The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Adam Bernstein <address@concealed>]

Serge, Olivier, et al.:

I might have asked about this a long time ago, I'm sorry I'm not sure, but 
can't find anything in the archives:  It has always been a headache that 
there are these two different tables that store different pieces of 
subscriber data, including some redundancy (eg. the full name, or "gecos"), 
and that only the subscriber table data is editable from the subscribers 
page.  People should only have to (and only be able to) edit their name in 
one place and have the change show up everywhere, and I'd also like to take 
advantage of the extended database fields for data (like mailing address) 
that currently maps to the user table, not the subscriber table -- but I 
want it to be displayed and editable on the subscribers page.  That page 
currently displays extra fields, but only from the subscriber table, not 
the user table.

It just seems a fundamental requirement that each person should have one 
single profile that describes them, and it should be the same everywhere. 
I think there was some historical reason why Sympa wasn't built this way, 
but with all the improvements lately (eg. the picture upload, awesome!), it 
seems ever more important to rework it appropriately.  The current scheme 
is, if you'll pardon me, a bit insane.

Any chance of such a change in the near future?  I could see it being a 
massive job, but I wonder if there's some way of linking or syncing the 
tables to produce the same effect without rewriting a whole lot of code.

      ab