Hi Peter,
I can see that having both systems at the same time would be nice, but how
would you solve the problem about "catagory", "topics", "threads",
"subjects".. in a mailing
list you only have a "subject". so if we parsed the mailist and got the
forum in sync then
all posts would just come in one catorory (not much of a win there).
I suggest you read up on RFC 2822 (the "standard" that defines how
e-mails are formed). There are hidden headers in each mail message which
define lots of cool things, one of which is an identifier which can be
used to thread the messages ("References:"). Most good e-mail clients
allow you to display messages in threaded "tree" format (Thunderbird,
Evolution). This header can be used to make forum-like threads out of
messages.
(As an aside, that's why when you start a new topic of discussion on
this mailing list, it's proper netiquette to click "New message" in your
client instead of replying to an old message and changing the subject.
The former will do the right thing, the latter will make your message
show up at the end of the old thread for anyone who displays their
messages in threaded form.)
Of course, it's up to the mail client to form a correct reply message,
and some omit the "References:" header (these should be exceedingly rare
now). Even if there is no "References:" header, most of the time you can
use heuristics (remove "Re:" to get the title, which gives you the
thread, then add the message to the thread in the order it was received
by date-time). These will fail sometimes, but most of the time will give
sane results.
Don't worry, some software exists to go from mailing list to forum and
back, so it's not a problem as you think it is. See for example:
http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.openscenegraph.user
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.openscenegraph.user
http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.openscenegraph.user
The problem is committing to one and then also finding the time to
install/configure/test/maintain it. Until that happens, it's likely
nothing will change and we'll get into these discussions every few months.
J-S
--
______________________________________________________
Jean-Sebastien Guay [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cm-labs.com/
http://whitestar02.webhop.org/
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