Dear GAP-Forum,

Over the last months we silently changed and improved a few things with
the GAP-Forum and I thought it might be worthwhile to inform you of this.

As you may know, there is an archive of old Forum mails on our web page:
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~gap/Info/forum.html
(or its mirrors)

We have now upgraded this archive to stay recent, that is every night the
latest forum mails will be added to the archive and can be browsed the next
day.

This page also offers a search engine that allows you to search the archive
of the GAP-Forum or the html manual.

If you think a problem you came up with might have been mentioned in the
forum some time ago (after all the forum has been running for over 5 years
now), it might be worth to check these pages.

Finally a word about mail problems:

With about 400 subscribers we have about once or twice a week that mail to a
subscriber fails. Sometimes this is just a temporary problem but sometimes
the failure is permanent. If this is the case we try to track the person
down by checking with their organizations web page and postmaster. If even
this produces no result, we remove the address from the list. In any case this
may have you miss a few forum mails. If this has happened, you can read the
missed mails on the web pages.

Another problem that happens from time to time is that postings to the Forum
are rejected. This is because you have to be subscribed to the Forum to be
allowed to post. The test is done by matching the address from which the mail
originated with the address from where you subscribed. If your eMail address
had changed in the mean time, and forum mail just is forwarded to you,
your mail will be rejected.

To avoid problems of these types:

If your email address has changed and you can still use the old email
address, simply unsubscribe by a mail from the old address and subscribe
with a mail to the new address (to `miles@dcs.st-and.ac.uk').

If you cannot use the old address any longer, send a mail to
`gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk' and we will correct it.

If you are posting from different addresses (be it because you are on a
visit to another University or because your `From' address contains a
machine name), please also write us; we have an alias file to permit
different posting addresses.

We try to respond to all requests within at most 1-2 weeks. If you suspect
you have been cut off the forum or if you sent us a mail to which you did
not get a response, please ask at `gap-trouble' about it. There might have
been a technical problem on your or our side that has so far gone
undetected.

Best regards,

Alexander Hulpke