LISTSERV is a well established email list management product and the de facto industry standard. The software has always been renowned for its reliability, scalability, and industry-leading feature set. In the release of LISTSERV 16.0, the main focus is on two aspects: Newsletters and UTF-8 Support.
There are mainly two kinds of LISTSERV lists: Discussion lists and announcement lists. While the standard for discussion lists hasn't changed remarkably, the need for easier methods of sending newsletters in HTML format while following best practices have increased. As a result, a new interface for newsletter sending was designed, providing a workflow that suits both HTML novices and experts. Best practices are automatically followed thanks to the design of the templates and the workflow. After careful testing and adjustments based on tester feedback, we are hopeful that we have crafted a user interface that provides the best in usability and functionality.
Who hasn't seen squares, question marks, or other funny symbols displayed in an email, instead of Scandinavian, Chinese, or Hebrew characters? The journey to UTF-8 support is long and intricate because of the number of character sets and conversion tables involved. We have now achieved the planned results for the first stopover on this journey, which is to allow the use of all kinds of characters in subscriber names, list titles and descriptions, as well as topics.
