The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

["Adam Bernstein" <address@concealed>]

Hi Michelle.  List segmentation, along with message personalization,
is high on the list of broadcast email functions (as opposed to 
discussion groups) that everyone is looking for these days, and Sympa
doesn't do either.  I think the closest you could come with existing 
Sympa functionality, if you knew in advance what your subsets were and
if there are not too many of them, would be to create a separate list 
for each subset.  Then you join them all into one master list using 
the list inclusion function, which you use when you want to address 
everyone.

There are many shortcomings of this solution, both in the above
conditions and in various subscription and unsubscription issues --
for instance, if somebody tries to unsubscribe using the master list's
address, they'll be told they can't unsubscribe, and there's no way
(that I know of) to tell them which list they're actually included
from.

If you wanted to do some hacking, it might be fairly easy to create a
real select-users-from-list ability.  The get_first_user() routine
in List.pm is what generates the subscriber list for display or for
sending, and it already has the additional filtering on address or
name (ie. gecos) for WWSympa display searches.  You could extend that
filtering (using $sql_regexp) to other fields, and then find a way to
to pass $sql_regexp to get_first_user() when sending to a list (from
the send_msg() routine), and that would almost do it.  Probably have to
change how Sympa uses or checks the total number of subscribers, etc.  
And I can imagine adding the search criteria to $sql_regexp through a 
Web form, but I don't know how you'd do it for posting by email.

Hm.  Actually it looks like you would have to somehow add your search 
criteria to your list message and add some parsing in sympa.pl to 
interpret it, because even the Web posting just sends a message out to
the email interface.  I can't imagine what that would look like -- but
maybe the same way variables can be passed to CGI scripts in a URL,
like "address@concealed"?

If you do that hacking, be sure to let us all know.  :)

    adam
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michelle Murrain [mailto:address@concealed]
> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2004 12:03 PM
> To: address@concealed
> Subject: [sympa-users] List subsets
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I need a bit of info and experience about using sympa in some complex 
> situations. Has anyone tried to figure out a way to use sympa such 
> that it will send a message to subsets of a particular mailing list? 
> Is that possible? We have a situation where there are times when we 
> want to send out messages to particular subsets of an entire list 
> (based on data in an expanded sympa database). Has anyone thought of 
> strategies to do this?
> 
> Thanks.
> -- 
> .Michelle
> 
> --------------------------
> Michelle Murrain
> mmurrain at dbdes dot com
> 413-253-2874 ph
> 413-222-6350 cell
> 413-825-0288 fax
> AIM:pearlbear0 Y!:pearlbear9 ICQ:129250575
> SMS: 4132226350 at messaging dot sprintpcs dot com
> 
> "Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been 
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