>>>>> "CMG" == Carlos M Gutierrez <carlos@gutierrez.com> writes:
[Typing info from the confirmation email into a form to validate a
subscription]
CMG> That will work. One could also code the confirmation message in such a
CMG> way that the user only has to hit 'reply' in his mailer to finish
CMG> subscribing himself. The message would already have a crypt key on
CMG> it... I think this is the same as currently in 1.94 but I am not
CMG> sure...
I spent some time thinking about making a reply work, and there are just to
many things that can happen when someone replies to an article. Mailers
can do just about whatever they feel like to the quoted text, and trying to
code around that would be nightmare. At the moment we assume that the user
at least has cut-and-paste capability. I have had a couple of cases where
the poor person was obviously typing in the line from scratch.
Now, in what is probably prolonging a non-argument, I add some needless
rebuttal. This is just speculation on how things could work in the utopian
world of Majordomo 341.7beta8:
CMG> Don't feel like a dinosaur! :-) Though, I think the web interface is
CMG> more useful than you realize...
CMG> Take for example, the case of an administrator subscribing and
CMG> unsubscribing members: he has to enter the list password on every
CMG> approve line.
Even as things are now, it's a trivial matter for the interface to extract
stuff from the .majordomo file so this is unnecessary. In fact, even less
authentication is necessary because you would never have to type in a
password. You would have to initially authenticate the web client.
CMG> After that he only has to enter names and addresses, and hit
CMG> 'subscribe'.
And can't do it in a script from a list of 10000 addresses extracted from,
say, an enrollment roster. Unless you really want to type all of that in.
Or hire someone at minimum wage to do it. Or, heck, just use Majordomo;
and call the subscribe function directly.
CMG> For unsubscribes, a search function based on Perl pattern matching or
CMG> glimpse could be devised.
That's a neat idea. Of course, it would be an internal function and thus
available to all interfaces.
CMG> The script would list all the matches. The admin clicks on the match
CMG> to be unsubscribed, or renamed, or changed address, or upgraded, or
CMG> admonished... ;-)
Yep, scrolly lists are one real advantage over a command line interface,
though there is curses. Ah, another possible interface. And a PerlTk one,
too. The possibilities are endless. Too bad the supply of programmers
isn't.
CMG> but I digress... first the low-level stuff has to be in place!
Well, digression isn't a bad thing. As long as someone is writing all of
this down. Then again, meadow.net has all of these archives online and
searchable so I guess there's no point.
CMG> p.s. One other wish item for 2.0 ... how about "modularizing" the help
CMG> and other messages that Majordomo sends to list members and
CMG> administrators?
You know, I just thought of this today. This doesn't have to be a 2.0
thing; I'll submit patches to put it into 1.95. It would actually clean up
the code nicely because there wouldn't be all of these messages scattered
throughout the code. Unfortunately, all of this stuff is making the config
files _HUGE_. Which means that I'll probably have to cook up a way to get
a config file without all of the comments, or even without certain advanced
options for the poor folks who just want to run a small list and don't want
to read 2000 lines of config file.
- J<
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