a question about mailman

Mon Sep 30 15:38:43 EDT 2002

I have a question about Mailman that was never answered when posting to the
Mailman list:

  http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2002-September/022538.html

I'm in the awkward position of having this question even though I don't
personally have Mailman installed (yet).

Since Mailman is written in Python, I thought I'd use the occasion of this
week's Dr. Dobb's Python-URL (DDPU) to illustrate the use case I envision
that is at the heart of my question about Mailman.

If you examine this week's DDPU (below), you'll see Cameron provides very
useful references to the Python mailist list when he references a thread
that happened on comp.lang.python.  (I've also seen contributors of DDPU
alternatively provide a link to the thread at http://groups.google.com/,
which is also very useful.)

What I imagine Cameron had to do was navigate to the archive page for the
Python mailing list and, by-hand, find the URL for each thread/message he
wanted to reference.

In that context, I wonder, "Wouldn't it be easier if you could configure
Mailman to insert the archive URL into the footer of outgoing messages?"

I took a peek at the Mailman code base and it seems like this could be done,
but it would require hacking the Dispatch (correct name?) module since when
it uses string formatting, it uses the list dictionary, not the message
dictionary to format the footers.  Of course, you want to do both:  format
with the list dictionary AND with the message dictionary.  But does it make
sense to combine the two into a temporary dictionary and use *that*?

So my questions are:

1.  Would this generally be useful--having the ability to put message
specific information in the footers?
2.  Would it specifically be useful to put the archive url into the footers?
(I personally think so.)
3.  Is the vague approach I sketched above the way you'd do it?  That is,
does it seem likely that it would work?

Of course, I realize it's highly likely this entire message will be ignored
since it's about Mailman, not Python per se.  C'est la vie.

Cheers,

// mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Cameron Laird [mailto:claird at lairds.com]On Behalf Of Cameron Laird
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 2:16 PM
To: mark at mceahern.com :
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Sep 30)

QOTW:  "One can always write very sparse or very dense lines of code that
break the model, but in-the-large programmers do not normally do that.
They tend to write code in lines that fit easily in their head and, because
of this, one line of code is pretty much comparable to another."
Jonathan Hogg

"Why are there always jobs for salesmen?"  Stephen Satchell

    Jack Diederich makes high-performance Permutations, Combinations,
    and other probability and statistics constructs available through
    SourceForge.
	http://probstat.sourceforge.net/

    Puffin makes automation nice.

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-puffin2.html
    Pexpect fills in Puffin's most severe lack.
	http://sourceforge.net/projects/pexpect/

    Uche Ogbuji introdues Python's XML and XML-RPC capabilities, and PyXML.
	http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/09/18/py.html
	http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-pyth10.html
	http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/09/25/py.html

    September brought another round of attention to CP4E in the EDU-SIG
group
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2002-September/thread.html

    Think in Tkinter.
	http://home.att.net/~stephen_ferg/thinking_in_tkinter/index.html

    Martin v. Löwis gives background to management of patches and
    contributions in the Python project.

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-September/122988.html

    Blog with Python.
	http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/kaa.html

========================================================================

Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

    Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
    center of Pythonia
        http://www.python.org
    Notice especially the master FAQ
        http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

    PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
    daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily
    Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new)
    World-Wide Web articles related to Python.
         http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html
    While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL
    are utterly different in their technologies and generally in
    their results.

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.

http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Brett Cannon continues the marvelous tradition established by
    Andrew Kuchling and Michael Hudson of summarizing action on the
    python-dev mailing list once every other week.
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
        http://www.amk.ca/python/dev

    The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect Python resources
        http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/

    Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
    mailing lists
        http://www.python.org/sigs/

    The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
    as an independent nexus of activity
        http://www.python.org/psf/

    Cetus does much of the same
        http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html

    Python FAQTS
        http://python.faqts.com/

    The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a
    SourceForge reincarnation.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse
        http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html

    The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com.
    editor at pythonjournal.com and editor at pythonjournal.cognizor.com
    welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding
    of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work.

    *Py: the Journal of the Python Language*
        http://www.pyzine.com

    Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive
    what AI can generate
        http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python

    Tenth International Python Conference
        http://www.python10.org

    Archive probing tricks of the trade:

http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100

http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.pytho
n.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://www.ddj.com/topics/pythonurl/
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant)
or

http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang
.python

Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
[http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/ is hibernating.  Just
e-mail us ideas directly.]

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-- The Python-URL! Team--

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