RE: PaleoNet Digests???

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Norm,
   Most list server software (listserv and listproc) have the commands set
mail digest and set mail index.  When the server recieves a digest command
from a subscriber it sends that subscriber one email message each day that
contains all traffic on the server over each 24 hour period.  Thus, for
example, I get only one message a day from Darwin-L with the subject of the
message saying Darwin-L Digest, and the body containing all traffic on the
list for the past day.  When one subscribes to a bunch of listservers this
turns out to be very helpfull.  Indexes are similar.  In response to a set
index command, the list server sends out to that subscriber one message per
day containing only the subject lines of the traffic on the list.  If the
subscriber sees interesting traffic they can then retrive it from the
archive by ftp or whatever protocol is available.  I have seen several
workers who have to pay storage costs for email praising this on the net.  I
couldn't find these commands in the command list that I got from your
listserver, so I didn't know if I wasn't figuring out how to get the
complete command set, or if the listserver software didn't have these
switches.
Best Regards,
-Paul

In message Wed, 16 Nov 1994 04:16:19 -0500,
  N.MacLeod@nhm.ac.uk (N. MacLeod)  writes:

> Paul:
>
> I don't know quite what you mean by "digests or indices."  PaleoNet
> archives all messages posted to it and to the specialty servers.  These
> are available in a file that can be downloaded from the NHM-FTP site.  If
> anyone is interested, I can provide instructions on how to do this.  There
> was a request at the Seattle PaleoNet meeting to periodically drop the
> PaleoNet archive into a database so that people could browse for past
> postings by topic, author's name, etc.  This is also doable though at this
> early stage I don't think we've reached a critical mass of messages that
> really need to be saved for posterity as yet.  Does this answer your
> question or did you have something else in mind?
>
> Norm MacLeod