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List:       listar-support
Subject:    [Listar-support] Listar vs. majordomo
From:       Peter Stieglecker <pst () radawana ! at>
Date:       1999-07-27 10:14:35
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First: Thank you for Listar :-)

(This is my first posting here so please forgive me any FAQ or
suggeststion that I did not find answered browsing shortly through the
archive.)

I am handling a few small lists with majordomo, mostly for fun with only a
few hundred subscribers each. And over the years I fiddled around with the
configuration to protect members and to simplify access to the lists. I
guess Listar will close many of the open "holes" of majordomo (like
bounces). But on the other hand I "miss" a few small features:

1. In majordomo, the "which" command takes a string which is used to
   substring-match against any list. I would like to sugest this feature
   for listar, as many people seem to "collect" email addresses and forget
   their subscriber address.

   The output of majordomo looks like this:

   >>>> which myname
   The string 'myname' appears in the following
   entries in lists served by Majordomo@somewhere.com:

   List                    Address
   ====                    =======
   list1                   mynaem@yahoo.com
   list2                   myname@gmx.de
   ...

   (The number of hits returned can be configured to avoid people stealing
    email adresses by searching for @). 

2. I like the majordomo feature to replace variables in Configuration
   files. The most famous one might be $LIST which is replaced by the
   name of the actual list. If it does not break the concept I would
   like to suggest this feature for listar as well.

3. There was a discussion about having a perl (or any interpreter hook) 
   and I think I got the point about performance. But I was wondering
   whether it would be possible to allow an arbitrary interpreter to
   "do something" to all involved files whenever a mail is sent through
   a list. It does not neccessarily have to happen for every single
   subscriber, but to the mail and the configuration files before the
   mail is sent.

   Example: We happen to host a mailing list about "the end of the world
   on August 11th" (date varies). In the footer of this list I put a
   small countdown to show the number of days left for posting to the
   list.

   I admit, I had to change majordomo sources slightly to replace a
   new variable $DAYSTILTHEEND by the output of a small perl script, but
   anyway... Is there a way to do this in Listar?

   Other examples could be "Tip of the day", "News of the day", "Link of
   the day"... well I guess you know what I mean. 

What do you think about a general "Tag" which could be used for both:
to be replaced by Listar variables or to call some external program and
put the output there, like in this example:

<LIST>                                    ... listar-support
<EXEC /usr/local/bin/daydiff 1999 08 11>  ... 15
...

Then people could decide themself whether they can afford to use
<EXEC...> in a 330.000 user list.

Thanks again, and I hope it was not a faux-pas to compare listar to
majordomo on this list :-) If so, I apologize.

Peter

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