I thought it would be difficult to get smartlist to not send a copy to the sender and only to all the other addresses in dist, but it wasn't.
I uncommented the RC.LOCAL.S20 line in rc.custom, and in rc.local.s20, I put:
# get sender address # and make new dist (distless) without sender
:0 { SENDER_ADDRESS=`formail -rtzxTo:` }
:0 c | $HOME/disjust.pl $SENDER_ADDRESS
and in disjust.pl I have:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $sender = shift @ARGV; open D, "dist"; open DL, ">distless"; while ( <D> ) { print DL unless /$sender/; }
and I changed rc.submit from:
alt_sendmail="\ choplist $minnames $mindiffnames $maxnames $maxsplits $maxsize $maxconcur dist"
to
alt_sendmail="\ choplist $minnames $mindiffnames $maxnames $maxsplits $maxsize $maxconcur distless"
And it seems to work. Now I have to think a way of making it configurable.
| I thought it would be difficult to get smartlist to not send | a copy to the sender and only to all the other addresses in dist, | but it wasn't.
That's good, Greg, since it's what you want, but it brings this question up: why? When I post to a mailing list, getting a copy as a subscriber lets me know that (and when) it was sent out to the membership, what edits a moderator may have made, and what the list software may have done to it (reformatting, abusive spell-checking, adding ads, whatever). Otherwise I'd have to dig into the archives every time (what if the list is not archived, or the archived versions do not match the distributed form?) to find all that out, and I'd probably end up lurking under a second address just to see my own posts (let's hope it's not a posting-required list). Even its being quoted in someone else's follow-up wouldn't answer the last two questions (something might have been changed in a part that the other poster didn't quote).
Also, sometimes a person can phrase something in a way that makes sense in the writer's mind at the time but reads oddly to other people, or one can let a typo slip through that changes the meaning, and only in seeing one's text again later can one realize that the position was stated poorly or incorrectly.
Yet the question of how to do that comes up so much that it's even discussed in the Smartlist distribution; it's far from being new with Greg.
Why would a list administrator want to keep members from seeing how their posts look to other members?
On Fri, 09 Nov 2001, David W. Tamkin wrote:
| I thought it would be difficult to get smartlist to not send | a copy to the sender and only to all the other addresses in dist, | but it wasn't.
When I post to a mailing list, getting a copy as a subscriber lets me know that (and when) it was sent out to the membership, what edits a moderator may have made, and what the list software may have done to it (reformatting, abusive spell-checking, adding ads, whatever).
I like it that way too, but my students I guess think of a piece of email as being an object that if it comes back to them means it didn't get to where it was supposed to go.
Yet the question of how to do that comes up so much that it's even discussed in the Smartlist distribution..
I couldn't find that in the Manual or in the examples directory or INTRO..
Greg Matheson lang-sl@ms.chinmin.edu.tw wrote:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2001, David W. Tamkin wrote:
| I thought it would be difficult to get smartlist to not send | a copy to the sender and only to all the other addresses in dist, | but it wasn't.
You cannot do this with SL unless you modify the choplist code.
Yet the question of how to do that comes up so much that it's even
discussed
in the Smartlist distribution..
I couldn't find that in the Manual or in the examples directory or INTRO..
That's really a question for the FAQ.
Werner
On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Werner Reisberger wrote:
Greg Matheson lang-sl@ms.chinmin.edu.tw wrote:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2001, David W. Tamkin wrote:
| I thought it would be difficult to get smartlist to not send | a copy to the sender and only to all the other addresses in dist, | but it wasn't.
Sorry, I wrote this sentence about getting smartlist to leave out the sender when distributing the message, not David. I think I must have deleted his attribution line.
You cannot do this with SL unless you modify the choplist code.
I've done only minimal testing, with 2 or 3 addresses in dist, but it seems smartlist is just distributing to the other addresses and not that of the sender.
Is dist hard-coded into choplist? Or is it sufficient to modify this line:
alt_sendmail="choplist $minnames $mindiffnames $maxnames $maxsplits $maxsize $maxconcur dist"
in rc.init
On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, David W. Tamkin wrote:
Greg explained,
| ... my students I guess think of a piece | of email as being an object that if it comes back to them means | it didn't get to where it was supposed to go.
[cut]
Perhaps you could teach them that it is a good thing to get back one's own posts is a good thing and that "MAILER-DAEMON" is not any of their names.
This is what I say. If they get back their mail, I say it means it shows that the mail at least made it to Chinmin College. They are not disturbed by not getting replies to their mail from correspondents. <advertisement>Anyone wanting some Taiwanese penpals should visit the site below</advertisement>
In defense of my students, I am perhaps confusing them by not telling them more about the lists to which they are writing. They are under the impression they are writing to individual penpals. The smartlist lists at those addresses are behind the scenes.
I think those MAILER-DAEMON messages are not just confusing to non-native speakers of English, and SmartList itself isn't very explicit about identifying itself. It could advertise the the fact it is distributing a list more by rewriting the To: line the way I thought LISTSERV used to stick in the official name for the list, but apparently doesn't. LISTSERV does capitalize the address in the To: line however.
Greg wrote,
| SmartList itself isn't very | explicit about identifying itself. It could advertise the | the fact it is distributing a list more | by rewriting the To: line the way I thought LISTSERV used to | stick in the official name for the list, but apparently doesn't.
Agreed. Too many mail clients have a fixed set of header lines that they show, and it never includes List-ID: or X-Mailing-List: or Mailing-List: nor anything else that list software might reasonably add; that's why there are ugly hacks around like tagging the subject line (yeccccch).
On my last list -- which I ran with homebrew routines, not with SmartList -- I ended up removing Cc: and Resent- lines from incoming posts and clobbering To: with the name and submission address of the list. I hesitated at first, figuring that was depriving members of information (for example, they would not know whether a follow-up article had also been emailed directly to the previous poster), but it occurred to me that digest-mode readers never get that information anyway and are none the worse for surviving without it. So I went ahead, and nobody ever complained. It made it easier for people with limited filtering capability (for example, back then Hotmail users could sort on To: but not on Cc:) to filter posts to their own folder, and it prevented the buildup of extraneous addressees in a chain of reply-alls.
On second thought, if there had been good reason to preserve the original addressing information, I could have just used formail's -i option instead of -I in that filter.
Greg explained,
| I like it that way too, but my students I guess think of a piece | of email as being an object that if it comes back to them means | it didn't get to where it was supposed to go.
Greg, in your position I would turn them down instead of accommodating them.
If they can't tell the difference between a mailing list distribution and a non-delivery notification, if they can't tell the difference between mail From: themselves and mail From: MAILER-DAEMON, if they can't distinguish a Subject: line that they used on their own outgoing post from "Returned Mail: user unknown" or such, then one of their other teachers is doing a very poor job of educating them. It's a shame that you colleagues are falling down on the job so badly.
Considering the ways my posts have been mangled by assorted mailing list software, I would never accept a setup where I didn't see -- or where I had to search to see -- the condition in which my writing was presented to the other members.
Perhaps you could teach them that it is a good thing to get back one's own posts is a good thing and that "MAILER-DAEMON" is not any of their names.
I ran some small mailing lists for many years with my own homebrew routines, and I offered a lot of format or delivery options, including several that I personally disliked but implemented when one or more members asked for them; but that is one which, had anyone ever asked for it, I'd have flatly turned down. While others may have been not to my taste, I see this one as an outright negative. My honest answer if anyone asks how to do it is that it shouldn't be done.
In a post responding to Greg Matheson, I mistyped,
| It's a shame that you colleagues are falling down on | the job so badly.
That should be "your colleagues" in reference to whichever other instructor there should have taught Greg's students more about email than they seem to know. I didn't mean "you and your colleagues" nor "you who are colleagues" nor anything else that might include Greg himself; I'm sure he's not the one at fault. Apologies for any implication to the contrary.
The electrician is due here in ten minutes and our power will be off for several hours. It's a very good time for me to get off the computer.
LOL - try to explain it this way:
That would only be the case if they were not subscribers themselves. Certainly, when they send an email to an individual, they don't expect it to come back, except if undeliverable. But a list you are also a member of is a little different.
If write an article for a magazine and then you buy that magazine, wouldn't you see your article in your copy since you are a subscriber, just like all the other subscribers see it?
If you are treasurer and send out annual dues reminders to all your club members, don't you also need to receive a copy since you are a member? You still have to pay your dues.
Jo Shea, Mamma Roo herself, http://kanggah.com http://herniche.com - have you found yours yet? Take advantage now! Limited Time Offer: Free domain name and no set up fees with any 6 or 12 month hosting sign-up
-----Original Message-----
I like it that way too, but my students I guess think of a piece of email as being an object that if it comes back to them means it didn't get to where it was supposed to go.
-- Greg Matheson
| If write an article for a magazine and then you buy that magazine, | wouldn't you see your article in your copy since you are a subscriber, | just like all the other subscribers see it?
That's an excellent way to illustrate it, Jo. They certainly wouldn't want a special edition of the magazine that omitted their article.
| If you are treasurer and send out annual dues reminders to all your club | members, don't you also need to receive a copy since you are a member?
Well, maybe not; as treasurer you could remind yourself by just thinking about it without mailing yourself a notice.
smartlist@lists.rwth-aachen.de
-
David W. Tamkin -
Greg Matheson -
Listmail -
Werner Reisberger