Re: [s-d] proposal parser

[Antonio Dolcetta <antonio.dolcetta@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 22 Jan 2007, at 22:21, Daniel Lepage wrote:

>
> On Jan 22, 2007, at 1:02 PM, Antonio Dolcetta wrote:
>> I've written a very basic (read: horrible) proposal parser.
>> you start proposals by writing BEGINPROPOSAL and end them with
>> ENDPROPOSAL, each proposal must have a title, enclosed between
>> STARTTITLE ENDTITLE
>
> What if I want to use the word "ENDPROPOSAL" in the course of my
> proposal?

yes, that would break it,
easy solution: don't do it
hard solution: think up a way to dynamically figure some delimiters,  
ideas ?


>
>> i was wondering if it's really needed to password protect stuff, I
>> could
>> just read the sender mail address and match that with the latest
>> proposal with the same title.
>> if that was from a different address the new one gets discarded.
>> Yes, i know It's easy to forge mail headers, but we can already do
>> that,
>> no ?
>
> What if somebody has two email addresses? Also, nothing currently
> prohibits two props with the same title; it sounds like this script
> would foul up in that case.

yes, it would require ad hoc legislation

>
>> I was also thinking, instead of having people send proposals to a
>> special address we could simply subscribe the bot to the mailing list
>> and have it work automatically, that would be nice.
>
> It would be nice as long as there were some clear indication when
> something goes wrong. For example, if I start a message with
> STARTPROOSAL, everyone will get the message and see that I made a
> proposal, but it wouldn't show up on the page because the script
> wouldn't recognize it.
>

i was thinking that the script would send an ack mail to the list, so  
you would notice something is wrong if you don't see it

> Also, having people send to a special address has the advantage that
> id numbers can be assigned immediately and will show up in the
> resulting message. Right now, we see the proposal when the author
> sends it, and then we learn its ID number when the admin assigns one.
> With the script, the number is assigned immediately, but we can't see
> it unless the script sends another message announcing the number.
>

yes, that was the main reason for sending an ack

> A third problem is robustness in the face of unexpected messages -
> what if I reply to somebody's prop message but forget to remove their
> proposal in the reply text? Will the system register that as a new
> proposal, made by me and with lots of >s in the text?
>

obviously lines starting with > would not get parsed
also the kind of quoting google mail uses has to be recognized


> -- 
> Wonko
>
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