Rohit, please don't cross-post to all three lists :)  Posting to LSTSRV-L
is really all you needed to do for these questions.

On Mon, 29 Nov 1999 18:38:10 PST rohit narang said:
>hi,
>I want to use Listserv 1.8d to maintain a japanese list. The text mailed
>will be essentialy Japanese. Are there any issues here ?

Yes, for double-byte character systems you need to set Translate= No in
the list header.  This stops LISTSERV from translating control characters
and keeps it from munging the double-byte characters.  This is documented
but not in an obvious way.

>For mail merge, is it necessary to use LSMTP ? no way can i do it with
>LISTSERV alone ?

As documented, LSMTP is required for mail merge.  This is because LSMTP
actually does the merge for you, not LISTSERV.  LISTSERV is simply the
agent through which you send the merge message (ie via a DISTRIBUTE MAIL-
MERGE job) to LSMTP for execution.

>My understanding of an SMTP server is that it just sends mails. How does
>then Listserv receive mails, when using LSMTP and when not using it ?

When using LSMTP, LSMTP passes mail seamlessly to LISTSERV.  When you
don't use LSMTP, there is an SMTP "listener" service that receives mail
for LISTSERV and passes it to LISTSERV (this comes with LISTSERV--it's
called SMTPL).  Note that if you do not use LSMTP then you have to configure
LISTSERV to use an external host for its outgoing email.

>Once you have installed everything, how do you create the Admin id and
>password ? Isn't the POSTMASTER in the site.config administrator of some
>sort ? How does he get his password ? through email ? please note that i
>want to use the web interface only.

A LISTSERV admin (also known as "site manager" or, archaically, "LISTSERV
postmaster") is any person whose email address is defined in the
POSTMASTER= variable in LISTSERV's site configuration.  Site managers
set personal passwords in an identical manner to general users.  It's
very easy if you are using the web interface since the first time you
come across a protected interface you will be asked for your login and
password, and will be given a link to create a password for yourself
if you do not already have one.

For some things you will have to use the mail interface, particularly
if you are doing custom mail merge.  For mail merge, the web interface
is geared more toward merging into traditional LISTSERV lists rather
than, say, large one-off mailings.

Nathan