This section discusses issues of Mailman's compatibility with standards, security systems, and languages.

Protocols that MailMan cares about

This part is a bit technical and pedantic. Unless you're a web development nerd like we are, you probably can skip this section. MailMan uses CGI to communicate with the host web server. For more information about CGI, consult Nick Kew's CGI FAQ.

For the generation of HTTP headers, MailMan conforms as closely as possible with the proposed standard RFC 2068, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", as well as the earlier related specifications such as RFC 1945, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0."

MailMan's user interface is generated using content that complies as closely as possible with the W3C's HTML 4.01 specifications. Some aspects of the newer MailMan theme (the blue ripply one, as opposed to the black/white/teal one) use features provided by CSS-1, but we do not use CSS-2 in the default MailMan templates for portability reasons. You are free to use CSS-2 for positioning in your own custom MailMan interface templates if it makes you happy though, nothing is stopping you.

Persistent state information for the frames-based MailMan interface is maintained according to RFC 2109, "HTTP State Management Mechanism".

For communication with incoming Internet email servers, MailMan conforms as closely as possible with RFC 1939, "Post Office Protocol - Version 3", and was originally based on the earlier specifications such as RFC 1725. MailMan is in strict compliance with end of line delimiters specified in the POP3 standards documents and should be compatible with POP3 servers regardless of the end of line delimiter used in the server's host operating system. MailMan currently has no known mail server incompatibilities, except that in order to use the Professional Edition your POP3 server must support the optional POP3 command "UIDL". Nearly all POP3 servers now support UIDL, so if you don't know what we're talking about then you can pretty safely not worry about it unless MailMan refuses to run the very first time you try to check your mail.

For communication with outgoing Internet email servers, MailMan conforms as closely as possible with RFC 821, "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol". For maximum compatibility, MailMan intentionally does not make use of enhancements provided by later approved extension standards such as RFC 1869 or RFC 1870.

The messages that MailMan processes and generates are compliant as closely as possible with RFC 822, "Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text messages". Formatted messages and messages with attachments are automatically handled by portions of MailMan that are compliant as closely as possible with the specifications in RFC 2045, RFC 2046, RFC 2047, RFC 2048 and RFC 2049, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)", parts one through five.

SSL Compatibility

Mailman is completely compatible with a Secure Socket Layer. MailMan operates behind the web server, and doesn't really pay much attention to what protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) or what port user requests come in on. It has no reason to care.