Nathan Brindle <[log in to unmask]> says:
 
>  Since LISTSERV went commercial only about a year ago, the labor involved
>in porting the product to other environments took precedence.  Eric hired
>me in October to write documentation.  And, barring PC emergencies, that's
>what I've been doing.  My goal is to have the list owner's manual finished
>by the end of 1Q95.  That's 6 weeks from now.
 
Great!  Will look forward to it--that will definitely be a big help.
I didn't mean to sound too critical, especially given the circumstances,
and we do get a _lot_ of help on this forum.
 
>>As an example, although the Keywords documents is comprehensive in the
>>list of keywords supported, it is excessively and unnecessarily terse
>>about what each one does.  And there are some things that are simply not
 
>However, I disagree
>with you on the issue of terseness...I have generally been able to use
>LISTKEYW MEMO without much trouble.  In any case, these problems are
 
Well, perhaps the things I'm thinking of aren't actually deficiencies in
the Keywords document, per se, but in the absence of other
documentation, the Keywords document also serves as a de facto description
of the feature or function too.  In the document that Nathan is working
on, perhaps these appear in other parts of the manual in sections that
describe the various features.  But some examples of things I was
thinking of (some of which I've recently posted questions about on this
forum), and which were not in the Keywords memo under the description of
the corresponding keyword, are:
 
Keyword      Omission
-------      --------
List-ID:     Statement that it takes effect overnight only (or for
             whatever version that statement applies)
Topics:      Description of case dependencies, fact that Re: preceding
             the keyword is fine (a literal reading of the description
             would indicate otherwise).  Also, All, None, Other and Others
             are identified as reserved, but what do they do?  Do they
             have some special action, or are they reserved for future use?
Digest:      Not clear what "FM" parameter should be set to, if you don't
             care where the digest is stored, and if you don't have
             archives.  Do you need listserv-owner support in doing this?
             There is some more description under "Notebook=" but it is
             still unclear what someone trying to set up a Notebook or
             Digest should set it to.
Editor:      What header field validates an approved message?
             "Resent-From"?  If an editor sends a message himself,
             does his address in "From" suffice, or should it also be
             in "Resent-From"?
X-Tags:      How does this interact with SHORT/FULL header options?  Are
             X-headers included in SHORT?
Subscription: If By_owner, does it get forwarded only to the first owner
             (which is what the singular usage in the description seems
             to imply, albeit weakly), or to all the owners (or the non-
             quiet ones), or is there a way to set this either way.
 
Anyway, the point of this list was to give (helpful, I hope) examples of
what I meant, but these are all questions that I've truly had, and most
are unanswered, so if someone feels like answering them too, that would be
great!
 
Shahrukh Merchant