Revision 6 as of 2006-06-21 14:32:45

Clear message

Ethan Fremen is working on mailman for his Summer of Code Project. The project will use web standards, kid and mod_python to deliver a superior HTTP user experience with enhanced internationalization.

Status June 21, 2006

After realizing how utterly horked the current templating situation is, I've started redoing the templates as xhtml/kid. Once I'm done with that, I'll write the glue code that connects it into mailman, leveraging the existing work in Gui/ .

As this is my first i18n project, I wasn't quite aware of what it entailed. Right now I'm focusing on making it so a simple iteration over all elements in the pre-rendered dom constitutes the entirety of the text that needs to be internationalized.

Observations

Existing templating situation

  • There's a mismash of MM- pseudo tags and python str/dict replacement for variable substitutions.
  • Many pages are generated by a sort of proto-dom.
  • All the pages are mid-90's tag soup, with upper case and lower case tags and invalid html attributes.
  • Many pieces of code generate strings with html markup. This breaks the first law of templating, an

 

Timeline

  • May 23 - 28: Convert Mailman interface to use Kid, retaining all functionality as-is.
  • May 29 - June 9: Change i18n approach to one that leverages gettext.
  • June 12 - 16: Write templates to provide a navigation interface for archive browsing. Write templates to provide an RSS/Atom feed for mailing lists.
  • June 19 - 23: Polish documentation for interface changes and deliver mid-term release.
  • June 26 - 30: Provide consistent navigation throughout the Mailman interface, working from the navigation templates built for the archives. Enhance the Administrator's user listing to allow for bulk modification and to highlight users that have been set nomail.

  • July 3 - 14: Change the mailman 'options' from being a set of Text:Action pairs presented in a two-column table to one that uses the available space more effectively to present the most important options to the user. Don't display options not available to the user.

  • July 17 - 21: Collapse pages, e.g the default admin/listinfo pages, that should be the same page.
  • July 24 - 31: Separate pages into pieces that can comfortably be embedded into non-Mailman pages. Add kupu/tinyMCE page-editing, easy support for stylesheet changes, site and list specific themes.
  • August 1 - 4: Update documentation to reflect changes.
  • August 7 - 11: Integrate any revision suggestions and make a second release.
  • August 14 - 21: Accommodate schedule slippage and add additional documentation / release / integration / upgrade code as necessary.