On Tue, 9 Jun 1992 14:37:35 EDT Paul Hyland said:
>1) Is there any way to turn off this formatting feature?
 
Place .fo off on a line by itself before your welcome letter starts.  This
will turn off formatting until the end of the message, or until it is turned
on again by an .fo on.  Example:
 
.fo off
this stuff
won't be     formatted.
.fo on
 
>2) Is there any way for me, a lowly list owner, to update these files
>directly?  My Listserv administrator tells me that I can't, must go through
>him, and this creates a long delay with many iterations to try out changes.
 
Yes, you can do it yourself if the listserv administrator is willing to play
along... it's a bit kludgy, but it does work.
 
First, the list administrator has to add a line to your list's FILEID file.
Let's say your list name was TEST-L.  The listserv administrator would edit
the file TEST-L FILEID (on listserv's 191) and add the following line:
 
TEST-L MAILFORM TEST-L MAILFORM A1
 
The number at the top line of the file should also be incremented by 1.
 
Once this is done, you must then edit your TEST-L FILELIST file (TELL LISTSERV
GET TEST-L FILELIST (CTL) to include TEST-L MAILFORM:
 
  TEST-L   MAILFORM   OWN OWN .       .     0 ........ ........ MAILFORM file
 
This being done, replace the TEST-L FILELIST file.  (LSVPUT TEST-L FILELIST).
From this point on, anytime you want you can send a new TEST-L MAILFORM to
listserv, and it will be (re)placed onto listserv's A disk.   The TEST-L
MAILFORM file is the file that has the text of the mail messages that listserv
sends out - for example, when a new subscriber is added... if you don't have
such a file, then listserv uses as a default, $DEFAULT MAILFORM.
 
Of course, just because this CAN be done, doesn't neccesarily mean that it
SHOULD be done - gotta be sure you are standing by with a backup of the old
file just in case things go wrong.
 
I kinda glossed over it - contact me if you need more details.
 
Bill Gruber   BITNET: BIGCU@CUNYVM  Internet: BIGCU at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
LISTSERV maintainer etc...  City University of New York Computer Center