(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