I'm wondering how best to share my Mailman extensions, assuming they're
useful to anyone besides me. For now, I've created a project at
sourceforge.net (http://sourceforge.net/projects/dsub/) and released a
tarball containing the files I've modified or created. The code is
pre-alpha at this point. I hope to have an alpha version by the end of
this weekend. While I hope my changes will eventually be incorporated into
Mailman, the time has clearly not yet arrived. Any advice on whether to
start my own branch of the Mailman CVS tree now or to keep hacking
separately until when and if my code is incorporated?
When I upload the alpha code, I'll also post a design doc and ask for
criticism.
I've attached my original description of my changes.
Ellen
FUNCTIONALITY
A user of mailing list foo creates a new thread with a base name of bar by
sending email to foo-new-bar@host. The system appends an integer to bar to
generate a unique thread name, e.g., bar1. All subscribers to mailing list
foo receive the first message of any thread. The message headers are:
To: foo-bar1@host
From: original-sender@wherever
If a user chooses reply, the new message goes to the original sender
(assuming a decent MUA). It a user chooses reply-all, the new message
becomes part of the thread bar1.
When subscribing (or subsequently), each user specifies whether they want
to be subscribed to new threads by default. If so, the user gets all
messages in a new thread (unless they explicitly unsubscribe). If a user
chooses NOT to be subscribed to new threads by default, they only get the
initial message unless they explicitly subscribe. Each message contains
(un)subscribe information both as a URL and mailto to make the operations
as lightweight as possible; e.g.,
To unsubscribe from this conversation, send email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
or visit
http://javamlm.mills.edu/scripts/override?listname=foo&conversation=14&preference=0.
To unsubscribe from foo, send email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Note that thread membership is determined solely by the address to which a
message is sent, not the message's subject, references, or other headers.
IMPLEMENTATION
We implemented threads by including a threadID in each message's metadata,
which was stored in a relational database, as was information about each
thread, subscription, etc. The following SQL query determines to whom to
send a message in thread 37:
SELECT email
FROM Subscriber
WHERE deleted = FALSE AND
((Subscriber.preference = 1 AND
NOT EXISTS
(SELECT * FROM Override
WHERE Override.subscriber_id = Subscriber.subscriber_id
AND Override.thread_id = 37
AND Override.preference = 0))
OR
(Subscriber.preference = 0 AND
EXISTS
(SELECT * FROM Override
WHERE Override.subscriber_id = Subscriber.subscriber_id
AND Override.thread_id = 37
AND Override.preference = 1)))
The full schema is in the paper. I'm including the query here to give you
an idea of the complexity and to show that list membership is calculated on
the fly.
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