On Thu, 8 Mar 2001, Todd Olson wrote:
I'd go even further and claim that e-mail-clients should include in there
menues, options that automatically generate commands to majordomo, mailman,
listserv, listproc, listar, ..... with little fuzzy prompts and such to
help people use them ... and then send the command out properly formated
for existing technology.
What you want is for email clients to implement a user interface for
their users around the information found in RFC2369, "The Use of URLs as
Meta-Syntax for Core Mail List Commands and their Transport through
Message Header Fields." If they do this the email clients do not have
to explicitly understand or know about the particular list management
technology or service in use.
That Internet Standard specifies how technologies like majordomo,
mailman, listserv, listproc, listar, etc., can specify in an email
header how to subscribe, unsubscribe, etc. The headers are
appropriately named list-subscribe, list-unsubscribe, etc.
Of course, the other side of the problem space is to get the list
management technologies to automatically generate and include such
headers, thus easing the burden on the list administrators. Most have a
way for the list administrator to specify such headers to be included on
outgoing messages, but it would be nice if they would take it to the
next level and make it more automatic. The problem is if the list
administrator doesn't know or care to do it then it doesn't happen.
Jim
