.!
.! DEC INTERNAL USE ONLY
.!
.! Nmail documentation - new features
.!
.! Dave Porter	15-Feb-1989 (V9.1)
.!              26-Feb-1991 (V9.2)
.!		 7-May-1992 (V9.3)
.!		15-Nov-1993 (V9.4)
.!
 
.hl+1 New Features added since V9.3
.ls "o"
.le;A new option on ANALYZE#QUEUE allows any message files
which were not found in the queue to be returned to
the sender; previously, they were simply resubmitted 
without modification. 
.le;Further ANALYZE qualifiers, /BEFORE and /SINCE, allow
partial repair runs based on the message date.  You can, for example,
execute one command to return all very old messages, and
then another command to resubmit more recent messages for
further attempts to send.
.le;If ANALYZE is unable to determine when a message
was created by reading the .WRK file (for
example, if it's not a well-formed Nmail control file) then
it will now display the file's creation date/time instead.
The time stored in the file is preferred since it's not so easily
changed.
.le;CANCEL and ANALYZE now allow you to specify some text
to be included in the returned message; see the description of
the /REASON qualifier.
.le;SHOW#QUEUE now supports an /ENTRY qualifier, to allow 
display of just one Nmail job.
.le;Execution queues now have /NOENABLE_GENERIC; this prevents
random print jobs from ending up in Nmail queues.
.els

.hl New Features added since V9.2
.ls "o"
.le;An undocumented and unused feature of Nmail used to place special
significance on a dot in the node name part of a mail address.
This meant that Nmail couldn't handle Phase V names, so the
funny feature has been removed.
.le;The generated names for control files have been changed
so that they are not generated in ascending order.  This
supposedly improves directory accesses.
.le;Queues are now initialized with /SCHEDULE=NOSIZE.  This
avoids permanent lockout of some jobs on underconfigured
systems (where the number of execution queues cannot
keep up with the mail load).
.le;Nmail's 512-byte record size limitation is now
documented in online help text and in the user guide.
.le;The sending timestamp now includes a time differential
factor (offset from GMT) where this can be determined.
This feature is only available if your system has the
UTC time services which are today installed along
with DECnet-VAX Extensions or DECnet/OSI for VMS.
The UTC services will be included in the Blade
release of VMS.
.le;The default for CANCEL is now /RETURN, since that's
a safer default.  To request immediate cancellation
with no return of the message, you can use /NORETURN.
.le;As always, if an Nmail job goes away whilst it's being
SHOWn, there's not much that Nmail can do about it.  However,
since the new job controller, Nmail was reporting this
as an "unexpected error".  Now it's a bit more graceful about
it.
.le;Nmail now runs on Alpha hardware as well.  
Use the same kit for VAX and Alpha
systems.
.le;V9.3-4 will work correctly on the Epsilon (V2.0) release of 
Alpha VMS; older versions cause MAIL to loop, signalling an
ACCVIO error, when trying to activate the Nmail transport.
To fix this, a new image called NM__MAILSHRP.EXE was
added to the kit.
.els

.hl New Features added since V9.1
.ls "o"
.le;Certain changes in the VMS batch/print subsystem made Nmail
unable to tell when a queue was stopped; this broke the commands
NMAIL STOP QUEUE and NMAIL ANALYZE QUEUE.  Nmail has now been
fixed to work correctly with both old and new queue managers.
.le;A few new fatal errors were added to NM_$ERROR.DAT:
"unbalanced", "host unknown", and "user unknown".   These are
all related to sending mail through the ULTRIX mail gateway.
.le;Nmail tries to remove all "NM%" occurences from the to-list prior
to delivery, since they look ugly.  It failed to do this if the
addresses were separated by spaces, not commas.  It was just
a cosmetic problem, but is now fixed.
.le;Nmail's parser no longer assumes your personal name is
a well-constructed string, with matched quotes, etc.  In previous
versions, certain ill-formed personal names would cause a
fatal syntax error to be signalled.
.le;I added a paragraph about MAIL's SET TRANSPORT command
to the help text, since this seems to have been a well-kept
secret.
.els

.hl New Features added since V9.0
.ls "o"
.le;Nmail now supports the transportation
of DDIF files, produced by various DECwindows
applications.  DDIF files are fully supported by the DECwindows
MAIL interface.  There is partial support in VMS MAIL; you can send
DDIF files, but you cannot display received DDIF files.  If
you try and read a received DDIF message, you will only see
any text (there may be none) embedded in the message. 
.le;Nmail now has the ability to transport messages
of any file format, using the unsupported SEND/FOREIGN
command of VMS MAIL.  If it's not text or DDIF, use SEND/FOREIGN.
.le;ANALYZE QUEUE now checks for jobs which are wedged in
a "retained" state due to previous system failure;
the occurrence of such jobs usually
correlates with some kind of cluster disaster. If /REPAIR
is specified, then the retained jobs can be released or
cancelled at the choice of the user.
.le;CANCEL now offers a /RETURN qualifier, which causes a copy
of the message to be returned to the sender before cancellation
is complete.
.le;Error messages from the remote mail object which include
the string "cannot accept" are now considered to be fatal.  This
catches the new error "cannot accept this message format" which
was introduced when DECwindows support was added to MAIL.
.le;This version discontinues support for "format1" and "format2"
control files; as near as I can figure it, this means that
messages posted with Nmail V8.0 or Nmail V8.1 cannot be
delivered by Nmail V9.1.  Anything posted by Nmail V8.2 or
later should be ok.  In case you're curious, the current
control files are "format5".
.le;Nmail had a habit of very very occasionally slipping in
an extraneous null character (_^_@) at the end of a document.
It did this only if the last block of the document had exactly
two free bytes.  Anyway, it doesn't do that anymore.
.le;Nmail now opens files by file-id under all circumstances,
thereby avoiding the problems which sometimes occurred when the filespec
stored in the job controller's queue had become invalid.
It wasn't possible to make this change until VMS V5, as
SYS_$GETQUI had to learn how to say "file-id" first.
.le;The operation of the /DELETE qualifier on the STOP QUEUE
command has changed; it now deletes all queues including the
top-level NM_$QUEUE.  Any jobs in the queues are lost until 
you use ANALYZE QUEUE /REPAIR to recover them.  This change
in behaviour is regrettable, but the previous implementation
was broken by VMS V5.2 job controller changes, and cannot
be restored.
.le;The startup command file is now SYS_$STARTUP:NM_$STARTUP.COM,
in accordance with the VMS V5 way of doing things.  Don't
forget to edit your system startup procedures!
.le;There are some release notes in the Nmail kit, as expected
by VMSINSTAL.
.le;The installation procedure now provides help if you enter
a question mark in response to any prompt.
.le;Running the IVP is now optional at installation time.
Execution of NM_$STARTUP.COM is also optional if you
don't choose to run the IVP.
.le;If you have defined NM_$WORK to point to somewhere
other than the usual Nmail work directory, then the installation
procedure will apply the old definition to the new
installation.
.le;Nmail's SHOW#QUEUE command will now issue a warning message
if it finds jobs to display and there are no Nmail queues
which are started.
.le;The Nmail daemon now uses different job names for the various
types of Nmail jobs that it can submit: REPORT for error
reports, SUMMARY for end of run summaries requested by the user,
and RETURNED for messages returned to sender on error.  This
last category is only used for foreign or DDIF messages, since
text messages are returned in the REPORT message.             
.le;Job submitted by the daemon are now submitted under the pseudo-user
name NMAIL-DAEMON.
.le;There used to be an undocumented logical name NM_$MAXRETURN
which would restrict the size of messages which Nmail would return
to sender.  The implementation was not compatible with changes
made for foreign message support, so it is no longer supported.
.le;I have added a couple of variations to NM_$CONFIRM with the
aim of cutting down mail noise in cases where Nmail
manages to deliver the message on the first attempt (which is
usually the case for purely local deliveries).  Refer to the
User Guide for details.
.els

.! End