On Thu, 5 Nov 1998 04:42:22 -0800, "Stephen C. Nill"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>        I know that using the Topic word in upper case, followed by a colon,
>works.  But what I wonder is, does Listserv need any particular format for
>the Topic word, and can the Topic word be located anywhere in the subject
>to be "read" by Listserv?  (If there is a section in the manual that you
>can point me to, I'll happily go there.)

Case does not matter for topics keywords. You only need the minimum matching
part. (e.g. hard: will route to HARDWARE:)   The topics keyword must appear
first on the subject: line i.e. before the descriptive subject words.  For Reply
messages, all variations on Re: RE: RE[2]: etc that might be before that are
understood and ignored by the parser (but FWD: and it's variations is not and it
will attempt to be interpreted as a keyword, and thus usually goes to 'Other').
If you or your users use the LISTSERV Subject Header for the list [LIST_TAG]
this also is automatically placed after the Re: (if any) but before the Topics
keyword but the parser knows to ignore this as well.

Since everyone writing to the list and using topics must (usually) manually
write in the topic keyword(s) it is best to keep them short and easy to
understand.  People also will need frequent reminders of the valid Keywords,
which is easy with a rotating BOTTOM_BANNER.

Appendix B of the manual covers this along with all List Header keywords in
detail.