Ah! I just remembered one more:
>Goals:
10. Support a WYSIWYG-ASCII format, alal SeText or WikiWikiWeb[1]
so that folks can send reasonable looking plain text email,
but it can be converted to rich HTML in an automated fashion.
and Daniel reminded me:
12. Interoperate with USENET somehow. (perhaps the archive
parallels a moderated newsgroup?)
[What's written below is not meant to be flaim bait. Please
don't take it that way.]
Python, perl5, java, tcl, C, whatever -- as long as it installs easily
on lots of platforms. I prefer python because it's integrated with ILU
today, and I like the style of the programs written in python.
The languages are equally expressive, but the development community
around them shares certain idioms and values, and I prefer the python
culture to the others. python is inspired by Modula-3, my favorite of
all. Have a look at the python libraries for rfc822 messages, URLs,
HTTP servers and such. (I don't like guido's design for the htmllib,
though. And that chameleon os interface: blech!)
Java may be even better, but it's not straightforward to install on
lots of platforms yet.
Dan
[1] http://c2.org/