[Mailman-Developers] Regarding Csv Export for list owner in postorius

[Sumana Harihareswara]

On 19/04/15 11:08, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Ashish Kumar writes:
> 
>  > of extending this feature request to pdf
> 
> I don't understand the motivation for this.  I guess it will look a
> tiny bit nicer when printed on paper, but it's basically an opaque,
> uneditable format which can surely be trivially produced by anyone who
> has space and power to run a printer.

Stephen, I suspect you are overestimating the technical skill of some
members of communities that want to use Mailman. But let's find out...

Ashish, can you talk a little bit more about the current workflow that
these folks are using (the ones in the scenario you suggested)? I'm used
to seeing word processing and spreadsheet applications that can easily
export to PDF. But maybe you know of a ton of people who need to create
PDFs from list membership rosters, and right now that's a 10-step
process for them (including "import into a Google doc, fiddle with
headers, hit Export and tweak options x and y and z"), and you have an
idea for how we can make that a 4-step process.

>  > and sharing the list of members on drive,
> 
> What's "drive"?

Probably Google Drive?

>  > as It will be very helpful for communities which have a lot of
>  > volunteers, organizers.
> 
> How is it helpful?

Here's a use case I ran into in December: I was editing a private
document in Google Drive and wanted to share it with about 40 people,
all of whom were on the same email thread as me. I ended up spending
many tedious minutes copying and pasting email addresses into the
"Share" dialog box in Google Drive. If I were a list owner for a
community that used Google Drive, I bet this sort of need would crop up
several times per year, and I'd wish there were an easy way for me to
import that membership roster into a Google Drive permissions list.

>  > Scenario:
>  > Suppose a team of volunteers working in a country/state like
>  > bloodconnect in india. For an activity like camps [in case of blood
>  > connect], Owner need to send a pdf
> 
> Why does the owner need to do that?  I think that plain text (as Tom
> Browder suggests) is almost surely more useful in every way.  CSV, on
> the other hand, has the advantage that it can be accurately read into
> a spreadsheet which is "the" way non-geeky people manage tables.

I have, as an event organizer, seen situations where venue managers,
school administrators, and similar bureaucrats demanded PDFs.

>  > of all the volunteers working in a specific area to the area head
>  > either by drive or mail. It would be very convenient if we provide
>  > these option as a UI in postorius itself.
> 
> Looks like a YAGNI to me, so it would just clutter the UI.

Ashish, here's my opinion, for the use cases I've dealt with: CSV export
is super helpful, plain text export is also very helpful, and PDF export
is somewhat helpful. Answering my question will definitely help. :)

-- 
Sumana Harihareswara
http://brainwane.net