On Fri, 05 Sep 1997 13:10:13 +0300, Aivars Liepa <aivars@www.acadlib.lv>
wrote:

Greetings.

	I once heard, there is a way to get the messages

>from the list by their archive numbers. But i newer 

have figured it out, though the trick was posted here
few times.
	May someone explain it "foolproof" way, please?

Nothing is truly foolproof, but I'll give it a shot...

To use the archiver, send an E-mail:

To: fanfic-request@fanfic.com
Subject: archive

The archive commands go in the message body. If you have a sig, it's
best to turn it off to avoid having the archiver try to interpret it as
additional commands.

To get post number 90210 (which there isn't yet, this is just an
example), send the command

get latest/90210


If you get unsubbed and want to catch up, just do the above for all
numbers between the last post you got before being unsubbed, and the
first one you got after resubbing. These numbers are found in the
message headers. For example, the message you sent has

X-Mailing-List: <fanfic@fanfic.com> archive/latest/43307

in the header, showing that it is number 43307.


Another useful command is find. It searches for a particular word
anywhere in any message:

find spam latest/*

would search all messages for the word "spam".

This command allows you to check subject headers for a sequence of a
hundred messages. Sending the command

find subject: latest/433*

would give you all the subject headers for messages 43300-43399. You
have to do this 100 posts at a time, otherwise the search will cut off
after 512 matches. This trick can save you lots of time, as it allows
you to find and download the messages you want and ignore the rest. It
is also a Good Thing to do when you think you've been unsubbed, rather
than bothering everyone else on the list by sending a test message.


Hope this helps!


Gary Kleppe
kleppe@execpc.com, Home page http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe
My fanfics and the FFML map are on my comics/manga page,
       http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics