[Zope] Zope as a mail list server

[Paul Everitt]

Dylan wrote:
> Comments in the press release for "Zope portal" (whatever 
> that is) seems to
> indicate that mailing list type functionality might be 
> available from inside
> zope. Or at least the web archive part of a mail list. Is this true?

The portal toolkit will leverage the IMAP adapter to allow integration
of email content into the portal.  A "Z Mailman", while on the radar for
this year, isn't on the radar for the first portal release.
 
> My current situation is as follows. I have a zope website 
> using an odbc
> database for a user base of around 500 or so users. I want to 
> support both
> discussion lists and annoucement style lists for my users. I 
> want to be able
> to view, search and submit mails from inside my zope website. 

Viewing and searching are awfully easy with the IMAP adapter.  You can
do your searches on the IMAP server.

If, on the other hand, you'd like to integrate the email messages into
Zope as Zope database entries and Zope Catalog entries, that would take
some noodling.  Not much, but a bit.

> I want users
> to manage their subscription from both the website and from 
> traditional
> listserv like mail commands. I want to be able to store the 
> user lists in
> flexible way in my user database. I preferably want some 
> flexibility on how
> I store the archived messages.

Ahh, yes, you're definately talking something like Mailman.
 
> Its seems to me that all the list servers I'm looking at 
> suffer from two
> problems. One is lack of flexibility on the backend data 
> storage. Another is
> their intergration with existing web pages. Zope seems 
> ideally placed to
> bridge this gap. Is this planned? If so perhaps rather than 
> hack togeather
> some connection between an existing list server I should wait 
> for the zope
> version. 

Since we have Ken Manheimer, one of the key people from Mailman, here
now we've talked a lot about the overlap between Mailman and Zope.  Ken
has done some experiments with putting a Zope front end on Mailman.

You could probably reduce the code in Mailman tenfold and increase its
breadth ten fold by just doing a straight port.  OTOH, you could
reinvent Mailman based on the Zope model of turning over control.

Anyway, the imminent version of the portal toolkit will be more like an
archive manager.

--Paul