Hi folks,

Well, I've decided to make PrimeForm publicly available for download
sometime over the next few days! Apart from a few minor changes (such as
defaulting to Probable Prime mode when first installed) and what I think is
a bug fix (I think I tracked down that problem Rene!) what gets released
will be exactly what you all have in 0.3 Beta. I'll still keep the '0' for a
while, as I've still got some parts to finish, but I think it's worth going
to wider availablilty. There'll be a web site (a little later this week),
and this mailing list. Welcome!

Why a mailing list? Well, I think we're different enough from other
primality-testing software to justify some discussions! General primes
questions have their place (nmbrthry, primes-l) but there's a lot of things
we can get excited about as PrimeForm people. For instance, Paul Underwood
found PrimeForm's first 100,000+ bit prime, that's quite an achievement for
the program in a few months! The sort of things I see being worth discussing
here are

- our experiences (and discoveries)
- question and answer (how do I set up PF to do this? Any ideas on how I can
prove this?)
- wish lists (wouldn't it be nice if PF could do this?)
- projects (for instance, the Zivkovic number project I've been doing with
Paul Jobling and Rachel Lewis) - nothing as formal as a "distributed prime
server", just little projects we could all contribute CPU time
- and most importantly, your ideas and comments!

I have no idea how many people are going to download PrimeForm when I
finally announce it a little later this week, or how many will be joining
this list. Since I've got to know you all really well over the past few
months and have really appreciated the feedback I've got, this is going to
be a very informal list. I'll publish a FAQ pretty soon, I think I can set
it up so it will automatically be sent to the list once a month.

The list is hosted by www.onelist.com, and it's a free list. What that means
is you'll probably see quite a few lines of advertising on the bottom of
every mail. On the other hand, what you should not see is 'spam' posts to
the list. Let me know if you like the service you're getting. Depending on
your preferences, you can access the list via the
http://www.onelist.com/communities/primeform link, or just use regular
e-mail. I notice some of you have filled out the registration with onelist,
while others have just subscribed via e-mail. Either works well for me,
although there are some features that are only available through the web
site.

I'm not sure what you all got in your 'invitations', but here's a quick
summary. If you're using e-mail
primeform@onelist.com posts to the list
primeform-subscribe@onelist.com (empty message) subscribes you to the list
primeform-unsubscribe@onelist.com (empty message) unsubscribes
primeform-digest@onelist.com (empty message) switches you to 'digest mode'
(up to 25 messages per mail). I think you can only switch it back at the Web
site, though.
primeform-owner@onelist.com sends me a message if you've got a problem with
the list
primeform@... is for correspondence about PrimeForm (off the list)

Yes, a lot of these addresses just get sent to me - but it makes my life
easier if I can keep these things separate ("Message Rules" make life so
much easier). I'm not sure whether there's an address of the server where
you can send listserv commands or similar, but I will check. Note that if
you subscribed to the list by the e-mail method, you will have received a
password in the mail - this is the password you use to access the onelist
web site, so keep it safe.

If you're using the web, there's some other features that you can use. We
have a files area, and at the moment that's open for all members to upload.
We don't have a great amount of space, but it's better if you have something
you want to share to upload it here rather than using a file attachment.
When the mailing list is fully-running, we might decide to use the file
space for other things. By the way, file attachments and even HTML messages
*are* allowed, but try to avoid them wherever possible! We have a couple of
other features as well, for instance, we have our own calendar of events
(maybe we could schedule online chat discussions) and we also have the
ability to create a 'survey' open to all list members so I can maybe ask
questions about new features, what you like, what you don't like, and so on.
We also have a page of relevant links, which could be useful too! Again, the
links facility is open to everyone.

So far I'm pleased with the options offered by the list service, also it
seems to be very easy to get some public interest in the program using it
(we can subscribe the list onto search engines, for example), so do not be
surprised if the number of list members (and PrimeForm users) grows very
quickly. The future looks bright!

Best Wishes to you all, and welcome!

Chris Nash
Lexington KY
UNITED STATES