> - Stable URLs, RFC 5064 + X-Message-ID-Hash. > See the above links. If you can implement the > `IArchiver.permalink()` method and ensure that even if > completely wiped and regenerated from the > underlying raw messages, your URLs > will remain stable, I think you will have won. :)
This is really trivial to implement. HOWEVER, it also has two notable problems. First, if the sender-selected-messageID is trusted to make a unique-id and permalink, then you are trusting senders, which IMO is a bad idea. What happens when senders intentionally duplicate a message-id? It's pretty hard to do anything smart when the listprocessor doesn't track messageids. Second, when message-id uniqueness breaks, it's often not an isolated instance, but a pattern of software doing bad things. I prefer generating a trustably unique message IDs, even if those are only used internally. I've used partial-content hashes in the past, but they have their tradeoffs. They are hard to abuse, since matching a content hash tends to mean supplying the same content, which kinda prevents abuse. However, if the content is being changed at all (intentionally or not), they breakdown. --- I like your ideas about plug-in text-match-formatters. We have something like that in the willowmail system, and it's pretty useful. (auto-linking fedex tracking numbers in email is one example) > - Merging of forums, archives, newsgroups, and IMAP. You like to bite off the big ones eh? NNTP, then IMAP. Does anyone even use fat-mail-clients anymore? Even the IMAP clients I've used in recent years have been web-based..... which is kinda already unified with web-based archives since they are both in the browser. :) Seriously though, what is the goal here? I suppose I've had one thought over the years, which is that sometimes it seems weird that I have all these mailing lists delivering into my mail client. In theory my mail client could be 'faking' the whole thing with NNTP to a known archive location. However, that only works when online. If you have to do delivery to my client, who cares if it's SMTP/NNTP/IMAP? I say pick the simplest one (SMTP), which works with all mail clients, no changes, and allows you to keep your messages when the archive goes down. As for mail-client integration features... I like mail-client push-button unsubscribe. I like the idea of making it trivial for mail clients to recognize mailing lists posts and auto-configure filter-to-folder for them. Neither of these require NNTP/IMAP in the archive though. _______________________________________________ Mailman-Developers mailing list Mailman-Developers@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-developers/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9