Most LISTSERV commands respond by appending lines of text to whatever output
channel is being used for the command reply: web interface, e-mail message,
etc. LISTSERV then moves on to the next command (if any) and appends more
text to the output channel. This is how QUERY works.

Some commands will also e-mail you a file, usually in addition to some sort
of normal command response (if only to let you know that something has been
mailed). Primarily, the GET command does that - this is what GET is all
about. Then there are all the variants of GET, such as INDEX, which is just
a synonym for GET with certain parameters, or REVIEW. The LISTS command and
a few others will also send an attachment when certain options are used. But
other than GET and its derivatives, there are only a handful of commands
that send you a file, and only with unusual parameters. Any command that
responds by sending you a file is not going to show you anything on the web
interface, and this is almost never what you want.

When a file is being sent to you, you can use command keywords like
SPLIT=xxx or F=MIME/APPL. These keywords apply only to the command on which
they appear. The output channel on the other hand is global. It is opened
before the first command is executed and closed when the last command has
completed. It is usually not buffered, ie LISTSERV passes on any response
text as the command generates it. To turn the output channel into a file,
LISTSERV would have to know in advance that this is what you want - before
the first command is executed. This file could then be sent to you when the
last command completes.

QUERY ***GUI*** is an internal command for the web interface. You are of
course welcome to use it for other purposes, but it was designed for the web
interface, which does not want to receive any e-mail responses. In fact, it
would be a disaster since the web interface cannot access your mailbox :-)

  Eric