From klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US Fri Oct 11 22:01:36 1996 From: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US (Ken Manheimer) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:01:36 -0400 Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review Message-ID: <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US> Hi, all. Andrew Kuchling has been developing pipermail , a python-based tool for maintaining maillist web archives, similar to hypermail. He has, *quite* conveniently for the PSA, contrived to test its operation using several of the PSA SIG mailing lists as test subjects. He's agreed to move this out of testing and into operation, so the PSA will have a maintained pipermail archive of its sigs mailing lists. What we seeking now is some judicious input about the layout, operational details, and general aesthetics. Take a look at: for a rudimentary view of the quarterly archive sections. Currently, the lists are divided into yearly quarters, with links to them all collected, by quarter, in a single document. I'll post my own, immediate suggestions, in a reply to this message. Thanks, andrew, for putting this together! Ken Manheimer klm@cnri.reston.va.us 703 620-8990 x268 (orporation for National Research |nitiatives # If you appreciate Python, consider joining the PSA! # # . # > Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 15:54:43 -0400 (EDT) > From: Andrew Kuchling > To: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US > Subject: Re: Pipermail, & SIG archives > > Good day! > > I'd like to finish off the archives, so we can put them up on > www.python.org. So, any thoughts (from anyone) regarding how the > archives should be divided? Split the matrix-sig only, or do > everything by quarters? Did you get any graphical comments from Just > or someone? > > Also, I'd really like to finalize a directory structure for the > archives that will fit nicely into www.python.org . Right now, it > looks like: > > /lists # Top-level > /lists/1996q1-db-sig/ # Each quarter is a directory > /lists/1996q2 ... > > But it should probably go somewhere under /sigs on the Web > site. Suggestions? > > > Andrew Kuchling > amk@magnet.com ================= META-SIG - SIG on Python.Org SIGs and Mailing Lists send messages to: meta-sig@python.org administrivia to: meta-sig-request@python.org ================= From klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US Fri Oct 11 22:19:29 1996 From: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US (Ken Manheimer) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:19:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review In-Reply-To: <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US> Message-ID: On Fri, 11 Oct 1996, Ken Manheimer wrote: > Andrew Kuchling has been developing pipermail > > , > [...] > What we seeking now is some judicious input about the layout, > operational details, and general aesthetics. Take a look at: > > >[...] > I'll post my own, immediate suggestions, in a reply to this message. I have a few off-the-bat suggestions for the structure: - Having all the sections of all the sigs together is, obviously, too cluttered. We should have a master document which contains a link to an archive document for each of the sigs. The sig-specific archive documents would contain links to each of the archive sections. (And could be linked from the sig's general index.html.) - *If* it's easy to do, it'd be nice to have the archives subdivided only when the size of the yearly collection exceeds a certain threshold - say 200 messages. (I really don't know what's appropriate, but my suspicion is that 200 is not too big.) It might be nice to take it a step further, and subdivide to months when a quarterly divisions exceeds the threshold. And maybe even in the other direction - not subdivide a sig's mail to yearly sections until more than the threshold number of messages is accumulated... (Sectioning of the archives will be less disruptive when there is an archive search interface, for which andrew is also seeking comments.) - Andrew, concerning incorporating with the existing sigs structure - i would: - have a document for each sig (in the sig's dir) with links to each of the archive sections for that sig, and a search form for that sig's archives, and a link to the consolidate archives document (see below) - create a link to the sig's index.html to the archive collection for that sig, and an link to the consolidated archives document... - in the encompassing sigs directory create a document with links to the archives for each of the sigs, and a search that crosses the sigs - create link to the consolidated archive from the master sigs index.html For example (all below ): sigs/ index.html has link to sigs/archives.html archives.html has links to each of the sig-specific collections, and consolidated search meta-sig/ index.html has link to meta-sig/archives.html archives.html has links to meta-sig archive sections, search of the meta-sig archives, and link to consolidated archive (and meta-sig index.html) - Aesthetic layout suggestions would be welcome - organization, expository descriptions, pictures... Ken again. ================= META-SIG - SIG on Python.Org SIGs and Mailing Lists send messages to: meta-sig@python.org administrivia to: meta-sig-request@python.org ================= From amk@magnet.com Fri Oct 11 23:11:38 1996 From: amk@magnet.com (Andrew Kuchling) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 18:11:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review In-Reply-To: from "Ken Manheimer" at Oct 11, 96 05:19:29 pm Message-ID: <199610112211.SAA09975@lemur.magnet.com> > - *If* it's easy to do, it'd be nice to have the archives subdivided > only when the size of the yearly collection exceeds a certain > threshold - say 200 messages. (I really don't know what's > appropriate, but my suspicion is that 200 is not too big.) Ummm... think think... while it's feasible, I think it would be a bit kludgy. (I'll consider it further, though.) If disk space isn't too big a problem, why not index both _en masse_ and by quarter/month? A digression about how Pipermail works: the base pipermail.T class handles formatting, and has abstract methods like get_archives(A), which returns a list of archives where article A should be filed. Each archive is then a subdirectory. get_archive() has access to the article's headers (and even its body), so it can make quite complex decisions. An article can be put in multiple archives; for example, we could automatically put postings by Guido, or postings where the subject line begins with "ANNOUNCE:", in a separate archive. (Any suggestions for such special archives?) Currently, a copy of the article is made in each archive directory; my fuzzy reasoning behind this is that you might want articles formatted differently depending on where they're going. (Consider keeping a verbatim copy of postings, and an HTML-formatted version.) This will eat disk space quickly if articles are placed in lots of different archives all the time. An alternative would be to have a single directory for formatted articles, and each different archive would point into that single repository. This means we can't format articles differently for each archive, but it's a lot easier on disk space. > (Sectioning of the archives will be less disruptive when there is > an archive search interface, for which andrew is also seeking > comments.) One note: the search isn't available on www.magnet.com because I can't run CGI scripts there. I've prototyped a search using swish on amarok, but it's hidden behind a firewall. We can worry about that after the archives are up. Another big problem: Python code's indentation gets mangled by HTML formatting. I'd like to magically recognize inclusions of code, and add 
...
around them. Any suggestions for how to do this fairly reliably? I consider this critical for making the archives usable. (We could just always put the entire article inside 
, but that's ugly and not very readable.)


	Andrew Kuchling
	amk@magnet.com


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From Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl  Sun Oct 13 22:40:14 1996
From: Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen)
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 23:40:14 +0200
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: Message by Ken Manheimer  ,
 Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:01:36 -0400 , <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
Message-ID: <9610132140.AA27328=jack@schelvis.cwi.nl>

Aside from the points already made (I strongly agree with the
monthly/quarterly/yearly division based on volume) two minor points:
- The text overlaps the fancy blue line at the left, which isn't very
readable.
- The threading doesn't seem to work very well for pythonmac-sig.
--
Jack Jansen             | ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl      | ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack | see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm 

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From amk@magnet.com  Mon Oct 14 18:34:03 1996
From: amk@magnet.com (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 13:34:03 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: <9610132140.AA27328=jack@schelvis.cwi.nl> from "Jack Jansen" at Oct 13, 96 11:40:14 pm
Message-ID: <199610141734.NAA15253@lemur.magnet.com>


	[Sent to both the locator-sig and meta-sig... which one is
preferable?]

> - The text overlaps the fancy blue line at the left, which isn't very
> readable.

	 I'm no typographer, and just put that in for
compatibility with the rest of the python.org site; it can just as
easily be removed.

> - The threading doesn't seem to work very well for pythonmac-sig.

	Ouch, you're right.  A sizable number of the pythonmac-sig
postings have the In-Reply-To line in a different format from what I
was expecting.  It's now fixed, along with a few other dumb threading
bugs.

	Incidentally, this is a good point to comment that if you
notice any formatting irregularities while browsing the archive for
your favorite SIG, please e-mail me at amk@magnet.com about them.  I
can't read through every posting (or even every archive) and see if it
came out OK.  You may not necessarily get a reply--frankly, I expect
to get buried in e-mail by this request-- but the problems will be
looked at and, hopefully, fixed.


	Andrew Kuchling
	amk@magnet.com

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From Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl  Sun Oct 13 22:40:14 1996
From: Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen)
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 23:40:14 +0200
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: Message by Ken Manheimer  ,
 Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:01:36 -0400 , <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
Message-ID: <9610132140.AA27328=jack@schelvis.cwi.nl>

Aside from the points already made (I strongly agree with the
monthly/quarterly/yearly division based on volume) two minor points:
- The text overlaps the fancy blue line at the left, which isn't very
readable.
- The threading doesn't seem to work very well for pythonmac-sig.
--
Jack Jansen             | ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl      | ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack | see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm 

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From amk@magnet.com  Mon Oct 14 18:34:03 1996
From: amk@magnet.com (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 13:34:03 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: <9610132140.AA27328=jack@schelvis.cwi.nl> from "Jack Jansen" at Oct 13, 96 11:40:14 pm
Message-ID: <199610141734.NAA15253@lemur.magnet.com>


	[Sent to both the locator-sig and meta-sig... which one is
preferable?]

> - The text overlaps the fancy blue line at the left, which isn't very
> readable.

	 I'm no typographer, and just put that in for
compatibility with the rest of the python.org site; it can just as
easily be removed.

> - The threading doesn't seem to work very well for pythonmac-sig.

	Ouch, you're right.  A sizable number of the pythonmac-sig
postings have the In-Reply-To line in a different format from what I
was expecting.  It's now fixed, along with a few other dumb threading
bugs.

	Incidentally, this is a good point to comment that if you
notice any formatting irregularities while browsing the archive for
your favorite SIG, please e-mail me at amk@magnet.com about them.  I
can't read through every posting (or even every archive) and see if it
came out OK.  You may not necessarily get a reply--frankly, I expect
to get buried in e-mail by this request-- but the problems will be
looked at and, hopefully, fixed.


	Andrew Kuchling
	amk@magnet.com

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From klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US  Fri Oct 11 22:01:36 1996
From: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US (Ken Manheimer)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:01:36 -0400
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
Message-ID: <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>

Hi, all.

Andrew Kuchling has been developing pipermail

	,

a python-based tool for maintaining maillist web archives, similar to
hypermail.  He has, *quite* conveniently for the PSA, contrived to
test its operation using several of the PSA SIG mailing lists as test
subjects.  He's agreed to move this out of testing and into operation,
so the PSA will have a maintained pipermail archive of its sigs
mailing lists.

What we seeking now is some judicious input about the layout,
operational details, and general aesthetics.  Take a look at:

	

for a rudimentary view of the quarterly archive sections.  Currently,
the lists are divided into yearly quarters, with links to them all
collected, by quarter, in a single document.

I'll post my own, immediate suggestions, in a reply to this message.

Thanks, andrew, for putting this together!

Ken Manheimer		klm@cnri.reston.va.us	    703 620-8990 x268
	    (orporation for National Research |nitiatives

	# If you appreciate Python, consider joining the PSA! #
		  # . #

> Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 15:54:43 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Andrew Kuchling 
> To: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US
> Subject: Re: Pipermail, & SIG archives
> 
> 	Good day!
> 
> 	I'd like to finish off the archives, so we can put them up on
> www.python.org.  So, any thoughts (from anyone) regarding how the
> archives should be divided?  Split the matrix-sig only, or do
> everything by quarters?  Did you get any graphical comments from Just
> or someone?
> 
> 	Also, I'd really like to finalize a directory structure for the
> archives that will fit nicely into www.python.org .  Right now, it
> looks like:
> 
> 	/lists                  # Top-level
> 	/lists/1996q1-db-sig/   # Each quarter is a directory
> 	/lists/1996q2 ...
> 
> 	But it should probably go somewhere under /sigs on the Web
> site.  Suggestions?
> 
> 
> 	Andrew Kuchling
> 	amk@magnet.com

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From klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US  Fri Oct 11 22:19:29 1996
From: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US (Ken Manheimer)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:19:29 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
Message-ID: 

On Fri, 11 Oct 1996, Ken Manheimer wrote:

> Andrew Kuchling has been developing pipermail
> 
> 	,
> [...]
> What we seeking now is some judicious input about the layout,
> operational details, and general aesthetics.  Take a look at:
> 
> 	
>[...]
> I'll post my own, immediate suggestions, in a reply to this message.

I have a few off-the-bat suggestions for the structure:

 - Having all the sections of all the sigs together is, obviously, too
   cluttered.  We should have a master document which contains a link
   to an archive document for each of the sigs.  The sig-specific
   archive documents would contain links to each of the archive
   sections.  (And could be linked from the sig's general index.html.)

 - *If* it's easy to do, it'd be nice to have the archives subdivided
   only when the size of the yearly collection exceeds a certain
   threshold - say 200 messages.  (I really don't know what's
   appropriate, but my suspicion is that 200 is not too big.)

   It might be nice to take it a step further, and subdivide to months
   when a quarterly divisions exceeds the threshold.  And maybe even
   in the other direction - not subdivide a sig's mail to yearly
   sections until more than the threshold number of messages is
   accumulated...

   (Sectioning of the archives will be less disruptive when there is
   an archive search interface, for which andrew is also seeking
   comments.)

 - Andrew, concerning incorporating with the existing sigs structure -
   i would:

   - have a document for each sig (in the sig's dir) with links to
     each of the archive sections for that sig, and a search form for
     that sig's archives, and a link to the consolidate archives
     document (see below)
   - create a link to the sig's index.html to the archive collection
     for that sig, and an link to the consolidated archives document...
   - in the encompassing sigs directory create a document with links
     to the archives for each of the sigs, and a search that crosses
     the sigs
   - create link to the consolidated archive from the master sigs
     index.html

   For example (all below ):

	sigs/

	    index.html		has link to sigs/archives.html

	    archives.html 	has links to each of the sig-specific
				collections, and consolidated search
	    meta-sig/

		index.html	has link to meta-sig/archives.html

		archives.html	has links to meta-sig archive sections,
				search of the meta-sig archives, and
				link to consolidated archive (and
				meta-sig index.html)

 - Aesthetic layout suggestions would be welcome - organization,
   expository descriptions, pictures...

Ken again.


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From hugunin@mit.edu  Mon Oct 21 19:33:43 1996
From: hugunin@mit.edu (Jim Hugunin)
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 14:33:43 -0400
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Re: [PYTHONWIN-SIG] Creating sub-newsgroups
Message-ID: <9610211845.AA28894@goldilocks.LCS.MIT.EDU>


> From: Guido van Rossum 
> 
> There's a discussion going on in pythonwin-sig that should be moved to
> meta-sig: whether to move the Windows traffic to the/a newsgroup.
> 
> I'm redirecting this to the meta-sig; please reply to the meta-sig only.
> 
> I wonder if we aren't ready to create a bunch of sub-newsgroups of
> comp.lang.python?  I'll leave it to others to propose an adequate set
> of subgroups -- have a look at what groups like Perl and Tcl have
> done...

>From my personal experience,  I think that NumPy was a great example of a
project that benefitted tremendously from the SIG mechanism.  On the other
hand, once this project is publically released (which will be real soon
now) it seems to me to make more sense to begin addressing questions on the
main newsgroup.  As NumPy usually has more traffic than PythonWin, this
might be a concern to readers of the main newsgroup.

In order to create sub-newsgroups we need to demonstrate that the traffic
on comp.lang.python is too high.  I'd say at the moment that's not true
(partially because of the traffic currently on the SIGs).

I'd propose that we move PythonWin back to the main newsgroup (as well as
NumPy after the public release).  Further, I think that posters should be
strongly encouraged to use a convention in their headers such as:

[Windows] How do I get Pythonwin to compile on X?
[Numeric] What's a singular value decomposition?

I think this would be a good way to both discover what the right subgroups
are (by seeing what sorts of prefixes become in common use) and to
demonstrate to usenet that there's enough volume on comp.lang.python to
justify splitting.

-Jim Hugunin

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From paul@digicool.com  Wed Oct 30 16:09:56 1996
From: paul@digicool.com (Paul Everitt)
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 10:09:56 -0600
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] PROPOSAL: Axe the locator sig
Message-ID: <32777DD4.3D7C@digicool.com>

OK, I'm convinced it is dead.  Any disagreement?

-- 
Paul Everitt       Digital Creations
paul@digicool.com  540.371.6909
## Python is my favorite language ##
##     http://www.python.org/     ##

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From mclay@nist.gov  Wed Oct 30 15:26:07 1996
From: mclay@nist.gov (Michael McLay)
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 10:26:07 -0500
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] PROPOSAL: Axe the locator sig
In-Reply-To: <32777DD4.3D7C@digicool.com>
References: <32777DD4.3D7C@digicool.com>
Message-ID: <199610301526.KAA30966@fermi.eeel.nist.gov>

Paul Everitt writes:
 > OK, I'm convinced it is dead.  Any disagreement?

I call it dormant.  Let's just subdivide the WWW page for the various
SIGs to include the active and dormant groups.  Given infinite time
and resources we could incorporate some relevant information about
each SIG into the page, such as how many members there are, how many
posts have been made, and when the last three posts were made.

Michael

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From paul@digicool.com  Wed Oct 30 18:09:41 1996
From: paul@digicool.com (Paul Everitt)
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 12:09:41 -0600
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] PROPOSAL: Axe the locator sig
References: <32777DD4.3D7C@digicool.com> <199610301526.KAA30966@fermi.eeel.nist.gov>
Message-ID: <327799E5.441E@digicool.com>

Michael McLay wrote:
> I call it dormant.  Let's just subdivide the WWW page for the various
> SIGs to include the active and dormant groups.  Given infinite time
> and resources we could incorporate some relevant information about
> each SIG into the page, such as how many members there are, how many
> posts have been made, and when the last three posts were made.

Unfortunately, though, people still subscribe to it.  I don't think it
is fair to portray it as active.

-- 
Paul Everitt       Digital Creations
paul@digicool.com  540.371.6909
## Python is my favorite language ##
##     http://www.python.org/     ##

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From meta-sig@python.org  Mon Oct 21 17:56:14 1996
From: meta-sig@python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 12:56:14 -0400
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Creating sub-newsgroups
Message-ID: <199610211656.MAA08464@monty>

There's a discussion going on in pythonwin-sig that should be moved to
meta-sig: whether to move the Windows traffic to the/a newsgroup.

I'm redirecting this to the meta-sig; please reply to the meta-sig only.

I wonder if we aren't ready to create a bunch of sub-newsgroups of
comp.lang.python?  I'll leave it to others to propose an adequate set
of subgroups -- have a look at what groups like Perl and Tcl have
done...

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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From klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US  Fri Oct 11 22:01:36 1996
From: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US (Ken Manheimer)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:01:36 -0400
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
Message-ID: <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>

Hi, all.

Andrew Kuchling has been developing pipermail

	,

a python-based tool for maintaining maillist web archives, similar to
hypermail.  He has, *quite* conveniently for the PSA, contrived to
test its operation using several of the PSA SIG mailing lists as test
subjects.  He's agreed to move this out of testing and into operation,
so the PSA will have a maintained pipermail archive of its sigs
mailing lists.

What we seeking now is some judicious input about the layout,
operational details, and general aesthetics.  Take a look at:

	

for a rudimentary view of the quarterly archive sections.  Currently,
the lists are divided into yearly quarters, with links to them all
collected, by quarter, in a single document.

I'll post my own, immediate suggestions, in a reply to this message.

Thanks, andrew, for putting this together!

Ken Manheimer		klm@cnri.reston.va.us	    703 620-8990 x268
	    (orporation for National Research |nitiatives

	# If you appreciate Python, consider joining the PSA! #
		  # . #

> Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 15:54:43 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Andrew Kuchling 
> To: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US
> Subject: Re: Pipermail, & SIG archives
> 
> 	Good day!
> 
> 	I'd like to finish off the archives, so we can put them up on
> www.python.org.  So, any thoughts (from anyone) regarding how the
> archives should be divided?  Split the matrix-sig only, or do
> everything by quarters?  Did you get any graphical comments from Just
> or someone?
> 
> 	Also, I'd really like to finalize a directory structure for the
> archives that will fit nicely into www.python.org .  Right now, it
> looks like:
> 
> 	/lists                  # Top-level
> 	/lists/1996q1-db-sig/   # Each quarter is a directory
> 	/lists/1996q2 ...
> 
> 	But it should probably go somewhere under /sigs on the Web
> site.  Suggestions?
> 
> 
> 	Andrew Kuchling
> 	amk@magnet.com

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From klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US  Fri Oct 11 22:19:29 1996
From: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US (Ken Manheimer)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:19:29 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
Message-ID: 

On Fri, 11 Oct 1996, Ken Manheimer wrote:

> Andrew Kuchling has been developing pipermail
> 
> 	,
> [...]
> What we seeking now is some judicious input about the layout,
> operational details, and general aesthetics.  Take a look at:
> 
> 	
>[...]
> I'll post my own, immediate suggestions, in a reply to this message.

I have a few off-the-bat suggestions for the structure:

 - Having all the sections of all the sigs together is, obviously, too
   cluttered.  We should have a master document which contains a link
   to an archive document for each of the sigs.  The sig-specific
   archive documents would contain links to each of the archive
   sections.  (And could be linked from the sig's general index.html.)

 - *If* it's easy to do, it'd be nice to have the archives subdivided
   only when the size of the yearly collection exceeds a certain
   threshold - say 200 messages.  (I really don't know what's
   appropriate, but my suspicion is that 200 is not too big.)

   It might be nice to take it a step further, and subdivide to months
   when a quarterly divisions exceeds the threshold.  And maybe even
   in the other direction - not subdivide a sig's mail to yearly
   sections until more than the threshold number of messages is
   accumulated...

   (Sectioning of the archives will be less disruptive when there is
   an archive search interface, for which andrew is also seeking
   comments.)

 - Andrew, concerning incorporating with the existing sigs structure -
   i would:

   - have a document for each sig (in the sig's dir) with links to
     each of the archive sections for that sig, and a search form for
     that sig's archives, and a link to the consolidate archives
     document (see below)
   - create a link to the sig's index.html to the archive collection
     for that sig, and an link to the consolidated archives document...
   - in the encompassing sigs directory create a document with links
     to the archives for each of the sigs, and a search that crosses
     the sigs
   - create link to the consolidated archive from the master sigs
     index.html

   For example (all below ):

	sigs/

	    index.html		has link to sigs/archives.html

	    archives.html 	has links to each of the sig-specific
				collections, and consolidated search
	    meta-sig/

		index.html	has link to meta-sig/archives.html

		archives.html	has links to meta-sig archive sections,
				search of the meta-sig archives, and
				link to consolidated archive (and
				meta-sig index.html)

 - Aesthetic layout suggestions would be welcome - organization,
   expository descriptions, pictures...

Ken again.


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From amk@magnet.com  Fri Oct 11 23:11:38 1996
From: amk@magnet.com (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 18:11:38 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To:  from "Ken Manheimer" at Oct 11, 96 05:19:29 pm
Message-ID: <199610112211.SAA09975@lemur.magnet.com>

>  - *If* it's easy to do, it'd be nice to have the archives subdivided
>    only when the size of the yearly collection exceeds a certain
>    threshold - say 200 messages.  (I really don't know what's
>    appropriate, but my suspicion is that 200 is not too big.)

	Ummm... think think... while it's feasible, I think it would
be a bit kludgy.  (I'll consider it further, though.)  If disk space
isn't too big a problem, why not index both _en masse_ and by
quarter/month?

	A digression about how Pipermail works: the base pipermail.T
class handles formatting, and has abstract methods like
get_archives(A), which returns a list of archives where article A
should be filed.  Each archive is then a subdirectory.  get_archive()
has access to the article's headers (and even its body), so it can
make quite complex decisions.

	An article can be put in multiple archives; for example, we
could automatically put postings by Guido, or postings where the
subject line begins with "ANNOUNCE:", in a separate archive.  (Any
suggestions for such special archives?)

	Currently, a copy of the article is made in each archive
directory; my fuzzy reasoning behind this is that you might want
articles formatted differently depending on where they're going.
(Consider keeping a verbatim copy of postings, and an HTML-formatted
version.)  This will eat disk space quickly if articles are placed in
lots of different archives all the time.

	An alternative would be to have a single directory for
formatted articles, and each different archive would point into that
single repository.  This means we can't format articles differently
for each archive, but it's a lot easier on disk space.  


>    (Sectioning of the archives will be less disruptive when there is
>    an archive search interface, for which andrew is also seeking
>    comments.)
	
	One note: the search isn't available on www.magnet.com because
I can't run CGI scripts there.  I've prototyped a search using swish
on amarok, but it's hidden behind a firewall.  We can worry about that
after the archives are up.

	Another big problem: Python code's indentation gets mangled by
HTML formatting.  I'd like to magically recognize inclusions of code,
and add 
...
 around them.  Any suggestions for how to do
this fairly reliably?  I consider this critical for making the
archives usable.  (We could just always put the entire article inside

, but that's ugly and not very readable.)


	Andrew Kuchling
	amk@magnet.com


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From Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl  Sun Oct 13 22:40:14 1996
From: Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen)
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 23:40:14 +0200
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: Message by Ken Manheimer  ,
 Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:01:36 -0400 , <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
Message-ID: <9610132140.AA27328=jack@schelvis.cwi.nl>

Aside from the points already made (I strongly agree with the
monthly/quarterly/yearly division based on volume) two minor points:
- The text overlaps the fancy blue line at the left, which isn't very
readable.
- The threading doesn't seem to work very well for pythonmac-sig.
--
Jack Jansen             | ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl      | ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack | see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm 

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From amk@magnet.com  Mon Oct 14 18:34:03 1996
From: amk@magnet.com (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 13:34:03 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: <9610132140.AA27328=jack@schelvis.cwi.nl> from "Jack Jansen" at Oct 13, 96 11:40:14 pm
Message-ID: <199610141734.NAA15253@lemur.magnet.com>


	[Sent to both the locator-sig and meta-sig... which one is
preferable?]

> - The text overlaps the fancy blue line at the left, which isn't very
> readable.

	 I'm no typographer, and just put that in for
compatibility with the rest of the python.org site; it can just as
easily be removed.

> - The threading doesn't seem to work very well for pythonmac-sig.

	Ouch, you're right.  A sizable number of the pythonmac-sig
postings have the In-Reply-To line in a different format from what I
was expecting.  It's now fixed, along with a few other dumb threading
bugs.

	Incidentally, this is a good point to comment that if you
notice any formatting irregularities while browsing the archive for
your favorite SIG, please e-mail me at amk@magnet.com about them.  I
can't read through every posting (or even every archive) and see if it
came out OK.  You may not necessarily get a reply--frankly, I expect
to get buried in e-mail by this request-- but the problems will be
looked at and, hopefully, fixed.


	Andrew Kuchling
	amk@magnet.com

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From Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl  Sun Oct 13 22:40:14 1996
From: Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen)
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 23:40:14 +0200
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: Message by Ken Manheimer  ,
 Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:01:36 -0400 , <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
Message-ID: <9610132140.AA27328=jack@schelvis.cwi.nl>

Aside from the points already made (I strongly agree with the
monthly/quarterly/yearly division based on volume) two minor points:
- The text overlaps the fancy blue line at the left, which isn't very
readable.
- The threading doesn't seem to work very well for pythonmac-sig.
--
Jack Jansen             | ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl      | ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack | see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm 

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From amk@magnet.com  Mon Oct 14 18:34:03 1996
From: amk@magnet.com (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 13:34:03 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: <9610132140.AA27328=jack@schelvis.cwi.nl> from "Jack Jansen" at Oct 13, 96 11:40:14 pm
Message-ID: <199610141734.NAA15253@lemur.magnet.com>


	[Sent to both the locator-sig and meta-sig... which one is
preferable?]

> - The text overlaps the fancy blue line at the left, which isn't very
> readable.

	 I'm no typographer, and just put that in for
compatibility with the rest of the python.org site; it can just as
easily be removed.

> - The threading doesn't seem to work very well for pythonmac-sig.

	Ouch, you're right.  A sizable number of the pythonmac-sig
postings have the In-Reply-To line in a different format from what I
was expecting.  It's now fixed, along with a few other dumb threading
bugs.

	Incidentally, this is a good point to comment that if you
notice any formatting irregularities while browsing the archive for
your favorite SIG, please e-mail me at amk@magnet.com about them.  I
can't read through every posting (or even every archive) and see if it
came out OK.  You may not necessarily get a reply--frankly, I expect
to get buried in e-mail by this request-- but the problems will be
looked at and, hopefully, fixed.


	Andrew Kuchling
	amk@magnet.com

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From klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US  Fri Oct 11 22:01:36 1996
From: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US (Ken Manheimer)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:01:36 -0400
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
Message-ID: <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>

Hi, all.

Andrew Kuchling has been developing pipermail

	,

a python-based tool for maintaining maillist web archives, similar to
hypermail.  He has, *quite* conveniently for the PSA, contrived to
test its operation using several of the PSA SIG mailing lists as test
subjects.  He's agreed to move this out of testing and into operation,
so the PSA will have a maintained pipermail archive of its sigs
mailing lists.

What we seeking now is some judicious input about the layout,
operational details, and general aesthetics.  Take a look at:

	

for a rudimentary view of the quarterly archive sections.  Currently,
the lists are divided into yearly quarters, with links to them all
collected, by quarter, in a single document.

I'll post my own, immediate suggestions, in a reply to this message.

Thanks, andrew, for putting this together!

Ken Manheimer		klm@cnri.reston.va.us	    703 620-8990 x268
	    (orporation for National Research |nitiatives

	# If you appreciate Python, consider joining the PSA! #
		  # . #

> Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 15:54:43 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Andrew Kuchling 
> To: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US
> Subject: Re: Pipermail, & SIG archives
> 
> 	Good day!
> 
> 	I'd like to finish off the archives, so we can put them up on
> www.python.org.  So, any thoughts (from anyone) regarding how the
> archives should be divided?  Split the matrix-sig only, or do
> everything by quarters?  Did you get any graphical comments from Just
> or someone?
> 
> 	Also, I'd really like to finalize a directory structure for the
> archives that will fit nicely into www.python.org .  Right now, it
> looks like:
> 
> 	/lists                  # Top-level
> 	/lists/1996q1-db-sig/   # Each quarter is a directory
> 	/lists/1996q2 ...
> 
> 	But it should probably go somewhere under /sigs on the Web
> site.  Suggestions?
> 
> 
> 	Andrew Kuchling
> 	amk@magnet.com

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From klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US  Fri Oct 11 22:19:29 1996
From: klm@CNRI.Reston.Va.US (Ken Manheimer)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:19:29 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Organized web archives of the PSA SIG mailing lists - review
In-Reply-To: <199610112101.RAA09050@glyph.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
Message-ID: 

On Fri, 11 Oct 1996, Ken Manheimer wrote:

> Andrew Kuchling has been developing pipermail
> 
> 	,
> [...]
> What we seeking now is some judicious input about the layout,
> operational details, and general aesthetics.  Take a look at:
> 
> 	
>[...]
> I'll post my own, immediate suggestions, in a reply to this message.

I have a few off-the-bat suggestions for the structure:

 - Having all the sections of all the sigs together is, obviously, too
   cluttered.  We should have a master document which contains a link
   to an archive document for each of the sigs.  The sig-specific
   archive documents would contain links to each of the archive
   sections.  (And could be linked from the sig's general index.html.)

 - *If* it's easy to do, it'd be nice to have the archives subdivided
   only when the size of the yearly collection exceeds a certain
   threshold - say 200 messages.  (I really don't know what's
   appropriate, but my suspicion is that 200 is not too big.)

   It might be nice to take it a step further, and subdivide to months
   when a quarterly divisions exceeds the threshold.  And maybe even
   in the other direction - not subdivide a sig's mail to yearly
   sections until more than the threshold number of messages is
   accumulated...

   (Sectioning of the archives will be less disruptive when there is
   an archive search interface, for which andrew is also seeking
   comments.)

 - Andrew, concerning incorporating with the existing sigs structure -
   i would:

   - have a document for each sig (in the sig's dir) with links to
     each of the archive sections for that sig, and a search form for
     that sig's archives, and a link to the consolidate archives
     document (see below)
   - create a link to the sig's index.html to the archive collection
     for that sig, and an link to the consolidated archives document...
   - in the encompassing sigs directory create a document with links
     to the archives for each of the sigs, and a search that crosses
     the sigs
   - create link to the consolidated archive from the master sigs
     index.html

   For example (all below ):

	sigs/

	    index.html		has link to sigs/archives.html

	    archives.html 	has links to each of the sig-specific
				collections, and consolidated search
	    meta-sig/

		index.html	has link to meta-sig/archives.html

		archives.html	has links to meta-sig archive sections,
				search of the meta-sig archives, and
				link to consolidated archive (and
				meta-sig index.html)

 - Aesthetic layout suggestions would be welcome - organization,
   expository descriptions, pictures...

Ken again.


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From hugunin@mit.edu  Mon Oct 21 19:33:43 1996
From: hugunin@mit.edu (Jim Hugunin)
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 14:33:43 -0400
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Re: [PYTHONWIN-SIG] Creating sub-newsgroups
Message-ID: <9610211845.AA28894@goldilocks.LCS.MIT.EDU>


> From: Guido van Rossum 
> 
> There's a discussion going on in pythonwin-sig that should be moved to
> meta-sig: whether to move the Windows traffic to the/a newsgroup.
> 
> I'm redirecting this to the meta-sig; please reply to the meta-sig only.
> 
> I wonder if we aren't ready to create a bunch of sub-newsgroups of
> comp.lang.python?  I'll leave it to others to propose an adequate set
> of subgroups -- have a look at what groups like Perl and Tcl have
> done...

>From my personal experience,  I think that NumPy was a great example of a
project that benefitted tremendously from the SIG mechanism.  On the other
hand, once this project is publically released (which will be real soon
now) it seems to me to make more sense to begin addressing questions on the
main newsgroup.  As NumPy usually has more traffic than PythonWin, this
might be a concern to readers of the main newsgroup.

In order to create sub-newsgroups we need to demonstrate that the traffic
on comp.lang.python is too high.  I'd say at the moment that's not true
(partially because of the traffic currently on the SIGs).

I'd propose that we move PythonWin back to the main newsgroup (as well as
NumPy after the public release).  Further, I think that posters should be
strongly encouraged to use a convention in their headers such as:

[Windows] How do I get Pythonwin to compile on X?
[Numeric] What's a singular value decomposition?

I think this would be a good way to both discover what the right subgroups
are (by seeing what sorts of prefixes become in common use) and to
demonstrate to usenet that there's enough volume on comp.lang.python to
justify splitting.

-Jim Hugunin

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From paul@digicool.com  Wed Oct 30 16:09:56 1996
From: paul@digicool.com (Paul Everitt)
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 10:09:56 -0600
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] PROPOSAL: Axe the locator sig
Message-ID: <32777DD4.3D7C@digicool.com>

OK, I'm convinced it is dead.  Any disagreement?

-- 
Paul Everitt       Digital Creations
paul@digicool.com  540.371.6909
## Python is my favorite language ##
##     http://www.python.org/     ##

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From mclay@nist.gov  Wed Oct 30 15:26:07 1996
From: mclay@nist.gov (Michael McLay)
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 10:26:07 -0500
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] PROPOSAL: Axe the locator sig
In-Reply-To: <32777DD4.3D7C@digicool.com>
References: <32777DD4.3D7C@digicool.com>
Message-ID: <199610301526.KAA30966@fermi.eeel.nist.gov>

Paul Everitt writes:
 > OK, I'm convinced it is dead.  Any disagreement?

I call it dormant.  Let's just subdivide the WWW page for the various
SIGs to include the active and dormant groups.  Given infinite time
and resources we could incorporate some relevant information about
each SIG into the page, such as how many members there are, how many
posts have been made, and when the last three posts were made.

Michael

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From paul@digicool.com  Wed Oct 30 18:09:41 1996
From: paul@digicool.com (Paul Everitt)
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 12:09:41 -0600
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] PROPOSAL: Axe the locator sig
References: <32777DD4.3D7C@digicool.com> <199610301526.KAA30966@fermi.eeel.nist.gov>
Message-ID: <327799E5.441E@digicool.com>

Michael McLay wrote:
> I call it dormant.  Let's just subdivide the WWW page for the various
> SIGs to include the active and dormant groups.  Given infinite time
> and resources we could incorporate some relevant information about
> each SIG into the page, such as how many members there are, how many
> posts have been made, and when the last three posts were made.

Unfortunately, though, people still subscribe to it.  I don't think it
is fair to portray it as active.

-- 
Paul Everitt       Digital Creations
paul@digicool.com  540.371.6909
## Python is my favorite language ##
##     http://www.python.org/     ##

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From meta-sig@python.org  Mon Oct 21 17:56:14 1996
From: meta-sig@python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 12:56:14 -0400
Subject: [PYTHON META-SIG] Creating sub-newsgroups
Message-ID: <199610211656.MAA08464@monty>

There's a discussion going on in pythonwin-sig that should be moved to
meta-sig: whether to move the Windows traffic to the/a newsgroup.

I'm redirecting this to the meta-sig; please reply to the meta-sig only.

I wonder if we aren't ready to create a bunch of sub-newsgroups of
comp.lang.python?  I'll leave it to others to propose an adequate set
of subgroups -- have a look at what groups like Perl and Tcl have
done...

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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