For a more comprehensive reference on all LISTSERV option settings
(including how to set options by mail), please see the section on How To Set Your
Subscription Options in the General User's Guide to
LISTSERV.
Subscription type
- Regular
With a "regular" subscription, you receive individual postings immediately,
as they are processed by LISTSERV. - Digest
(traditional)
- Digest (MIME format)
- Digest (HTML format)
With a "digest"
subscription, you receive larger messages (called
"digests") at regular intervals, usually once per day or once per week.
These "digests" are collections of individual list postings. Some lists are
so active that they produce several digests per day. Digests are a good
compromise between reading everything as it is posted and feeling like the
list is clogging your mailbox with a multitude of individual postings.
There are three digest formats: a "traditional", text-only format; a MIME
format, which (with mail clients that understand MIME digests) "bursts" the
individual messages out of the digest so that you can read them separately;
and an HTML format, which requires an HTML mail clients. - Index (traditional)
- Index (HTML
format)
With an "index" subscription, you receive short "index"
messages at regular intervals, usually once per day or once per week. These
"indexes" show you what is being discussed on the list, without including
the text of the individual postings. For each posting, the date, the
author's name and address, the subject of the message and the number of
lines is listed. You can then download messages of interest from the server
(the index contains instructions on how to do that). An index
subscription is ideal if you have a slow connection and only read a few
hand-picked messages. The indexes are very short and you do not have to
worry about long download times. The drawback of course is that you need to
reconnect to order messages of interest from the server. You can choose
to have the index sent to you in either a traditional format (plain text) or
in HTML format with hyperlinks.
Mail header style
- Normal LISTSERV-style header
"Full" mail headers (normally the default), containing
Internet routing information, MIME headers, and so forth.
- LISTSERV-style, with list name in subject
"Full" mail headers (like the default) except that a "subject tag" is added
to the subject line of mail coming from the list. If there is no subject
tag defined in the list's configuration, the name of the list will be used.
This can be very useful for sorting and filtering mail. - LISTSERV-style, short (advanced option)
These headers
are similar to the normal LISTSERV-style header except that Internet routing
information and MIME headers are removed. - "Dual"
(second header in mail body)
Dual headers are regular short
headers followed by a second header inside the message body. This second
header shows what list the message is coming from ('Sender:'), the name and
address of the person who posted it ('Poster:'), the poster's organization,
if present, and the message subject. Dual headers are helpful if your mail
client does not preserve the original return e-mail address. - sendmail-style (advanced option)
This option selects
sendmail-style headers, i.e. an exact copy of the original, incoming
mail header with the addition of a 'Received:' line and of a 'Sender:'
field. Some technical people prefer this type of header.
Acknowledgements
- No acknowledgements
LISTSERV will not send any acknowledgement at all when you post to the list.
This is probably not a good setting unless you really do not want any
feedback from LISTSERV as to whether or not your posting was received and
distributed. - Short message confirming receipt
Typically this is the default setting, although it can be overridden by
the list owner. If you choose this setting, LISTSERV will send you a short
message whenever you post to the list, confirming the distribution of your
message and telling you how many people it was sent to. - Receive copy of own postings
Some people prefer this
setting over the short acknowledgement message. It tells LISTSERV to send
you a copy of your own postings, so that you can see exactly how it appeared
on the list (useful if you are behind an unreliable gateway or firewall).
Miscellaneous
- Mail delivery disabled temporarily
This
option toggles the receipt of mail from the list. You may want to disable
mail delivery if you will be away from your mail for an extended period of
time. - Address concealed from REVIEW listing
This option conceals you from the list of subscribers shown by the
REVIEW command. Note that the list owner and the LISTSERV administrator can
always get the complete list of subscribers, regardless of this setting.
Nowadays, most lists are configured so that only the list owner can use the
REVIEW command, but some lists still allow subscribers to get a listing of
all the other participants.
Topics
For lists with topics enabled (if the Topics: section of the form is not
visible, topics are not enabled), this section allows you to subscribe or
unsubscribe to all, some, or none of the available topics.
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