[Mailman-Developers] Re: Requirements for a new archiver

[J C Lawrence]

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 12:48:46 -0800 
Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui at plaidworks.com> wrote:
> On Oct 28, 2003, at 12:30 PM, David Champion wrote:

>> message-delivery protocols, and tools that know about messages; why
>> keep trying to reinvent them over HTTP?

> because once you leave the niche of dealing with your fellow geeks,
> that's what users are going to want. browser access. NNTP is simply a
> non-issue any more, and iMap is fine, but they know how to go to a
> URL, don't assume they can reconfigure their mailer.

Quite.

> Not saying don't do this, but if you write geek tools for geeks,
> you'll lose the rest of your audience, the non-technical users.

This is where the Twisted+MeoWWW approach seems attractive.  If we go
for Twisted+MeoWWW we get a flexible message store with a CGI-based web
front end which also allows posting via web.  The fact that it is
netnews based can be, and should be, utterly transparent to the casual
user.  There's no need in fact for the NNTP interface to be exposed to
arbitrary connections.

  However, should someone wish to setup news access to their lists or
  archives, that's as trivial as telling Mailman to open the port.

  If they should wish to use their already configured inn2 or whatever,
  that's as trivial as telling Mailman to deliver to inn2 instead of the
  Twisted Netnews server.

But in the average case they don't have to, and don't have to care.
Mailman just uses the netnews base of Twisted as a message store with a
known-ion-advance primary retrieval key.

>> Nobody needs web access: what they need is access via a web
>> browser. With browsers that understand NNTP and IMAP prevalent, and
>> with a wide selection of web-mail and web-news gateways for the cases
>> where that doesn't work, this is sufficient.

> is it? it seems to me to (frankly) be a real hack with bad navigation,
> at least the stuff I've seen. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

That's my interpretation as well.  It serves some very narrow cases
well, but not the general case.

> And for intermittent or one-time access to an archive? won't
> bother. And how does it get into google so they know to look at it in
> the first place?

<nod>

That's where I like the MeoWWW approach.  Its just another CGI, so it
auto-installs as part of the Mailman CGIs without requiring specific
SysAdm configuration.  As it renders to HTML/HTTP Google will index it
happily.  If the list/group is configured to allow posting, then MeoWWW
will happily provide a web-based way for arbitrary users coming into
your archives via (say) Google search to post and respond to items in a
list's archives.

  Of course standard poster/spam controls would/could be applied.

While I see your concern for spending a whole lot of time investing and
specialising in a netnews core for Mailman, I think the fear is
displaced.  Mailman already bidirectionally gates to netnews.  The
changes required would be comparatively small for a significant gain in
feature-set for the average non-geek case (better web archives, posting
from web archives, more flexible message store, ability to have archive
URL placed in broadcast messages, etc).

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.