>On Sat, 20 Jan 1996, Nicolas Graner wrote (Re: listowner defining what
>patterns of errors are handled in what way, with keyword control):
>> Wouldn't this satisfy everyone, and be trivial to implement?
 
Hmm, not exactly. I made two suggestions. One was to define error patterns,
and I asked if this was difficult to implement. The other was to truncate all
error reports to a maximu number of lines, and I claimed this was trivial
(even if possibly RFC-forbidden).
 
BTW, Eric said error patterns wouldn't work because he needs to know what the
problem address is. But if we used regular expressions to identify errors, the
expression could isolate the guilty address as well. Those list owners who
find it too difficult to define regexps would just have listserv as it now
stands, while those who learn will have improved error management. Nobody
loses.
 
>Wow!  Eric ought to hire this guy!  :)
 
Hey, why not? I am unemployed, and I live 500m from Ecole Centrale, where
listserv was born. Too bad Eric crossed the Pond :-)
 
>There ought to be a
>"Law of Software" which states, "Nothing is Trivial to implement".
 
True, but L-Soft can implement even highly non-trivial features.
 
>One person mentioned they did not like the notifications mixed with the
>errors; one more thing for a keyword, basically.
 
If Santa Claus is reading this, what I would really really love is FOUR
different digests:
 
- one with xxx-request messqges, untouched.
 
- one with sub/unsub notifications, either as a concatenation of current
notifications, or with one line per event (more or less like daily error
monitoring reports).
 
- one with error reports, each truncated to N lines.
 
- one with those error reports due to From or Sender fields pointing back to
the list, which are often subscribers mistakes rather than delivery errors.
 
If each digest had its keyword, they could be directed to different list
owners, or merged into one big digest, at the owner's discretion (or left
undigested, of course).
 
OK, Santa, I am prepared to wait until next Christmas to get all this. :-)
 
Nicolas