(Apologies for the cross-posting)
In anticipation of the CREN survey, a number of people have suggested
that I post a list of the main new features in the new versions of
LISTSERV and LMail, since that is probably the first question their
management will ask. Some of the new functions have already been
described on LSTSRV-L and LMAIL-L, but there are other major enhancements
for which no description has been posted because it would not be
overwhelmingly useful to have the information in advance (while it is
clearly better to know in advance what is going to happen, one has to
bear in mind that these early descriptions are incomplete and that things
often change before the code is released, sometimes in incompatible
ways). Anyway, here is the list of new features:
LMail 1.2a:
- Personal Names Directory support (already described on LMAIL-L). This
is a kind of "smart" alias feature that lets people address your users
as [log in to unmask] for instance. LMail will return a list of
"close" matches if there is no entry matching the specified name, and
you can easily query the directory without having to install any
special client. Running a search on "all the Smiths" is as easy as
sending mail to [log in to unmask] Note that this code was made
available to a few 1.1d sites for testing and feedback; it is not,
however, part of version 1.1d. If you did not install a special
shipment called MPNDIR1, you do not have that code.
- Global List Exchange (GLX) support. Version 1.2a is required to operate
a local GLX, giving your users access to any list in the network
without having to know where it is located (that is, by just typing
'mail xyz', local users can reach the XYZ list no matter where it is
actually hosted). Sites which obtained an early version of the GLX code
will need version 1.2a to support the new 'listname-server' convention
and to properly forward requests to the 'listname-request' mailboxes.
- SOURCE_ROUTES configuration variable making it easier to bypass bugs in
sendmail configuration files and a number of PC mail packages.
LISTSERV 1.8a:
- Security improvements for remote operations. All list management
commands except PUT can now be validated using the "OK" mechanism (also
known as "magic cookie") rather than passwords. For optimal protection,
lists can optionally be configured to reject password-based validation
and to require the use of the OK mechanism for certain end-user
functions normally accepted without validation.
- Mail system relief: all list subscriptions default to SHORTBSMTP with
release 1.8a (formerly, Internet subscriptions defaulted to SHORTBSMTP
and BITNET ones to SHORTHDR). The SET command was also changed so that
the SHORT and FULL abbreviations default to the xxxxBSMTP variants.
Concretely, this change decreases the amount of traffic between
LISTSERV and MAILER, and thus the cost of providing the LISTSERV
service (both the LISTSERV and MAILER virtual machines benefit from
this change). It is not possible to give an estimate of the resulting
savings, because they can vary significantly from one site to another.
- New template processor that lets list owners customize administrative
messages without intervention by the LISTSERV maintainer (already
described on LSTSRV-L). Some sites modified LISTSERV to give list
owners direct access to the 1.7f MAILFORM files, in spite of the many
warnings. Doing this jeopardizes the security of ALL the users on the
system, even if the list owner can be trusted. With version 1.8a, you
can have the functionality without having to accept this risk.
- Administrative messages have been rewritten to be more easily
understood by non-technical users, or users whose native language is
not English.
- Performance improvements. DISTRIBUTE is now entirely in PASCAL, and
some of the most frequently used commands (ADD, SUBSCRIBE, QUERY, SET)
have been converted to PASCAL, along with many others. Unfortunately,
at this point it is not possible to give accurate performance figures,
as the traffic patterns are very different in summer. In 9305, LISTSERV
used up 18.5 hours of CPU time on SEARN, or about 2.5 times as much as
LMail. For 9308, it only used 7.5 hours of CPU time or 1.037 times as
much as LMail.
- Better and more consistent error messages. Commands rewritten in PASCAL
use a common set of parsing subroutines which can give better hints in
case of incorrect input than typical REXX commands. Another advantage
is support for several syntactic flavours; for instance, it is now
possible to use 'QUERY XYZ-L/USER=*@XYZ.EDU' or 'SET XYZ-L/NOMAIL'.
Generally speaking, PASCAL commands are a lot more consistent with each
other than the REXX commands.
- Support for list exits (already described on LSTSRV-L). A REXX program
can be associated with a list so that it is called during processing of
various list management commands, such as ADD, SUBSCRIBE, etc. The
program can make certain decisions, such as whether to let a new
subscriber in, and can also take special action, such as sending a
document to new subscribers, adding them to another list, etc.
- Partial support for X.400 addresses containing blanks, to answer an
EARN requirement. These users may now issue commands to LISTSERV, join
mailing lists, order files from the server, etc. Some messages and the
output of some commands may, however, be improperly formatted. This
restriction cannot be removed until the last of the REXX code is
rewritten in PASCAL.
- Support for delivery of large documents as multipart MIME messages,
through the new 'SPLIT=' command keyword, which can be combined with
any of the file format keywords (UUENCODE, XXENCODE, MIME/APPL, etc).
- New 'listname-server' mailbox, integrated with the Global List Exchange
(GLX). To order a file from the VM-UTIL archive, for instance, you can
mail your request to [log in to unmask] without having to
know where the list is located.
- Miscellaneous list management enhancements. Delivery errors sent to the
owner-listname mailbox are now forwarded with the 'listname: Delivery
error from hostname' subject that was in use before the inception of
"safe" lists. The ADD command accepts new entries in RFC822 format as
well as the old format (eg 'add xyz-l John Smith <[log in to unmask]>').
- New statistics gathering functions which partially answer an EARN
requirement. LISTSERV will maintain monthly statistical counters which
can be retrieved for reporting/analysis using an external tool. This is
both more convenient and more accurate than snapshots of the SHOW
command.
- New 'INFO listname' command which returns information supplied by the
list owner (via the mail template mechanism), or a copy of the list
header if no information was available.
Eric
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