From: Jonathan Duddington
Subject: Mailing Lists
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 21:25:00
Source: Docs

Introduction
============

A Mailing List is similar to a Newsgroup, except that its messages are distributed by email rather than the internet news mechanism.  This section describes setting up a mailing list that you can then subscribe to.

Once you've set up a Mailing List in Pluto, you still need to subscribe to it by sending an email request to the mailing list server.  How to subscribe and unsubscribe varies for different mailing lists.  You will need to know the mailing list's email address.

If you want to run (host) a mailing list yourself see the section: Mailing List Server.

Pluto treats Mailing Lists in a similar manner to Newsgroups.  Some of the same features apply to both.


Setup
=====

To set up a Mailing List in Pluto, add it to the Mailing Lists list (from Lists->Mailing_Lists from Pluto's iconbar menu).

In the Mailing List Edit dialogue, the Address of the mailing list should be the email address that you use to send messages to the List.  For example, for the Pluto mailing list, the Address would be:
   pluto-L@argonet.co.uk

The Name field can be set to a descriptive name that you want to appear in Pluto's article lists.  For example "Pluto mailing list".

Pluto uses this email address ( pluto-L@argonet.co.uk  in this example) to recognise incoming emails as belonging to this mailing list.  It looks for it in any of the following header fields of messages:
    Reply-To:          To:                 From:
    Sender:            X-Sender:           X-Mailing-List-Name:
    List-Post:

For the other items in the Mailing List Edit dialogue, see the Section: Newsgroups.

In some mailing lists, it's usual not to add a signature to your messages.  If this is the case, set up an empty signature file in Lists->Signatures and call it (for example) "None".  Then select "None" from the Signature menu in the Newsgroup Edit dialogue.  Note that the entry "(none)" means "use the normal signature for your user name".


Replying to Mailing List Messages
=================================

When you are looking at a mailing list message in the Article Viewer and you click on the Write button, the Reply dialogue gives you a choice of
   Mail sender   (send the reply to the original sender only)
   Mail list     (send the reply to the whole list)


Sending a New Message (not a Reply)
===================================

You can write a new message (i.e. not replying to a previous message) by either:

a.  Select any message in the mailing list, in an article list window
    and click on the Write button at the top of the article list.  This
    will open an empty Write Mail window with the "To" email address
    filled in.

b.  Click on the Write button at the top of the Boxes List, to open
    a blank Write Mail window.  Adjust-click on the menu button to the
    right of the "To" field to open a menu of mailing lists.
 