter on each incoming messages.  There are some
    JJB> special things I can think of I'd like to do with my list.
    JJB> E.g., automatic tallying of poll results.

The old filter_prog stuff is gone.  A much better way to do this in
MM2.1 is to write a handler module.  See the Mailman/Handlers
directory for examples.

    JJB> 2. Along those lines, I would like users to be able to elect
    JJB> to filter out HTML from their regular mail, in addition to
    JJB> digests.  Seems this should be easy.

You'd think!  I've had a couple of patches contributed that filter out
HTML, but I've not been able to whip them into shape for inclusion.
I've basically given up hope for MM2.1, but will look at it again for
the next release.  The problem is that the naive approach isn't
difficult, but for it to be robust is much more difficult.

    JJB> 3. Longer term, I would like the option of adding some info
    JJB> fields to the user database.  E.g., I would like to store
    JJB> real names, addresses and phone numbers on one of my lists.

Not hard to do in MM2.1, but I doubt I'll accept much extension in
this area.  The whole backend user database will be rewritten in a
future version and IMO, such extra information ought to be kept in an
external database like LDAP or some such.  Then those databases ought
to be easily integrated into Mailman's rosters.

    JJB> 4. It would be nice to reuse the existing list security as an
    JJB> umbrealla to cover other arbitrary, list-members-only web
    JJB> pages.  E.g., some listers hate large graphics attachments
    JJB> (and they are problematic generally).  I'd like to remove the
    JJB> image from the incoming message, publish it on a secure,
    JJB> lister-only web page and forward the mail with an URL
    JJB> substituted for the image attachment.

Again, not hard to do.  The MemberAdaptor API can help you here, and
also take a look at the SecurityManager.py.  Note also that MM2.1's
Pipermail has some code to strip out attachments and store them
separately in url space.

Cheers,
-Barry