On: Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 07:08:45PM -0500,Doug Essinger-Hileman Wrote:

} Late this past summer I asked for help in sorting out a problem with 
} the digests being very large. The problem is still not answered. With 
} folk complaining again, I am hoping that someone can help me sort 
} this out.
} 
} The list is currently configured for digests to be cut off at 500 
} lines. I realize that if the last email is longer than 500 lines, it 
} will not be truncated, and will thus extend the length of the digest.
} 
} The last five digests have been 25 lines, 5016 lines, 5814 lines, 
} 2900 lines, and 750 lines. None of those digests have a last email 
} that is all that long; the lengths of the last messages are: 25 lines 
} (the digest had only one message), 24 lines, 40 lines, 18 lines, 28 
} lines. I have gone back and checked, each of the messages comes from 
} a different person, and none of them had any attachments.
} 
} Can anyone help me solve this problem?

Is it possible that the 25 line digest contained the only message of
that day?  Digests are cut every 24 hrs as well as on exceeding the size.
Another possible explanation is that the 25 line message was the last
of the day, and the one before had triggered a digest cut.

One likely cause of this disparity is that many mailers don't put
returns at the end of the lines, so each paragraph is one "line".
Many mailers display these "lines" as multiple lines.

The cure is that in the newest release of Listserv, there is an option
to specify the digest size in megabytes or kilobytes.  Here is a bit from
the 14.3 release notes:

[Quote]
The Digest= list header keyword has been enhanced in 14.3 to allow list
owners to specify a maximum digest size in either kilobytes or
megabytes, rather than in lines, which was the only way to do this in
earlier versions. For instance:

* Digest= Yes,Same,Daily,Size(100K)      Cut the digest at 100Kbytes
  
* Digest= Yes,Same,Daily,Size(1M)        Cut the digest at 1Mbyte

As before, the digest will be cut whenever the pending digest grows over
the size limit setting.  Please remember that the limit refers to the
cutoff point, not to the size of the largest digest that LISTSERV will
send. Assuming Size(1M), a 1Mbyte message causing the digest to go over
the limit will be included in the cut digest in its entirety, so it is
to be expected that if the digest already contains nearly that much
text, the cut digest will be almost 2MB when it is distributed.  A
judicious use of the Sizelim= keyword setting in conjunction with the
Size() parameter for Digest= is therefore recommended in order to keep
digests from either growing too large or being cut too often.
[end quote]

I am not sure but I believe that a similar change was made for Sizelim=
a few updates ago.

You can find the 14.3 release notes at:

  http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8e/relnotes/LISTSERV14.3-Release-Notes.html

-- 
Rich Greenberg N6LRT Marietta, GA, USA richgr atsign panix.com + 1 770 321 6507
Eastern time zone.   I speak for myself & my dogs only.     VM'er since CP-67
Canines:Val, Red & Shasta (RIP),Red, husky                   Owner:Chinook-L
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