Re: Killer app #493

[Jim Pick <jim jimpick com>]

Elliot Lee <sopwith@cuc.edu> writes:

> gmailman seems to be working for me, so I'd like to tell the world so they
> can start knocking it to pieces and sending in ideas...
> 
> Don't know what mailing lists you're on, or how to get off of them? It
> keeps track of your mailing list subscriptions. Currently it supports
> Majordomo & SmartList list subscriptions, but adding new types is *very*
> easy (see smartlist.m and majordomo.m for illumination).

Cool.

If it can handle bugtraq (including regular renewals), you get a
prize.:-)

Now what would be nice is to hook a mail filter to it.

One feature I'd really like is to make it work with a filter on the
MTA that filters based on the envelope.  That way it would be possible
to ditch all those screwball procmail/mailagent rules that have
trouble with lists that don't behave with their headers.

ie.

Subscribed to each mailing list using a different email address with a
prefix - ie.

All mail from linux-kernel goes to jim-linux-kernel@jimpick.com
All mail from bugtraq      goes to jim-bugtraq@jimpick.com   
etc.

It's pretty easy to set up exim to deposit these into the appropriate
folder based on the name jim-<listname>@jimpick.com.

The big problem with doing things this way is that some lists are very
picky about the address the subscription/unsubscription/confirm
requests come from (they have to match).  That means I have to send
mail setting the "From:" address (ie. use the -f option with sendmail,
and be a trusted user).  This is a real pain - but it using a tool
like gmailman to manage the subscriptions automatically would
definitely help.

The other cool thing would be to get a list of all the main mailing
lists and put them into an RDF format file (distributed as part of the
LDP).  Here's a good database to start with:

  http://www.croftj.net/~barreiro/lml.html

(I've got a few more bookmarked as well)

Cheers,

 - Jim

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