[Dan sent me this in error. - Roger] ----- Forwarded message from Dan Kappus <dk@squaretrade.com> ----- Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 09:35:41 -0700 From: Dan Kappus <dk@squaretrade.com> To: Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org> Subject: Re: Smartlist web interface (was Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?) On Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 05:25:21PM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote:

On or about Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 09:17:49AM -0700, Rob Flickenger typed:

...

I'm certainly willing to bear with SmartList's 'homely' appearance. It's extensible, stable, and very fast... And eventually, when the community finds the time to put a pretty face on it, it will truly kick ass, and we'll all be ahead of the learning curve... =)

OK. What does a web interface for smartlist need?

Considering the "list administration" side first:

The most basic version would simply send appropriately-formatted X-Command: mail to the list-server. That's fairly trivial to get right. But I'm considering the possibilities inherent in a slightly larger CGI, which might be run suid to the list user, which could maniupulate the list data files directly - to check authentication, add/remove users, and so on. keep a database of all the users that are subscribed to all the lists hosted by a particular instance of smartlist, and let users, with insecure passwords which are mailed to them at a rate specified by the admin, change their subscribtion info and settings.

actually, list administration is the braindead side of it. many list admins can do list admin stuff, but their users are unable to subscribe and unsubscribe.

As for the user side, how would you prevent malicious foreign unsubscriptions without a password? The existing "confirm" patch from aks would be helpful, here.

just ask for a confirm in an email message.

Do we want a mhonarc-like archiving system, given that mhonarc is pretty easy to integrate with smartlist already?

mhonarc is good, especially given that the mailman developpers are often thinking about ditching pipermail in favor of it! for some reasons that web archives are important, see the o'reilly book "practical intranet groupware" -- dan kappus, system admin squaretrade, www.squaretrade.com p.s. I do both mailman and smartlist here ----- End forwarded message -----