[Pmwiki-users] Re: Mail interface for adding to pages (was Action or form a new page)

[Christian Ridderström]

On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> Also, I can request things to be posted to wiki pages as I'm composing
> my responses to the message, and just 'bcc' the wiki-post address before
> replying.

We need to figure out what to do with duplicates... for instance, if you 
post this to the list and do CC (not bcc) to WikiEngine at pmichaud.com:

> [[append:Development.MailGateway]]
> > Purpose: Be able to take the important ideas from a new or mailing list
> > and "store" them on a wiki so that they don't get lost.
> > 
> > Items:
> >  * This should be quick and simple to do.
> >  * You do it by forwarding the relevant post
> >  * Do a 'one-way-pass' over the mail, adding simple markup that
> >    indicates what should go where.
> >  * The receiving software do simple reformatting of '> ' etc
> >  * It's not important that the formatted result in the wiki is perfect
> [[append:]]

then if someone happens to do a 'reply all', we might get a duplicate 
posting (well, not exacply duplicate since it'll have an extra '> ' in 
front). Is this why you wanted to use 'bcc'? 

> Also, everyone on the list can see that this text was posted.  

It'd be nice if the people on the list can "see" that you've also sent it
to the gateway, instead of just inferring it from the use of this markup.
Or is this not necessary?

> This feature also becomes incredibly useful for FAQ documents, since I can
> both answer the question in email and add the response to the wiki page in a
> single message.

Definitely!

> > Ideas:
> > * The information added to the wiki should contain a 'signature' or 
> >    something, so others now it came via an e-mail, and from where.
> 
> I was thinking of simply adding the a line with the email return address,
> the subject, and an archive reference if available.  At some point we 
> could get fancier and translate email addresses into signature lines.

With 'signature' I meant what you wrote above.

> > * We can use the 'Subject:' to indicate actions or other things
> 
> I prefer doing it as directives within the message itself, although we
> could allow both.  Thus someone could reply to a message and post to
> the wiki in a single operation.  This becomes difficult if the subject
> line has to be changed.

Good point, I agree.

> > Questions:
> > * Do we only want to append information to pages?
> 
> An option to prepend makes sense to me.
> 
> > * Should information be allowed to be appended to any page?
> > * Should anyone be allowed to do this?
> 
> Well, any page that isn't otherwise protected by an edit password or other
> security.

Ok

> > * Should pages that allow information to be appended contain special 
> >   markup, thus also indicating where the information is added?
> 
> Perhaps, but many times I expect the mail-to-wiki gateway will be used to
> create new pages.

Ok (I hadn't thought about being able to create a completely new page).

I can't remember if this already has been said, but the 'wiki mail
gateway' (?) (or 'wiki gateway' for short), will send a reply with
information about the result, right?

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderstr?m                           http://www.md.kth.se/~chr