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List:       mhonarc
Subject:    Re: EXCS Comments, In-Reply-To, and References not working
From:       Earl Hood <ehood () hydra ! acs ! uci ! edu>
Date:       1999-03-10 6:21:51
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[Sorry for the late reply.  The message was sent while I was busy moving,
 but I think it is still worth a response.]

On January 16, 1999 at 12:28, Al Gilman wrote:

> Like you, I fail to find $TO$ in the index of variables.
...
> We will have to hear from Earl for a definitive answer, but it sure sounds
> like for exactly what you want to do, someone has to patch MHonArc to
> generate the $TO$.

Correct.  Since "To:" seemed to of little need in mailing lists, it
was not included in the "key" fields to remember.  Also, the "To:" can
contain many receipients, making the flat-file db unnecessarily large
for questionable gain.


> Harald Alvestrand once opined that Web archivers for Mail or News are "the
> wrong architecture."  He felt that a superior architecture would be one
> where if you want to read the message you get a verbatim message/rfc822
> copy and read it in your mail (or news) tool.

This depends on the intent on the archive.  The big plus that web
archivers give is navigational aides.  Ie.  The navigational links
given on each message page cannot be display with raw message/rfc822
data.

Also, if using an extensible archiver, admins can control how much
of the original message should be displayed.  I.e. They have the ability
to do some automated editorial control to follow whatever guidelines
they want to impose on the archive data.  Examples:

	o  Stripping JavaScript from HTML messages to avoid
	   security holes.

	o  Drop attachments to save space (and may not appropriate,
	   for the mailing list in question).


> Has anyone built a service where the index is a web page but the message is
> verbatim?  Unfortunately this requires users to know how to install viewers
> in their browser, but it would be interesting to know what has been tried
> and how well it works.

Netscape supports the message/rfc822 type and will render it directly
in the browser.

If you shut-off the MSGPGS resource in MHonArc, and redefine index
related resources to use links that will retrieve the original message,
you can get something you have mentioned.  MHonArc is then only
used to provide the main navigational indexes.

This scheme will probably be more suited for a frames based navigation
where the index is one frame, and any link activated will show the
message is a separate frame.

	--ewh

----
             Earl Hood              | University of California: Irvine
      ehood@medusa.acs.uci.edu      |      Electronic Loiterer
http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/ | Dabbler of SGML/WWW/Perl/MIME

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