This release includes bug fixes. Amongst them, the most painful was a regexp that prevented from rebuilding web archives or deleting messages from said archives.

Another great news is the work on Japanese translation by Soji Ikeda. The user interface is greatly updated and more than half of the online help is now available.

In this release, you will find bug fixes, particularly one regarding CAS ticket management.

This version also introduces the full support for Simplified Chinese, thanks to the work by Li Xuejiang, Yahoo!

Thanks to all the fine people who reported bugs – and even provided fixes.

This release includes a few annoying bug fixes.

Here's what's new in Sympa 5.4

Introduction of HTTP session in order to replace a lot of cookies, for better usability and security.

• new session_table table
• new SympaSession.pm module
• new features (see screenshot)
  • from admin page list active sessions (#1 on the screenshot);
  • from admin page change user email identity (#2 on the screenshot);
  • from admin page set log level for the current session (#3 on the screenshot);
  • from admin page activate online dump of Sympa variables (#4 on the screenshot);
• internal changes
  • new task to purge old sessions from table (inactive delay to remove session is set by the sympa.conf parameter session_expiration_period (default 1 month);
  • session starts at first hit usually with an anonymous user. The session continues when the user log in;
  • cookie lang replaced by a session parameter;
  • cookie sympa-user removed;
  • crawler detection, controlled by /etc/crawlers_detection.conf.

• Custom user attributes. This contribution from A.de Bignicourt (UREC/CNRS) allows the use of per list custom user attributes. Once the format of the attributes has been defined by the list owner, a form will be presented to new list members on the subscription web page. These custom attributes are either optional or mandatory. The list owner will then see the provided user information while taking the subscription decision. Custom attributes can later be viewed from the review page and editsubscriber page. Custom attributes are stored in a dedicated field of the subscriber_table DB table, as XML data.
• Custom list parameters. Owners can define their own list parameters and use them in authorization scenarios and mail templates.
• Custom button in main Sympa menu. Administrators can define their own tabs in the Sympa web interface main menu.
• Improved avatars usage. User pictures are now shown (if available) in the web archives. Pictures are shown to authenticated users only, to prevent web harvesters to get them.

• LDAPS This contribution by P.Baumgart (British Telecom) allows LDAP alias manager to be LDAPS enabled and to be configured via a separate configuration file. We've also added a new 'alias_manager' sympa.conf parameter that allows to use such alternate mail aliases management scripts. See documentation.
• XSS protection. Sympa escapes any HTML that is not generated by its templates (i.e. contained by parameters). Some exceptions are the homepage file, which is filtered using the perl module HTML::StripSripts.
• Session hijacking protection. Session ids are renewed each time a click is done. This way, it is impossible to use a stolen session id.

• Online help internationalized. The online user help found in the web interface (help tab and help links) has been converted to be translated by the same system as the user interface. These strings are gathered in a dedicated PO catalog ; Use [%helploc%] tags anywhere in the code to create strings that will be located in web_help.po catalogue.

• Five brand new translations! The following languages have been added to Sympa distribution, thanks to the recent work of contributors:
  • Korean (Mark Smith and Kang Tae-Hee Hewlett-Packard) (try it | translate)
  • Simplified Chinese (Mark Smith and Xun Yan Hewlett-Packard) (try it | translate)
  • Tradional Chinese (Mark Smith Hewlett-Packard) (try it | translate)
  • Russian: (Chernysh) (try it | translate)
  • Catalan: (J. Deu-Pons) (try it | translate)

• Numerous translations updated:
  • German (J. Krehbiel-Graether) (try it | translate)
  • French (D. Viñar Ulriksen) (try it | translate)
  • Italian (G. Donnini) (try it | translate)
  • Nederlands (K. Naut) (try it | translate)
  • Brazilian Portuguese (F. Lopes) (try it | translate)
  • Revised version of English translations (try it | translate)

Please, feel free to come and help translating Sympa into your language. You can use our online translation tool. Any information regarding translation of Sympa can be found on our web site.

The performances – mainly regarding the web interface – have been significantly improved. This was achieved, in particular, through:

• a reduction of the number of calls to do_log()
• a reduction of the locks in List::new()
• code factorization through a new Scenario.pm library

The discussions which lead to these improvements can be found here and there.

• remove_outgoing_headers (sympa.conf and list parameter). This parameter allows to define a list of SMTP header fields that should be removed before a message is distributed to list members. Thus it even makes it possible to remove the header fields that Sympa sets. The existing 'remove_headers' can now be set in a list config file.
• New ignore_x_no_archive_header_feature sympa.conf parameter ; if set to 'on', x-no-archive SMTP header field is ignored if found in an incoming message (sympa will archive the message).

• allow_subscribe_if_pending (sympa.conf parameter) Contribution by C. Paul, evil-wire.org. Default value is “on”. If set to “off”, it is forbidden to add subscribers (through wwsympa) to a list whose status is different from “open”.
• Users list is synchronized with inclusion sources (database, LDAP, files,...) on the fly prior to execute some actions, such as review, sending, which, etc. The lap between two synchronization is defined by the list parameter distribution_ttl.

We've done a significant effort to close most reported bugs in this new version of Sympa. You can check the detailed list of bug fixes from the Changelog.

This release mainly contains bug fixes.

This release of Sympa only includes bug fixes.

Some bug fixes. Also recovered images which were damaged when migrating from CVS to SVN.

This release includes bug fixes from the 5.3 reported by E. Koblinger (uhulinux). All the informations regarding the 5.3 release remain valid. Please read the section below to have a snapshot of the new Sympa 5.3 branch features.

Development of this version started in april 2006. It includes many new features that have been tested by many sites who have installed alpha and beta versions of Sympa over the last year.

(New features :

• New SOAP features allow remote list creation, ADD and DEL of list members (see documentation)
• Automatic list creation : this is a contribution from the A.Amrani (French Ministry of Defence) that allows to trigger list creation when a message is sent for the list. (see documentation)
• DB logs (developped by A.Bard) : each operations that changes the status of messages/subscriptions/list config is now logged in a structured DB entry. Both listmasters and listowners can search this events DB using the Sympa web interface. (see screenshot
• Picture upload (developped by A.Brard) : List members can upload and share their pictures via the REVIEW web page. (see screenshot)
• Blacklist : list owners can manage a blacklist for their list, via the web interface (see screenshot)
• New user and admin web documentation (provided by V.Paitrault). In French version only, the English version will be available in next version. (try it)
• Accessibility of the web interface has been enhanced (work done by A.Brard)
• Generalization of UTF-8 : Sympa now uses Unicode for its web interface, thus making it easier to mix different characters encodings
• Custom scenario conditions (S.Amrani) : you can use a Perl package of your own to evaluate a custom scenario condition (see documentation)
• SQL named filters (S.Amrani) : listmasters can now define SQL search conditions in authorization scenarios see documentation)
• Added support for NFS locking, using File::NFSLock CPAN module. [K. Moriwaka] (see documentation)
• New sympa.pl –purge_list option to remove a closed lists.
• Added an alias_manager that is MySQL enabled. [Bea, Cartables.net]

Changes :

• All service messages are now UTF8 encoded. Conversion is automated with sympa.pl –upgrade for all custom files (mail_tt2, web_tt2, scenario files, configuration files, list templates) and also for shared document filenames. The conversion process will keep a copy of original files.
• 'include' mode is now obsolete. Now performing a mapping while to 'include2' while loading the parameter.
• Updated Polish translations. [L. Zygmanski] (try it | translate)
• Updated Japanese translations. [S. Ikeda] (try it | translate)
• Updated Brazilian translations. [Prof. P.E.M. Almeida] (try it | translate)
• Updated Spanish translations (try it | translate)
• Updated Italian translations (try it | translate)
• Updated Occitan translations (try it | translate)
• Revised version of English translations (J.Gemmill, Univ. Alabama at Birmingham) (try it | translate)

This new version of the Sympa authorization module for Apache can now be associated to a Shibboleth Service Provider. You can thereby authenticate users on their local Single Sign-On system (via Shibboleth) and then do access control based on mailing lists membership.

Cette formation, organisée par le CRU, aura lieu le 7 juin 2007, au CNAM, à Paris.

This version of Sympa only includes bug fixes including the one that affects users of Internet Explore 7. This IE 7 bug breaks the login feature on the web interface. We'd like to thank Olivier Franco who submitted a patch for Sympa CSS that fixes this problem.

Upgrade note : if you have installed a static CSS, you need trigger an update (from the web admin interface) to use the new fixed CSS.

Sympa 5.2.3 has moved to the Debian testing (etch) distribution.

A survey has been carried amongst the sites that use Sympa, through the sympa-announce mailing list. We are presenting a summary of the 129 results.

This article, presented at the Spanish JT2006 conference, describes Sympa's most interesting features in a university environment.

To build a collaboration evironment, myVocs relies on existing tools including Sympa for group management.

We have set up a web_based own translation service, dedicated to Sympa translations. This service, based on pootle software, should ease the translation works and help keeping translations uptodate.

The PARCEL project aims at promoting use of opensource e-learning software for NGOs.

This plugin allows to use Sympa password and check list membership in order to control authentication and authorization in Dokuwiki.

This plugin for Munin, developped by Patrick von der Hagen (Universität Karlsruhe), collects statistics about the spools of Sympa.

This article was published back in 2003...

Craig Hancock, from University of Notre Dame, has produced RPMs of Sympa for Fedora : http://middleware.internet2.edu/mlist/#Sympa_RPMs/

The mail/sympa5, packaged by Olivier Girard, has been accepted by FreBSD ports team : http://www.freshports.org/mail/sympa5/

The American National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI) published its 7th release ; a set of opensource documents and software related to middleware.

Sympa 5.0 has been included in the NMI Release 7 :

• http://www.nsf-middleware.org/Lists/NMIR7/AllItems.aspx