2010-11-14.

Looking at ways to make a web-based archive of a mailing list.
Stimulated by setting up Nordic Synchrophasor Group site and list.

The most interesting find yet, for something quickly useable, 
is MHonArc http://www.mhonarc.org/ , a Perl-based converter.
It's available in Gentoo (mhonarc), and installs easily from 
the source-package's install.me file on RedHat (EL4 was tried).


It wants mbox format for the input.
From my favoured Maildir format (one pure email per file),

mb='mbox.tmp'  # mailbox file of list-emails
ld='list'   # list-directory for html/attachments

# using 'formail' command from 'procmail' package, to convert 
# raw (maildir-format individual-file) emails to mbox format
for f in ~/maildir/{cur,new}/*
do
	formail <"$f" >>"$mb"
done


Then an initial simple use of mhonarc is

# initial conversion to list
mhonarc  -outdir "$ld"  "$mb"

Useful options:
  -scan    dump formatted list of message numbers, dates, senders and titles
  -add     add given mbox to archive, rather than making new archive
  -reconvert  build archive /preserving message-numbering/ for already existing messages
  -quiet   to suppress the casual conversation]
 Now options for the main (plain list) index page
  -title   set the page-title
  -reverse  reverse sort-order
  -sort  sort by date (default)
  -authsort sort by author name instead of date
  -subsort  sort by subject	
 The same things for the thread index page are done by including 't',
  -ttitle, -tsort etc.
 Removal of old messages
  -expireage NNN   max age in /seconds/ 
  -expiredate 'DD Mon YYYY HH:MM:SS Zone'   oldest permissible date
  -maxsize NNN  max number of messages in archive (older are removed)
  -rmm NNN MMM   remove messages with the given number[s]
 Changing page-style
  -rcfile FILE.mrc  use specified `resource-file' for style
 /loads/ of other options...