Using MHonArc to get a decent periodic Mailman archive
history:
I started this project in 2001 and only by
2006 I was able to finish, with not quite the result I wanted, but about 95%.
The small and frequent obstacles always stopped me and it took some time to
get back (I always had something else to do as well), but finally, in June of
2006 I "sort of" finalized the project.
I did not understand why most of the Mailman archives around the world is in
english or only partially (some basic tokens) translated to germany or french,
but as I involved myself deeper and deeper, I started to realize.
MHonArc is a very
powerful mail to HTML converter, but unfortunately to create something very
good and nice requires time, programming skills not to mention the design
skills also not written to ease anyone not willing to use other language than
english.
Hunting down all the names of the "tokens" was a tedious task, even though I
received a lot of support from
Earl Hood (author of
MHonArc) for which I hereby thank to him.
So what is this crap I put together?
This is a "modular template" for MHonArc
to be used with any Mailman
- and might be for other - mailing list to create an archive.
It contains the structure to create author/subject/date and thread based pages,
with mail addresses hidden by default (anti-spam) and basic (and static) HTML
template and which I believe the most important: localization (language file).
If you need to use a language other than english, you just need to edit
language.us.mrc, and
change everything you need here.
You need to include this language file in main.mrc and also check first two
entries of main.mrc
(see filelist on this).
Then the archive created by using this file will be 100% localized [I hope].
(If you find any discrepancies, mail them to me, find my address down below.)
Of course you need to set the list's basic properties too, in
variables.mrc.
For more on these and the rest of the files, see
"filelist" file.
I believe this still needs heavy refinement, but I see this working quite well
and I don't see that in the near future I would be able to do any more with it,
so here you are, use it, fix it and optionally send me the fixed version, I'll
be glad to include your localized language.xx.mrc or any fix and host it for
the others to download.
FAQ/Hints:
- MHonArc variables are case sensitive. So $VAR_xx$ and $VAR_XX$ are different.
- Permissions suggested to be changed to www-data or whatever you use for www.
- Sample archive using this template (in hungarian) can be found at:
http://www.openoffice.hu/archivum/
Download:
all the files in one tgz
Comments, suggestion, flame, praise to:
| version - yyyy.mm.dd | Description |
| v1.00 - 2006.11.28 | First version |
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