Appendix F: Acknowledgements

Once again it appears that I'm done with a manual. Of course, no manual is ever really done; that's why we have revisions. :)

And it's time to thank the people who helped out. I'd like particularly to thank Eric Thomas, Elena Hammond, Amy Farley, Dana Kressierer and Jeni Williams of L-Soft for their assistance; Holly Stowe of IUPUI for reading and commenting on really early versions of this manual (I mean, versions missing complete chapters and containing "I'm working on this" tags); and Holly, Marty Hoag of North Dakota State University, Jim Gerland of the University at Buffalo, Glenn Malling of Syracuse University, and Jim McIntosh of American University for reading and commenting on the beta draft. Thanks also to Ben Chi of the University at Albany for his paper "Setting Up the LISTSERV File Server: A Beginner’s Guide" (FSV GUIDE) which has been mentioned herein as the document of choice for setting up VM filelists, and Norm Aleks of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center Library for his document on using the new non-VM database commands, which I have used to help document them in all of the new 1.8c manuals.

As with the List Owner's Manual, much use was made of the archives of LSTSRV-L and LSTOWN-L, as well as the release notes for quite a few versions of LISTSERV (you'd be surprised--or if you're an old VMer, maybe you wouldn't--how far back I had to go for some things) and, of course, I used the day to day business of supporting LISTSERV in the field to fill in certain gaps. Once again, thanks to the list subscribers and to our customers for pointing out those gaps.

I'm sure that there are people I've missed (in fact, I know there are), but you know who you are and you know I've always appreciated your input. (I may not always have used it, but I always appreciated it.)

--Nathan Brindle (nathan@lsoft.com)

Acknowlegements for the 1.8d Revision

This one was tough. Eric added a lot of new stuff for 1.8d that just about broke me in terms of describing how it all worked :) In any case, once again I'd like to thank the L-Soft crew (specifically the support group--Eric, Elena, Dana, Jeni, and "new" recruits Francoise Becker, Larry York, Ben Parker, Liam Kelly, and DeWayne Jones) for their dedication in ferreting out any bugs they could find in the documentation (any that are left are due to my own misunderstanding or omission); to the L-Soft sales staff for passing along comments they received, both pro and con; and to the usual gang of old-time LISTSERV users for telling me I should fix this or that, or this or that wasn't documented. Special thanks to Holly Stowe at IUPUI for reading early and late revisions and telling me (among other useful tidbits) "That still says 1.8c"; to Roger Fajman at NIH for keeping after me long enough that I provided the table for Validate=; to John Karpovich of the L-Soft sales staff for his non-technical take on how to write DISTRIBUTE jobs, which I modified for part of chapter 11 of this release of the manual (which has since been moved to the separate Developer's Guide); to Pete Weiss at PSU for his never-failing humor (and for running SPAM-L along with Doug Muth, and now Paul Russell, too); to Marty Hoag at NDSU for his comments on beta drafts; to Alan S. Dobkin at Emory University for marking up a late beta draft.

Some of you are aware that I am a telecommuter who lives in a Midwestern venue which shall remain nameless for my own privacy :) Well--regardless of that, I spent a LOT of time in Landover during 1996 and 1997 (somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 or 13 weeks total), including during the Blizzard of 1996--and just "because", I want to thank the management and staff of the Courtyard by Mariott-New Carrollton for their unflagging courtesy and hospitality, particularly Guest Services Manager Lisa Hooper and the kitchen and serving staff in the restaurant. My only unfulfilled request was for more cable channels. I also want to thank the L-Soft staff in the Landover office for putting up with me and arranging their schedules so that we could get the work I came to do done in a timely manner. And next time I'll rent a car that doesn't break down on the way to the Christmas party. (Postscript: This time (1998) I made it--Russ was driving:)

Finally, I swear to you all that the next version of this manual will have section numbers in the footers and a decent index.

Since the beginning of this revision process some 25 months ago, several of the above-named L-Soft staff have moved on to (one assumes) bigger and better things. I wish them well in their new endeavors.

Again, I know I've missed people who helped; but you know who you are and you know I appreciate your input. Until next time!

--Nathan Brindle (nathan@lsoft.com)

Revisions:

Note carefully that these revision notes are cumulative. For instance, if a revision note says that chapter x was renumbered to chapter y, or that a change was made to chapter y, and a later revision note says that chapter y was moved to another manual, obviously the later revision supersedes the earlier one (which is nonetheless retained for reference). So before complaining that you can't find a certain revision in the manual, please read the entire list of revisions to make sure something else didn't change in the meantime :) Revision notes from the release of the 1.8d manual through the beta stages will be removed when the manual for the next version is released and this process will begin again.

990301-001    Released 1.8d manual.
990503-001    Converted to Word 97 format
990503-002    6.3, SHUTDOWN in the "general" section -- added REBOOT|REIPL 
              options since they are available under OpenVMS, with note 
              that under unix and Windows these options are ignored.
990503-003    7.13.1 and .2 - expanded on the Reply-To= keyword and why 
              setting it even to "Sender,Ignore" may still result in some 
              replies coming back to the list rather than going to the 
              original poster.
990503-004    8.3, per arrangement with Ben Chi, changed footnote for FSV 
              GUIDE to point to LISTSERV.NET and to ftp://ftp.lsoft.com 
              rather than to ALBANY.EDU. Also made change (web link only) 
              in 8.3.1 and 8.3.2.
990503-005    Added "Documented Restriction" box in 11.11, LSMTP required 
              for mail merge.
990521-001    Added 9.8.3.
990611-001    Per Francoise, 7.4, "#" is indeed not a legal character in a 
              list name.  Harmonized the tabbed list that said it was not 
              with the paragraph below that indicated it was.
990614-001    Added 10.3.22.
990624-001    Appendix B, Prime=, added a mid-week distribution example.
990626-001    5.4.4, wa.obj should have been wa.olb.
990707-001    13.5.2, added note that passive probing is disabled in Lite.
990707-002    Appendix B, Auto-Delete=, added note to Lite disclaimer that 
              passive probing is specifically unavailable under Lite.
990722-001    Appendix C, MAILMAXL description expanded.
990727-001    15.6 and Appendix B, Send=, Send= default is Private.
990804-001    7.13.4, noted that Moderator= is disabled in LISTSERV Lite.
990824-001    SWGATE.LSOFT.COM is the default host for TABLELESS mode.
990914-001    Added 10.3.23 on X-TBREG jobs.
990914-002    9.3, documented .ASIS directive.
991018-001    Appendix C, modified LICENSE_WARNING text.
991018-002    Appendix B, Default Values, 'Digest= Yes,Daily,Same if 
              "Notebook= Yes", No otherwise' should be 'Digest= Yes,Same,Daily
              if "Notebook= Yes", No otherwise'.
991031-001    Changelogs not available in Lite.
991031-002    Trademark block updated.
991031-003    2.1, Y2K info changed to point to official URL.
991109-001    Prime=, Appendix B, and 12.3, noted that weekdays must be in 
              order beginning with Monday.
991111-001    Notebook=, Appendix B, added note about changing notebook 
              intervals not converting existing notebooks to new format
991217-001    7.3, point 8, referenced sections 7.7.1 and 7.7.2 were 
              incorrect, changed to 7.2.1 and 7.2.2.
991222-001    5.8 and Appendix B, Notebook=, under unix "where" spec must be 
              lower case.
991223-001    Released Revision 1.
000103-001    6.1.1, "SET" command, noted backward compatibility issue with 
              SET listname MAIL for DIGEST/INDEX users.
000204-001    7.4, removed $ from the list of acceptable characters in a 
              list name.
000209-001    11.12, added warning that unix and VMS(PMDF) must still make 
              aliases when creating lists from web interface
000211-001    Added points 4 and 5 to the procedure in 7.11 for deleting 
              lists.
000216-001    "+" added to the list of unacceptable characters in a list 
              name.
000306-001    Appendix C, TRAPIN and TRAPOUT, in abstract added 
              "administrative" before last word "mail".
000313-001    Added 10.3.24 to document LVMON mails.
000411-001    Added 13.5.3, probing issues under unix/VMS
000411-002    Updated 7.2.2, and point 8 of the checklist in 7.3 wrt making 
              PMDF aliases for new lists
000504-001    Attachments= keyword added to Appendix B.  Also noted in 
              Files=.
000504-002    Added 12.7 describing the Attachments= keyword.
000504-003    9.4.2., added info about BAD_ATTACHMENTS template form.
000505-001    Released Revision 2.

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Site Manager's Operations Manual for LISTSERV®
Appendix A: System Reference Library for LISTSERV® Version 1.8d
Appendix B: List Keyword Reference for LISTSERV® Version 1.8d
Appendix C: Site Configuration Keyword Reference
Appendix D: Sample Boilerplate Files
Appendix E: Related Documentation and Support