Re: Making the mailing-list archives nicer

[Gerhard Niklasch <nikl@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de>]

In response to:
> Message-ID: <000301bfd7da$9cddfee0$254e883e@maths.nottingham.ac.uk>
> From: "Tom Womack" <tom@womack.net>
> To: "PARIUSER" <pari-users@list.cr.yp.to>
> Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 22:15:40 +0100
> 
> Is there any way I could help to make the mailing-list archives nicer to
> access? I've found the present Web interface so irritating that I ran a
> recursive grab over the entire archive and use the Windows search tool to
> find relevant posts; at the moment it doesn't feel even as if you can do
> 'forward a month' and 'back a month', let alone a full-text search, and the
> format of the month indices leaves an awful lot to be desired.

I guess everybody who is more or less frequently making use of the
archive could help a little to improve them, and I herewith cordially
invite you all to do so:

So far I don't know at all who you are, how many you are, how often
you consult the archive, how often you would consult it if it were
changed in some way or another, what kind of info you're looking for
in the archive, what kind of items / search keywords / other info you
already have when you begin to look for something, ...

Do you look for pieces of text (say, something like "elliptic curve")?
Do you look for postings containing gp script, or referencing a particular
gp function or feature?
Would you be searching for library function names in C source code
fragments?
Would it be useful if you could type one or two author's names into a
future search form?
Would you like to see postings grouped into threads?  (Now this was
probably a rhetorical question...)

I'm acutely aware of missing functionality here.  The mixture
of material in the postings doesn't make this a straightforward
exercise;  the more demand I'm aware of, the more gladly will I
devote time to it.  Reply to me directly or, if it seems of wider
interest, via pari-users,

Gerhard