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| -rw-r--r-- | NEWS | 209 |
1 files changed, 203 insertions, 6 deletions
@@ -4,18 +4,215 @@ Copyright (C) 1998,1999,2000,2001 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc. Here is a history of user visible changes to Mailman. -2.1 alpha 3 (XXX) +2.1 alpha 3 (20-Oct-2001) - - topic filters + - Realname support + o Mailman now tracks a member's Real Name in addition to their + email address. - - separate gui components + o List members can now supply their Real Names when + subscribing via the web. Their Real Names are parsed from + any thru-email subscriptions. - - membership adaptors + o Members can change their Real Names on their options page, + and admins can change members' Real Names on the membership + pages. Mass subscribing accepts "email@dom.ain (Real Name)" + entries, for both in-text-box and file-upload mass + subscriptions. - - realname support + - Filtering and Privacy + o Reply-To: munging has been enhanced to allow a wider range + of list policies. You can now pre-strip any Reply-To: + headers before adding list-specific ones (i.e. you can + override or extend existing Reply-To: headers). If + stripping, the old headers are no longer saved on + X-Reply-To: - - list extensibility + o New sender moderation rules. The old `posters', + `member_only_posting', `moderated' and `forbidden_posters' + options have been removed in favor of a new moderation + scheme. Each member has a personal moderation bit, and + non-member postings can be automatically accepted, held for + approval, rejected (bounced) or discarded. + o When membership rosters are private, responses to + subscription (and other) requests are made more generic so + that these processes can't be covertly mined for hidden + addresses. If a subscription request comes in for a user + who is already subscribed, the user is notified of potential + membership mining. + + o When a held message is approved via the admindb page, an + X-Moderated: header is added to the message. + + - Web U/I + o All web confirmations now require a two-click procedure, + where the first click gives them a page that allows them to + confirm or cancel their subscription. It is bad form for an + email click (HTTP GET) to have side effects. + + o Lots of improvements for clarity. + + o The Privacy category has grown three subcategories. + + o The General options page as a number of subsection headers. + + o The Passwords and Languages categories are now on separate + admin pages. + + o The admin subcategories are now formated as two columns in + the top and bottom legends. + + o When creating a list through the web, you can now specify + the initial list of supported languages. + + o The U/I for unsubscribing a member on the admin's membership + page should be more intuitive now. + + - Performance + o misc/mailman is a Unix init script, appropriate for + /etc/init.d, and containing chkconfig hooks for systems that + support it. + + o bin/mailmanctl has been rewritten; the `restart' command + actually works now. It now also accepts -s, -q, and -u + options. + + o bin/qrunner has been rewritten too; it can serve the role of + the old cron/qrunner script for those who want classic + cron-invoked mail delivery. + + o Internally, messages are now stored in the qfiles directory + primarily as pickles. List configuration databases are now + stored as pickles too (i.e. config.pck). bin/dumpdb knows + how to display both pickles and marshals. + + - Mail delivery + o If a user's message is held for approval, they are sent a + notification message containing a confirmation cookie. They + can use this confirmation cookie to cancel their own + postings (if they haven't already been approved). + + o When held messages are forwarded to an explicit address + using the admindb page, it is done so in a message/rfc822 + encapsulation. + + o When a message is first held for approval, the notification + sent to the list admin is a 3-part multipart/mixed. The + first part holds the notification message, the second part + hold the original message, and the third part hold a cookie + confirmation message, to which the admin can respond to + approve or discard the message via email. + + o In the mail->news gateway, you can define mail headers that + must be modified or deleted before the message can be posted + to the nntp server. + + o The list admin can send an immediate urgent message to the + entire list membership, bypassing digest delivery. This is + done by adding an Urgent: header with the list password. + Urgent messages with an invalid password are rejected. + + o Lists can now optionally personalize email messages, if the + site admin allows it. Personalized messages mean that the + To: header includes the recipient's address instead of the + list's address, and header and footer messages can contain + user-specific information. Note that only regular + deliveries can currently be personalized. + + o Message that come from Usenet but that have broken MIME + boundaries are ignored. + + - Building/testing/configuration + o mimelib is no longer required, but you must install the + email package (see the tarball in the misc directory). + + o An (as yet) incomplete test suite has been added. Don't try + running it in a production environment! + + o Better virtual host support by adding a mapping from the + host name given in cgi's HTTP_HOST/SERVER_NAME variable to + the email host used in list addresses. (E.g. www.python.org + maps to @python.org). + + o Specifying urls to external public archivers is more + flexible. + + o The filters/ subdirectory has been removed. + + o There is now a `site list' which is a mailing list that must + be created first, and from which all password reminders + appear to come from. It is recommended that this list be + called "mailman@your.site". + + o bin/move_list is no longer necessary (see the FAQ for + detailed instructions on renaming a list). + + o A new script bin/fix_url.py can be used with bin/withlist to + change a list's web_page_url configuration variable (since + it is no longer modifiable through the web). + + - Internationalization + o Support for German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, and + Norwegian have been added. + + - Miscellaneous + o Lots of new bounce detectors. Bounce detectors can now + discard temporary bounce messages by returning a special + Stop value. + + o bin/withlist now sports a -q/--quiet flag. + + o bin/add_members has a new -a/--admin-notify flag which can + be used to inhibit list owner notification for each + subscription. + + - Membership Adaptors + o Internally, mailing list memberships are accessed through a + MemberAdaptor interface. This would allow for integrating + membership databases with external sources (e.g. Zope or + LDAP), although the only MemberAdaptor currently implemented + is a "classic" adaptor which stores the membership + information on the MailList object. + + o There's a new pipeline handler module called FileRecips.py + which could be used to get all regular delivery mailing list + recipients from a Sendmail-style :include: file (see List + Extensibility bullet below). + + This work was sponsored by Control.com + + - List Extensibility + o A framework has been added which can be used to specialize + and extend specific mailing lists. If there is a file + called lists/<yourlist>/extend.py, it is execfile()'d after + the MailList object is instantiated. The file should + contain a function extend() which will be called with the + MailList instance. This function can do all sorts of deep + things, like modify the handler pipeline just for this list, + or even strip out particular admin GUI elements (see below). + + o All the admin page GUI elements are now separate + components. This provides greater flexibility for list + customization. Also, each GUI element will be given an + opportunity to handle admin CGI form data. + + This work was sponsored by Control.com + + - Topic Filters + o A new feature has been added called "Topic Filters". A list + administrator can create topics, which are essentially + regular expression matches against Subject: and Keyword: + headers (including such pseudo-headers if they appear in the + first few lines of the body of a message). + + List members can then `subscribe' to various topics, which + allows them to filter out any messages that don't match a + topic, or to filter out any message that does match a + topic. This can be useful for high volume lists where not + everyone will be interested in every message. + + This work was sponsored by Control.com 2.1 alpha 2 (11-Jul-2001) |