I'm relatively new to Mailman but I've managed to build it from source and set up a few lists, with generous help from this list.
While working through issues relating to creating a standard list configuration, I started to feel that there was a fundamental flaw in the way Mailman lists are configured that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Of course, this could be due me not knowing or understanding something, and, if so, I'll be happy to retract what I'm going to say below. Yesterday, I realized that I had made a mistake in how I had configured all my lists (I only have about 6 so far, so this is no great tragedy). This was entirely my fault, and not due to anything amiss in Mailman. So, using the web interface, I fixed the mistake on all 6 lists. This wasn't too bad, but it got me to thinking what I would have had to do if I had 1,000 lists. All of a sudden the thought hit me that would it be better if Mailman lists were designed kind of like classes in an object oriented programming language. There would be one super list which would be configured with all the standard values you want every list to have. Then, there would be lists derived from the super list, which would only need to be configured to have values different than the super list. There could even be lists derived from these lists, and so on down the line. With this design philosophy it would be very easy to make changes that effect multiple lists because the change would only have to be made in one place. I haven't thought it through but it might even be possible for this class-like design to include list membership making it easier to have one list contain other lists as members. Given that Mailman is written in Python, my naive impression would be that this should be relatively easy to implement. (As my old boss Mike Stonebraker used to say, it's just "a simple matter of software"). In reading the Mailman documentation I saw a mention of an "umbrella list", but the only description here says "umbrella lists" are depreciated and will be replaced with a better mechanism for Mailman 3.0". Are umbrella lists somehow related to what I'm talking about? Am I completely out to lunch or does this make any sense? Cordially, -- Jon Forrest [EMAIL PROTECTED] Computer Resources Manager Civil and Environmental Engineering Dept. 305 Davis Hall Univ. of Calif., Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-1710 510-642-0904 ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.027.htp
