4 ms·

Postgres' archives aren't that bad. You can find things via $search_engine, view by time, thread view crosses months etc: https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-

Postgres' archives aren't that bad. You can find things via $search_engine, view by time, thread view crosses months etc: https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-hackers/ https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-hackers/

u801e 9y ago
It apparently doesn't present a threaded view like a mail/news client would and downloading the mbox file requires one to authenticate with the server.
- anarazel 9y ago
  > It apparently doesn't present a threaded view like a mail/news client would Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure. > and downloading the mbox file requires one to authenticate with the server. It does, but also says “Please authenticate with user archives and password antispam” - it's just to make automated extraction of email addresses a bit more work.
  - u801e 9y ago
    > Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure. Yes, but it's much more cumbersome to navigate the thread compared to using an actual mail client. If web pages of mail archives could present an overview pane for navigating messages, it would go a long way to making them usable in a browser as opposed to just posting links to the immediate parent and the set of children for a given message. Though I wish that having a NNTP gateway (or using NNTP as a primary method of communication for a project) was the standard as opposed to using a mailing list since it would make viewing past messages before subscribing to a newsgroup trivial.
    - anarazel 9y ago
      > Yes, but it's much more cumbersome to navigate the thread compared to using an actual mail client. If web pages of mail archives could present an overview pane for navigating messages, it would go a long way to making them usable in a browser as opposed to just posting links to the immediate parent and the set of children for a given message. It does, although discovery of the feature as well as the feature itself could use some improvement. In the header there's "Thread:" and the associated button displays the structure. You can also open a whole thread, but I don't find that particularly useful. The download mbox link inside a message will give you the whole thread as well.
- kazinator 9y ago
  Not all mailing list archivers are created equal. For my own site, I rejected the awful Pipermail (default archiver with GNU Mailman) with its brutally ugly presentation format and text-only. I found an alternative called Lurker, with a better web interface and some of the features you're mentioning, like threading. I further customized Lurker. I gave it a button bar with custom icons, and hacked it to support in-line HTML (when people post HTML to the mailing list, it is integrated into the archive as HTML). Because that is dangerous, of course, I wrote a comprehensive HTML cleaner for that. I welcome HTML in my mailing lists; it's time for mailing lists to retire "text only" rules. It improves the formatting of text, letting you use typewriter fonts, italics and bold appropriately, and real bullets. Here is an archive message with in-line images, another benefit: http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20131110.004036.5ed1288c.en.html http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20131110.004036.5ed128... Here is discussion where you can see a branched tree view: http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20121127.210005.0ca78dd0.en.html http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20121127.210005.0ca78d... Lurker mods: http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/lurker/ http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/lurker/ HTML cleaner: http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/hc/tree/ http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/hc/tree/ This lexically analyzes the HTML and filters out all unwanted tags, or unwanted attributes of otherwise wanted tags. mbox archives reveal people's e-mails; you have to control access to those.
  - kazinator 9y ago
    By the way, here is the Lurker author's response to my changes: https://sourceforge.net/p/lurker/mailman/message/31487163/ https://sourceforge.net/p/lurker/mailman/message/31487163/ TL; DR: Irrationally against all HTML in mail archives, even if properly cleaned. Thanks for Lurker, though!
  - u801e 9y ago
    > http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20121127.210005.0ca78d.. http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20121127.210005.0ca78d.... That does look better compared to other web interfaces I've seen in the past (though you still have to hover over the icon to view details of a message like the author and subject). One decent interface I've seen is public-inbox (https://public-inbox.org/git/ https://public-inbox.org/git/). It presents an overview with the subjects and threading and allows for downloading mbox files or using an atom feed link.

u801e 9y ago

It apparently doesn't present a threaded view like a mail/news client would and downloading the mbox file requires one to authenticate with the server.

anarazel 9y ago
> It apparently doesn't present a threaded view like a mail/news client would Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure. > and downloading the mbox file requires one to authenticate with the server. It does, but also says “Please authenticate with user archives and password antispam” - it's just to make automated extraction of email addresses a bit more work.
- u801e 9y ago
  > Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure. Yes, but it's much more cumbersome to navigate the thread compared to using an actual mail client. If web pages of mail archives could present an overview pane for navigating messages, it would go a long way to making them usable in a browser as opposed to just posting links to the immediate parent and the set of children for a given message. Though I wish that having a NNTP gateway (or using NNTP as a primary method of communication for a project) was the standard as opposed to using a mailing list since it would make viewing past messages before subscribing to a newsgroup trivial.
  - anarazel 9y ago
    > Yes, but it's much more cumbersome to navigate the thread compared to using an actual mail client. If web pages of mail archives could present an overview pane for navigating messages, it would go a long way to making them usable in a browser as opposed to just posting links to the immediate parent and the set of children for a given message. It does, although discovery of the feature as well as the feature itself could use some improvement. In the header there's "Thread:" and the associated button displays the structure. You can also open a whole thread, but I don't find that particularly useful. The download mbox link inside a message will give you the whole thread as well.
kazinator 9y ago
Not all mailing list archivers are created equal. For my own site, I rejected the awful Pipermail (default archiver with GNU Mailman) with its brutally ugly presentation format and text-only. I found an alternative called Lurker, with a better web interface and some of the features you're mentioning, like threading. I further customized Lurker. I gave it a button bar with custom icons, and hacked it to support in-line HTML (when people post HTML to the mailing list, it is integrated into the archive as HTML). Because that is dangerous, of course, I wrote a comprehensive HTML cleaner for that. I welcome HTML in my mailing lists; it's time for mailing lists to retire "text only" rules. It improves the formatting of text, letting you use typewriter fonts, italics and bold appropriately, and real bullets. Here is an archive message with in-line images, another benefit: http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20131110.004036.5ed1288c.en.html http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20131110.004036.5ed128... Here is discussion where you can see a branched tree view: http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20121127.210005.0ca78dd0.en.html http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20121127.210005.0ca78d... Lurker mods: http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/lurker/ http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/lurker/ HTML cleaner: http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/hc/tree/ http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/hc/tree/ This lexically analyzes the HTML and filters out all unwanted tags, or unwanted attributes of otherwise wanted tags. mbox archives reveal people's e-mails; you have to control access to those.
- kazinator 9y ago
  By the way, here is the Lurker author's response to my changes: https://sourceforge.net/p/lurker/mailman/message/31487163/ https://sourceforge.net/p/lurker/mailman/message/31487163/ TL; DR: Irrationally against all HTML in mail archives, even if properly cleaned. Thanks for Lurker, though!
- u801e 9y ago
  > http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20121127.210005.0ca78d.. http://www.kylheku.com/lurker/message/20121127.210005.0ca78d.... That does look better compared to other web interfaces I've seen in the past (though you still have to hover over the icon to view details of a message like the author and subject). One decent interface I've seen is public-inbox (https://public-inbox.org/git/ https://public-inbox.org/git/). It presents an overview with the subjects and threading and allows for downloading mbox files or using an atom feed link.