[Mailman-Users] Topic filter actually used anymore? - feedback request

[Mark Sapiro]

Mark Sapiro wrote:
>
>In the (seemingly) distant past, I played with Topics a bit and could
>never make them work (I think this was 2.1.4). That was before I
>started reading the code, so I don't know if the problem was a bug or
>my lack of understanding.


I've had a chance to play with Topics a bit and as far as I can tell
(with very simple regexps) they work as they should.

There are a couple of gotcha's that I was previously aware of that I
have now developed fixes for, but I'm uncertain about one of the fixes.

Gotcha #1. If a user is subscribed to any topic(s) and has not elected
to receive posts which don't match any topic, and the list admin
disables topics, the user will not receive any posts at all.

The fix is a simple change in Handlers/CalcRecips.py to test
mlist.topics_enabled before zapping any recipients when the post
matches no topics.

Gotcha #2. If a user is subscribed to a topic and has not elected to
receive posts which don't match any topic, and the list admin deletes
that topic, the user will not receive any posts that would have
matched that topic. It is possible for the admin to delete all topics
and the user to still have selected topics which the user can't
unselect.

The fix I have come up with here is to change Gui/Topics.py so that
whenever topics are changed, each user's topic selections are checked
and any non-existent topics are removed from the user's selections.

I am not totally comfortable with this because it creates a situation
where the admin can accidentally delete a topic and then restore it,
but all users who had selected that topic will no longer have it
selected.

The importance of Gotcha #2 is reduced because of the fix for #1, and
the user who doesn't receive posts because of #2 can always receive
them by electing to receive posts that don't match any topic, but this
is counterintuitive, so I actually prefer to have the fix for #2.

What do others think?

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan