Does there exist any plug-in or hack for IPB that allows the forums to be browsed or at least gatewayed via NNTP/UseNet or a standard e-mail mailing list?

I'm posting this here because I'd love NNTP and e-mail only access to the board, but also for my own personal reasons, so any mod feel free to move the topic from here if it is not appropriate. I think some interesting solutions here might help HA or at least give Dibrom some ideas for the future, as well giving me some advice.

Even if it isn't a possibility for IPB, I'd certaintly be interested in finding out for myself. I'm considering starting a small project where a board would be needed, and base features like access via mailing list, the web, and NNTP is more important than smilies and avatars.

Just having decent gatewaying via e-mail would also mean that I could setup an Anonymous IMAP server for people using compliant IMAP clients like PINE, Mulberry, Mutt, Sylpheed, etc.

I would prefer that the software/plug-in/hack/solution/whatever keeps proper headers such as "Message-ID", "In-Reply-To", and "Referenes", for proper threading and implements basic loop protection.

For fun, if I do decide to support avatars, I'll have them converted into "X-Face" headers on the fly, just to keep things interesting. =)

Nothing like this currently exists for IPB, at least not publically or that I know of.

I actually did some preliminary work on a python script to facilitate a forum <-> mailing list gateway awhile ago, but scrapped it due to a lack time and the fact that I was generally displeased with the way the project was turning out -- it was simply too hackish in it's current form, and probably very error prone and easy to break.

If someone were to work on something like this now though, and could do a good job with it, I'd definitely be interested in it. The bottom line though is that I simply don't have enough time to take on a project of this magnitude by myself in addition to all the other stuff I'm juggling atm.

As far as the future goes, I would actually almost prefer to move to some other platform and to abstract the entire messaging framework as much as possible. I wouldn't even mind scrapping IPB in favor of some sort of completely custom solution, but again, a project of this size would be a rather major undertaking.

What I am interested in as far as the immediate future of HA, beyond simple messaging interfaces, is tying the forum here into some sort of custom Zope/Plone platform from which we can implement other aspects of the site in a very robust and easy to manage way (downloads, content management, portal, colloboration platforms/tools, robust and secure management interfaces, documentation platforms like wiki, etc). The problem I'm facing right now though is that even implementing the framework for this and managing it takes quite a bit of time, and I simply haven't had the resources to kick it off the ground yet.

If there are Python/Zope/Plone programmers here who are also good with PHP (for interfacing to the forum, etc), and you are interested in helping out HA, then please let me know, because we could definitely use the help to really move things into the next phase here.

Anyway, that was a bit off topic I suppose, but I think it's rather pertinent, at least when discussing custom solutions to expand the functionality of HA.

TrN: check this out:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=60260
http://m2f.netclectic.com/

They also say that this can be relatively easily changed to work with other forum software besides phpbb.

ah, a 3 year old bump. :p

any news on this?