[Mailman-Developers] Requirements for a new archiver

[Brad Knowles]

At 12:40 AM -0500 2003/10/30, J C Lawrence wrote:

>                                                                      We
>  need a priori key determination, a collision policy, key handoffs to an
>  indexer (which could be NULL in Chuq's MySQL case), and an
>  improved/adapted presentation layer.

	As far as this goes, I agree.

>                                        I've already said my bits there
>  and proposed what I see as the cheap, easy, incremental improvement
>  course: Twisted's NNTP supports for storage, Message IDs for keys, a
>  variant best-effort detection and rewriting policy for collisions, and a
>  MeoWWW derivative for HTML presentation/posting.

	I don't know anything about Twisted or MeoWWW, so I can't say how 
they address the subjects above.

	I can say that I'm not sure about an NNTP-based storage solution, 
although certain storage techniques we've recently discussed borrow a 
lot from extant NNTP implementations, and I'm not sure how much sense 
it would make to rip out just those parts we know we need, or if we 
could actually reasonably take the whole thing, kit-n-caboodle.

	I do believe that we need an alternative solution to the 
message-id header as it was presented to us in the message, as a 
stable guaranteed unique (well, as good as MD-5 or SHA-1 gets) 
message identifier that can always be used to refer to the exact same 
message no matter what.  Whether we use this message identifier as a 
replacement for the message-id header value as it was presented to us 
-- I think that's a more philosophical discussion, and I think we 
should address it by allowing both options but deciding which would 
be a reasonable default to take.

	Given that the mailman UI is basically completely contained 
within the CGI, I'm inclined to leave it there and work on improving 
it internally, allowing us to continue to work with most any 
webserver the client may have.  I don't know how MeoWWW addresses 
this issue, either by replacing the webserver, or providing 
additional tools that may make it easier to present a good and 
consistent UI.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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