Note  that SCAN  is one  of the  new features  of the  code that  will be
eventually  released as  1.8b. It  was written  2 months  after 1.8a  was
released and is thus not included in the "normal" 1.8a that most VM sites
are running.  It is however  included in the XA-exploitation  update that
CUNY and  a couple other  sites are running. It  is also standard  in the
VMS, unix and  Windows versions, since they were released  after SCAN was
written and I didn't  see any reason not to include it.  But if your 1.8a
server says there is no SCAN command, it doesn't mean something is wrong,
it just  means it is running  the "normal" 1.8a. The  reason there hasn't
been any new release  for 10 months is that we have  to "freeze" the code
for about  1-2 months  before releasing  a new version,  so that  the new
version can  be beta-tested seriously.  During this period, fixes  can of
course be made but new functions  or major changes are not allowed, since
that  in  turn would  require  new  testing and  we  would  end up  never
releasing anything, since  there would always be some  new, untested code
in the distribution.  Because of the VMS, unix and  Windows ports, it has
been necessary to  make a number of  major changes to the  code which are
not  compatible with  beta-testing. This  doesn't mean  that improvements
haven't  been  made,  we've  just  not been  able  to  make  them  widely
available.  The Windows  version is  expected to  go beta  next week  and
hopefully we should  be able to start a beta-test  phase after Christmas.
These changes are a  one-time thing and we should be  back on the regular
two releases a year schedule after that.
 
  Eric