I do not use the Mailman server myself, but I am a member on several Mailman-driven lists. I usually sign up with the digest form, as that fills my mailbox with fewer messages. One frustration I have with any digesting software, and Mailman is no exception, is that the digest is not very smart: it leaves in lots of redundant noise that could be removed from the summary. Of course, it won't be possible to make the digest software overcome the lack of etiquette that its users display, but there are a few automatable anti-noise features I'd like to see. These can either be hardwired into Mailman, or they can be made into orthogonally selectable options. These can be done on the input side, or on the digest output side, either way. Option 1: Remove Tail List Signature from Inbound When receiving a message to a list, if the last N consecutive lines match the list's own signature lines (ignoring leading regex [\[\]\|\>\t ]*), remove those lines from the inbound message. Also remove a line preceding the N lines which is exactly "--", the standard signature-follows mark. Defaults off if O#2 below is also implemented, defaults on if not. Option 2: Remove Redundant List Signatures from Inbound Like O#1 above, except it looks through all lines of the message, not just the tailing N lines. Defaults on. Option 3: Remove Redundant Blank Lines from Inbound Any multiple consecutive lines that are blank (again ignoring leading regex [\[\]\|\>\t ]*) are removed. Only one consecutive blank line is allowed. Defaults on. Option 4: Remove Personal Signatures from Inbound Any trailing lines following the standard signature-follows mark, a line exactly "--", are removed. Defaults off. Option 5: Maximum Reply Quotation Level from Inbound For any line beginning with the regex [\[\]\|\>][\[\]\|\>\t\ ]*, count the non-whitespace characters in the match. If the count is greater than the chosen maximum, replace it (and similar consecutive lines) with a line that reads "[ deep reply quotations edited out by Mailman for brevity ]". Rationale: people have seen the deeply quoted material several times. Defaults to off, but suggests a maximum of 3 levels if turned on. Other options are to perform O#2, O#3, O#5 only when compiling a digest, and not for all inbound messages. This makes for a condensed digest, while leaving direct-from-list inbound messages alone. Unfortunately, this has to be a set of admin configured options; to offer this as an individually adjustable set of digesting options would require compiling all requested permutations of digest options. I think the actual processing load will be tolerable for any human usable mail list, and would only be a problem for machines that host many dozens of very active Mailman lists. The benefits, on the other hand, will be mightily popular with Mailman-list mail recipients, for the lower signal-to-noise ratio of their daily digests or emails. (I'm not on [EMAIL PROTECTED], so if you'd like to reply, reply directly. Thanks.) -- [ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ] ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
