----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kurt Bigler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 8:12 PM
Subject: Re: [sqwebmail] NEW: domainmap Patch


> on 2/23/03 8:18 AM, Jesse Guardiani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > Kurt Bigler wrote:
> 

<snip>

> In this proposal logindomainlist would have records of this form:
> 
>     login-domain:web-domain-spec:group-key
> 
> The first two fields are exactly the reverse of the domainmap fields as
> currently defined.
> 
> Fields:
> 
>     login-domain
>         is the default domain for the login, which works either with or
>         without a popup list, as already described.
> 
>     web-domain-spec
>         is a string to match against either the SERVER_ADDR or HTTP_HOST
>         environment variables (for IP- or NAME- based virtual hosting)
> 
>     group-key 
>         is either:
> 
>             an asterisk, indicating that this is a "loner"
>             domain - the popup domain list should be suppressed
>         
>         or:
> 
>             a string used to identify a "group" to which this domain belongs
>             All domains sharing the same group-key will appear together
>             on a popup domain list.
>             The group-key field may be empty.  The "empty" key
>             is a valid group-key like any other.  All domains
>             specifying no group-key belong to the same group.
> 

Well, I definately see what you were getting at now.

I'd be extremely interested in hearing how many people would like to see 
this kind of functionality included in vpopmail (especially you, Sam).

I personally use vpopmail with sqwebmail, and I envision wrapping my webmail
installation with a kind of "account control and information page" that provides
links to webmail (sqwebmail), control panel (qmailadmin), and other CGIs or
scripts my company creates. This script would look into an account database
and group domains that a person is affiliated with automatically for display
to the user. 

I coded the domainmap functionality because it was a quick way to insure that
IP-alias functionality would indeed work with sqwebmail if I couldn't fix the
broken vpopmail-specific IP-alias functionality. I also coded it so that others
would be able to use the IP-alias functionality even without vpopmail, as a way
to give back to the open source community. There seemed to be at least a couple
of people who had either patched their code for the same functionality or who
wanted it, but couldn't write it themselves. Personally, I never intend to use
the code I wrote in a production environment. (not that it's not good enough,
but simply because vpopmail will do a better job of it for me. I want to keep
things integrated.)

With the above two paragraphs in mind, I'll say this: It seems to me that flat
files are largely a thing of the past. Everything is now targeting SQL. Because
of this, I find it hard to justify writing the code necessary to do what you
envision.

Not that it would really be extremely hard to write or anything, because it
wouldn't, but because I feel like most people would be better served to write
a PHP script or Perl script front end to sqwebmail that automatically logs the
user into a domain based on your custom criteria...

I mean, where do we stop? Why not add a field for regular expression matches or
external program calls? And quickly we'd be writing bloatware rather than the
lean mean sqwebmail we know and (hopefully) love.

I wrote my domainmap code because it was extremely quick and easy to write, and
because it addressed an issue that I genuinely believed would do some people
good and make a few hundred thousand user's lives easier. (man, some of those
domains are a real pain to type, you know?)

If ten or twenty people write back about this thread and say, "Hey! That would
be the greatest thing next to sliced bread!", then you have my blessing to write
the code yourself. You seem to be a decent analytical thinker. I'll even help
out a little if you need some pointers. But I just can't justify writing it myself
as I'll probably never use it.

And, as always, I'd still greatly enjoy reading everyone's opinion on the matter.

Good luck!

Jesse




> 
> Thanks,
> Kurt Bigler
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

Reply via email to