An announcement (ANN) is a Usenet, mailing list or e-mail message sent to notify subscribers that a software project has made a new release version. Newsgroup announcement recipients often have a name like “comp.somegroup.announce”. Mailing list announcement recipients often have a name like “toolname-announce”. 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:
Some additional, optional fields might include “Highlights”, “Author(s)”, “License”, “Requirements”, and “Release History”.
Announcement messages are usually sent in plain text form.
Example announcement message subject line:
Example announcement message contents: