The Yacht-L manual

Yacht-L is a dynamic group, both in make-up and in the vigor and enthusiam of its participants. There is a solid core of enthusiasts who represent a rich resource of fact, opinion, yarns and lore. Whatever your particular interests in sailing, whether you are a novice or an old hand, the subscribers welcome your participation and offer you a forum for your inquiries, information and opinions.

With the explosive growth of the Internet, many Yacht-L subscribers haven't yet had occasion to learn the capabilities of the Listserv software that provides much of the operation of the list. Listserv is, in fact, rather powerful in the features it offers, and presents you with a number of options and capabilities to tailor the service to your needs and preferences. The most important are described here and can also be found in the Yacht-L file: Yacht-L MANUAL.

The first matter to understand is that there are two addresses for Yacht-L. One is for posting messages to the list, so they are delivered to all subscribers. The other is for submitting instructions to the Listserv software, which will then execute them for you. Messages "posted" to the Listserv address will not get to the subscribers to be seen, and will result in an error message from Listserv. Instructions directed to the posting address will be seen by all subscribers, but will not get to the Listserv command processor and will not be executed. They may well produce "error messages" from the subscribers who receive your posting.

When you do send instructions to Listserv, you should not include anything in the text of your message other than the instructions. If your signature is included, for example, Listserv will attempt to parse it as an instruction, fail, and generate an error message. While this is not a disaster, it is a waste of the SURFnet resources which is unwelcome. Suppress your signature and other extraneous matter in any instructions to the Listserv software.

The second matter of usage you should understand is that all messages posted to the list are logged and archived. The archives are readily available to all subscribers. You can obtain substantial amounts of information on many topics by searching or browsing the archives.

The following discussion is intended to inform you about such access to the archived information, as well as other matters of usage of Yacht-L and Listserv.

The first method, of course, is the regular mail reception. It means that you receive each message sent to the list as soon as it is sent.

The second method is obtaining mail via DIGEST. When you use DIGEST, the listserver will send you one DIGEST-message a day in which all Yacht-L messages of that day are consecutively accumulated. The messages are preceded by a topic list, containing the subject lines of all messages included in the DIGEST-message.

The third method is obtaining mail via INDEX. When you use INDEX, the listserver will send you one INDEX-message a day in which of each Yacht-L message of that day on one line is given the Sender and the Subject of that message. The INDEX-message contains also a simple means to select the messages you actually want to read.

The fourth method is to get the on a monthly or weekly basis logged messages from the archives of the listserver. All the Yacht-L messages of the month or week requested are sent to you in one (large) file.

The fifth method is obtaining mail with the aid of WWW.

The sixth method is to select messages by doing a database search through the monthly or weekly log files in the Yacht-L archives. You select only those messages of Yacht-L which contain the logical combination of words you used as the search criterium.

You can only subscribe or signoff by sending a message to Listserv@Listserv.SURFnet.NL. Be sure NOT to send the message to Yacht-L@Listserv.SURFnet.NL. The subject line is not important and will be ignored by the listserver. On the first message line you should type:

SUBscribe YACHT-L firstname lastname
e.g. SUB YACHT-L E.R. Kooi (the space between firstname and lastname is mandatory).

To signoff the list, type on the message line:
SIGNOFF YACHT-L (that is sufficient).
Therefor don't use SIGNON or UNSUBSCRIBE and the like, they won't work.

To set your mail to DIGEST (or INDEX), send to Listserv@Listserv.SURFnet.NL (not to Yacht-L@Listserv.SURFnet.NL) on the first line of the message body (the subject line is not important):

When you select DIGEST (or INDEX), the listserver will send you one DIGEST (or INDEX) message a day in which of each Yacht-L message of that day one line with Sender and the Subject (or the whole message) is given.

Contributions sent to this list are automatically archived. You can get a list of the available log files by sending to Listserv@Listserv.SURFnet.NL (NOT to Yacht-L@Listserv.SURFnet.NL) the command:

INDex Yacht-L

You can then order these files by sending to Listserv@Listserv.SURFnet.NL the command:

GET Yacht-L LOGyymm(A,B,C,D or E)

If you have a World Wide Web browser, such as Netscape, IExplorer or the like, you can access the on a monthly or weekly basis archiveded logs of messages directly. I am referring to the logbook information collected and made available by the listserver: Listserv@Listserv.SURFnet.NL.
The URL of the WWW-service for the Yacht-L logs is: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/yacht-l.html.
What you find when you get there is a list of the archive log files, arranged chronologically by author, topic or whatever else you selected at the top of that WWW-page. Click on one, and you get the log listing of the messages for the period you selected. By scrolling through the logs, you can find the messages which are of interest. Click on a message entry to see the full message.
You should try to bookmark the URL to you browser; like any large system, the SURFnet machine has a complex structure and addresses. If you don't get to the right place, there's probably a typo.
WWW access to the archives is not limited to subscribers, so you can share the URL for the archives with your friends who are not subscribers to the list. And tell them we would like to have them as subscribers and participants, too.

Those who can use a Web-browser can use the search-facility of the Y-L-webserver (see par. 5 above). When you want to get many messages sent to you it can be more efficient to send a message to Listserv@Listserv.SURFnet.NL with the following commands, starting on the very first line of the message body (The subject of the message to Listserv is not important):

(1234-6789 limits the range of messages where the to be "printed" messages are to be found. 2345, 3456 and 4567 are the messages to be send (not printed) to you. All numbers are arbitrary examples. In the print-command you can also indicate a range by typing: PRINT 2345-3456. When needed, more lines with print-commands can be typed. )

For those who have to use email the following is applicable. The following commands perform a search in all monthly or weekly LOGyymm(A,B,C,D or E) files of Yacht-L.
Send a message to Listserv@Listserv.SURFnet.NL (not to Yacht-L) with the following commands, starting on the very first line of the message body (The subject of the message to Listserv is not important):

XXX, YYY and ZZZ are the keywords. The "or" is a logical or and the spaces between keywords are interpreted as a logical and. Thus "xxx yyy or zzz" is interpreted as "xxx AND yyy OR zzz". A " - " at the end of a command is interpreted as a continuation mark, therefor the next line is considered to be part of the command. The time limitation has as its main purpose to limit the search time, because the CPU-time of the listserver is limited to 60 seconds. Of course, you may also use a simple "Search XXXX in Yacht-L". Index gives you a list of all the messages containing in the message body the combination of keywords asked for. Each message is identified by a number.
An example is:

Actually "Search ferro cement in Yacht-L -" would have been sufficient. The implied AND would have found all three cases, but also for instance "cemented ferro-oxide".
After you have received a reply from Listserv, you may send a new message to Listserv@Listserv.SURFnet.NL with the following lines in the message body:

(1234-6789 limits the range of messages where the to be "printed" messages are to be found. 2345, 3456 and 4567 are the messages to be send (not printed) to you. All numbers are arbitrary examples. In the print-command you can also indicate a range by typing: PRINT 2345-3456. When needed, more lines with print-commands can be typed.)

You may also combine the searching and printing jobs in one message in case you know beforehand that the number of hits are limited. An example of such a message follows below:

("bottom paint" is interpreted as one keyword, whereas bottom paint is interpreted as bottom AND paint)