mhonarc-users

Re: [Fwd: keywords index ?]

2000-10-24 13:58:11
On October 23, 2000 at 21:25, Juan wrote:

Excuse me, MUA stands for me the mail reader (Eudora, etc.)

Correct.  MUA = Mail User Agent.

So, did you ever think to present the mhonarc mailing list archive by
topics ? For example, a page where all messages about config should be
listed, then all messages about new features , then all messages about code
changes proposals, etc.

These categorizations typically get grouped in discussion threads
indirectly by how people do their responses.  But there is no "formal"
categorization of such things.

In the same way, should be a good idea to present, in a mailling list about
Art exhibitions, the exhibitions by topics, or towns where they go. People
should have a better access to the information, don't you think.

What I suggest is a Yahoo approach nor an Altavista approach to list the
topics. Many people search the archive with their own words and ofen fail
in retrieving the info they ask for.

This is beyond the scope of MHonArc, but MHonArc could be used in
some kind of solution.

How to ? Proposal :

1.  Before using Mhonarc, use a .pl program which reads the spool and
extracts the topics from the line 1 of the body to the Keywords field of
the header. A synonyms topics table should be implemented in order to avoid
synonyms topics (like expo vs. exhibition) and the put the  'official'
topic instead.

The problem is that you must rely on users to define the Keywords
field properly.  This is bound to be problematic.  You are expecting
users to have knowledge of proper keywords when they compose a message,
and most users do not want to mess with such things.

2. Use Mhonarc normally.

3. Put the topics of each msgxxxxx.html file into the Mhonarc database and
use a new otherindex (topics).

4. Generate the topics.html file from the database by regenerating the
messages.

If message creation is generated by a system you control (for example,
an HTML form on your web site), you can do what you want.  You can
format the messages so a filter can easily determine which category a
message belongs to (the user selects topic by a pre-defined set of
choices from the form).  And if you have a MHonArc archive for each
category, no need to try to create a special mhonarc index for topic.
The topic index can be created by your custom code (similiar how the
monthly index page is created at
<http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/mhonarc/>).  I.e. A meta
index of multiple MHonArc archives.

--ewh

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