An announcement is a Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

, mailing list

Mailing list

A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the...

 or e-mail

E-mail

Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

 message sent to notify subscribers that a software project has made a new release version. Newsgroup

Newsgroup

A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...

 announcement recipients often have a name like "comp.somegroup.announce". Mailing list

Mailing list

A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the...

 announcement recipients often have a name like "toolname-announce". Most software projects that make announcements are open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

.

In an announcement, the subject line commonly contains the abbreviated prefix ANN: or [ANN].

The contents of an announcement usually contain a title line which contains the tool name, version, release name, and date. Additional contents often fall into the following message sections:

• About: a short paragraph summary of the tool's purpose
• Changes: a list of the highest impact changes since the last release (should be brief since the changelog
  Changelog
  A changelog is a log or record of changes made to a project, such as a website or software project, usually including such records as bug fixes, new features, etc...
  
   comprises the definitive list)
• Resources: links to project pages of interest, such as homepage
  Homepage
  A home page or homepage has various related meanings to do with web sites:* It most often refers to the initial or main web page of a web site, sometimes called the front page ....
  
  , where to download, bug tracking system
  Bug tracking system
  A bug tracking system is a software application that is designed to help quality assurance and programmers keep track of reported software bugs in their work. It may be regarded as a type of issue tracking system....
  
  , etc.

Some additional, optional fields might include "Highlights", "Author(s)", "License", "Requirements", and "Release History".

Announcement messages are usually sent in plain text

Plain text

In computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing, usually opposed to formatted text....

 form.

Example

Example announcement message subject line:

ANN: fooutils 0.9.42 beta released

Example announcement message contents:

 


  Fooutils 0.9.42 Beta Released -- 2006 Feb 16

 

 ANNOUNCING Fooutils v0.2.12beta, the first beta release.



 About Fooutils

 --------------

 Fooutils are a set of utilities that...



 Changes

 -------

 Improved the searching facility by including...

 Fixed bugs: #123, #456, ...



 Resources

 ---------

 Homepage:

   http://fooutils.org



 Documentation:

   http://fooutils.org/docs



 Download:

   http://fooutils.org/download



 Bug Tracker:

   http://fooutils.org/newticket



 Mailing Lists:

   http://lists.fooutils.org/

External links

• Try searching the newsgroup
  Newsgroup
  A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
  
  comp.lang.python.announce to see examples of real-world announcements.