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Date: | Sat, 16 Jan 1993 22:33:01 +0100 |
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On Sat, 16 Jan 1993 15:00:52 -0400 Lydia Fish <FISHLM@SNYBUFVA> said:
>>I would like to see documentation of new features. Eric has just
>>introduced some very valuable improvements with the new Digest= and
>>Topic= headers
>
>I may have missed the announcement of the date of the implementation of
>the new features, but when may we expect to have them available on our
>local LISTSERVs?
You need to distinguish between "When will version 1.7f be released?" and
"When will I be able to use feature X for my ABC-L list?". Your LISTSERV
maintainer is the person who can best answer the second question:
sometimes the code is available everywhere else but cannot be installed
at your site yet for one reason or another, sometimes it hasn't been
released as part of an official version update but is available for
testing. "Active" LISTSERV maintainers generally subscribe to the
LSTSRV-L list and know what features are available as development fixes,
or then alpha or beta-test version updates (think of it as various types
of "previews" of the code for selected sites). If your maintainer is a
busy type and you know he doesn't read LSTSRV-L, he probably won't want
to install early-release code and you will probably want to wait for the
official version update before asking.
So, when will version 1.7f be released? You will not get an accurate
answer to such a question unless the code is about to be sent out,
because nothing is ever released without a serious beta-testing period
(usually 1-2 weeks). If many problems show up, the beta-testing period is
usually extended until a good solution is found to all problems. And
problems are not always bugs - for instance, when LISTSERV became faster
than the VM mailer this created an operational problem for a number of
sites, and operators had to be told to start watching mailer queues
rather than LISTSERV queues. Last minute suggestions are often
incorporated during beta-testing as users become acquainted with the new
functions and provide feedback, and in fact this is the reason why major
enhancements such as the digest/index functions are usually made
available as development fixes - so that the beta-testing programme
doesn't drag on forever.
As far as 1.7f is concerned, there are still a couple things I would like
to add before I start thinking about releasing it, and the speed at which
I add things depends mostly on what other things I have to do (LISTSERV
being a spare-time activity). This means I can't even tell you when
beta-testing will start, although this will probably happen before the
end of next month.
Eric
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