From gonix.com!owner-auto-faq-users@oasis.novia.net Sat Aug 19 10:09:48 1995 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by oasis.novia.net (8.6.12/8.6.11) id JAA26998 for auto-faq-users-outgoing; Sat, 19 Aug 1995 09:34:36 -0500 Received: from gonix.gonix.com (gonix.gonix.com [199.171.32.3]) by oasis.novia.net (8.6.12/8.6.11) with SMTP id JAA26994 for <auto-faq-users@novia.net>; Sat, 19 Aug 1995 09:34:32 -0500 From: pschleck@gonix.gonix.com (Paul W Schleck KD3FU) Message-Id: <9508191432.AA06498@gonix.gonix.com> Subject: auto-faq User Tips #1 To: auto-faq-users@oasis.novia.net Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 09:32:38 -0500 (CDT) Cc: faq-maintainers@mit.edu Reply-To: auto-faq-maint@oasis.novia.net X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL20] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 4007 Sender: owner-auto-faq-users@oasis.novia.net Precedence: bulk Status: RO (The auto-faq User Tips will be a occasional, maybe monthly or bi-monthly, bulletin of subtle hints and tricks about using the auto-faq software package sent to faq-maintainers@mit.edu and auto-faq-users@novia.net.) Something new has been added! ----------------------------- Try out the auto-faq WWW Page. It's: http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/auto-faq.html [Maintainer's Note: As of 10/22/95, the URL has been changed to: http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/auto-faq/ ] In addition to links to the auto-faq anonymous FTP archive, the auto-faq-users mailing list, and the maintainer and help-desk mailboxes, an on-line browsable copy of the auto-faq manual is provided so that you can decide if auto-faq is the right tool for you (or if you should upgrade if you are using a version previous to 3.2pl1). A link to an archive of User Tips bulletins will probably be added shortly. Adding auxilliary headers is easy with auto-faq. ------------------------------------------------ In case you haven't read a recent version of the *.answers Submission Guidelines (or upgraded to at least version 3.x of auto-faq), you might not have been aware of the following suggested auxilliary header for *.answers cross-posted articles or how to configure auto-faq to add one to your FAQ articles: > c. Posting-Frequency (OPTIONAL) > > Example: > > Posting-Frequency: monthly (third Monday) > > A Posting-Frequency line in the auxiliary header indicates > clearly to the reader how often your article is posted. If you > specify this line, updates you make to it will be automatically > copied into the "List of Periodic Informational Postings". > > (During the submission process, you must inform us somehow the > frequency with which you plan to post. This header is optional > because you don't have to use IT to inform us -- you can also > just tell us your planned frequency directly in separate email.) (excerpted from the *.answers Submission Guidelines, available from: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/news-answers/guidelines http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/news-answers/guidelines ) The use of the Posting-Frequency header is a useful way not only inform your readers of how often the article will be posted, but is also automatically read by the rtfm.mit.edu archiving program and added to the List of Periodic Information Postings, thus providing one more automated relief from the workload for the *.answers moderation team. To add a Posting-Frequency header to an auto-faq maintained FAQ article, simply add the following line at the bottom of the rules paragraph for the given FAQ article in the faq-config file (or to the global rules if you wish the same header to apply to all of your articles): Posting-Frequency:: monthly Any suitable alternative value (biweekly, 15th of the month, every 4-6 weeks, etc.) may be used. In general, the double-colon notation causes the header to go into the auxilliary header (If just a single colon was used, it would go into the main header. Unless it is a "standard" news header, it is best to prepend any main header with an "X-" to insure that it doesn't violate any de-facto net standards, either now or in the future). This solution also works for other static auxilliary headers such as additional archive names (News-answers-archive-name, <Newsgroup-name>-archive-name, etc.) or the recently suggested URL header. Consult the *.answers Submission Guidelines for more information and any pre-approval requirements. Coming up in a future auto-faq User Tips: ----------------------------------------- Configuring dynamic contents (dates, times, sequence numbers, etc.) of headers such as the Subject using auto-faq "macros" in the rules file, a powerful new capability of auto-faq Version 3.x. Updated information about efforts to port auto-faq to Perl 5.x. (If you wish to volunteer as a programmer or beta-tester, please contact me at my E-mail address below, the default Reply-To: of this message). -- Paul W. Schleck auto-faq-maint@novia.net auto-faq Maintainer