I run two mailing lists that I set up here on minyos, using scripts I wrote
myself from scratch, out of a combination of awk and Bourne shell scripts.
I want to change over to a majordomo setup, except for one or two minor things
that I'd like to see majordomo capable of (not just to as I don't have to change
my setup, mind, it's just that I find these extra bits useful)
The first isn't too complicated at all really, and revolves around the content
of the From: line in the email header. Most mailing lists I know of (and this
includes this majordomo one) do not change the headers to show that the mail
is from a mailing list, but leave the name of the original sender as the
contents of the line.
I know of one other mailing list that does what I do, which is to replace the
From: line with one that tells the end user that the mail is from a mailing
list, rather than personal mail (I find it REALLY annoying when I get mail from
lists that don't do this: the subject line is the only clue you have that it is
from a list -- and that is only if you can remember the context of the current
discussion!) Once that is done, the original user info (the original From:
line) is placed at the beginning of the mail body with the line Really-From:
OK, I'll give an example ... let's say the following arrives:
|From s914431 Tue Feb 8 12:34:18 1994
|Received: by minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU
|Date: Tue, 8 Feb 94 12:32:53 EDT
|From: s914431 (Malcolm Herbert)
|Message-Id: <9402080132.6070@minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU>
|To: choral-test, s914431
|Subject: Heading test
|
|This is the message body ...
That would then become:
|From s914431 Tue Feb 8 12:33:20 1994
|Received: by minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU
|Received: by choral-test mailing list (owner: s914431@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au)
| from s914431
|Received: by minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU
|Date: Tue, 8 Feb 94 12:32:53 EDT
|Message-Id: <9402080132.6070@minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU>
|X-Old-To: choral-test, s914431
|Subject: Heading test
|From: choral-test@minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU (The Choral Test List)
|To: choral-test@minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU
|
|Really-From: s914431 (Malcolm Herbert)
|Membership changes / repost requests: <choral-request@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au>
|
|This is the message body ...
So that when the email is received, the email reader (let's say elm) will show
that the email is from "The Choral Test List" rather than "Malcolm Herbert".
This allows easy group deleting of email if you don't want to read it, yet it
preserves the original sender, if you want to reply back to them in person.
The other question relates to the sort of database majordomo keeps on users.
Because my mailing list members are a close knit group, and often need to get
in contact with each other off the network, I have set up a simple database
containing postal addresses, phone numbers etc etc which can be accessed by
a mail server. What would I need to do to get majordomo to support this?
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas, please send them post-haste! Oh, and if
anyone can spot anything nasty about the header mangling done above, I'd
like to know that too ... :)
thanx,
Malcolm
============================================================================
Malcolm Herbert 2nd Yr Comms and Elec Eng
s914431@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au RMIT Melbourne Aust
============= Choral-net and choral-chat mailing lists manager =============
Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
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