MIT Mailman User Guide:
Topics

MIT Mailman

The topic filter categorizes each incoming email message according to regular expression filters you specify. An FAQ for Python regular expressions is available from http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-re.html. If the message's Subject: or Keywords: header contains a match against a topic filter, the message is logically placed into a topic bucket. Each user can then choose to only receive messages from the mailing list for a particular topic bucket (or buckets).

These are the options available on the Topics Screen:

Topics

List topic keywords
Description
Value

Should the topic filter be enabled or disabled?
Details for topics_enabled: The topic filter categorizes each incoming email message according to regular expression filters you specify below. If the message's Subject: or Keywords: header contains a match against a topic filter, the message is logically placed into a topic bucket. Each user can then choose to only receive messages from the mailing list for a particular topic bucket (or buckets). Any message not categorized in a topic bucket registered with the user is not delivered to the list. Note that this feature only works with regular delivery, not digest delivery. The body of the message can also be optionally scanned for Subject: and Keywords: headers, as specified by the topics_bodylines_limit configuration variable.

Disabled Enabled
How many body lines should the topic matcher scan?
Details for topics_bodylines_limit: The topic matcher will scan this many lines of the message body looking for topic keyword matches. Body scanning stops when either this many lines have been looked at, or a non-header-like body line is encountered. By setting this value to zero, no body lines will be scanned (i.e. only the Keywords: and Subject: headers will be scanned). By setting this value to a negative number, then all body lines will be scanned until a non-header-like line is encountered.)
Topic keywords, one per line, to match against each message.
Details for topics: Each topic keyword is actually a regular expression, which is matched against certain parts of a mail message, specifically the Keywords: and Subject: message headers. Note that the first few lines of the body of the message can also contain a Keywords: and Subject: "header" on which matching is also performed.
Topic 1
Topic name:
Regexp:
Description:


MIT Updated April 28, 2003. Copyright © 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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