Page 35 - Mercury Manual.book

Mailing lists 30
Mailing list settings and options

Modify subject lines using this string Any text you enter in this field will be inserted at the
start of the subject field (or at the end if the Suffix control is checked) of all mail distributed
to the list. This feature is primarily intended for the comfort of MajorDomo users, and for the
benefit of mail programs with only rudimentary filtering capabilities. You can enter any text
you want in this field - the MajorDomo convention is usually to enter the list topic in square
brackets... In any case, try to keep whatever you enter short. For replies to the list, where the
subject line already contains the tag text, Mercury will strip it out and re-insert it after any
occurrences of "Re", "Re:" or "Re[x]:" at the start of the subject field, ensuring consistent
placement without affecting clients that can thread-sort by subject.

Enable Pegasus Mail-compatible encryption If the subscribers to your mailing list all use
Pegasus Mail, then you can encrypt the messages you send to the list by checking this control.
Whatever key you supply will be used to encrypt the messages, and your subscribers must
know that password in order to read the messages. Mail generated with this option turned on
is only readable using Pegasus Mail.

Explode submissions For large lists, it can be significantly more efficient to send the message
out to several chunks of the subscription list instead of simply generating one large message,
since doing so allows multiple SMTP processes to handle the mail at the same time. If you
enter a value here, Mercury will "explode" messages sent to the list into that number of out-
Lists cannot be exploded
into more than a total of 20 going jobs. This setting can have a dramatic impact on list delivery if you are using the Mer-
separate jobs. curyE SMTP end-to-end delivery protocol module. You cannot explode a submission into
more than 20 jobs.
Digest support
Mercury has comprehensive support for mail digests – messages that simply contain a col-
lection of other messages, like a kind of “mini-folder”. To enable digest support for a mailing
list, enter a simple filename in the Digest filename field. The filename you enter may not have
a path component - it is always stored in the Mercury scratch directory. The filename may
not contain substitution characters the way an archive filename does. If no filename is entered
in a list definition, then digest support will not be available for that list. You cannot prevent
a subscriber from changing in or out of digest mode if digest support is enabled for a list. The
Max size and Max waiting period fields control the trigger conditions that determine when a
digest is sent out to digest subscribers. If the Max size field is non-zero, then the digest will
be distributed as soon as the digest file exceeds the number of bytes you enter. If the Max
waiting period field is non-zero, then the digest will be sent after that number of hours has
elapsed. Note that Mercury only checks digests every fifteen minutes, so the Max waiting pe-
riod setting may not result in a precise delivery time.

Create an index of subject lines and senders When this control is enabled, Mercury will note
down the sender and subject of every message in the digest, and will construct an "index" as
the first item in the digest. The index contains a précis of the contents of the digest and is
handy for people whose mail packages do not support the MIME digest format.

Anonymous mail support
It is occasionally desirable to set up mailing lists that provide anonymity for people who send
mail to them -- examples of this include suggestion boxes, and lists covering sensitive or dan-
gerous subjects. Mercury lists support three levels of anonymity - none, where no attempt is
made to hide the sender's identity; logged, where no indication of the sender's identity appears
in mail sent out to the membership, but the sender's address is recorded in the Mercury log
Running a server that al-
lows anonymous mail may file; and total, where the sender's identity is neither shown in mail sent to the list nor in the
have legal implications in Mercury log file. WARNING: In many states and countries, there may be legal issues asso-
many places. Consult your
legal counsel before using ciated with hosting an anonymous list, particularly if it involves discussion of activities that
this facility. are illegal or subversive. Before agreeing to host an anonymous mailing list, we strongly rec-