1.2 The List Definition
The list definition contains all the details about a particular
list and all the email addresses of every member of the list.
Here we will set a list that can be joined by anyone and allow
anyone to send mail to it. The list manager will be the root
user and we will display three different messages when people
request help about this list, first join the list and leave
the list. In addition we will have a message displayed in every
piece of mail sent by the list server, telling people how
to leave and containing a special, unique character sequence
so that intelligent mail clients can automatically file mail
sent.
The three files will typically answer the following questions:
- help file Who are the people who would benefit from
being members of this list? Typically how much mail is sent?
How to join? How to leave? Who controls the list? For the
prupose of this discussion, we shall assume this file is
called "D:\DISCHELP.TXT"
- join file How to leave? How much mail to expect?
What is the unique character sequence? Who to contact if there
are problems. ("D:\DISCJOIN.TXT")
- leave file Thanks! ("D:\DISCGO.TXT").
For this set of requirements we have an alias of "DISCUSSION" - the
list name. The parameters part has the following entries:
- list human is "root".
- list manager is "list" - this is the name of the
List Manager defined above.
- X-Info is "Mail list@net-shopper.co.uk for help. DISC". This
tells the user how to leave and also has a four byte identifier for
those clever mail clients.
- post_allow is "*". This will match anyone who attempts
to post to the mail list.
- join_allow is "*". This will allow anyone to join the
mail list.
- help_file is "D:\DISCHELP.TXT".
- join_file is "D:\DISCJOIN.TXT".
- leave_file is "D:\DISCGO.TXT".
Combining this into one registry entry (say M11), we would have:
Ldiscussion root,list,"Mail list@net-shopper.co.uk for help. DISC",
*,*,D:\DISCHELP.TXT,D:\DISCJOIN.TXT,D:\DISCGO.TXT
(note this is all one line in the registry but has been slit up here so that
it can be seen easily).