Top Document: Mailing list management software FAQ Previous Document: 3.11 MXSERV (MX/MLF, part of the Message Exchange system) [v. 4.1] Next Document: 3.13 Smof Listserver for DOS/KA9Q. [v. 05l] See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge Depending in large part on the intelligence of the (wonderful) Procmail local delivery agent for Unix, SmartList is a surprisingly small package that does many nice and unique things. It also does those things in a unique way, with a unique user interface -- specifically, from the user's perspective it looks more like a manually-maintained list (the kind with a human being at "listname-request"), than it does like the "machine at a server" model of most packages, as pioneered by LISTSERV. SmartList is specifically designed to do what users expect without imposing any particular syntax on them. It imposes no strict format on subscribe and unsubscribe messages, accepting all common formats including commands in the Subject line and most requests in "plain English." It also does fuzzy matching on addresses (as described in the "user features" section), which can be important in processing unsubscribe requests and bounces. Administration of SmartList lists is easiest for users who have accounts on the server system. Limited administration can also be done by mail; however, commands are sent in the message *header*, instead of the body, which limits the MUA's a remote administrator can use (most PC packages are right out). Beyond the "philosophy" issues described above, which can be either an advantage or a disadvantage depending on your biases, SmartList offers these advantages: it imposes a low load on your system yet offers high performance in delivery, thus it is suited to run fairly large lists; it handles bounced mail better than any other package; and it probably already runs on your Unix system. Its primary disadvantage, for some sites anyway (again excluding philosophy issues) is that users don't get a unified view of the lists on your server: each "-request" address stands alone. Stephen R. van den Berg ("AKA BuGless"), who writes both Procmail and SmartList, provides quick and friendly support on their discussion lists. To run SmartList, you also need Procmail. Get the sources for both at: <ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/packages/Procmail/> and <ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/packages/Procmail/> (replace ".gz" with ".Z" if you don't have the GNU gzip package) Discussion lists: subscribe to Procmail@informatik.rwth-aachen.de and/or SmartList@informatik.rwth-aachen.de by writing a subscribe message (any format, even plain English) to Procmail-request@informatik.rwth-aachen.de or SmartList-request@informatik.rwth-aachen.de, as appropriate. User Contributions:Top Document: Mailing list management software FAQ Previous Document: 3.11 MXSERV (MX/MLF, part of the Message Exchange system) [v. 4.1] Next Document: 3.13 Smof Listserver for DOS/KA9Q. [v. 05l] Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: naleks@Library.UMMED.EDU
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
|
Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: