[Mailman-Users] Sending a human message to the LISTNAME-request address.

[Greg Stein]

Dan Delaney wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, The List Server Administrator at UNH wrote:
> >     Don't you think it would make sense for the server
> >     to include some sort of information on how to get help?
> 
> I have to agree whole heartedly on that one. One of the things I
> really like about Petidomo is that if it receives a message with NO
> commands it actually replies with a copy of the help file with a
> subject of something like "Your request was indeciferable." Now
> THAT's friendly. And there's no need for an "end" command on
> Petidomo because it simply and quietly ignores lines which are not
> commands. If I send it a command and leave my sig in the message,
> all I get in reply is the status or result of my command. It does't
> tell me that it couldn't understand EVERY SINGLE LINE of my message
> (as with Bill's example).

Interesting idea, and probably simple to do. Simply set a flag if any
command was recognized. If no command was found, then forget about the
line-by-line response of unknown commands and return the help.

> > Separating the displayed text from the code allows for much
> > easier internationalization as well as making it easier for
> > different sites to customize the messages as necessary to
> > reflect local policies.
> 
> That is an excellent idea.

Yah, all great and excellent and whatnot. Somebody has to do it. Either
of you could certainly volunteer to submit the patches to do this in the
post-1.0 release.

Most people don't have the time or inclination to do i18n work in the
FIRST release of a tool. I'm thankful that I have the Mailman package to
begin with. If I had to wait for i18n, then I'd be waiting another year,
if ever. I'd probably be running something else instead and never switch
to Mailman.

Cheers,
-g

--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/