Hi Earl,
An RDF rcfile would be totally cool, and also show off the
flexibility of MHonArc. I think it also might be a candidate
for the MHonArc examples directory. I briefly started making
one, and it seemed tricky.
Any alternate to the list-of-lists would be great, because the
current one is getting so unwieldy, even for personal use. I don't
know what the best solution is, though. Htdig can merge multiple
htdig-dbs. However, I don't think I have the hardware to search
across millions of message. So if I did go with the 'interest
finder' suggestion, it would probably just have a small,
independent htdig-database that covered only recent messages from
all the lists.
It's hard for me to make subjective calls on index layouts, as I
recognize I'm no expert, but have mild (not unwavering!) trust in
my intuition. In the threads case, I chose lots of repetition of
subject lines, to make it trivial to tell at a glance what the
major threads are about.
I'm afraid of the complexity that might come with keeping metadata
like descriptions and subscription information around. Baggage
might include logins, a concept of list archive administrators, and
probably a few other things. The best ideas I have for metadata is
1) Hope the yahoo's and liszt's of the world decide to do it.
This is what I am really hoping for.
2) Somehow link against the list's intro letter that is sometimes
sent directly to archive@jab.org
3) Make it possible for people to forward metadata as an email to
a special address. Thus the metadata would be made accessable
in the format of a list archive.
Jeff
