From: Jose Kahan (jose.kahan@w3.org)
Date: Mon Sep 23 2002 - 04:17:36 CDT
Hello Peter et al,
As you may know, we use hypermail for the W3C mailing list mailing
archives.
Some months ago, a workgroup proposed new improvements to the
archives for enhancing the WAI (accessibility), HTML structure, and
CSS of the archives. Some of these features are for converting the
archives to full XHTML and let people use XSLT scripts on the HTMLized
messages.
I've been working on this, but unfortunately, I never find enough
time for finishing it. I was wondering if someone else would like
to carry on this work?
What I can contribute so far is the full convertion to XHTML.
I could also contribute my WAI port so far, but as it's not complete,
I think it's better to start it from scratch.
The proposed improvements are available at:
http://w3.org/2002/03/archives-improvements/
The other thing I've been working on is changing the sequential
numbering of the archives to a hash string based on the msigd and
reception date of messages. This is to make it easier to remove/insert
messages without breaking existing links. Ultimately, this change
could be used to put all the messages metadata in a single file (either
text or GDBM) and this could greatly improve the updating of archives.
Currenly this metadata is stored in each file in the archive and all of
them have to be opened when adding a new archive.
I've been succesful in changing the message sequencing. I am just
missing choosing the correct hash function. For the moment, I'm just
putting the msgid+date, but this makes the URL too big.
I'd like to know is if people are interested in my commiting the
XHTML changes + the non-sequential message feature (activated thru an
option).
I'd also like to know if someone is interested in carrying
forward the archives WAI/HTML/CSS improvement. You have been recently
working on this, so maybe it could interest you?
Thanks!
-jose