>Question remains  - how did that  blank line get in  there? Perhaps from
>the guy who sent it in the first place and not LISTSERV.
 
Probably what happened  in that the message in question  was delivered to
the list as a file. That is, it  popped up in the reader of the list with
a fileid  like "ME  NETMSG", which is  not one of  the two  reserved mail
filetypes (MAIL and  NOTE); it did not have a  PROFS or NETDATA type=Note
header either.  It may  or may  not have  contained a  blank line  at the
beginning, anyway LISTSERV didn't identify it as mail and processed it as
a file to be distributed to the list (which happened to contain text, but
it might have been binaries  or anything). For security reasons (LISTSERV
is a "trusted source" for the mailer  and can fake mail from any origin),
a file which  looks like it contains text rather  than binaries and might
perhaps have a valid RFC822 header gets  an extra blank line on top: this
way, if it  hits a mailer, it  won't be processed as mail,  and the final
recipient of  the file shouldn't  have any  problem with it,  since we're
talking about  a text file  (and anyway  editors let you  delete unwanted
lines, don't they? :-) ).
 
Anyway, what you  got is an 'as  is' copy, which is  perhaps not suitable
for  replying to,  but keep  in  mind that  (apart from  this blank  line
business) this is basically the way Internet distribution lists work, and
the way  God meant it  to be  (LISTSERV just happens  to be one  of these
pieces of BITNET heresy :-) ).
 
  Eric