[Mailman-Users] TOPICS

[Mark Sapiro]

On 01/07/2015 10:50 AM, JB wrote:
> 
> I have finished setting up the list and then I went into the TOPICS section and set up three topics (fishing, books, trains).  I do not see anywhere that allows users to subscribe to specific topics nor do I know how to send out an email and indicate which topic(s) it is pertaining to.


Users subscribe to topics on their respective user options pages.

When you set up the topics you provided a regexp to match against to
determine if a message is in that topic. This regexp is matched against
the Subject: header of the message, the Keywords: header if any.

Also in the Topics setup is a setting for topics_bodylines_limit.
Mailman will also look at up to this many of the initial body lines of
the message looking for pseudo Subject: and Keywords: headers. This body
lines search stops when the limit is reached or a non-header like line
is encountered.

Say the regexp for the 'books' topic is 'books?'. A message will match
the books topic if for example the Subject: contains the word 'book' or
'books' or the first body line is for example 'Keywords: books'.


> I would like to have a subscribe page (or link) that allows the user to sign up for the list and indicate which topics he wants to receive all in one place.  I really want to use custom skinned pages to do this.  I know how to write the pages for a simple subscribe/unsubscribe page but this whole mess with topics is throwing me.


Making Mailman support a single CGI transaction to both subscribe a user
and specify topics for that subscription would require creating a new
CGI and making significant source changes. The major hurdles are the
fact that subscribing is a request that normally requires confirmation,
approval or both, and topic subscription can only be done for an
existing user.

The current process has a mechanism for carrying things like the user's
real name and preferred language with the subscription request, but that
would have to be extended to carry topics as well.

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