[Mailman-Users] Subscribing to several lists at once? / Customized confirmation subjects

[Axel Beckert]

Hi!

Because no native newsletter software seems to fit the newsletter
requirements of a customer (not even close), we've chosen Mailman
2.1.x for this purposes, because we already have very good experiences
with earlier Mailman versions, as well for mailing lists as for
newsletters. And the 2.1 versions also have several more goodies
useful for newsletters.

But still some more or less important problems seems unsolved: 


We already have a form like
http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe where you fill in your
e-mail address just once and then select, on which lists you want to
be subscribed. Currently, that script sends out a bunch of subscribe
mails to the appropriate addresses. But currently the user will get
one confirmation mail for each list he'd like to subscribe instead of
a single one.

Is there a possibility in Mailman to process a bunch of list
subscriptions for a single user like one subscription, i.e. so that
only one confirm mail is required? Anyone already had similiar
problems?


Another little customization thingy:

IIRC Mailman 2.0.x had confirmation mail subjects looking like this:

|  listname -- confirmation of subscription -- request XXXXXX

The new ones look just like this:

|  confirm xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Is it easily possible to customize this subject to be a little bit
more understandable for a non-english speaking, non-technical
audience, e.g. by a descriptive prefix in the configured language? Or
do I need to patch Mailman and/or create new locales?


And how do others deal with those horrible old Win95 mail clients
("X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.X.XXXX.XX)") which break the
subject by adding an additonal white space auf 60 or 70 characters?

E.g. I customized an older Mailman version with a few German texts,
e.g. the above mentioned old confirmation subject, so that it read
like this:

|  Listname -- Bitte um Bestaetigung der Anmeldung -- Anfrage 388443

What I got back from a customer was this:

|  Subject: WG: Listname -- Bitte um Bestaetigung der Anmeldung -- Anfra
|          ge 388443

My shorthack solution was to write a Perl (Jehova! ;-) wrapper, which
fixed the subject before passing it to Mailman. How are (were) others
dealing with this problem? (It should not only happen with customized
versions of Mailman but also with long list names and the umodified
Mailman version.)

            Kind regards, Axel Beckert
-- 
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Axel Beckert      ecos electronic communication services gmbh
it security solutions * dynamic web applications * consulting

Mail:       Tulpenstrasse 5       D-55276 Dienheim near Mainz
E-Mail:     beckert at ecos.de       Voice:     +49 6133 939-220
WWW:        http://www.ecos.de/   Fax:       +49 6133 939-333
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