Subject: Nomic: automation status

From: Joel Uckelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 23:57:53 -0500

I'm sure at least one or two people have been wondering how work has been 
progressing with regard to admin automation stuff. I'm working on the last 
essential component now, the script that filters frequently taken and 
sufficiently standardized actions from messages to the mailing list, and from 
them automatically updates various data files from which html is generated.

An example:

If I send a message to the list that looks something like this,

---------
To: [email-masked]
Subject: foo!
From: Joel Uckelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 21:55:36 -0500

This is my brand new proposal:

<Proposal>12 March will hereafter be known as Berserker Nomic Day.</Proposal>
--------

the filter will see the <Proposal> tags, correctly format the proposal, append 
it to the proposal data file, assign it a number, and send a message with that 
number back to the list. The new proposal will then appear on the web page 
after the next time the update program is run (probably every few hours). In 
case anyone would want to include a </Proposal> tag in the text of a proposal, 
it would have to be backslashed, (e.g. \</Proposal>) to show up correctly. 
Does this seem reasonably simple to everyone? Does anyone have any suggestions 
for how this should/shouldn't be implemented, before I finish coding it?

-- 
J. Uckelman
[email-masked]
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~uckelman/