[fpc-other] [fpc-pascal] The end of Gmane

[Sven Barth]

On Fri, 29 Jul 2016 01:38:16 +0530, Vasudev Ram

Hi list,
Sorry if this has been mentioned earlier here already, or if it is
considered off-topic (and if so, will not do it again). But I think it
The End of Gmane? (ingebrigtsen.no)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12180547

OH NO!!!
I have used the GMane SMTP->NNTP service since at least 10 years.
It is my main channel into development communities using mail lists
and is an invaluable resource.
I cannot even begin to understand how I would be able to solve the
programming problems I encounter without this resource available.
Mail lists is no alternative because there is no structure and I would
be flooded with email hiding the normal mail use. NNTP is king in
these regards.

I only use the mailing lists and I don't see your problems at all.
I've set up my google mail account in such a way that all mails from a
specific list get the list's name as label attached and that they don't go
through the normal mail entry. In Thunderbird these labels appear as IMAP
folders. So no clutter here.
Additionally I use threaded view and as long as no one('s client) messes up
the list-ID that also works without problems. How do you think Gmane
manages to keep track of the structure? It also uses information contained
in the mails...

Regards,
Sven

[Lukasz Sokol]

Post by Sven Barth

On Fri, 29 Jul 2016 01:38:16 +0530, Vasudev Ram

Hi list,
Sorry if this has been mentioned earlier here already, or if it
is considered off-topic (and if so, will not do it again). But I
think it is relevant and of interest to people reading this list
The End of Gmane? (ingebrigtsen.no <http://ingebrigtsen.no>)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12180547

OH NO!!! I have used the GMane SMTP->NNTP service since at least 10
years. It is my main channel into development communities using
mail lists and is an invaluable resource.
I cannot even begin to understand how I would be able to solve the
programming problems I encounter without this resource available.
Mail lists is no alternative because there is no structure and I
would be flooded with email hiding the normal mail use. NNTP is
king in these regards.

I only use the mailing lists and I don't see your problems at all.
I've set up my google mail account in such a way that all mails from
a specific list get the list's name as label attached and that they
don't go through the normal mail entry. In Thunderbird these labels
appear as IMAP folders. So no clutter here. Additionally I use
threaded view and as long as no one('s client) messes up the list-ID
that also works without problems. How do you think Gmane manages to
keep track of the structure? It also uses information contained in
the mails...
Regards, Sven

I started using Gmane long ago, because back then neither Google or Yahoo,
IIRC, neither of them had the email rules feature (like, filter by sender address
and move to a folder by name of the mailing list. )
Some free and non-free email providers still might not have that feature, even in this day and age...

Also email providers can have quite tough quota rules, for message size and/or count.

Thunderbird, well yes, it does download same data from NNTP server as you would via IMAP.
(and keeps it on your disk)
But you're in control here too - it only downloads whole article IFF you wish to read it (click its header) or
otherwise request it to be downloaded while syncing the newsgroup.
(IMAP synchronization of folders is not on demand: you either sync whole messages (can not just only download headers),
or have the 'keep the messages for this account on this computer' checkbox ticked, so you keep nothing locally)

And Thunderbird can search the nntp archive on the server too;
something that is quite much more efficient than searching in mailing list archives.

Also it enabled you to be able to read the mailing list, without going through subscription process too;
(I've no problem to subscribe if I want to post somewhere but for just reading, gmane nntp was infinitely more convenient
than e.g. the mailman web interface before HyperKitty :J )

I wish you also could have seen the thread.gmane.org web interface, and the way it searched....
however they've offlined it already.

Gmane will be sorely missed if the nntp gateway ever happens to go away...

-L.

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[Lukasz Sokol]

I'm sure that if one dug there would be plenty of prewritten mail
distribution programs, probably in Perl on unix (and if somebody
doesn't like that, he might as well stop reading here).

there was even a pre-cursor to (probably) every known program like that, fetchmail...
up to the interested reader to find what was it written in ;) and by who.
(as in, I remember fetchmail from ~15-20 years ago, it had quite /specific/ approach to config files)

The key to managing anything like this is usually to use a different
email ID for each mailing list, e.g. something like
you deal with an ISP who is prepared to accept either all mail for
your domain or a significant number of predefined names (i.e. rather
than just a single one) or set up your own email server
(Sendmail+Cyrus or whatever). Then use Thunderbird etc. rules to
distribute traffic to folders by recipient.

Yes. However it requires that filter/sorter be running somewhere all the
time, to sort the messages. So you end up having a 24/7 computer in
the house, which isn't to everybody's taste... or hosting it to run in a
vm somewhere for free/non-free. And, well if you happen to think, that
an DD/OpenWRT'd home ADSL modem(*) with some storage is enough, try to think
of a good answer to 'Why do you need that hard drive attached to the modem all the time?'
question, in 2 minutes ... ;)

(*) (of which workable ones are not as easy to come by by the way either)

Otherwise it's not particularly difficult to pipe messages from
Sendmail into a discussion group server, although I'd suggest that
anybody who chooses INN for this use v1 rather than anything later.
It's also not too difficult to redirect anything sent locally to an
external mailing list, but there is a number of "gotchas" that one
has to be aware of lest one sets up a loop.

Or for the matter, if the project happens to run a mailing list, to set up
their own mail2news gateway with a nntp server of their own.
(however it increases maintenance which nobody ever has time for...)
(and you still might need to deal with takedown notices, as Gmane admin had to)

-L.

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