This is ../../info/gnus, produced by makeinfo version 4.11 from gnus.texi. Copyright (C) 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover texts being "A GNU Manual", and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License". (a) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is: "You have the freedom to copy and modify this GNU manual. Buying copies from the FSF supports it in developing GNU and promoting software freedom." INFO-DIR-SECTION Emacs START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY * Gnus: (gnus). The newsreader Gnus. END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY  File: gnus, Node: History, Next: On Writing Manuals, Prev: XEmacs, Up: Appendices 10.2 History ============ GNUS was written by Masanobu UMEDA. When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen grew bored and decided to rewrite Gnus. If you want to investigate the person responsible for this outrage, you can point your (feh!) web browser to `http://quimby.gnus.org/'. This is also the primary distribution point for the new and spiffy versions of Gnus, and is known as The Site That Destroys Newsrcs And Drives People Mad. During the first extended alpha period of development, the new Gnus was called "(ding) Gnus". "(ding)" is, of course, short for "ding is not Gnus", which is a total and utter lie, but who cares? (Besides, the "Gnus" in this abbreviation should probably be pronounced "news" as UMEDA intended, which makes it a more appropriate name, don't you think?) In any case, after spending all that energy on coming up with a new and spunky name, we decided that the name was _too_ spunky, so we renamed it back again to "Gnus". But in mixed case. "Gnus" vs. "GNUS". New vs. old. * Menu: * Gnus Versions:: What Gnus versions have been released. * Other Gnus Versions:: Other Gnus versions that also have been released. * Why?:: What's the point of Gnus? * Compatibility:: Just how compatible is Gnus with GNUS? * Conformity:: Gnus tries to conform to all standards. * Emacsen:: Gnus can be run on a few modern Emacsen. * Gnus Development:: How Gnus is developed. * Contributors:: Oodles of people. * New Features:: Pointers to some of the new stuff in Gnus.  File: gnus, Node: Gnus Versions, Next: Other Gnus Versions, Up: History 10.2.1 Gnus Versions -------------------- The first "proper" release of Gnus 5 was done in November 1995 when it was included in the Emacs 19.30 distribution (132 (ding) Gnus releases plus 15 Gnus 5.0 releases). In May 1996 the next Gnus generation (aka. "September Gnus" (after 99 releases)) was released under the name "Gnus 5.2" (40 releases). On July 28th 1996 work on Red Gnus was begun, and it was released on January 25th 1997 (after 84 releases) as "Gnus 5.4" (67 releases). On September 13th 1997, Quassia Gnus was started and lasted 37 releases. It was released as "Gnus 5.6" on March 8th 1998 (46 releases). Gnus 5.6 begat Pterodactyl Gnus on August 29th 1998 and was released as "Gnus 5.8" (after 99 releases and a CVS repository) on December 3rd 1999. On the 26th of October 2000, Oort Gnus was begun and was released as Gnus 5.10 on May 1st 2003 (24 releases). On the January 4th 2004, No Gnus was begun. On April 19, 2010 Gnus development was moved to Git. See http://git.gnus.org for details (http://www.gnus.org will be updated with the information when possible). If you happen upon a version of Gnus that has a prefixed name - "(ding) Gnus", "September Gnus", "Red Gnus", "Quassia Gnus", "Pterodactyl Gnus", "Oort Gnus", "No Gnus" - don't panic. Don't let it know that you're frightened. Back away. Slowly. Whatever you do, don't run. Walk away, calmly, until you're out of its reach. Find a proper released version of Gnus and snuggle up to that instead.  File: gnus, Node: Other Gnus Versions, Next: Why?, Prev: Gnus Versions, Up: History 10.2.2 Other Gnus Versions -------------------------- In addition to the versions of Gnus which have had their releases coordinated by Lars, one major development has been Semi-gnus from Japan. It's based on a library called SEMI, which provides MIME capabilities. These Gnusae are based mainly on Gnus 5.6 and Pterodactyl Gnus. Collectively, they are called "Semi-gnus", and different strains are called T-gnus, ET-gnus, Nana-gnus and Chaos. These provide powerful MIME and multilingualization things, especially important for Japanese users.  File: gnus, Node: Why?, Next: Compatibility, Prev: Other Gnus Versions, Up: History 10.2.3 Why? ----------- What's the point of Gnus? I want to provide a "rad", "happening", "way cool" and "hep" newsreader, that lets you do anything you can think of. That was my original motivation, but while working on Gnus, it has become clear to me that this generation of newsreaders really belong in the stone age. Newsreaders haven't developed much since the infancy of the net. If the volume continues to rise with the current rate of increase, all current newsreaders will be pretty much useless. How do you deal with newsgroups that have thousands of new articles each day? How do you keep track of millions of people who post? Gnus offers no real solutions to these questions, but I would very much like to see Gnus being used as a testing ground for new methods of reading and fetching news. Expanding on UMEDA-san's wise decision to separate the newsreader from the back ends, Gnus now offers a simple interface for anybody who wants to write new back ends for fetching mail and news from different sources. I have added hooks for customizations everywhere I could imagine it being useful. By doing so, I'm inviting every one of you to explore and invent. May Gnus never be complete. `C-u 100 M-x all-hail-emacs' and `C-u 100 M-x all-hail-xemacs'.  File: gnus, Node: Compatibility, Next: Conformity, Prev: Why?, Up: History 10.2.4 Compatibility -------------------- Gnus was designed to be fully compatible with GNUS. Almost all key bindings have been kept. More key bindings have been added, of course, but only in one or two obscure cases have old bindings been changed. Our motto is: In a cloud bones of steel. All commands have kept their names. Some internal functions have changed their names. The `gnus-uu' package has changed drastically. *Note Decoding Articles::. One major compatibility question is the presence of several summary buffers. All variables relevant while reading a group are buffer-local to the summary buffer they belong in. Although many important variables have their values copied into their global counterparts whenever a command is executed in the summary buffer, this change might lead to incorrect values being used unless you are careful. All code that relies on knowledge of GNUS internals will probably fail. To take two examples: Sorting `gnus-newsrc-alist' (or changing it in any way, as a matter of fact) is strictly verboten. Gnus maintains a hash table that points to the entries in this alist (which speeds up many functions), and changing the alist directly will lead to peculiar results. Old hilit19 code does not work at all. In fact, you should probably remove all hilit code from all Gnus hooks (`gnus-group-prepare-hook' and `gnus-summary-prepare-hook'). Gnus provides various integrated functions for highlighting. These are faster and more accurate. To make life easier for everybody, Gnus will by default remove all hilit calls from all hilit hooks. Uncleanliness! Away! Packages like `expire-kill' will no longer work. As a matter of fact, you should probably remove all old GNUS packages (and other code) when you start using Gnus. More likely than not, Gnus already does what you have written code to make GNUS do. (Snicker.) Even though old methods of doing things are still supported, only the new methods are documented in this manual. If you detect a new method of doing something while reading this manual, that does not mean you have to stop doing it the old way. Gnus understands all GNUS startup files. Overall, a casual user who hasn't written much code that depends on GNUS internals should suffer no problems. If problems occur, please let me know by issuing that magic command `M-x gnus-bug'. If you are in the habit of sending bug reports _very_ often, you may find the helpful help buffer annoying after a while. If so, set `gnus-bug-create-help-buffer' to `nil' to avoid having it pop up at you.  File: gnus, Node: Conformity, Next: Emacsen, Prev: Compatibility, Up: History 10.2.5 Conformity ----------------- No rebels without a clue here, ma'am. We conform to all standards known to (wo)man. Except for those standards and/or conventions we disagree with, of course. *RFC (2)822* There are no known breaches of this standard. *RFC 1036* There are no known breaches of this standard, either. *Son-of-RFC 1036* We do have some breaches to this one. _X-Newsreader_ _User-Agent_ These are considered to be "vanity headers", while I consider them to be consumer information. After seeing so many badly formatted articles coming from `tin' and `Netscape' I know not to use either of those for posting articles. I would not have known that if it wasn't for the `X-Newsreader' header. *USEFOR* USEFOR is an IETF working group writing a successor to RFC 1036, based on Son-of-RFC 1036. They have produced a number of drafts proposing various changes to the format of news articles. The Gnus towers will look into implementing the changes when the draft is accepted as an RFC. *MIME - RFC 2045-2049 etc* All the various MIME RFCs are supported. *Disposition Notifications - RFC 2298* Message Mode is able to request notifications from the receiver. *PGP - RFC 1991 and RFC 2440* RFC 1991 is the original PGP message specification, published as an informational RFC. RFC 2440 was the follow-up, now called Open PGP, and put on the Standards Track. Both document a non-MIME aware PGP format. Gnus supports both encoding (signing and encryption) and decoding (verification and decryption). *PGP/MIME - RFC 2015/3156* RFC 2015 (superseded by 3156 which references RFC 2440 instead of RFC 1991) describes the MIME-wrapping around the RFC 1991/2440 format. Gnus supports both encoding and decoding. *S/MIME - RFC 2633* RFC 2633 describes the S/MIME format. *IMAP - RFC 1730/2060, RFC 2195, RFC 2086, RFC 2359, RFC 2595, RFC 1731* RFC 1730 is IMAP version 4, updated somewhat by RFC 2060 (IMAP 4 revision 1). RFC 2195 describes CRAM-MD5 authentication for IMAP. RFC 2086 describes access control lists (ACLs) for IMAP. RFC 2359 describes a IMAP protocol enhancement. RFC 2595 describes the proper TLS integration (STARTTLS) with IMAP. RFC 1731 describes the GSSAPI/Kerberos4 mechanisms for IMAP. If you ever notice Gnus acting non-compliant with regards to the texts mentioned above, don't hesitate to drop a note to Gnus Towers and let us know.  File: gnus, Node: Emacsen, Next: Gnus Development, Prev: Conformity, Up: History 10.2.6 Emacsen -------------- This version of Gnus should work on: * Emacs 21.1 and up. * XEmacs 21.4 and up. This Gnus version will absolutely not work on any Emacsen older than that. Not reliably, at least. Older versions of Gnus may work on older Emacs versions. Particularly, Gnus 5.10.8 should also work on Emacs 20.7 and XEmacs 21.1.  File: gnus, Node: Gnus Development, Next: Contributors, Prev: Emacsen, Up: History 10.2.7 Gnus Development ----------------------- Gnus is developed in a two-phased cycle. The first phase involves much discussion on the development mailing list `ding@gnus.org', where people propose changes and new features, post patches and new back ends. This phase is called the "alpha" phase, since the Gnusae released in this phase are "alpha releases", or (perhaps more commonly in other circles) "snapshots". During this phase, Gnus is assumed to be unstable and should not be used by casual users. Gnus alpha releases have names like "Oort Gnus" and "No Gnus". *Note Gnus Versions::. After futzing around for 10-100 alpha releases, Gnus is declared "frozen", and only bug fixes are applied. Gnus loses the prefix, and is called things like "Gnus 5.10.1" instead. Normal people are supposed to be able to use these, and these are mostly discussed on the `gnu.emacs.gnus' newsgroup. This newgroup is mirrored to the mailing list `info-gnus-english@gnu.org' which is carried on Gmane as `gmane.emacs.gnus.user'. These releases are finally integrated in Emacs. Some variable defaults differ between alpha Gnusae and released Gnusae, in particular, `mail-source-delete-incoming'. This is to prevent lossage of mail if an alpha release hiccups while handling the mail. *Note Mail Source Customization::. The division of discussion between the ding mailing list and the Gnus newsgroup is not purely based on publicity concerns. It's true that having people write about the horrible things that an alpha Gnus release can do (sometimes) in a public forum may scare people off, but more importantly, talking about new experimental features that have been introduced may confuse casual users. New features are frequently introduced, fiddled with, and judged to be found wanting, and then either discarded or totally rewritten. People reading the mailing list usually keep up with these rapid changes, while people on the newsgroup can't be assumed to do so. So if you have problems with or questions about the alpha versions, direct those to the ding mailing list `ding@gnus.org'. This list is also available on Gmane as `gmane.emacs.gnus.general'. Some variable defaults differ between alpha Gnusae and released Gnusae, in particular, `mail-source-delete-incoming'. This is to prevent lossage of mail if an alpha release hiccups while handling the mail. *Note Mail Source Customization::.  File: gnus, Node: Contributors, Next: New Features, Prev: Gnus Development, Up: History 10.2.8 Contributors ------------------- The new Gnus version couldn't have been done without the help of all the people on the (ding) mailing list. Every day for over a year I have gotten billions of nice bug reports from them, filling me with joy, every single one of them. Smooches. The people on the list have been tried beyond endurance, what with my "oh, that's a neat idea , yup, I'll release it right away no wait, that doesn't work at all , yup, I'll ship that one off right away no, wait, that absolutely does not work" policy for releases. Micro$oft--bah. Amateurs. I'm _much_ worse. (Or is that "worser"? "much worser"? "worsest"?) I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Academy for... oops, wrong show. * Masanobu UMEDA--the writer of the original GNUS. * Shenghuo Zhu--uudecode.el, mm-uu.el, rfc1843.el, webmail.el, nnwarchive and many, many other things connected with MIME and other types of en/decoding, as well as general bug fixing, new functionality and stuff. * Per Abrahamsen--custom, scoring, highlighting and SOUP code (as well as numerous other things). * Luis Fernandes--design and graphics. * Joe Reiss--creator of the smiley faces. * Justin Sheehy--the FAQ maintainer. * Erik Naggum--help, ideas, support, code and stuff. * Wes Hardaker--`gnus-picon.el' and the manual section on "picons" (*note Picons::). * Kim-Minh Kaplan--further work on the picon code. * Brad Miller--`gnus-gl.el' and the GroupLens manual section. * Sudish Joseph--innumerable bug fixes. * Ilja Weis--`gnus-topic.el'. * Steven L. Baur--lots and lots and lots of bugs detections and fixes. * Vladimir Alexiev--the refcard and reference booklets. * Felix Lee & Jamie Zawinski--I stole some pieces from the XGnus distribution by Felix Lee and JWZ. * Scott Byer--`nnfolder.el' enhancements & rewrite. * Peter Mutsaers--orphan article scoring code. * Ken Raeburn--POP mail support. * Hallvard B Furuseth--various bits and pieces, especially dealing with .newsrc files. * Brian Edmonds--`gnus-bbdb.el'. * David Moore--rewrite of `nnvirtual.el' and many other things. * Kevin Davidson--came up with the name "ding", so blame him. * François Pinard--many, many interesting and thorough bug reports, as well as autoconf support. This manual was proof-read by Adrian Aichner, with Ricardo Nassif, Mark Borges, and Jost Krieger proof-reading parts of the manual. The following people have contributed many patches and suggestions: Christopher Davis, Andrew Eskilsson, Kai Grossjohann, Kevin Greiner, Jesper Harder, Paul Jarc, Simon Josefsson, David Kċgedal, Richard Pieri, Fabrice Popineau, Daniel Quinlan, Michael Shields, Reiner Steib, Jason L. Tibbitts, III, Jack Vinson, Katsumi Yamaoka, and Teodor Zlatanov. Also thanks to the following for patches and stuff: Jari Aalto, Adrian Aichner, Vladimir Alexiev, Russ Allbery, Peter Arius, Matt Armstrong, Marc Auslander, Miles Bader, Alexei V. Barantsev, Frank Bennett, Robert Bihlmeyer, Chris Bone, Mark Borges, Mark Boyns, Lance A. Brown, Rob Browning, Kees de Bruin, Martin Buchholz, Joe Buehler, Kevin Buhr, Alastair Burt, Joao Cachopo, Zlatko Calusic, Massimo Campostrini, Castor, David Charlap, Dan Christensen, Kevin Christian, Jae-you Chung, James H. Cloos, Jr., Laura Conrad, Michael R. Cook, Glenn Coombs, Andrew J. Cosgriff, Neil Crellin, Frank D. Cringle, Geoffrey T. Dairiki, Andre Deparade, Ulrik Dickow, Dave Disser, Rui-Tao Dong, Joev Dubach, Michael Welsh Duggan, Dave Edmondson, Paul Eggert, Mark W. Eichin, Karl Eichwalder, Enami Tsugutomo, Michael Ernst, Luc Van Eycken, Sam Falkner, Nelson Jose dos Santos Ferreira, Sigbjorn Finne, Sven Fischer, Paul Fisher, Decklin Foster, Gary D. Foster, Paul Franklin, Guy Geens, Arne Georg Gleditsch, David S. Goldberg, Michelangelo Grigni, Dale Hagglund, D. Hall, Magnus Hammerin, Kenichi Handa, Raja R. Harinath, Yoshiki Hayashi, P. E. Jareth Hein, Hisashige Kenji, Scott Hofmann, Tassilo Horn, Marc Horowitz, Gunnar Horrigmo, Richard Hoskins, Brad Howes, Miguel de Icaza, François Felix Ingrand, Tatsuya Ichikawa, Ishikawa Ichiro, Lee Iverson, Iwamuro Motonori, Rajappa Iyer, Andreas Jaeger, Adam P. Jenkins, Randell Jesup, Fred Johansen, Gareth Jones, Greg Klanderman, Karl Kleinpaste, Michael Klingbeil, Peter Skov Knudsen, Shuhei Kobayashi, Petr Konecny, Koseki Yoshinori, Thor Kristoffersen, Jens Lautenbacher, Martin Larose, Seokchan Lee, Joerg Lenneis, Carsten Leonhardt, James LewisMoss, Christian Limpach, Markus Linnala, Dave Love, Mike McEwan, Tonny Madsen, Shlomo Mahlab, Nat Makarevitch, Istvan Marko, David Martin, Jason R. Mastaler, Gordon Matzigkeit, Timo Metzemakers, Richard Mlynarik, Lantz Moore, Morioka Tomohiko, Erik Toubro Nielsen, Hrvoje Niksic, Andy Norman, Fred Oberhauser, C. R. Oldham, Alexandre Oliva, Ken Olstad, Masaharu Onishi, Hideki Ono, Ettore Perazzoli, William Perry, Stephen Peters, Jens-Ulrik Holger Petersen, Ulrich Pfeifer, Matt Pharr, Andy Piper, John McClary Prevost, Bill Pringlemeir, Mike Pullen, Jim Radford, Colin Rafferty, Lasse Rasinen, Lars Balker Rasmussen, Joe Reiss, Renaud Rioboo, Roland B. Roberts, Bart Robinson, Christian von Roques, Markus Rost, Jason Rumney, Wolfgang Rupprecht, Jay Sachs, Dewey M. Sasser, Conrad Sauerwald, Loren Schall, Dan Schmidt, Ralph Schleicher, Philippe Schnoebelen, Andreas Schwab, Randal L. Schwartz, Danny Siu, Matt Simmons, Paul D. Smith, Jeff Sparkes, Toby Speight, Michael Sperber, Darren Stalder, Richard Stallman, Greg Stark, Sam Steingold, Paul Stevenson, Jonas Steverud, Paul Stodghill, Kiyokazu Suto, Kurt Swanson, Samuel Tardieu, Teddy, Chuck Thompson, Tozawa Akihiko, Philippe Troin, James Troup, Trung Tran-Duc, Jack Twilley, Aaron M. Ucko, Aki Vehtari, Didier Verna, Vladimir Volovich, Jan Vroonhof, Stefan Waldherr, Pete Ware, Barry A. Warsaw, Christoph Wedler, Joe Wells, Lee Willis, and Lloyd Zusman. For a full overview of what each person has done, the ChangeLogs included in the Gnus alpha distributions should give ample reading (550kB and counting). Apologies to everybody that I've forgotten, of which there are many, I'm sure. Gee, that's quite a list of people. I guess that must mean that there actually are people who are using Gnus. Who'd'a thunk it!  File: gnus, Node: New Features, Prev: Contributors, Up: History 10.2.9 New Features ------------------- * Menu: * ding Gnus:: New things in Gnus 5.0/5.1, the first new Gnus. * September Gnus:: The Thing Formally Known As Gnus 5.2/5.3. * Red Gnus:: Third time best---Gnus 5.4/5.5. * Quassia Gnus:: Two times two is four, or Gnus 5.6/5.7. * Pterodactyl Gnus:: Pentad also starts with P, AKA Gnus 5.8/5.9. * Oort Gnus:: It's big. It's far out. Gnus 5.10/5.11. * No Gnus:: Very punny. These lists are, of course, just _short_ overviews of the _most_ important new features. No, really. There are tons more. Yes, we have feeping creaturism in full effect.  File: gnus, Node: ding Gnus, Next: September Gnus, Up: New Features 10.2.9.1 (ding) Gnus .................... New features in Gnus 5.0/5.1: * The look of all buffers can be changed by setting format-like variables (*note Group Buffer Format:: and *note Summary Buffer Format::). * Local spool and several NNTP servers can be used at once (*note Select Methods::). * You can combine groups into virtual groups (*note Virtual Groups::). * You can read a number of different mail formats (*note Getting Mail::). All the mail back ends implement a convenient mail expiry scheme (*note Expiring Mail::). * Gnus can use various strategies for gathering threads that have lost their roots (thereby gathering loose sub-threads into one thread) or it can go back and retrieve enough headers to build a complete thread (*note Customizing Threading::). * Killed groups can be displayed in the group buffer, and you can read them as well (*note Listing Groups::). * Gnus can do partial group updates--you do not have to retrieve the entire active file just to check for new articles in a few groups (*note The Active File::). * Gnus implements a sliding scale of subscribedness to groups (*note Group Levels::). * You can score articles according to any number of criteria (*note Scoring::). You can even get Gnus to find out how to score articles for you (*note Adaptive Scoring::). * Gnus maintains a dribble buffer that is auto-saved the normal Emacs manner, so it should be difficult to lose much data on what you have read if your machine should go down (*note Auto Save::). * Gnus now has its own startup file (`~/.gnus.el') to avoid cluttering up the `.emacs' file. * You can set the process mark on both groups and articles and perform operations on all the marked items (*note Process/Prefix::). * You can grep through a subset of groups and create a group from the results (*note Kibozed Groups::). * You can list subsets of groups according to, well, anything (*note Listing Groups::). * You can browse foreign servers and subscribe to groups from those servers (*note Browse Foreign Server::). * Gnus can fetch articles, asynchronously, on a second connection to the server (*note Asynchronous Fetching::). * You can cache articles locally (*note Article Caching::). * The uudecode functions have been expanded and generalized (*note Decoding Articles::). * You can still post uuencoded articles, which was a little-known feature of GNUS' past (*note Uuencoding and Posting::). * Fetching parents (and other articles) now actually works without glitches (*note Finding the Parent::). * Gnus can fetch FAQs and group descriptions (*note Group Information::). * Digests (and other files) can be used as the basis for groups (*note Document Groups::). * Articles can be highlighted and customized (*note Customizing Articles::). * URLs and other external references can be buttonized (*note Article Buttons::). * You can do lots of strange stuff with the Gnus window & frame configuration (*note Window Layout::). * You can click on buttons instead of using the keyboard (*note Buttons::).  File: gnus, Node: September Gnus, Next: Red Gnus, Prev: ding Gnus, Up: New Features 10.2.9.2 September Gnus ....................... New features in Gnus 5.2/5.3: * A new message composition mode is used. All old customization variables for `mail-mode', `rnews-reply-mode' and `gnus-msg' are now obsolete. * Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads--threads where missing articles are represented by empty nodes (*note Customizing Threading::). (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some) * Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server (*note Archived Messages::). * Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are referred. * Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions. * Picons (personal icons) can be displayed under XEmacs (*note Picons::). * A `trn'-like tree buffer can be displayed (*note Tree Display::). (setq gnus-use-trees t) * An `nn'-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary buffers (*note Pick and Read::). (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode) * In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode (*note Binary Groups::). * Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy (*note Group Topics::). (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode) * Gnus can re-send and bounce mail (*note Summary Mail Commands::). * Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency is possible (*note Group Score::). (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group) * Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on groups of groups (*note Marking Groups::). * Caching is possible in virtual groups. * `nndoc' now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else (*note Document Groups::). * Gnus has a new back end (`nnsoup') to create/read SOUP packets (*note SOUP::). * The Gnus cache is much faster. * Groups can be sorted according to many criteria (*note Sorting Groups::). * New group parameters have been introduced to set list-addresses and expiry times (*note Group Parameters::). * All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used (*note Formatting Fonts::). * There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on process marked articles on the `M P' submap (*note Setting Process Marks::). * The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been bound to keys on the `/' submap (*note Limiting::). * Articles can be made persistent with the `*' command (*note Persistent Articles::). * All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles. * Article headers can be buttonized (*note Article Washing::). * All mail back ends support fetching articles by `Message-ID'. * Duplicate mail can now be treated properly (*note Duplicates::). * All summary mode commands are available directly from the article buffer (*note Article Keymap::). * Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration' (*note Window Layout::). * Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process (*note Daemons::). * Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to weed out spam (*note NoCeM::). (setq gnus-use-nocem t) * Groups can be made permanently visible (*note Listing Groups::). (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:") * Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier. * Gnus respects the `Mail-Copies-To' header. * Threads can be gathered by looking at the `References' header (*note Customizing Threading::). (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references) * Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid refetching (*note Article Backlog::). (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50) * A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate buffer to allow easier treatment. * Gnus can suggest where to save articles (*note Saving Articles::). * Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving (*note Saving Articles::). (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t) * `gnus-uu' can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching articles (*note Other Decode Variables::). (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view) * Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text (*note Article Washing::). * Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much cited text to hide is now customizable (*note Article Hiding::). (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2) * Boring headers can be hidden (*note Article Hiding::). * Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar. * Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.  File: gnus, Node: Red Gnus, Next: Quassia Gnus, Prev: September Gnus, Up: New Features 10.2.9.3 Red Gnus ................. New features in Gnus 5.4/5.5: * `nntp.el' has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion. * Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into Gnus (*note Asynchronous Fetching::). * Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection (*note Advanced Scoring::). * Article washing status can be displayed in the article mode line (*note Misc Article::). * `gnus.el' has been split into many smaller files. * Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID can be done (*note Duplicate Suppression::). (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t) * New variables for specifying what score and adapt files are to be considered home score and adapt files (*note Home Score File::) have been added. * `nndoc' was rewritten to be easily extendable (*note Document Server Internals::). * Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics (*note Topic Parameters::). * Article editing has been revamped and is now actually usable. * Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions (*note Article Signature::). * Summary pick mode has been made to look more `nn'-like. Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be used to pick articles (`Pick and Read'). * Commands for moving the `.newsrc.eld' from one server to another have been added (*note Changing Servers::). * There's a way now to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when generating lines in buffers (*note Advanced Formatting::). * Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with `C-M-_' (*note Undo::). * Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w' (*note Score File Format::). * Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis (*note Adaptive Scoring::). (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word)) * Scores can be decayed (*note Score Decays::). (setq gnus-decay-scores t) * Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first (*note Score File Format::). * A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from the native server (*note Changing Servers::). * A new command for reading collections of documents (`nndoc' with `nnvirtual' on top) has been added--`C-M-d' (*note Really Various Summary Commands::). * Process mark sets can be pushed and popped (*note Setting Process Marks::). * A new mail-to-news back end makes it possible to post even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting (*note Mail-To-News Gateways::). * A new back end for reading searches from Web search engines ("DejaNews", "Alta Vista", "InReference") has been added (*note Web Searches::). * Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently (*note Topic Sorting::). * Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently (`Sorting Groups'). * Cached articles can be pulled into the groups (*note Summary Generation Commands::). * Score files are now applied in a more reliable order (*note Score Variables::). * Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated (*note Splitting Mail::). * More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk from incoming mail before saving the mail (*note Washing Mail::). * Emphasized text can be properly fontisized:  File: gnus, Node: Quassia Gnus, Next: Pterodactyl Gnus, Prev: Red Gnus, Up: New Features 10.2.9.4 Quassia Gnus ..................... New features in Gnus 5.6: * New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. *Note Gnus Unplugged::, for the full story. * The `nndraft' back end has returned, but works differently than before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the `nndraft' group, which is created automatically. * `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header values. * `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's. * A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message outside the region: `C-c C-v'. * You can now post to component group in `nnvirtual' groups with `C-u C-c C-c'. * `nntp-rlogin-program'--new variable to ease customization. * `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit re-highlighting of the article buffer. * New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers'--`long-to'. * `M-i' symbolic prefix command. *Note Symbolic Prefixes::, for details. * `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix `a' to add the score rule to the `all.SCORE' file. * `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater control over simplification. * `A T'--new command for fetching the current thread. * `/ T'--new command for including the current thread in the limit. * `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text. * `\\1'-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'. * The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed. If you used this function in your initialization files, you must rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead. * Canceling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix `a' forces normal posting method. * New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text--`W d'. * For easier debugging of `nntp', you can set `nntp-record-commands' to a non-`nil' value. * `nntp' now uses `~/.authinfo', a `.netrc'-like file, for controlling where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers. * A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer has been added. * A history of where mails have been split is available. * A new article date command has been added--`article-date-iso8601'. * Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting `gnus-score-thread-simplify'. * A new function for citing in Message has been added--`message-cite-original-without-signature'. * `article-strip-all-blank-lines'--new article command. * A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has been added. * A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable. * The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command. * Web listserv archives can be read with the `nnlistserv' back end. * Old dejanews archives can now be read by `nnweb'.  File: gnus, Node: Pterodactyl Gnus, Next: Oort Gnus, Prev: Quassia Gnus, Up: New Features 10.2.9.5 Pterodactyl Gnus ......................... New features in Gnus 5.8: * The mail-fetching functions have changed. See the manual for the many details. In particular, all procmail fetching variables are gone. If you used procmail like in (setq nnmail-use-procmail t) (setq nnmail-spool-file 'procmail) (setq nnmail-procmail-directory "~/mail/incoming/") (setq nnmail-procmail-suffix "\\.in") this now has changed to (setq mail-sources '((directory :path "~/mail/incoming/" :suffix ".in"))) *Note Mail Source Specifiers::. * Gnus is now a MIME-capable reader. This affects many parts of Gnus, and adds a slew of new commands. See the manual for details. * Gnus has also been multilingualized. This also affects too many parts of Gnus to summarize here, and adds many new variables. * `gnus-auto-select-first' can now be a function to be called to position point. * The user can now decide which extra headers should be included in summary buffers and NOV files. * `gnus-article-display-hook' has been removed. Instead, a number of variables starting with `gnus-treat-' have been added. * The Gnus posting styles have been redone again and now works in a subtly different manner. * New web-based back ends have been added: `nnslashdot', `nnwarchive' and `nnultimate'. nnweb has been revamped, again, to keep up with ever-changing layouts. * Gnus can now read IMAP mail via `nnimap'.  File: gnus, Node: Oort Gnus, Next: No Gnus, Prev: Pterodactyl Gnus, Up: New Features 10.2.9.6 Oort Gnus .................. New features in Gnus 5.10: * Installation changes * Upgrading from previous (stable) version if you have used Oort. If you have tried Oort (the unstable Gnus branch leading to this release) but went back to a stable version, be careful when upgrading to this version. In particular, you will probably want to remove all `.marks' (nnml) and `.mrk' (nnfolder) files, so that flags are read from your `.newsrc.eld' instead of from the `.marks'/`.mrk' file where this release store flags. See a later entry for more information about marks. Note that downgrading isn't save in general. * Lisp files are now installed in `.../site-lisp/gnus/' by default. It defaulted to `.../site-lisp/' formerly. In addition to this, the new installer issues a warning if other Gnus installations which will shadow the latest one are detected. You can then remove those shadows manually or remove them using `make remove-installed-shadows'. * New `make.bat' for compiling and installing Gnus under MS Windows Use `make.bat' if you want to install Gnus under MS Windows, the first argument to the batch-program should be the directory where `xemacs.exe' respectively `emacs.exe' is located, if you want to install Gnus after compiling it, give `make.bat' `/copy' as the second parameter. `make.bat' has been rewritten from scratch, it now features automatic recognition of XEmacs and GNU Emacs, generates `gnus-load.el', checks if errors occur while compilation and generation of info files and reports them at the end of the build process. It now uses `makeinfo' if it is available and falls back to `infohack.el' otherwise. `make.bat' should now install all files which are necessary to run Gnus and be generally a complete replacement for the `configure; make; make install' cycle used under Unix systems. The new `make.bat' makes `make-x.bat' and `xemacs.mak' superfluous, so they have been removed. * `~/News/overview/' not used. As a result of the following change, the `~/News/overview/' directory is not used any more. You can safely delete the entire hierarchy. * `(require 'gnus-load)' If you use a stand-alone Gnus distribution, you'd better add `(require 'gnus-load)' into your `~/.emacs' after adding the Gnus lisp directory into load-path. File `gnus-load.el' contains autoload commands, functions and variables, some of which may not be included in distributions of Emacsen. * New packages and libraries within Gnus * The revised Gnus FAQ is included in the manual, *Note Frequently Asked Questions::. * TLS wrapper shipped with Gnus TLS/SSL is now supported in IMAP and NNTP via `tls.el' and GNUTLS. The old TLS/SSL support via (external third party) `ssl.el' and OpenSSL still works. * Improved anti-spam features. Gnus is now able to take out spam from your mail and news streams using a wide variety of programs and filter rules. Among the supported methods are RBL blocklists, bogofilter and white/blacklists. Hooks for easy use of external packages such as SpamAssassin and Hashcash are also new. *note Thwarting Email Spam:: and *note Spam Package::. * Gnus supports server-side mail filtering using Sieve. Sieve rules can be added as Group Parameters for groups, and the complete Sieve script is generated using `D g' from the Group buffer, and then uploaded to the server using `C-c C-l' in the generated Sieve buffer. *Note Sieve Commands::, and the new Sieve manual *note Top: (sieve)Top. * Changes in group mode * `gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group' can be called interactively, using `G M'. * Retrieval of charters and control messages There are new commands for fetching newsgroup charters (`H c') and control messages (`H C'). * The new variable `gnus-parameters' can be used to set group parameters. Earlier this was done only via `G p' (or `G c'), which stored the parameters in `~/.newsrc.eld', but via this variable you can enjoy the powers of customize, and simplified backups since you set the variable in `~/.gnus.el' instead of `~/.newsrc.eld'. The variable maps regular expressions matching group names to group parameters, a'la: (setq gnus-parameters '(("mail\\..*" (gnus-show-threads nil) (gnus-use-scoring nil)) ("^nnimap:\\(foo.bar\\)$" (to-group . "\\1")))) * Unread count correct in nnimap groups. The estimated number of unread articles in the group buffer should now be correct for nnimap groups. This is achieved by calling `nnimap-fixup-unread-after-getting-new-news' from the `gnus-setup-news-hook' (called on startup) and `gnus-after-getting-new-news-hook'. (called after getting new mail). If you have modified those variables from the default, you may want to add `nnimap-fixup-unread-after-getting-new-news' again. If you were happy with the estimate and want to save some (minimal) time when getting new mail, remove the function. * Group names are treated as UTF-8 by default. This is supposedly what USEFOR wanted to migrate to. See `gnus-group-name-charset-group-alist' and `gnus-group-name-charset-method-alist' for customization. * `gnus-group-charset-alist' and `gnus-group-ignored-charsets-alist'. The regexps in these variables are compared with full group names instead of real group names in 5.8. Users who customize these variables should change those regexps accordingly. For example: ("^han\\>" euc-kr) -> ("\\(^\\|:\\)han\\>" euc-kr) * Old intermediate incoming mail files (`Incoming*') are deleted after a couple of days, not immediately. *Note Mail Source Customization::. (New in Gnus 5.10.10 / Emacs 22.2) * Changes in summary and article mode * `F' (`gnus-article-followup-with-original') and `R' (`gnus-article-reply-with-original') only yank the text in the region if the region is active. * In draft groups, `e' is now bound to `gnus-draft-edit-message'. Use `B w' for `gnus-summary-edit-article' instead. * Article Buttons More buttons for URLs, mail addresses, Message-IDs, Info links, man pages and Emacs or Gnus related references. *Note Article Buttons::. The variables `gnus-button-*-level' can be used to control the appearance of all article buttons. *Note Article Button Levels::. * Single-part yenc encoded attachments can be decoded. * Picons The picons code has been reimplemented to work in GNU Emacs--some of the previous options have been removed or renamed. Picons are small "personal icons" representing users, domain and newsgroups, which can be displayed in the Article buffer. *Note Picons::. * If the new option `gnus-treat-body-boundary' is non-`nil', a boundary line is drawn at the end of the headers. * Signed article headers (X-PGP-Sig) can be verified with `W p'. * The Summary Buffer uses an arrow in the fringe to indicate the current article. Use `(setq gnus-summary-display-arrow nil)' to disable it. * Warn about email replies to news Do you often find yourself replying to news by email by mistake? Then the new option `gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news' is just the thing for you. * If the new option `gnus-summary-display-while-building' is non-`nil', the summary buffer is shown and updated as it's being built. * The new `recent' mark `.' indicates newly arrived messages (as opposed to old but unread messages). * Gnus supports RFC 2369 mailing list headers, and adds a number of related commands in mailing list groups. *Note Mailing List::. * The Date header can be displayed in a format that can be read aloud in English. *Note Article Date::. * diffs are automatically highlighted in groups matching `mm-uu-diff-groups-regexp' * Better handling of Microsoft citation styles Gnus now tries to recognize the mangled header block that some Microsoft mailers use to indicate that the rest of the message is a citation, even though it is not quoted in any way. The variable `gnus-cite-unsightly-citation-regexp' matches the start of these citations. The new command `W Y f' (`gnus-article-outlook-deuglify-article') allows deuglifying broken Outlook (Express) articles. * `gnus-article-skip-boring' If you set `gnus-article-skip-boring' to `t', then Gnus will not scroll down to show you a page that contains only boring text, which by default means cited text and signature. You can customize what is skippable using `gnus-article-boring-faces'. This feature is especially useful if you read many articles that consist of a little new content at the top with a long, untrimmed message cited below. * Smileys (`:-)', `;-)' etc) are now displayed graphically in Emacs too. Put `(setq gnus-treat-display-smileys nil)' in `~/.gnus.el' to disable it. * Face headers handling. *Note Face::. * In the summary buffer, the new command `/ N' inserts new messages and `/ o' inserts old messages. * Gnus decodes morse encoded messages if you press `W m'. * `gnus-summary-line-format' The default value changed to `%U%R%z%I%(%[%4L: %-23,23f%]%) %s\n'. Moreover `gnus-extra-headers', `nnmail-extra-headers' and `gnus-ignored-from-addresses' changed their default so that the users name will be replaced by the recipient's name or the group name posting to for NNTP groups. * Deleting of attachments. The command `gnus-mime-save-part-and-strip' (bound to `C-o' on MIME buttons) saves a part and replaces the part with an external one. `gnus-mime-delete-part' (bound to `d' on MIME buttons) removes a part. It works only on back ends that support editing. * `gnus-default-charset' The default value is determined from the `current-language-environment' variable, instead of `iso-8859-1'. Also the `.*' item in `gnus-group-charset-alist' is removed. * Printing capabilities are enhanced. Gnus supports Muttprint natively with `O P' from the Summary and Article buffers. Also, each individual MIME part can be printed using `p' on the MIME button. * Extended format specs. Format spec `%&user-date;' is added into `gnus-summary-line-format-alist'. Also, user defined extended format specs are supported. The extended format specs look like `%u&foo;', which invokes function `gnus-user-format-function-FOO'. Because `&' is used as the escape character, old user defined format `%u&' is no longer supported. * `/ *' (`gnus-summary-limit-include-cached') is rewritten. It was aliased to `Y c' (`gnus-summary-insert-cached-articles'). The new function filters out other articles. * Some limiting commands accept a `C-u' prefix to negate the match. If `C-u' is used on subject, author or extra headers, i.e., `/ s', `/ a', and `/ x' (`gnus-summary-limit-to-{subject,author,extra}') respectively, the result will be to display all articles that do not match the expression. * Gnus inlines external parts (message/external). * Changes in Message mode and related Gnus features * Delayed articles You can delay the sending of a message with `C-c C-j' in the Message buffer. The messages are delivered at specified time. This is useful for sending yourself reminders. *Note Delayed Articles::. * If the new option `nnml-use-compressed-files' is non-`nil', the nnml back end allows compressed message files. * The new option `gnus-gcc-mark-as-read' automatically marks Gcc articles as read. * Externalizing of attachments If `gnus-gcc-externalize-attachments' or `message-fcc-externalize-attachments' is non-`nil', attach local files as external parts. * The envelope sender address can be customized when using Sendmail. *Note Mail Variables: (message)Mail Variables. * Gnus no longer generate the Sender: header automatically. Earlier it was generated when the user configurable email address was different from the Gnus guessed default user address. As the guessing algorithm is rarely correct these days, and (more controversially) the only use of the Sender: header was to check if you are entitled to cancel/supersede news (which is now solved by Cancel Locks instead, see another entry), generation of the header has been disabled by default. See the variables `message-required-headers', `message-required-news-headers', and `message-required-mail-headers'. * Features from third party `message-utils.el' added to `message.el'. Message now asks if you wish to remove `(was: )' from subject lines (see `message-subject-trailing-was-query'). `C-c M-m' and `C-c M-f' inserts markers indicating included text. `C-c C-f a' adds a X-No-Archive: header. `C-c C-f x' inserts appropriate headers and a note in the body for cross-postings and followups (see the variables `message-cross-post-*'). * References and X-Draft-From headers are no longer generated when you start composing messages and `message-generate-headers-first' is `nil'. * Easy inclusion of X-Faces headers. *Note X-Face::. * Group Carbon Copy (GCC) quoting To support groups that contains SPC and other weird characters, groups are quoted before they are placed in the Gcc: header. This means variables such as `gnus-message-archive-group' should no longer contain quote characters to make groups containing SPC work. Also, if you are using the string `nnml:foo, nnml:bar' (indicating Gcc into two groups) you must change it to return the list `("nnml:foo" "nnml:bar")', otherwise the Gcc: line will be quoted incorrectly. Note that returning the string `nnml:foo, nnml:bar' was incorrect earlier, it just didn't generate any problems since it was inserted directly. * `message-insinuate-rmail' Adding `(message-insinuate-rmail)' and `(setq mail-user-agent 'gnus-user-agent)' in `.emacs' convinces Rmail to compose, reply and forward messages in message-mode, where you can enjoy the power of MML. * `message-minibuffer-local-map' The line below enables BBDB in resending a message: (define-key message-minibuffer-local-map [(tab)] 'bbdb-complete-name) * `gnus-posting-styles' Add a new format of match like ((header "to" "larsi.*org") (Organization "Somewhere, Inc.")) The old format like the lines below is obsolete, but still accepted. (header "to" "larsi.*org" (Organization "Somewhere, Inc.")) * `message-ignored-news-headers' and `message-ignored-mail-headers' `X-Draft-From' and `X-Gnus-Agent-Meta-Information' have been added into these two variables. If you customized those, perhaps you need add those two headers too. * Gnus supports the "format=flowed" (RFC 2646) parameter. On composing messages, it is enabled by `use-hard-newlines'. Decoding format=flowed was present but not documented in earlier versions. * The option `mm-fill-flowed' can be used to disable treatment of "format=flowed" messages. Also, flowed text is disabled when sending inline PGP signed messages. *Note Flowed text: (emacs-mime)Flowed text. (New in Gnus 5.10.7) * Gnus supports the generation of RFC 2298 Disposition Notification requests. This is invoked with the `C-c M-n' key binding from message mode. * Message supports the Importance: (RFC 2156) header. In the message buffer, `C-c C-f C-i' or `C-c C-u' cycles through the valid values. * Gnus supports Cancel Locks in News. This means a header `Cancel-Lock' is inserted in news posting. It is used to determine if you wrote an article or not (for canceling and superseding). Gnus generates a random password string the first time you post a message, and saves it in your `~/.emacs' using the Custom system. While the variable is called `canlock-password', it is not security sensitive data. Publishing your canlock string on the web will not allow anyone to be able to anything she could not already do. The behavior can be changed by customizing `message-insert-canlock'. * Gnus supports PGP (RFC 1991/2440), PGP/MIME (RFC 2015/3156) and S/MIME (RFC 2630-2633). It needs an external S/MIME and OpenPGP implementation, but no additional Lisp libraries. This add several menu items to the Attachments menu, and `C-c RET' key bindings, when composing messages. This also obsoletes `gnus-article-hide-pgp-hook'. * MML (Mime compose) prefix changed from `M-m' to `C-c C-m'. This change was made to avoid conflict with the standard binding of `back-to-indentation', which is also useful in message mode. * The default for `message-forward-show-mml' changed to the symbol `best'. The behavior for the `best' value is to show MML (i.e., convert to MIME) when appropriate. MML will not be used when forwarding signed or encrypted messages, as the conversion invalidate the digital signature. * If `auto-compression-mode' is enabled, attachments are automatically decompressed when activated. * Support for non-ASCII domain names Message supports non-ASCII domain names in From:, To: and Cc: and will query you whether to perform encoding when you try to send a message. The variable `message-use-idna' controls this. Gnus will also decode non-ASCII domain names in From:, To: and Cc: when you view a message. The variable `gnus-use-idna' controls this. * You can now drag and drop attachments to the Message buffer. See `mml-dnd-protocol-alist' and `mml-dnd-attach-options'. *Note MIME: (message)MIME. * `auto-fill-mode' is enabled by default in Message mode. See `message-fill-column'. *Note Message Headers: (message)Various Message Variables. * Changes in back ends * Gnus can display RSS newsfeeds as a newsgroup. *Note RSS::. * The nndoc back end now supports mailman digests and exim bounces. * Gnus supports Maildir groups. Gnus includes a new back end `nnmaildir.el'. *Note Maildir::. * The nnml and nnfolder back ends store marks for each groups. This makes it possible to take backup of nnml/nnfolder servers/groups separately of `~/.newsrc.eld', while preserving marks. It also makes it possible to share articles and marks between users (without sharing the `~/.newsrc.eld' file) within e.g. a department. It works by storing the marks stored in `~/.newsrc.eld' in a per-group file `.marks' (for nnml) and `GROUPNAME.mrk' (for nnfolder, named GROUPNAME). If the nnml/nnfolder is moved to another machine, Gnus will automatically use the `.marks' or `.mrk' file instead of the information in `~/.newsrc.eld'. The new server variables `nnml-marks-is-evil' and `nnfolder-marks-is-evil' can be used to disable this feature. * Appearance * The menu bar item (in Group and Summary buffer) named "Misc" has been renamed to "Gnus". * The menu bar item (in Message mode) named "MML" has been renamed to "Attachments". Note that this menu also contains security related stuff, like signing and encryption (*note Security: (message)Security.). * The tool bars have been updated to use GNOME icons in Group, Summary and Message mode. You can also customize the tool bars: `M-x customize-apropos RET -tool-bar$' should get you started. This is a new feature in Gnus 5.10.10. (Only for Emacs, not in XEmacs.) * The tool bar icons are now (de)activated correctly in the group buffer, see the variable `gnus-group-update-tool-bar'. Its default value depends on your Emacs version. This is a new feature in Gnus 5.10.9. * Miscellaneous changes * `gnus-agent' The Gnus Agent has seen a major updated and is now enabled by default, and all nntp and nnimap servers from `gnus-select-method' and `gnus-secondary-select-method' are agentized by default. Earlier only the server in `gnus-select-method' was agentized by the default, and the agent was disabled by default. When the agent is enabled, headers are now also retrieved from the Agent cache instead of the back ends when possible. Earlier this only happened in the unplugged state. You can enroll or remove servers with `J a' and `J r' in the server buffer. Gnus will not download articles into the Agent cache, unless you instruct it to do so, though, by using `J u' or `J s' from the Group buffer. You revert to the old behavior of having the Agent disabled with `(setq gnus-agent nil)'. Note that putting `(gnus-agentize)' in `~/.gnus.el' is not needed any more. * Gnus reads the NOV and articles in the Agent if plugged. If one reads an article while plugged, and the article already exists in the Agent, it won't get downloaded once more. `(setq gnus-agent-cache nil)' reverts to the old behavior. * Dired integration `gnus-dired-minor-mode' (see *note Other modes::) installs key bindings in dired buffers to send a file as an attachment, open a file using the appropriate mailcap entry, and print a file using the mailcap entry. * The format spec `%C' for positioning point has changed to `%*'. * `gnus-slave-unplugged' A new command which starts Gnus offline in slave mode.  File: gnus, Node: No Gnus, Prev: Oort Gnus, Up: New Features 10.2.9.7 No Gnus ................ New features in No Gnus: * Installation changes * Upgrading from previous (stable) version if you have used No Gnus. If you have tried No Gnus (the unstable Gnus branch leading to this release) but went back to a stable version, be careful when upgrading to this version. In particular, you will probably want to remove the `~/News/marks' directory (perhaps selectively), so that flags are read from your `~/.newsrc.eld' instead of from the stale marks file, where this release will store flags for nntp. See a later entry for more information about nntp marks. Note that downgrading isn't safe in general. * Incompatibility when switching from Emacs 23 to Emacs 22 In Emacs 23, Gnus uses Emacs' new internal coding system `utf-8-emacs' for saving articles drafts and `~/.newsrc.eld'. These files may not be read correctly in Emacs 22 and below. If you want to use Gnus across different Emacs versions, you may set `mm-auto-save-coding-system' to `emacs-mule'. * Lisp files are now installed in `.../site-lisp/gnus/' by default. It defaulted to `.../site-lisp/' formerly. In addition to this, the new installer issues a warning if other Gnus installations which will shadow the latest one are detected. You can then remove those shadows manually or remove them using `make remove-installed-shadows'. * The installation directory name is allowed to have spaces and/or tabs. * New packages and libraries within Gnus * Gnus includes the Emacs Lisp SASL library. This provides a clean API to SASL mechanisms from within Emacs. The user visible aspects of this, compared to the earlier situation, include support for DIGEST-MD5 and NTLM. *Note Emacs SASL: (sasl)Top. * ManageSieve connections uses the SASL library by default. The primary change this brings is support for DIGEST-MD5 and NTLM, when the server supports it. * Gnus includes a password cache mechanism in password.el. It is enabled by default (see `password-cache'), with a short timeout of 16 seconds (see `password-cache-expiry'). If PGG is used as the PGP back end, the PGP passphrase is managed by this mechanism. Passwords for ManageSieve connections are managed by this mechanism, after querying the user about whether to do so. * Using EasyPG with Gnus When EasyPG, is available, Gnus will use it instead of PGG. EasyPG is an Emacs user interface to GNU Privacy Guard. *Note EasyPG Assistant user's manual: (epa)Top. EasyPG is included in Emacs 23 and available separately as well. * Changes in group mode * Old intermediate incoming mail files (`Incoming*') are deleted after a couple of days, not immediately. *Note Mail Source Customization::. (New in Gnus 5.10.10 / No Gnus 0.8) * Changes in summary and article mode * Gnus now supports sticky article buffers. Those are article buffers that are not reused when you select another article. *Note Sticky Articles::. * Gnus can selectively display `text/html' articles with a WWW browser with `K H'. *Note MIME Commands::. * International host names (IDNA) can now be decoded inside article bodies using `W i' (`gnus-summary-idna-message'). This requires that GNU Libidn (`http://www.gnu.org/software/libidn/') has been installed. * The non-ASCII group names handling has been much improved. The back ends that fully support non-ASCII group names are now `nntp', `nnml', and `nnrss'. Also the agent, the cache, and the marks features work with those back ends. *Note Non-ASCII Group Names::. * Gnus now displays DNS master files sent as text/dns using dns-mode. * Gnus supports new limiting commands in the Summary buffer: `/ r' (`gnus-summary-limit-to-replied') and `/ R' (`gnus-summary-limit-to-recipient'). *Note Limiting::. * You can now fetch all ticked articles from the server using `Y t' (`gnus-summary-insert-ticked-articles'). *Note Summary Generation Commands::. * Gnus supports a new sort command in the Summary buffer: `C-c C-s C-t' (`gnus-summary-sort-by-recipient'). *Note Summary Sorting::. * S/MIME now features LDAP user certificate searches. You need to configure the server in `smime-ldap-host-list'. * URLs inside OpenPGP headers are retrieved and imported to your PGP key ring when you click on them. * Picons can be displayed right from the textual address, see `gnus-picon-style'. *Note Picons::. * ANSI SGR control sequences can be transformed using `W A'. ANSI sequences are used in some Chinese hierarchies for highlighting articles (`gnus-article-treat-ansi-sequences'). * Gnus now MIME decodes articles even when they lack "MIME-Version" header. This changes the default of `gnus-article-loose-mime'. * `gnus-decay-scores' can be a regexp matching score files. For example, set it to `\\.ADAPT\\'' and only adaptive score files will be decayed. *Note Score Decays::. * Strings prefixing to the `To' and `Newsgroup' headers in summary lines when using `gnus-ignored-from-addresses' can be customized with `gnus-summary-to-prefix' and `gnus-summary-newsgroup-prefix'. *Note To From Newsgroups::. * You can replace MIME parts with external bodies. See `gnus-mime-replace-part' and `gnus-article-replace-part'. *Note MIME Commands::, *note Using MIME::. * The option `mm-fill-flowed' can be used to disable treatment of format=flowed messages. Also, flowed text is disabled when sending inline PGP signed messages. *Note Flowed text: (emacs-mime)Flowed text. (New in Gnus 5.10.7) * Now the new command `S W' (`gnus-article-wide-reply-with-original') for a wide reply in the article buffer yanks a text that is in the active region, if it is set, as well as the `R' (`gnus-article-reply-with-original') command. Note that the `R' command in the article buffer no longer accepts a prefix argument, which was used to make it do a wide reply. *Note Article Keymap::. * The new command `C-h b' (`gnus-article-describe-bindings') used in the article buffer now shows not only the article commands but also the real summary commands that are accessible from the article buffer. * Changes in Message mode * Gnus now supports the "hashcash" client puzzle anti-spam mechanism. Use `(setq message-generate-hashcash t)' to enable. *Note Hashcash::. * You can now drag and drop attachments to the Message buffer. See `mml-dnd-protocol-alist' and `mml-dnd-attach-options'. *Note MIME: (message)MIME. * The option `message-yank-empty-prefix' now controls how empty lines are prefixed in cited text. *Note Insertion Variables: (message)Insertion Variables. * Gnus uses narrowing to hide headers in Message buffers. The `References' header is hidden by default. To make all headers visible, use `(setq message-hidden-headers nil)'. *Note Message Headers: (message)Message Headers. * You can highlight different levels of citations like in the article buffer. See `gnus-message-highlight-citation'. * `auto-fill-mode' is enabled by default in Message mode. See `message-fill-column'. *Note Message Headers: (message)Various Message Variables. * You can now store signature files in a special directory named `message-signature-directory'. * The option `message-citation-line-format' controls the format of the "Whomever writes:" line. You need to set `message-citation-line-function' to `message-insert-formatted-citation-line' as well. * Changes in back ends * The nntp back end stores article marks in `~/News/marks'. The directory can be changed using the (customizable) variable `nntp-marks-directory', and marks can be disabled using the (back end) variable `nntp-marks-is-evil'. The advantage of this is that you can copy `~/News/marks' (using rsync, scp or whatever) to another Gnus installation, and it will realize what articles you have read and marked. The data in `~/News/marks' has priority over the same data in `~/.newsrc.eld'. * You can import and export your RSS subscriptions from OPML files. *Note RSS::. * IMAP identity (RFC 2971) is supported. By default, Gnus does not send any information about itself, but you can customize it using the variable `nnimap-id'. * The `nnrss' back end now supports multilingual text. Non-ASCII group names for the `nnrss' groups are also supported. *Note RSS::. * Retrieving mail with POP3 is supported over SSL/TLS and with StartTLS. * The nnml back end allows other compression programs beside `gzip' for compressed message files. *Note Mail Spool::. * The nnml back end supports group compaction. This feature, accessible via the functions `gnus-group-compact-group' (`G z' in the group buffer) and `gnus-server-compact-server' (`z' in the server buffer) renumbers all articles in a group, starting from 1 and removing gaps. As a consequence, you get a correct total article count (until messages are deleted again). * Appearance * The tool bar has been updated to use GNOME icons. You can also customize the tool bars: `M-x customize-apropos RET -tool-bar$' should get you started. (Only for Emacs, not in XEmacs.) * The tool bar icons are now (de)activated correctly in the group buffer, see the variable `gnus-group-update-tool-bar'. Its default value depends on your Emacs version. * You can change the location of XEmacs' toolbars in Gnus buffers. See `gnus-use-toolbar' and `message-use-toolbar'. * Miscellaneous changes * Having edited the select-method for the foreign server in the server buffer is immediately reflected to the subscription of the groups which use the server in question. For instance, if you change `nntp-via-address' into `bar.example.com' from `foo.example.com', Gnus will connect to the news host by way of the intermediate host `bar.example.com' from next time. * The `all.SCORE' file can be edited from the group buffer using `W e'. * You can set `gnus-mark-copied-or-moved-articles-as-expirable' to a non-`nil' value so that articles that have been read may be marked as expirable automatically when copying or moving them to a group that has auto-expire turned on. The default is `nil' and copying and moving of articles behave as before; i.e., the expirable marks will be unchanged except that the marks will be removed when copying or moving articles to a group that has not turned auto-expire on. *Note Expiring Mail::.  File: gnus, Node: On Writing Manuals, Next: Terminology, Prev: History, Up: Appendices 10.3 On Writing Manuals ======================= I guess most manuals are written after-the-fact; documenting a program that's already there. This is not how this manual is written. When implementing something, I write the manual entry for that something straight away. I then see that it's difficult to explain the functionality, so I write how it's supposed to be, and then I change the implementation. Writing the documentation and writing the code go hand in hand. This, of course, means that this manual has no, or little, flow. It documents absolutely everything in Gnus, but often not where you're looking for it. It is a reference manual, and not a guide to how to get started with Gnus. That would be a totally different book, that should be written using the reference manual as source material. It would look quite different.  File: gnus, Node: Terminology, Next: Customization, Prev: On Writing Manuals, Up: Appendices 10.4 Terminology ================ "news" This is what you are supposed to use this thing for--reading news. News is generally fetched from a nearby NNTP server, and is generally publicly available to everybody. If you post news, the entire world is likely to read just what you have written, and they'll all snigger mischievously. Behind your back. "mail" Everything that's delivered to you personally is mail. Some news/mail readers (like Gnus) blur the distinction between mail and news, but there is a difference. Mail is private. News is public. Mailing is not posting, and replying is not following up. "reply" Send a mail to the person who has written what you are reading. "follow up" Post an article to the current newsgroup responding to the article you are reading. "back end" Gnus considers mail and news to be mostly the same, really. The only difference is how to access the actual articles. News articles are commonly fetched via the protocol NNTP, whereas mail messages could be read from a file on the local disk. The internal architecture of Gnus thus comprises a "front end" and a number of "back ends". Internally, when you enter a group (by hitting , say), you thereby invoke a function in the front end in Gnus. The front end then "talks" to a back end and says things like "Give me the list of articles in the foo group" or "Show me article number 4711". So a back end mainly defines either a protocol (the `nntp' back end accesses news via NNTP, the `nnimap' back end accesses mail via IMAP) or a file format and directory layout (the `nnspool' back end accesses news via the common "spool directory" format, the `nnml' back end access mail via a file format and directory layout that's quite similar). Gnus does not handle the underlying media, so to speak--this is all done by the back ends. A back end is a collection of functions to access the articles. However, sometimes the term "back end" is also used where "server" would have been more appropriate. And then there is the term "select method" which can mean either. The Gnus terminology can be quite confusing. "native" Gnus will always use one method (and back end) as the "native", or default, way of getting news. "foreign" You can also have any number of foreign groups active at the same time. These are groups that use non-native non-secondary back ends for getting news. "secondary" Secondary back ends are somewhere half-way between being native and being foreign, but they mostly act like they are native. "article" A message that has been posted as news. "mail message" A message that has been mailed. "message" A mail message or news article "head" The top part of a message, where administrative information (etc.) is put. "body" The rest of an article. Everything not in the head is in the body. "header" A line from the head of an article. "headers" A collection of such lines, or a collection of heads. Or even a collection of NOV lines. "NOV" NOV stands for News OverView, which is a type of news server header which provide datas containing the condensed header information of articles. They are produced by the server itself; in the `nntp' back end Gnus uses the ones that the NNTP server makes, but Gnus makes them by itself for some backends (in particular, `nnml'). When Gnus enters a group, it asks the back end for the headers of all unread articles in the group. Most servers support the News OverView format, which is more compact and much faster to read and parse than the normal HEAD format. The NOV data consist of one or more text lines (*note Motion by Text Lines: (elisp)Text Lines.) where each line has the header information of one article. The header information is a tab-separated series of the header's contents including an article number, a subject, an author, a date, a message-id, references, etc. Those data enable Gnus to generate summary lines quickly. However, if the server does not support NOV or you disable it purposely or for some reason, Gnus will try to generate the header information by parsing each article's headers one by one. It will take time. Therefore, it is not usually a good idea to set nn*-nov-is-evil (*note Slow/Expensive Connection::) to a non-`nil' value unless you know that the server makes wrong NOV data. "level" Each group is subscribed at some "level" or other (1-9). The ones that have a lower level are "more" subscribed than the groups with a higher level. In fact, groups on levels 1-5 are considered "subscribed"; 6-7 are "unsubscribed"; 8 are "zombies"; and 9 are "killed". Commands for listing groups and scanning for new articles will all use the numeric prefix as "working level". "killed groups" No information on killed groups is stored or updated, which makes killed groups much easier to handle than subscribed groups. "zombie groups" Just like killed groups, only slightly less dead. "active file" The news server has to keep track of what articles it carries, and what groups exist. All this information in stored in the active file, which is rather large, as you might surmise. "bogus groups" A group that exists in the `.newsrc' file, but isn't known to the server (i.e., it isn't in the active file), is a _bogus group_. This means that the group probably doesn't exist (any more). "activating" The act of asking the server for info on a group and computing the number of unread articles is called "activating the group". Un-activated groups are listed with `*' in the group buffer. "spool" News servers store their articles locally in one fashion or other. One old-fashioned storage method is to have just one file per article. That's called a "traditional spool". "server" A machine one can connect to and get news (or mail) from. "select method" A structure that specifies the back end, the server and the virtual server settings. "virtual server" A named select method. Since a select method defines all there is to know about connecting to a (physical) server, taking the thing as a whole is a virtual server. "washing" Taking a buffer and running it through a filter of some sort. The result will (more often than not) be cleaner and more pleasing than the original. "ephemeral groups" Most groups store data on what articles you have read. "Ephemeral" groups are groups that will have no data stored--when you exit the group, it'll disappear into the aether. "solid groups" This is the opposite of ephemeral groups. All groups listed in the group buffer are solid groups. "sparse articles" These are article placeholders shown in the summary buffer when `gnus-build-sparse-threads' has been switched on. "threading" To put responses to articles directly after the articles they respond to--in a hierarchical fashion. "root" The first article in a thread is the root. It is the ancestor of all articles in the thread. "parent" An article that has responses. "child" An article that responds to a different article--its parent. "digest" A collection of messages in one file. The most common digest format is specified by RFC 1153. "splitting" The action of sorting your emails according to certain rules. Sometimes incorrectly called mail filtering.  File: gnus, Node: Customization, Next: Troubleshooting, Prev: Terminology, Up: Appendices 10.5 Customization ================== All variables are properly documented elsewhere in this manual. This section is designed to give general pointers on how to customize Gnus for some quite common situations. * Menu: * Slow/Expensive Connection:: You run a local Emacs and get the news elsewhere. * Slow Terminal Connection:: You run a remote Emacs. * Little Disk Space:: You feel that having large setup files is icky. * Slow Machine:: You feel like buying a faster machine.  File: gnus, Node: Slow/Expensive Connection, Next: Slow Terminal Connection, Up: Customization 10.5.1 Slow/Expensive Connection -------------------------------- If you run Emacs on a machine locally, and get your news from a machine over some very thin strings, you want to cut down on the amount of data Gnus has to get from the server. `gnus-read-active-file' Set this to `nil', which will inhibit Gnus from requesting the entire active file from the server. This file is often very large. You also have to set `gnus-check-new-newsgroups' and `gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups' to `nil' to make sure that Gnus doesn't suddenly decide to fetch the active file anyway. `gnus-nov-is-evil' Usually this one must _always_ be `nil' (which is the default). If, for example, you wish to not use NOV (*note Terminology::) with the `nntp' back end (*note Crosspost Handling::), set `nntp-nov-is-evil' to a non-`nil' value instead of setting this. But you normally do not need to set `nntp-nov-is-evil' since Gnus by itself will detect whether the NNTP server supports NOV. Anyway, grabbing article headers from the NNTP server will not be very fast if you tell Gnus not to use NOV. As the variables for the other back ends, there are `nndiary-nov-is-evil', `nndir-nov-is-evil', `nnfolder-nov-is-evil', `nnimap-nov-is-evil', `nnml-nov-is-evil', `nnspool-nov-is-evil', and `nnwarchive-nov-is-evil'. Note that a non-`nil' value for `gnus-nov-is-evil' overrides all those variables.(1) ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) Although the back ends `nnkiboze', `nnslashdot', `nnultimate', and `nnwfm' don't have their own nn*-nov-is-evil.  File: gnus, Node: Slow Terminal Connection, Next: Little Disk Space, Prev: Slow/Expensive Connection, Up: Customization 10.5.2 Slow Terminal Connection ------------------------------- Let's say you use your home computer for dialing up the system that runs Emacs and Gnus. If your modem is slow, you want to reduce (as much as possible) the amount of data sent over the wires. `gnus-auto-center-summary' Set this to `nil' to inhibit Gnus from re-centering the summary buffer all the time. If it is `vertical', do only vertical re-centering. If it is neither `nil' nor `vertical', do both horizontal and vertical recentering. `gnus-visible-headers' Cut down on the headers included in the articles to the minimum. You can, in fact, make do without them altogether--most of the useful data is in the summary buffer, anyway. Set this variable to `^NEVVVVER' or `From:', or whatever you feel you need. Use the following to enable all the available hiding features: (setq gnus-treat-hide-headers 'head gnus-treat-hide-signature t gnus-treat-hide-citation t) `gnus-use-full-window' By setting this to `nil', you can make all the windows smaller. While this doesn't really cut down much generally, it means that you have to see smaller portions of articles before deciding that you didn't want to read them anyway. `gnus-thread-hide-subtree' If this is non-`nil', all threads in the summary buffer will be hidden initially. `gnus-updated-mode-lines' If this is `nil', Gnus will not put information in the buffer mode lines, which might save some time.  File: gnus, Node: Little Disk Space, Next: Slow Machine, Prev: Slow Terminal Connection, Up: Customization 10.5.3 Little Disk Space ------------------------ The startup files can get rather large, so you may want to cut their sizes a bit if you are running out of space. `gnus-save-newsrc-file' If this is `nil', Gnus will never save `.newsrc'--it will only save `.newsrc.eld'. This means that you will not be able to use any other newsreaders than Gnus. This variable is `t' by default. `gnus-read-newsrc-file' If this is `nil', Gnus will never read `.newsrc'--it will only read `.newsrc.eld'. This means that you will not be able to use any other newsreaders than Gnus. This variable is `t' by default. `gnus-save-killed-list' If this is `nil', Gnus will not save the list of dead groups. You should also set `gnus-check-new-newsgroups' to `ask-server' and `gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups' to `nil' if you set this variable to `nil'. This variable is `t' by default.  File: gnus, Node: Slow Machine, Prev: Little Disk Space, Up: Customization 10.5.4 Slow Machine ------------------- If you have a slow machine, or are just really impatient, there are a few things you can do to make Gnus run faster. Set `gnus-check-new-newsgroups' and `gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups' to `nil' to make startup faster. Set `gnus-show-threads', `gnus-use-cross-reference' and `gnus-nov-is-evil' to `nil' to make entering and exiting the summary buffer faster. Also *note Slow/Expensive Connection::.  File: gnus, Node: Troubleshooting, Next: Gnus Reference Guide, Prev: Customization, Up: Appendices 10.6 Troubleshooting ==================== Gnus works _so_ well straight out of the box--I can't imagine any problems, really. Ahem. 1. Make sure your computer is switched on. 2. Make sure that you really load the current Gnus version. If you have been running GNUS, you need to exit Emacs and start it up again before Gnus will work. 3. Try doing an `M-x gnus-version'. If you get something that looks like `Gnus v5.13' you have the right files loaded. Otherwise you have some old `.el' files lying around. Delete these. 4. Read the help group (`G h' in the group buffer) for a FAQ and a how-to. 5. Gnus works on many recursive structures, and in some extreme (and very rare) cases Gnus may recurse down "too deeply" and Emacs will beep at you. If this happens to you, set `max-lisp-eval-depth' to 500 or something like that. If all else fails, report the problem as a bug. If you find a bug in Gnus, you can report it with the `M-x gnus-bug' command. `M-x set-variable RET debug-on-error RET t RET', and send me the backtrace. I will fix bugs, but I can only fix them if you send me a precise description as to how to reproduce the bug. You really can never be too detailed in a bug report. Always use the `M-x gnus-bug' command when you make bug reports, even if it creates a 10Kb mail each time you use it, and even if you have sent me your environment 500 times before. I don't care. I want the full info each time. It is also important to remember that I have no memory whatsoever. If you send a bug report, and I send you a reply, and then you just send back "No, it's not! Moron!", I will have no idea what you are insulting me about. Always over-explain everything. It's much easier for all of us--if I don't have all the information I need, I will just mail you and ask for more info, and everything takes more time. If the problem you're seeing is very visual, and you can't quite explain it, copy the Emacs window to a file (with `xwd', for instance), put it somewhere it can be reached, and include the URL of the picture in the bug report. If you would like to contribute a patch to fix bugs or make improvements, please produce the patch using `diff -u'. If you want to debug your problem further before reporting, possibly in order to solve the problem yourself and send a patch, you can use edebug. Debugging Lisp code is documented in the Elisp manual (*note Debugging Lisp Programs: (elisp)Debugging.). To get you started with edebug, consider if you discover some weird behavior when pressing `c', the first step is to do `C-h k c' and click on the hyperlink (Emacs only) in the documentation buffer that leads you to the function definition, then press `M-x edebug-defun RET' with point inside that function, return to Gnus and press `c' to invoke the code. You will be placed in the lisp buffer and can single step using `SPC' and evaluate expressions using `M-:' or inspect variables using `C-h v', abort execution with `q', and resume execution with `c' or `g'. Sometimes, a problem do not directly generate an elisp error but manifests itself by causing Gnus to be very slow. In these cases, you can use `M-x toggle-debug-on-quit' and press `C-g' when things are slow, and then try to analyze the backtrace (repeating the procedure helps isolating the real problem areas). A fancier approach is to use the elisp profiler, ELP. The profiler is (or should be) fully documented elsewhere, but to get you started there are a few steps that need to be followed. First, instrument the part of Gnus you are interested in for profiling, e.g. `M-x elp-instrument-package RET gnus' or `M-x elp-instrument-package RET message'. Then perform the operation that is slow and press `M-x elp-results'. You will then see which operations that takes time, and can debug them further. If the entire operation takes much longer than the time spent in the slowest function in the profiler output, you probably profiled the wrong part of Gnus. To reset profiling statistics, use `M-x elp-reset-all'. `M-x elp-restore-all' is supposed to remove profiling, but given the complexities and dynamic code generation in Gnus, it might not always work perfectly. If you just need help, you are better off asking on `gnu.emacs.gnus'. I'm not very helpful. You can also ask on the ding mailing list . Write to to subscribe.  File: gnus, Node: Gnus Reference Guide, Next: Emacs for Heathens, Prev: Troubleshooting, Up: Appendices 10.7 Gnus Reference Guide ========================= It is my hope that other people will figure out smart stuff that Gnus can do, and that other people will write those smart things as well. To facilitate that I thought it would be a good idea to describe the inner workings of Gnus. And some of the not-so-inner workings, while I'm at it. You can never expect the internals of a program not to change, but I will be defining (in some details) the interface between Gnus and its back ends (this is written in stone), the format of the score files (ditto), data structures (some are less likely to change than others) and general methods of operation. * Menu: * Gnus Utility Functions:: Common functions and variable to use. * Back End Interface:: How Gnus communicates with the servers. * Score File Syntax:: A BNF definition of the score file standard. * Headers:: How Gnus stores headers internally. * Ranges:: A handy format for storing mucho numbers. * Group Info:: The group info format. * Extended Interactive:: Symbolic prefixes and stuff. * Emacs/XEmacs Code:: Gnus can be run under all modern Emacsen. * Various File Formats:: Formats of files that Gnus use.  File: gnus, Node: Gnus Utility Functions, Next: Back End Interface, Up: Gnus Reference Guide 10.7.1 Gnus Utility Functions ----------------------------- When writing small functions to be run from hooks (and stuff), it's vital to have access to the Gnus internal functions and variables. Below is a list of the most common ones. `gnus-newsgroup-name' This variable holds the name of the current newsgroup. `gnus-find-method-for-group' A function that returns the select method for GROUP. `gnus-group-real-name' Takes a full (prefixed) Gnus group name, and returns the unprefixed name. `gnus-group-prefixed-name' Takes an unprefixed group name and a select method, and returns the full (prefixed) Gnus group name. `gnus-get-info' Returns the group info list for GROUP. `gnus-group-unread' The number of unread articles in GROUP, or `t' if that is unknown. `gnus-active' The active entry for GROUP. `gnus-set-active' Set the active entry for GROUP. `gnus-add-current-to-buffer-list' Adds the current buffer to the list of buffers to be killed on Gnus exit. `gnus-continuum-version' Takes a Gnus version string as a parameter and returns a floating point number. Earlier versions will always get a lower number than later versions. `gnus-group-read-only-p' Says whether GROUP is read-only or not. `gnus-news-group-p' Says whether GROUP came from a news back end. `gnus-ephemeral-group-p' Says whether GROUP is ephemeral or not. `gnus-server-to-method' Returns the select method corresponding to SERVER. `gnus-server-equal' Says whether two virtual servers are equal. `gnus-group-native-p' Says whether GROUP is native or not. `gnus-group-secondary-p' Says whether GROUP is secondary or not. `gnus-group-foreign-p' Says whether GROUP is foreign or not. `gnus-group-find-parameter' Returns the parameter list of GROUP. If given a second parameter, returns the value of that parameter for GROUP. `gnus-group-set-parameter' Takes three parameters; GROUP, PARAMETER and VALUE. `gnus-narrow-to-body' Narrows the current buffer to the body of the article. `gnus-check-backend-function' Takes two parameters, FUNCTION and GROUP. If the back end GROUP comes from supports FUNCTION, return non-`nil'. (gnus-check-backend-function "request-scan" "nnml:misc") => t `gnus-read-method' Prompts the user for a select method.  File: gnus, Node: Back End Interface, Next: Score File Syntax, Prev: Gnus Utility Functions, Up: Gnus Reference Guide 10.7.2 Back End Interface ------------------------- Gnus doesn't know anything about NNTP, spools, mail or virtual groups. It only knows how to talk to "virtual servers". A virtual server is a "back end" and some "back end variables". As examples of the first, we have `nntp', `nnspool' and `nnmbox'. As examples of the latter we have `nntp-port-number' and `nnmbox-directory'. When Gnus asks for information from a back end--say `nntp'--on something, it will normally include a virtual server name in the function parameters. (If not, the back end should use the "current" virtual server.) For instance, `nntp-request-list' takes a virtual server as its only (optional) parameter. If this virtual server hasn't been opened, the function should fail. Note that a virtual server name has no relation to some physical server name. Take this example: (nntp "odd-one" (nntp-address "ifi.uio.no") (nntp-port-number 4324)) Here the virtual server name is `odd-one' while the name of the physical server is `ifi.uio.no'. The back ends should be able to switch between several virtual servers. The standard back ends implement this by keeping an alist of virtual server environments that they pull down/push up when needed. There are two groups of interface functions: "required functions", which must be present, and "optional functions", which Gnus will always check for presence before attempting to call 'em. All these functions are expected to return data in the buffer `nntp-server-buffer' (` *nntpd*'), which is somewhat unfortunately named, but we'll have to live with it. When I talk about "resulting data", I always refer to the data in that buffer. When I talk about "return value", I talk about the function value returned by the function call. Functions that fail should return `nil' as the return value. Some back ends could be said to be "server-forming" back ends, and some might be said not to be. The latter are back ends that generally only operate on one group at a time, and have no concept of "server" --they have a group, and they deliver info on that group and nothing more. Gnus identifies each message by way of group name and article number. A few remarks about these article numbers might be useful. First of all, the numbers are positive integers. Secondly, it is normally not possible for later articles to "re-use" older article numbers without confusing Gnus. That is, if a group has ever contained a message numbered 42, then no other message may get that number, or Gnus will get mightily confused.(1) Third, article numbers must be assigned in order of arrival in the group; this is not necessarily the same as the date of the message. The previous paragraph already mentions all the "hard" restrictions that article numbers must fulfill. But it seems that it might be useful to assign _consecutive_ article numbers, for Gnus gets quite confused if there are holes in the article numbering sequence. However, due to the "no-reuse" restriction, holes cannot be avoided altogether. It's also useful for the article numbers to start at 1 to avoid running out of numbers as long as possible. Note that by convention, back ends are named `nnsomething', but Gnus also comes with some `nnnotbackends', such as `nnheader.el', `nnmail.el' and `nnoo.el'. In the examples and definitions I will refer to the imaginary back end `nnchoke'. * Menu: * Required Back End Functions:: Functions that must be implemented. * Optional Back End Functions:: Functions that need not be implemented. * Error Messaging:: How to get messages and report errors. * Writing New Back Ends:: Extending old back ends. * Hooking New Back Ends Into Gnus:: What has to be done on the Gnus end. * Mail-like Back Ends:: Some tips on mail back ends. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) See the function `nnchoke-request-update-info', *note Optional Back End Functions::.  File: gnus, Node: Required Back End Functions, Next: Optional Back End Functions, Up: Back End Interface 10.7.2.1 Required Back End Functions .................................... `(nnchoke-retrieve-headers ARTICLES &optional GROUP SERVER FETCH-OLD)' ARTICLES is either a range of article numbers or a list of `Message-ID's. Current back ends do not fully support either--only sequences (lists) of article numbers, and most back ends do not support retrieval of `Message-ID's. But they should try for both. The result data should either be HEADs or NOV lines, and the result value should either be `headers' or `nov' to reflect this. This might later be expanded to `various', which will be a mixture of HEADs and NOV lines, but this is currently not supported by Gnus. If FETCH-OLD is non-`nil' it says to try fetching "extra headers", in some meaning of the word. This is generally done by fetching (at most) FETCH-OLD extra headers less than the smallest article number in `articles', and filling the gaps as well. The presence of this parameter can be ignored if the back end finds it cumbersome to follow the request. If this is non-`nil' and not a number, do maximum fetches. Here's an example HEAD: 221 1056 Article retrieved. Path: ifi.uio.no!sturles From: sturles@ifi.uio.no (Sturle Sunde) Newsgroups: ifi.discussion Subject: Re: Something very droll Date: 27 Oct 1994 14:02:57 +0100 Organization: Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway Lines: 26 Message-ID: <38o8e1$a0o@holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no> References: <38jdmq$4qu@visbur.ifi.uio.no> NNTP-Posting-Host: holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no . So a `headers' return value would imply that there's a number of these in the data buffer. Here's a BNF definition of such a buffer: headers = *head head = error / valid-head error-message = [ "4" / "5" ] 2number " " eol valid-head = valid-message *header "." eol valid-message = "221 " " Article retrieved." eol header = eol (The version of BNF used here is the one used in RFC822.) If the return value is `nov', the data buffer should contain "network overview database" lines. These are basically fields separated by tabs. nov-buffer = *nov-line nov-line = field 7*8[ field ] eol field = For a closer look at what should be in those fields, *note Headers::. `(nnchoke-open-server SERVER &optional DEFINITIONS)' SERVER is here the virtual server name. DEFINITIONS is a list of `(VARIABLE VALUE)' pairs that define this virtual server. If the server can't be opened, no error should be signaled. The back end may then choose to refuse further attempts at connecting to this server. In fact, it should do so. If the server is opened already, this function should return a non-`nil' value. There should be no data returned. `(nnchoke-close-server &optional SERVER)' Close connection to SERVER and free all resources connected to it. Return `nil' if the server couldn't be closed for some reason. There should be no data returned. `(nnchoke-request-close)' Close connection to all servers and free all resources that the back end have reserved. All buffers that have been created by that back end should be killed. (Not the `nntp-server-buffer', though.) This function is generally only called when Gnus is shutting down. There should be no data returned. `(nnchoke-server-opened &optional SERVER)' If SERVER is the current virtual server, and the connection to the physical server is alive, then this function should return a non-`nil' value. This function should under no circumstances attempt to reconnect to a server we have lost connection to. There should be no data returned. `(nnchoke-status-message &optional SERVER)' This function should return the last error message from SERVER. There should be no data returned. `(nnchoke-request-article ARTICLE &optional GROUP SERVER TO-BUFFER)' The result data from this function should be the article specified by ARTICLE. This might either be a `Message-ID' or a number. It is optional whether to implement retrieval by `Message-ID', but it would be nice if that were possible. If TO-BUFFER is non-`nil', the result data should be returned in this buffer instead of the normal data buffer. This is to make it possible to avoid copying large amounts of data from one buffer to another, while Gnus mainly requests articles to be inserted directly into its article buffer. If it is at all possible, this function should return a cons cell where the `car' is the group name the article was fetched from, and the `cdr' is the article number. This will enable Gnus to find out what the real group and article numbers are when fetching articles by `Message-ID'. If this isn't possible, `t' should be returned on successful article retrieval. `(nnchoke-request-group GROUP &optional SERVER FAST)' Get data on GROUP. This function also has the side effect of making GROUP the current group. If FAST, don't bother to return useful data, just make GROUP the current group. Here's an example of some result data and a definition of the same: 211 56 1000 1059 ifi.discussion The first number is the status, which should be 211. Next is the total number of articles in the group, the lowest article number, the highest article number, and finally the group name. Note that the total number of articles may be less than one might think while just considering the highest and lowest article numbers, but some articles may have been canceled. Gnus just discards the total-number, so whether one should take the bother to generate it properly (if that is a problem) is left as an exercise to the reader. If the group contains no articles, the lowest article number should be reported as 1 and the highest as 0. group-status = [ error / info ] eol error = [ "4" / "5" ] 2 " " info = "211 " 3* [ " " ] `(nnchoke-close-group GROUP &optional SERVER)' Close GROUP and free any resources connected to it. This will be a no-op on most back ends. There should be no data returned. `(nnchoke-request-list &optional SERVER)' Return a list of all groups available on SERVER. And that means _all_. Here's an example from a server that only carries two groups: ifi.test 0000002200 0000002000 y ifi.discussion 3324 3300 n On each line we have a group name, then the highest article number in that group, the lowest article number, and finally a flag. If the group contains no articles, the lowest article number should be reported as 1 and the highest as 0. active-file = *active-line active-line = name " " " " " " flags eol name = flags = "n" / "y" / "m" / "x" / "j" / "=" name The flag says whether the group is read-only (`n'), is moderated (`m'), is dead (`x'), is aliased to some other group (`=other-group') or none of the above (`y'). `(nnchoke-request-post &optional SERVER)' This function should post the current buffer. It might return whether the posting was successful or not, but that's not required. If, for instance, the posting is done asynchronously, it has generally not been completed by the time this function concludes. In that case, this function should set up some kind of sentinel to beep the user loud and clear if the posting could not be completed. There should be no result data from this function.  File: gnus, Node: Optional Back End Functions, Next: Error Messaging, Prev: Required Back End Functions, Up: Back End Interface 10.7.2.2 Optional Back End Functions .................................... `(nnchoke-retrieve-groups GROUPS &optional SERVER)' GROUPS is a list of groups, and this function should request data on all those groups. How it does it is of no concern to Gnus, but it should attempt to do this in a speedy fashion. The return value of this function can be either `active' or `group', which says what the format of the result data is. The former is in the same format as the data from `nnchoke-request-list', while the latter is a buffer full of lines in the same format as `nnchoke-request-group' gives. group-buffer = *active-line / *group-status `(nnchoke-request-update-info GROUP INFO &optional SERVER)' A Gnus group info (*note Group Info::) is handed to the back end for alterations. This comes in handy if the back end really carries all the information (as is the case with virtual and imap groups). This function should destructively alter the info to suit its needs, and should return a non-`nil' value (exceptionally, `nntp-request-update-info' always returns `nil' not to waste the network resources). There should be no result data from this function. `(nnchoke-request-type GROUP &optional ARTICLE)' When the user issues commands for "sending news" (`F' in the summary buffer, for instance), Gnus has to know whether the article the user is following up on is news or mail. This function should return `news' if ARTICLE in GROUP is news, `mail' if it is mail and `unknown' if the type can't be decided. (The ARTICLE parameter is necessary in `nnvirtual' groups which might very well combine mail groups and news groups.) Both GROUP and ARTICLE may be `nil'. There should be no result data from this function. `(nnchoke-request-set-mark GROUP ACTION &optional SERVER)' Set/remove/add marks on articles. Normally Gnus handles the article marks (such as read, ticked, expired etc) internally, and store them in `~/.newsrc.eld'. Some back ends (such as IMAP) however carry all information about the articles on the server, so Gnus need to propagate the mark information to the server. ACTION is a list of mark setting requests, having this format: (RANGE ACTION MARK) RANGE is a range of articles you wish to update marks on. ACTION is `add' or `del', used to add marks or remove marks (preserving all marks not mentioned). MARK is a list of marks; where each mark is a symbol. Currently used marks are `read', `tick', `reply', `expire', `killed', `dormant', `save', `download', `unsend', `forward' and `recent', but your back end should, if possible, not limit itself to these. Given contradictory actions, the last action in the list should be the effective one. That is, if your action contains a request to add the `tick' mark on article 1 and, later in the list, a request to remove the mark on the same article, the mark should in fact be removed. An example action list: (((5 12 30) 'del '(tick)) ((10 . 90) 'add '(read expire)) ((92 94) 'del '(read))) The function should return a range of articles it wasn't able to set the mark on (currently not used for anything). There should be no result data from this function. `(nnchoke-request-update-mark GROUP ARTICLE MARK)' If the user tries to set a mark that the back end doesn't like, this function may change the mark. Gnus will use whatever this function returns as the mark for ARTICLE instead of the original MARK. If the back end doesn't care, it must return the original MARK, and not `nil' or any other type of garbage. The only use for this I can see is what `nnvirtual' does with it--if a component group is auto-expirable, marking an article as read in the virtual group should result in the article being marked as expirable. There should be no result data from this function. `(nnchoke-request-scan &optional GROUP SERVER)' This function may be called at any time (by Gnus or anything else) to request that the back end check for incoming articles, in one way or another. A mail back end will typically read the spool file or query the POP server when this function is invoked. The GROUP doesn't have to be heeded--if the back end decides that it is too much work just scanning for a single group, it may do a total scan of all groups. It would be nice, however, to keep things local if that's practical. There should be no result data from this function. `(nnchoke-request-group-description GROUP &optional SERVER)' The result data from this function should be a description of GROUP. description-line = name description eol name = description = `(nnchoke-request-list-newsgroups &optional SERVER)' The result data from this function should be the description of all groups available on the server. description-buffer = *description-line `(nnchoke-request-newgroups DATE &optional SERVER)' The result data from this function should be all groups that were created after `date', which is in normal human-readable date format (i.e., the date format used in mail and news headers, and returned by the function `message-make-date' by default). The data should be in the active buffer format. It is okay for this function to return "too many" groups; some back ends might find it cheaper to return the full list of groups, rather than just the new groups. But don't do this for back ends with many groups. Normally, if the user creates the groups herself, there won't be too many groups, so `nnml' and the like are probably safe. But for back ends like `nntp', where the groups have been created by the server, it is quite likely that there can be many groups. `(nnchoke-request-create-group GROUP &optional SERVER)' This function should create an empty group with name GROUP. There should be no return data. `(nnchoke-request-expire-articles ARTICLES &optional GROUP SERVER FORCE)' This function should run the expiry process on all articles in the ARTICLES range (which is currently a simple list of article numbers.) It is left up to the back end to decide how old articles should be before they are removed by this function. If FORCE is non-`nil', all ARTICLES should be deleted, no matter how new they are. This function should return a list of articles that it did not/was not able to delete. There should be no result data returned. `(nnchoke-request-move-article ARTICLE GROUP SERVER ACCEPT-FORM &optional LAST)' This function should move ARTICLE (which is a number) from GROUP by calling ACCEPT-FORM. This function should ready the article in question for moving by removing any header lines it has added to the article, and generally should "tidy up" the article. Then it should `eval' ACCEPT-FORM in the buffer where the "tidy" article is. This will do the actual copying. If this `eval' returns a non-`nil' value, the article should be removed. If LAST is `nil', that means that there is a high likelihood that there will be more requests issued shortly, so that allows some optimizations. The function should return a cons where the `car' is the group name and the `cdr' is the article number that the article was entered as. There should be no data returned. `(nnchoke-request-accept-article GROUP &optional SERVER LAST)' This function takes the current buffer and inserts it into GROUP. If LAST in `nil', that means that there will be more calls to this function in short order. The function should return a cons where the `car' is the group name and the `cdr' is the article number that the article was entered as. The group should exist before the back end is asked to accept the article for that group. There should be no data returned. `(nnchoke-request-replace-article ARTICLE GROUP BUFFER)' This function should remove ARTICLE (which is a number) from GROUP and insert BUFFER there instead. There should be no data returned. `(nnchoke-request-delete-group GROUP FORCE &optional SERVER)' This function should delete GROUP. If FORCE, it should really delete all the articles in the group, and then delete the group itself. (If there is such a thing as "the group itself".) There should be no data returned. `(nnchoke-request-rename-group GROUP NEW-NAME &optional SERVER)' This function should rename GROUP into NEW-NAME. All articles in GROUP should move to NEW-NAME. There should be no data returned.  File: gnus, Node: Error Messaging, Next: Writing New Back Ends, Prev: Optional Back End Functions, Up: Back End Interface 10.7.2.3 Error Messaging ........................ The back ends should use the function `nnheader-report' to report error conditions--they should not raise errors when they aren't able to perform a request. The first argument to this function is the back end symbol, and the rest are interpreted as arguments to `format' if there are multiple of them, or just a string if there is one of them. This function must always returns `nil'. (nnheader-report 'nnchoke "You did something totally bogus") (nnheader-report 'nnchoke "Could not request group %s" group) Gnus, in turn, will call `nnheader-get-report' when it gets a `nil' back from a server, and this function returns the most recently reported message for the back end in question. This function takes one argument--the server symbol. Internally, these functions access BACK-END`-status-string', so the `nnchoke' back end will have its error message stored in `nnchoke-status-string'.  File: gnus, Node: Writing New Back Ends, Next: Hooking New Back Ends Into Gnus, Prev: Error Messaging, Up: Back End Interface 10.7.2.4 Writing New Back Ends .............................. Many back ends are quite similar. `nnml' is just like `nnspool', but it allows you to edit the articles on the server. `nnmh' is just like `nnml', but it doesn't use an active file, and it doesn't maintain overview databases. `nndir' is just like `nnml', but it has no concept of "groups", and it doesn't allow editing articles. It would make sense if it were possible to "inherit" functions from back ends when writing new back ends. And, indeed, you can do that if you want to. (You don't have to if you don't want to, of course.) All the back ends declare their public variables and functions by using a package called `nnoo'. To inherit functions from other back ends (and allow other back ends to inherit functions from the current back end), you should use the following macros: `nnoo-declare' This macro declares the first parameter to be a child of the subsequent parameters. For instance: (nnoo-declare nndir nnml nnmh) `nndir' has declared here that it intends to inherit functions from both `nnml' and `nnmh'. `defvoo' This macro is equivalent to `defvar', but registers the variable as a public server variable. Most state-oriented variables should be declared with `defvoo' instead of `defvar'. In addition to the normal `defvar' parameters, it takes a list of variables in the parent back ends to map the variable to when executing a function in those back ends. (defvoo nndir-directory nil "Where nndir will look for groups." nnml-current-directory nnmh-current-directory) This means that `nnml-current-directory' will be set to `nndir-directory' when an `nnml' function is called on behalf of `nndir'. (The same with `nnmh'.) `nnoo-define-basics' This macro defines some common functions that almost all back ends should have. (nnoo-define-basics nndir) `deffoo' This macro is just like `defun' and takes the same parameters. In addition to doing the normal `defun' things, it registers the function as being public so that other back ends can inherit it. `nnoo-map-functions' This macro allows mapping of functions from the current back end to functions from the parent back ends. (nnoo-map-functions nndir (nnml-retrieve-headers 0 nndir-current-group 0 0) (nnmh-request-article 0 nndir-current-group 0 0)) This means that when `nndir-retrieve-headers' is called, the first, third, and fourth parameters will be passed on to `nnml-retrieve-headers', while the second parameter is set to the value of `nndir-current-group'. `nnoo-import' This macro allows importing functions from back ends. It should be the last thing in the source file, since it will only define functions that haven't already been defined. (nnoo-import nndir (nnmh nnmh-request-list nnmh-request-newgroups) (nnml)) This means that calls to `nndir-request-list' should just be passed on to `nnmh-request-list', while all public functions from `nnml' that haven't been defined in `nndir' yet should be defined now. Below is a slightly shortened version of the `nndir' back end. ;;; nndir.el -- single directory newsgroup access for Gnus ;; Copyright (C) 1995,1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ;;; Code: (require 'nnheader) (require 'nnmh) (require 'nnml) (require 'nnoo) (eval-when-compile (require 'cl)) (nnoo-declare nndir nnml nnmh) (defvoo nndir-directory nil "Where nndir will look for groups." nnml-current-directory nnmh-current-directory) (defvoo nndir-nov-is-evil nil "*Non-nil means that nndir will never retrieve NOV headers." nnml-nov-is-evil) (defvoo nndir-current-group "" nil nnml-current-group nnmh-current-group) (defvoo nndir-top-directory nil nil nnml-directory nnmh-directory) (defvoo nndir-get-new-mail nil nil nnml-get-new-mail nnmh-get-new-mail) (defvoo nndir-status-string "" nil nnmh-status-string) (defconst nndir-version "nndir 1.0") ;;; Interface functions. (nnoo-define-basics nndir) (deffoo nndir-open-server (server &optional defs) (setq nndir-directory (or (cadr (assq 'nndir-directory defs)) server)) (unless (assq 'nndir-directory defs) (push `(nndir-directory ,server) defs)) (push `(nndir-current-group ,(file-name-nondirectory (directory-file-name nndir-directory))) defs) (push `(nndir-top-directory ,(file-name-directory (directory-file-name nndir-directory))) defs) (nnoo-change-server 'nndir server defs)) (nnoo-map-functions nndir (nnml-retrieve-headers 0 nndir-current-group 0 0) (nnmh-request-article 0 nndir-current-group 0 0) (nnmh-request-group nndir-current-group 0 0) (nnmh-close-group nndir-current-group 0)) (nnoo-import nndir (nnmh nnmh-status-message nnmh-request-list nnmh-request-newgroups)) (provide 'nndir)  File: gnus, Node: Hooking New Back Ends Into Gnus, Next: Mail-like Back Ends, Prev: Writing New Back Ends, Up: Back End Interface 10.7.2.5 Hooking New Back Ends Into Gnus ........................................ Having Gnus start using your new back end is rather easy--you just declare it with the `gnus-declare-backend' functions. This will enter the back end into the `gnus-valid-select-methods' variable. `gnus-declare-backend' takes two parameters--the back end name and an arbitrary number of "abilities". Here's an example: (gnus-declare-backend "nnchoke" 'mail 'respool 'address) The above line would then go in the `nnchoke.el' file. The abilities can be: `mail' This is a mailish back end--followups should (probably) go via mail. `post' This is a newsish back end--followups should (probably) go via news. `post-mail' This back end supports both mail and news. `none' This is neither a post nor mail back end--it's something completely different. `respool' It supports respooling--or rather, it is able to modify its source articles and groups. `address' The name of the server should be in the virtual server name. This is true for almost all back ends. `prompt-address' The user should be prompted for an address when doing commands like `B' in the group buffer. This is true for back ends like `nntp', but not `nnmbox', for instance.  File: gnus, Node: Mail-like Back Ends, Prev: Hooking New Back Ends Into Gnus, Up: Back End Interface 10.7.2.6 Mail-like Back Ends ............................ One of the things that separate the mail back ends from the rest of the back ends is the heavy dependence by most of the mail back ends on common functions in `nnmail.el'. For instance, here's the definition of `nnml-request-scan': (deffoo nnml-request-scan (&optional group server) (setq nnml-article-file-alist nil) (nnmail-get-new-mail 'nnml 'nnml-save-nov nnml-directory group)) It simply calls `nnmail-get-new-mail' with a few parameters, and `nnmail' takes care of all the moving and splitting of the mail. This function takes four parameters. METHOD This should be a symbol to designate which back end is responsible for the call. EXIT-FUNCTION This function should be called after the splitting has been performed. TEMP-DIRECTORY Where the temporary files should be stored. GROUP This optional argument should be a group name if the splitting is to be performed for one group only. `nnmail-get-new-mail' will call BACK-END`-save-mail' to save each article. BACK-END`-active-number' will be called to find the article number assigned to this article. The function also uses the following variables: BACK-END`-get-new-mail' (to see whether to get new mail for this back end); and BACK-END`-group-alist' and BACK-END`-active-file' to generate the new active file. BACK-END`-group-alist' should be a group-active alist, like this: (("a-group" (1 . 10)) ("some-group" (34 . 39)))  File: gnus, Node: Score File Syntax, Next: Headers, Prev: Back End Interface, Up: Gnus Reference Guide 10.7.3 Score File Syntax ------------------------ Score files are meant to be easily parseable, but yet extremely mallable. It was decided that something that had the same read syntax as an Emacs Lisp list would fit that spec. Here's a typical score file: (("summary" ("win95" -10000 nil s) ("Gnus")) ("from" ("Lars" -1000)) (mark -100)) BNF definition of a score file: score-file = "" / "(" *element ")" element = rule / atom rule = string-rule / number-rule / date-rule string-rule = "(" quote string-header quote space *string-match ")" number-rule = "(" quote number-header quote space *number-match ")" date-rule = "(" quote date-header quote space *date-match ")" quote = string-header = "subject" / "from" / "references" / "message-id" / "xref" / "body" / "head" / "all" / "followup" number-header = "lines" / "chars" date-header = "date" string-match = "(" quote quote [ "" / [ space score [ "" / space date [ "" / [ space string-match-t ] ] ] ] ] ")" score = "nil" / date = "nil" / string-match-t = "nil" / "s" / "substring" / "S" / "Substring" / "r" / "regex" / "R" / "Regex" / "e" / "exact" / "E" / "Exact" / "f" / "fuzzy" / "F" / "Fuzzy" number-match = "(" [ "" / [ space score [ "" / space date [ "" / [ space number-match-t ] ] ] ] ] ")" number-match-t = "nil" / "=" / "<" / ">" / ">=" / "<=" date-match = "(" quote quote [ "" / [ space score [ "" / space date [ "" / [ space date-match-t ] ] ] ] ")" date-match-t = "nil" / "at" / "before" / "after" atom = "(" [ required-atom / optional-atom ] ")" required-atom = mark / expunge / mark-and-expunge / files / exclude-files / read-only / touched optional-atom = adapt / local / eval mark = "mark" space nil-or-number nil-or-number = "nil" / expunge = "expunge" space nil-or-number mark-and-expunge = "mark-and-expunge" space nil-or-number files = "files" *[ space ] exclude-files = "exclude-files" *[ space ] read-only = "read-only" [ space "nil" / space "t" ] adapt = "adapt" [ space "ignore" / space "t" / space adapt-rule ] adapt-rule = "(" *[ *[ "(" ")" ] ")" local = "local" *[ space "(" space
")" ] eval = "eval" space space = *[ " " / / ] Any unrecognized elements in a score file should be ignored, but not discarded. As you can see, white space is needed, but the type and amount of white space is irrelevant. This means that formatting of the score file is left up to the programmer--if it's simpler to just spew it all out on one looong line, then that's ok. The meaning of the various atoms are explained elsewhere in this manual (*note Score File Format::).  File: gnus, Node: Headers, Next: Ranges, Prev: Score File Syntax, Up: Gnus Reference Guide 10.7.4 Headers -------------- Internally Gnus uses a format for storing article headers that corresponds to the NOV format in a mysterious fashion. One could almost suspect that the author looked at the NOV specification and just shamelessly _stole_ the entire thing, and one would be right. "Header" is a severely overloaded term. "Header" is used in RFC 1036 to talk about lines in the head of an article (e.g., `From'). It is used by many people as a synonym for "head"--"the header and the body". (That should be avoided, in my opinion.) And Gnus uses a format internally that it calls "header", which is what I'm talking about here. This is a 9-element vector, basically, with each header (ouch) having one slot. These slots are, in order: `number', `subject', `from', `date', `id', `references', `chars', `lines', `xref', and `extra'. There are macros for accessing and setting these slots--they all have predictable names beginning with `mail-header-' and `mail-header-set-', respectively. All these slots contain strings, except the `extra' slot, which contains an alist of header/value pairs (*note To From Newsgroups::).  File: gnus, Node: Ranges, Next: Group Info, Prev: Headers, Up: Gnus Reference Guide 10.7.5 Ranges ------------- GNUS introduced a concept that I found so useful that I've started using it a lot and have elaborated on it greatly. The question is simple: If you have a large amount of objects that are identified by numbers (say, articles, to take a _wild_ example) that you want to qualify as being "included", a normal sequence isn't very useful. (A 200,000 length sequence is a bit long-winded.) The solution is as simple as the question: You just collapse the sequence. (1 2 3 4 5 6 10 11 12) is transformed into ((1 . 6) (10 . 12)) To avoid having those nasty `(13 . 13)' elements to denote a lonesome object, a `13' is a valid element: ((1 . 6) 7 (10 . 12)) This means that comparing two ranges to find out whether they are equal is slightly tricky: ((1 . 5) 7 8 (10 . 12)) and ((1 . 5) (7 . 8) (10 . 12)) are equal. In fact, any non-descending list is a range: (1 2 3 4 5) is a perfectly valid range, although a pretty long-winded one. This is also valid: (1 . 5) and is equal to the previous range. Here's a BNF definition of ranges. Of course, one must remember the semantic requirement that the numbers are non-descending. (Any number of repetition of the same number is allowed, but apt to disappear in range handling.) range = simple-range / normal-range simple-range = "(" number " . " number ")" normal-range = "(" start-contents ")" contents = "" / simple-range *[ " " contents ] / number *[ " " contents ] Gnus currently uses ranges to keep track of read articles and article marks. I plan on implementing a number of range operators in C if The Powers That Be are willing to let me. (I haven't asked yet, because I need to do some more thinking on what operators I need to make life totally range-based without ever having to convert back to normal sequences.)  File: gnus, Node: Group Info, Next: Extended Interactive, Prev: Ranges, Up: Gnus Reference Guide 10.7.6 Group Info ----------------- Gnus stores all permanent info on groups in a "group info" list. This list is from three to six elements (or more) long and exhaustively describes the group. Here are two example group infos; one is a very simple group while the second is a more complex one: ("no.group" 5 ((1 . 54324))) ("nnml:my.mail" 3 ((1 . 5) 9 (20 . 55)) ((tick (15 . 19)) (replied 3 6 (19 . 3))) (nnml "") ((auto-expire . t) (to-address . "ding@gnus.org"))) The first element is the "group name"--as Gnus knows the group, anyway. The second element is the "subscription level", which normally is a small integer. (It can also be the "rank", which is a cons cell where the `car' is the level and the `cdr' is the score.) The third element is a list of ranges of read articles. The fourth element is a list of lists of article marks of various kinds. The fifth element is the select method (or virtual server, if you like). The sixth element is a list of "group parameters", which is what this section is about. Any of the last three elements may be missing if they are not required. In fact, the vast majority of groups will normally only have the first three elements, which saves quite a lot of cons cells. Here's a BNF definition of the group info format: info = "(" group space ralevel space read [ "" / [ space marks-list [ "" / [ space method [ "" / space parameters ] ] ] ] ] ")" group = quote quote ralevel = rank / level level = rank = "(" level "." score ")" score = read = range marks-lists = nil / "(" *marks ")" marks = "(" range ")" method = "(" *elisp-forms ")" parameters = "(" *elisp-forms ")" Actually that `marks' rule is a fib. A `marks' is a `' consed on to a `range', but that's a bitch to say in pseudo-BNF. If you have a Gnus info and want to access the elements, Gnus offers a series of macros for getting/setting these elements. `gnus-info-group' `gnus-info-set-group' Get/set the group name. `gnus-info-rank' `gnus-info-set-rank' Get/set the group rank (*note Group Score::). `gnus-info-level' `gnus-info-set-level' Get/set the group level. `gnus-info-score' `gnus-info-set-score' Get/set the group score (*note Group Score::). `gnus-info-read' `gnus-info-set-read' Get/set the ranges of read articles. `gnus-info-marks' `gnus-info-set-marks' Get/set the lists of ranges of marked articles. `gnus-info-method' `gnus-info-set-method' Get/set the group select method. `gnus-info-params' `gnus-info-set-params' Get/set the group parameters. All the getter functions take one parameter--the info list. The setter functions take two parameters--the info list and the new value. The last three elements in the group info aren't mandatory, so it may be necessary to extend the group info before setting the element. If this is necessary, you can just pass on a non-`nil' third parameter to the three final setter functions to have this happen automatically.  File: gnus, Node: Extended Interactive, Next: Emacs/XEmacs Code, Prev: Group Info, Up: Gnus Reference Guide 10.7.7 Extended Interactive --------------------------- Gnus extends the standard Emacs `interactive' specification slightly to allow easy use of the symbolic prefix (*note Symbolic Prefixes::). Here's an example of how this is used: (defun gnus-summary-increase-score (&optional score symp) (interactive (gnus-interactive "P\ny")) ... ) The best thing to do would have been to implement `gnus-interactive' as a macro which would have returned an `interactive' form, but this isn't possible since Emacs checks whether a function is interactive or not by simply doing an `assq' on the lambda form. So, instead we have `gnus-interactive' function that takes a string and returns values that are usable to `interactive'. This function accepts (almost) all normal `interactive' specs, but adds a few more. `y' The current symbolic prefix--the `gnus-current-prefix-symbol' variable. `Y' A list of the current symbolic prefixes--the `gnus-current-prefix-symbol' variable. `A' The current article number--the `gnus-summary-article-number' function. `H' The current article header--the `gnus-summary-article-header' function. `g' The current group name--the `gnus-group-group-name' function.  File: gnus, Node: Emacs/XEmacs Code, Next: Various File Formats, Prev: Extended Interactive, Up: Gnus Reference Guide 10.7.8 Emacs/XEmacs Code ------------------------ While Gnus runs under Emacs, XEmacs and Mule, I decided that one of the platforms must be the primary one. I chose Emacs. Not because I don't like XEmacs or Mule, but because it comes first alphabetically. This means that Gnus will byte-compile under Emacs with nary a warning, while XEmacs will pump out gigabytes of warnings while byte-compiling. As I use byte-compilation warnings to help me root out trivial errors in Gnus, that's very useful. I've also consistently used Emacs function interfaces, but have used Gnusey aliases for the functions. To take an example: Emacs defines a `run-at-time' function while XEmacs defines a `start-itimer' function. I then define a function called `gnus-run-at-time' that takes the same parameters as the Emacs `run-at-time'. When running Gnus under Emacs, the former function is just an alias for the latter. However, when running under XEmacs, the former is an alias for the following function: (defun gnus-xmas-run-at-time (time repeat function &rest args) (start-itimer "gnus-run-at-time" `(lambda () (,function ,@args)) time repeat)) This sort of thing has been done for bunches of functions. Gnus does not redefine any native Emacs functions while running under XEmacs--it does this `defalias' thing with Gnus equivalents instead. Cleaner all over. In the cases where the XEmacs function interface was obviously cleaner, I used it instead. For example `gnus-region-active-p' is an alias for `region-active-p' in XEmacs, whereas in Emacs it is a function. Of course, I could have chosen XEmacs as my native platform and done mapping functions the other way around. But I didn't. The performance hit these indirections impose on Gnus under XEmacs should be slight.  File: gnus, Node: Various File Formats, Prev: Emacs/XEmacs Code, Up: Gnus Reference Guide 10.7.9 Various File Formats --------------------------- * Menu: * Active File Format:: Information on articles and groups available. * Newsgroups File Format:: Group descriptions.  File: gnus, Node: Active File Format, Next: Newsgroups File Format, Up: Various File Formats 10.7.9.1 Active File Format ........................... The active file lists all groups available on the server in question. It also lists the highest and lowest current article numbers in each group. Here's an excerpt from a typical active file: soc.motss 296030 293865 y alt.binaries.pictures.fractals 3922 3913 n comp.sources.unix 1605 1593 m comp.binaries.ibm.pc 5097 5089 y no.general 1000 900 y Here's a pseudo-BNF definition of this file: active = *group-line group-line = group spc high-number spc low-number spc flag group = spc = " " high-number = low-number = flag = "y" / "n" / "m" / "j" / "x" / "=" group For a full description of this file, see the manual pages for `innd', in particular `active(5)'.  File: gnus, Node: Newsgroups File Format, Prev: Active File Format, Up: Various File Formats 10.7.9.2 Newsgroups File Format ............................... The newsgroups file lists groups along with their descriptions. Not all groups on the server have to be listed, and not all groups in the file have to exist on the server. The file is meant purely as information to the user. The format is quite simple; a group name, a tab, and the description. Here's the definition: newsgroups = *line line = group tab description group = tab = description =  File: gnus, Node: Emacs for Heathens, Next: Frequently Asked Questions, Prev: Gnus Reference Guide, Up: Appendices 10.8 Emacs for Heathens ======================= Believe it or not, but some people who use Gnus haven't really used Emacs much before they embarked on their journey on the Gnus Love Boat. If you are one of those unfortunates whom "`C-M-a'", "kill the region", and "set `gnus-flargblossen' to an alist where the key is a regexp that is used for matching on the group name" are magical phrases with little or no meaning, then this appendix is for you. If you are already familiar with Emacs, just ignore this and go fondle your cat instead. * Menu: * Keystrokes:: Entering text and executing commands. * Emacs Lisp:: The built-in Emacs programming language.  File: gnus, Node: Keystrokes, Next: Emacs Lisp, Up: Emacs for Heathens 10.8.1 Keystrokes ----------------- * Q: What is an experienced Emacs user? * A: A person who wishes that the terminal had pedals. Yes, when you use Emacs, you are apt to use the control key, the shift key and the meta key a lot. This is very annoying to some people (notably `vi'le users), and the rest of us just love the hell out of it. Just give up and submit. Emacs really does stand for "Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift", and not "Editing Macros", as you may have heard from other disreputable sources (like the Emacs author). The shift keys are normally located near your pinky fingers, and are normally used to get capital letters and stuff. You probably use it all the time. The control key is normally marked "CTRL" or something like that. The meta key is, funnily enough, never marked as such on any keyboard. The one I'm currently at has a key that's marked "Alt", which is the meta key on this keyboard. It's usually located somewhere to the left hand side of the keyboard, usually on the bottom row. Now, us Emacs people don't say "press the meta-control-m key", because that's just too inconvenient. We say "press the `C-M-m' key". `M-' is the prefix that means "meta" and "C-" is the prefix that means "control". So "press `C-k'" means "press down the control key, and hold it down while you press `k'". "Press `C-M-k'" means "press down and hold down the meta key and the control key and then press `k'". Simple, ay? This is somewhat complicated by the fact that not all keyboards have a meta key. In that case you can use the "escape" key. Then `M-k' means "press escape, release escape, press `k'". That's much more work than if you have a meta key, so if that's the case, I respectfully suggest you get a real keyboard with a meta key. You can't live without it.  File: gnus, Node: Emacs Lisp, Prev: Keystrokes, Up: Emacs for Heathens 10.8.2 Emacs Lisp ----------------- Emacs is the King of Editors because it's really a Lisp interpreter. Each and every key you tap runs some Emacs Lisp code snippet, and since Emacs Lisp is an interpreted language, that means that you can configure any key to run any arbitrary code. You just, like, do it. Gnus is written in Emacs Lisp, and is run as a bunch of interpreted functions. (These are byte-compiled for speed, but it's still interpreted.) If you decide that you don't like the way Gnus does certain things, it's trivial to have it do something a different way. (Well, at least if you know how to write Lisp code.) However, that's beyond the scope of this manual, so we are simply going to talk about some common constructs that you normally use in your `~/.gnus.el' file to customize Gnus. (You can also use the `~/.emacs' file, but in order to set things of Gnus up, it is much better to use the `~/.gnus.el' file, *Note Startup Files::.) If you want to set the variable `gnus-florgbnize' to four (4), you write the following: (setq gnus-florgbnize 4) This function (really "special form") `setq' is the one that can set a variable to some value. This is really all you need to know. Now you can go and fill your `~/.gnus.el' file with lots of these to change how Gnus works. If you have put that thing in your `~/.gnus.el' file, it will be read and `eval'ed (which is Lisp-ese for "run") the next time you start Gnus. If you want to change the variable right away, simply say `C-x C-e' after the closing parenthesis. That will `eval' the previous "form", which is a simple `setq' statement here. Go ahead--just try it, if you're located at your Emacs. After you `C-x C-e', you will see `4' appear in the echo area, which is the return value of the form you `eval'ed. Some pitfalls: If the manual says "set `gnus-read-active-file' to `some'", that means: (setq gnus-read-active-file 'some) On the other hand, if the manual says "set `gnus-nntp-server' to `nntp.ifi.uio.no'", that means: (setq gnus-nntp-server "nntp.ifi.uio.no") So be careful not to mix up strings (the latter) with symbols (the former). The manual is unambiguous, but it can be confusing.  File: gnus, Node: Frequently Asked Questions, Prev: Emacs for Heathens, Up: Appendices 10.9 Frequently Asked Questions =============================== * Menu: * FAQ - Changes:: * FAQ - Introduction:: About Gnus and this FAQ. * FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ:: Installation of Gnus. * FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer:: Start up questions and the first buffer Gnus shows you. * FAQ 3 - Getting Messages:: Making Gnus read your mail and news. * FAQ 4 - Reading messages:: How to efficiently read messages. * FAQ 5 - Composing messages:: Composing mails or Usenet postings. * FAQ 6 - Old messages:: Importing, archiving, searching and deleting messages. * FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment:: Reading mail and news while offline. * FAQ 8 - Getting help:: When this FAQ isn't enough. * FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus:: How to make Gnus faster. * FAQ - Glossary:: Terms used in the FAQ explained. Abstract -------- This is the new Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list. If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at `http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/', the Docbook source is available from http://sourceforge.net (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnus/). Please submit features and suggestions to the FAQ discussion list . The list is protected against junk mail with qconfirm (http://smarden.org/qconfirm/index.html). As a subscriber, your submissions will automatically pass. You can also subscribe to the list by sending a blank email to faq-discuss-subscribe@my.gnus.org and browse the archive (BROKEN) (http://mail1.kens.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-browse?command=monthbythread%26list=faq-discuss).  File: gnus, Node: FAQ - Changes, Next: FAQ - Introduction, Up: Frequently Asked Questions Changes ------- * 2008-06-15: Adjust for message-fill-column. Add x-face-file. Clarify difference between ding and gnu.emacs.gnus. Remove reference to discontinued service. * 2006-04-15: Added tip on how to delete sent buffer on exit.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ - Introduction, Next: FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ, Prev: FAQ - Changes, Up: Frequently Asked Questions Introduction ------------ This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list. Gnus is a Usenet Newsreader and Electronic Mail User Agent implemented as a part of Emacs. It's been around in some form for almost a decade now, and has been distributed as a standard part of Emacs for much of that time. Gnus 5 is the latest (and greatest) incarnation. The original version was called GNUS, and was written by Masanobu UMEDA. When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen grew bored and decided to rewrite Gnus. Its biggest strength is the fact that it is extremely customizable. It is somewhat intimidating at first glance, but most of the complexity can be ignored until you're ready to take advantage of it. If you receive a reasonable volume of e-mail (you're on various mailing lists), or you would like to read high-volume mailing lists but cannot keep up with them, or read high volume newsgroups or are just bored, then Gnus is what you want. This FAQ was maintained by Justin Sheehy until March 2002. He would like to thank Steve Baur and Per Abrahamsen for doing a wonderful job with this FAQ before him. We would like to do the same - thanks, Justin! If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at: `http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/'. This version is much nicer than the unofficial hypertext versions that are archived at Utrecht, Oxford, Smart Pages, Ohio State, and other FAQ archives. See the resources question below if you want information on obtaining it in another format. The information contained here was compiled with the assistance of the Gnus development mailing list, and any errors or misprints are the my.gnus.org team's fault, sorry.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ, Next: FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer, Prev: FAQ - Introduction, Up: Frequently Asked Questions 10.9.1 Installation FAQ ----------------------- * Menu: * FAQ 1-1:: What is the latest version of Gnus? * FAQ 1-2:: What's new in 5.10? * FAQ 1-3:: Where and how to get Gnus? * FAQ 1-4:: What to do with the tarball now? * FAQ 1-5:: I sometimes read references to No Gnus and Oort Gnus, what are those? * FAQ 1-6:: Which version of Emacs do I need? * FAQ 1-7:: How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 1-1, Next: FAQ 1-2, Up: FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ Question 1.1 ............ What is the latest version of Gnus? Answer ...... Jingle please: Gnus 5.10 is released, get it while it's hot! As well as the step in version number is rather small, Gnus 5.10 has tons of new features which you shouldn't miss. The current release (5.13) should be at least as stable as the latest release of the 5.8 series.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 1-2, Next: FAQ 1-3, Prev: FAQ 1-1, Up: FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ Question 1.2 ............ What's new in 5.10? Answer ...... First of all, you should have a look into the file GNUS-NEWS in the toplevel directory of the Gnus tarball, there the most important changes are listed. Here's a short list of the changes I find especially important/interesting: * Major rewrite of the Gnus agent, Gnus agent is now active by default. * Many new article washing functions for dealing with ugly formatted articles. * Anti Spam features. * Message-utils now included in Gnus. * New format specifiers for summary lines, e.g. %B for a complex trn-style thread tree.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 1-3, Next: FAQ 1-4, Prev: FAQ 1-2, Up: FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ Question 1.3 ............ Where and how to get Gnus? Answer ...... Gnus is released independent from releases of Emacs and XEmacs. Therefore, the version bundled with Emacs or the version in XEmacs' package system might not be up to date (e.g. Gnus 5.9 bundled with Emacs 21 is outdated). You can get the latest released version of Gnus from `http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz' or via anonymous FTP from `ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz'.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 1-4, Next: FAQ 1-5, Prev: FAQ 1-3, Up: FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ Question 1.4 ............ What to do with the tarball now? Answer ...... Untar it via `tar xvzf gnus.tar.gz' and do the common `./configure; make; make install' circle. (under MS-Windows either get the Cygwin environment from `http://www.cygwin.com' which allows you to do what's described above or unpack the tarball with some packer (e.g. Winace from `http://www.winace.com') and use the batch-file make.bat included in the tarball to install Gnus.) If you don't want to (or aren't allowed to) install Gnus system-wide, you can install it in your home directory and add the following lines to your ~/.xemacs/init.el or ~/.emacs: (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/gnus/lisp") (if (featurep 'xemacs) (add-to-list 'Info-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/") (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/")) Make sure that you don't have any Gnus related stuff before this line, on MS Windows use something like "C:/path/to/lisp" (yes, "/").  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 1-5, Next: FAQ 1-6, Prev: FAQ 1-4, Up: FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ Question 1.5 ............ I sometimes read references to No Gnus and Oort Gnus, what are those? Answer ...... Oort Gnus was the name of the development version of Gnus, which became Gnus 5.10 in autumn 2003. No Gnus is the name of the current development version which will once become Gnus 5.12 or Gnus 6. (If you're wondering why not 5.11, the odd version numbers are normally used for the Gnus versions bundled with Emacs)  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 1-6, Next: FAQ 1-7, Prev: FAQ 1-5, Up: FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ Question 1.6 ............ Which version of Emacs do I need? Answer ...... Gnus 5.10 requires an Emacs version that is greater than or equal to Emacs 20.7 or XEmacs 21.1. The development versions of Gnus (aka No Gnus) requires Emacs 21 or XEmacs 21.4.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 1-7, Prev: FAQ 1-6, Up: FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ Question 1.7 ............ How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs? Answer ...... You can't use the same copy of Gnus in both as the Lisp files are byte-compiled to a format which is different depending on which Emacs did the compilation. Get one copy of Gnus for Emacs and one for XEmacs.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer, Next: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages, Prev: FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ, Up: Frequently Asked Questions 10.9.2 Startup / Group buffer ----------------------------- * Menu: * FAQ 2-1:: Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean and how to prevent it? * FAQ 2-2:: Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to, what's this? * FAQ 2-3:: How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer? * FAQ 2-4:: My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse through them? * FAQ 2-5:: How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to sort the groups in a topic?  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 2-1, Next: FAQ 2-2, Up: FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer Question 2.1 ............ Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean and how to prevent it? Answer ...... This message means that the last time you used Gnus, it wasn't properly exited and therefor couldn't write its informations to disk (e.g. which messages you read), you are now asked if you want to restore those informations from the auto-save file. To prevent this message make sure you exit Gnus via `q' in group buffer instead of just killing Emacs.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 2-2, Next: FAQ 2-3, Prev: FAQ 2-1, Up: FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer Question 2.2 ............ Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to, what's this? Answer ...... You get the message described in the q/a pair above while starting Gnus, right? It's an other symptom for the same problem, so read the answer above.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 2-3, Next: FAQ 2-4, Prev: FAQ 2-2, Up: FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer Question 2.3 ............ How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer? Answer ...... You've got to tweak the value of the variable gnus-group-line-format. See the manual node "Group Line Specification" for information on how to do this. An example for this (guess from whose .gnus :-)): (setq gnus-group-line-format "%P%M%S[%5t]%5y : %(%g%)\n")  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 2-4, Next: FAQ 2-5, Prev: FAQ 2-3, Up: FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer Question 2.4 ............ My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse through them? Answer ...... Gnus offers the topic mode, it allows you to sort your groups in, well, topics, e.g. all groups dealing with Linux under the topic linux, all dealing with music under the topic music and all dealing with scottish music under the topic scottish which is a subtopic of music. To enter topic mode, just hit t while in Group buffer. Now you can use `T n' to create a topic at point and `T m' to move a group to a specific topic. For more commands see the manual or the menu. You might want to include the %P specifier at the beginning of your gnus-group-line-format variable to have the groups nicely indented.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 2-5, Prev: FAQ 2-4, Up: FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer Question 2.5 ............ How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to sort the groups in a topic? Answer ...... Move point over the group you want to move and hit `C-k', now move point to the place where you want the group to be and hit `C-y'.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages, Next: FAQ 4 - Reading messages, Prev: FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer, Up: Frequently Asked Questions 10.9.3 Getting Messages ----------------------- * Menu: * FAQ 3-1:: I just installed Gnus, started it via `M-x gnus' but it only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do? * FAQ 3-2:: I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus.el means. * FAQ 3-3:: My news server requires authentication, how to store user name and password on disk? * FAQ 3-4:: Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to subscribe to a group. * FAQ 3-5:: Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed to post on this server as well as I am, what's that? * FAQ 3-6:: I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible? * FAQ 3-7:: And how about local spool files? * FAQ 3-8:: OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it? * FAQ 3-9:: And what about IMAP? * FAQ 3-10:: At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use Gnus to read my mail from it? * FAQ 3-11:: Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it retrieves via POP3?  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-1, Next: FAQ 3-2, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.1 ............ I just installed Gnus, started it via `M-x gnus' but it only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do? Answer ...... You've got to tell Gnus where to fetch the news from. Read the documentation for information on how to do this. As a first start, put those lines in ~/.gnus.el: (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.yourprovider.net")) (setq user-mail-address "you@yourprovider.net") (setq user-full-name "Your Name")  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-2, Next: FAQ 3-3, Prev: FAQ 3-1, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.2 ............ I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus.el means. Answer ...... The ~/ means the home directory where Gnus and Emacs look for the configuration files. However, you don't really need to know what this means, it suffices that Emacs knows what it means :-) You can type `C-x C-f ~/.gnus.el RET ' (yes, with the forward slash, even on Windows), and Emacs will open the right file for you. (It will most likely be new, and thus empty.) However, I'd discourage you from doing so, since the directory Emacs chooses will most certainly not be what you want, so let's do it the correct way. The first thing you've got to do is to create a suitable directory (no blanks in directory name please) e.g. c:\myhome. Then you must set the environment variable HOME to this directory. To do this under Win9x or Me include the line SET HOME=C:\myhome in your autoexec.bat and reboot. Under NT, 2000 and XP, hit Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system options (if it doesn't work, go to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced). There you'll find the possibility to set environment variables. Create a new one with name HOME and value C:\myhome. Rebooting is not necessary. Now to create ~/.gnus.el, say `C-x C-f ~/.gnus.el RET C-x C-s'. in Emacs.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-3, Next: FAQ 3-4, Prev: FAQ 3-2, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.3 ............ My news server requires authentication, how to store user name and password on disk? Answer ...... Create a file ~/.authinfo which includes for each server a line like this machine news.yourprovider.net login YourUserName password YourPassword . Make sure that the file isn't readable to others if you work on a OS which is capable of doing so. (Under Unix say chmod 600 ~/.authinfo in a shell.)  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-4, Next: FAQ 3-5, Prev: FAQ 3-3, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.4 ............ Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to subscribe to a group. Answer ...... If you know the name of the group say `U name.of.group RET' in group buffer (use the tab-completion Luke). Otherwise hit ^ in group buffer, this brings you to the server buffer. Now place point (the cursor) over the server which carries the group you want, hit `RET', move point to the group you want to subscribe to and say `u' to subscribe to it.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-5, Next: FAQ 3-6, Prev: FAQ 3-4, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.5 ............ Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed to post on this server as well as I am, what's that? Answer ...... Some providers allow restricted anonymous access and full access only after authorization. To make Gnus send authinfo to those servers append force yes to the line for those servers in ~/.authinfo.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-6, Next: FAQ 3-7, Prev: FAQ 3-5, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.6 ............ I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible? Answer ...... Of course. You can specify more sources for articles in the variable gnus-secondary-select-methods. Add something like this in ~/.gnus.el: (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourSecondProvider.net")) (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourThirdProvider.net"))  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-7, Next: FAQ 3-8, Prev: FAQ 3-6, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.7 ............ And how about local spool files? Answer ...... No problem, this is just one more select method called nnspool, so you want this: (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnspool "")) Or this if you don't want an NNTP Server as primary news source: (setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool "")) Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you want something different, change the line above to something like this: (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnspool "" (nnspool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir"))) This sets the spool directory for this server only. You might have to specify more stuff like the program used to post articles, see the Gnus manual on how to do this.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-8, Next: FAQ 3-9, Prev: FAQ 3-7, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.8 ............ OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it? Answer ...... That's a bit harder since there are many possible sources for mail, many possible ways for storing mail and many different ways for sending mail. The most common cases are these: 1: You want to read your mail from a pop3 server and send them directly to a SMTP Server 2: Some program like fetchmail retrieves your mail and stores it on disk from where Gnus shall read it. Outgoing mail is sent by Sendmail, Postfix or some other MTA. Sometimes, you even need a combination of the above cases. However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way it should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which back end to use. Gnus supports many different back ends, the most commonly used one is nnml. It stores every mail in one file and is therefor quite fast. However you might prefer a one file per group approach if your file system has problems with many small files, the nnfolder back end is then probably the choice for you. To use nnml add the following to ~/.gnus.el: (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml "")) As you might have guessed, if you want nnfolder, it's (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnfolder "")) Now we need to tell Gnus, where to get it's mail from. If it's a POP3 server, then you need something like this: (eval-after-load "mail-source" '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net" :user "yourUserName" :password "yourPassword"))) Make sure ~/.gnus.el isn't readable to others if you store your password there. If you want to read your mail from a traditional spool file on your local machine, it's (eval-after-load "mail-source" '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(file :path "/path/to/spool/file")) If it's a Maildir, with one file per message as used by postfix, Qmail and (optionally) fetchmail it's (eval-after-load "mail-source" '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(maildir :path "/path/to/Maildir/" :subdirs ("cur" "new"))) And finally if you want to read your mail from several files in one directory, for example because procmail already split your mail, it's (eval-after-load "mail-source" '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(directory :path "/path/to/procmail-dir/" :suffix ".prcml"))) Where :suffix ".prcml" tells Gnus only to use files with the suffix .prcml. OK, now you only need to tell Gnus how to send mail. If you want to send mail via sendmail (or whichever MTA is playing the role of sendmail on your system), you don't need to do anything. However, if you want to send your mail to an SMTP Server you need the following in your ~/.gnus.el (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it) (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it) (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.yourProvider.net")  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-9, Next: FAQ 3-10, Prev: FAQ 3-8, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.9 ............ And what about IMAP? Answer ...... There are two ways of using IMAP with Gnus. The first one is to use IMAP like POP3, that means Gnus fetches the mail from the IMAP server and stores it on disk. If you want to do this (you don't really want to do this) add the following to ~/.gnus.el (add-to-list 'mail-sources '(imap :server "mail.mycorp.com" :user "username" :pass "password" :stream network :authentication login :mailbox "INBOX" :fetchflag "\\Seen")) You might have to tweak the values for stream and/or authentication, see the Gnus manual node "Mail Source Specifiers" for possible values. If you want to use IMAP the way it's intended, you've got to follow a different approach. You've got to add the nnimap back end to your select method and give the information about the server there. (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnimap "Give the baby a name" (nnimap-address "imap.yourProvider.net") (nnimap-port 143) (nnimap-list-pattern "archive.*"))) Again, you might have to specify how to authenticate to the server if Gnus can't guess the correct way, see the Manual Node "IMAP" for detailed information.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-10, Next: FAQ 3-11, Prev: FAQ 3-9, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.10 ............. At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use Gnus to read my mail from it? Answer ...... Offer your administrator a pair of new running shoes for activating IMAP on the server and follow the instructions above.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 3-11, Prev: FAQ 3-10, Up: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages Question 3.11 ............. Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it retrieves via POP3? Answer ...... First of all, that's not the way POP3 is intended to work, if you have the possibility, you should use the IMAP Protocol if you want your messages to stay on the server. Nevertheless there might be situations where you need the feature, but sadly Gnus itself has no predefined functionality to do so. However this is Gnus county so there are possibilities to achieve what you want. The easiest way is to get an external program which retrieves copies of the mail and stores them on disk, so Gnus can read it from there. On Unix systems you could use e.g. fetchmail for this, on MS Windows you can use Hamster, an excellent local news and mail server. The other solution would be, to replace the method Gnus uses to get mail from POP3 servers by one which is capable of leaving the mail on the server. If you use XEmacs, get the package mail-lib, it includes an enhanced pop3.el, look in the file, there's documentation on how to tell Gnus to use it and not to delete the retrieved mail. For GNU Emacs look for the file epop3.el which can do the same (If you know the home of this file, please send me an e-mail). You can also tell Gnus to use an external program (e.g. fetchmail) to fetch your mail, see the info node "Mail Source Specifiers" in the Gnus manual on how to do it.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4 - Reading messages, Next: FAQ 5 - Composing messages, Prev: FAQ 3 - Getting Messages, Up: Frequently Asked Questions 10.9.4 Reading messages ----------------------- * Menu: * FAQ 4-1:: When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them again? * FAQ 4-2:: How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I enter a group, even when it's read? * FAQ 4-3:: How to view the headers of a message? * FAQ 4-4:: How to view the raw unformatted message? * FAQ 4-5:: How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at the top of the article buffer? * FAQ 4-6:: I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if it's available. How to do it? * FAQ 4-7:: Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails? * FAQ 4-8:: Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails more readable? * FAQ 4-9:: Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I highlight more interesting ones in some way? * FAQ 4-10:: How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set other variables specific for some groups? * FAQ 4-11:: Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those? * FAQ 4-12:: The number of total messages in a group which Gnus displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in mail groups. Is this a bug? * FAQ 4-13:: I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display? * FAQ 4-14:: I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it? * FAQ 4-15:: How to split incoming mails in several groups?  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-1, Next: FAQ 4-2, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.1 ............ When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them again? Answer ...... If you enter the group by saying `RET' in group buffer with point over the group, only unread and ticked messages are loaded. Say `C-u RET' instead to load all available messages. If you want only the e.g. 300 newest say `C-u 300 RET' Loading only unread messages can be annoying if you have threaded view enabled, say (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 'some) in ~/.gnus.el to load enough old articles to prevent teared threads, replace 'some with t to load all articles (Warning: Both settings enlarge the amount of data which is fetched when you enter a group and slow down the process of entering a group). If you already use Gnus 5.10, you can say `/o N' In summary buffer to load the last N messages, this feature is not available in 5.8.8 If you don't want all old messages, but the parent of the message you're just reading, you can say `^', if you want to retrieve the whole thread the message you're just reading belongs to, `A T' is your friend.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-2, Next: FAQ 4-3, Prev: FAQ 4-1, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.2 ............ How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I enter a group, even when it's read? Answer ...... You can tick important messages. To do this hit `u' while point is in summary buffer over the message. When you want to remove the mark, hit either `d' (this deletes the tick mark and set's unread mark) or `M c' (which deletes all marks for the message).  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-3, Next: FAQ 4-4, Prev: FAQ 4-2, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.3 ............ How to view the headers of a message? Answer ...... Say `t' to show all headers, one more `t' hides them again.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-4, Next: FAQ 4-5, Prev: FAQ 4-3, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.4 ............ How to view the raw unformatted message? Answer ...... Say `C-u g' to show the raw message `g' returns to normal view.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-5, Next: FAQ 4-6, Prev: FAQ 4-4, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.5 ............ How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at the top of the article buffer? Answer ...... The variable gnus-visible-headers controls which headers are shown, its value is a regular expression, header lines which match it are shown. So if you want author, subject, date, and if the header exists, Followup-To and MUA / NUA say this in ~/.gnus.el: (setq gnus-visible-headers '("^From" "^Subject" "^Date" "^Newsgroups" "^Followup-To" "^User-Agent" "^X-Newsreader" "^X-Mailer"))  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-6, Next: FAQ 4-7, Prev: FAQ 4-5, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.6 ............ I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if it's available. How to do it? Answer ...... Say (eval-after-load "mm-decode" '(progn (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html") (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext"))) in ~/.gnus.el. If you don't want HTML rendered, even if there's no text alternative add (setq mm-automatic-display (remove "text/html" mm-automatic-display)) too.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-7, Next: FAQ 4-8, Prev: FAQ 4-6, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.7 ............ Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails? Answer ...... Only if you use Gnus 5.10 or younger. In this case you've got the choice between w3, w3m, links, lynx and html2text, which one is used can be specified in the variable mm-text-html-renderer, so if you want links to render your mail say (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'links)  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-8, Next: FAQ 4-9, Prev: FAQ 4-7, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.8 ............ Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails more readable? Answer ...... Gnus offers you several functions to "wash" incoming mail, you can find them if you browse through the menu, item Article->Washing. The most interesting ones are probably "Wrap long lines" (`W w'), "Decode ROT13" (`W r') and "Outlook Deuglify" which repairs the dumb quoting used by many users of Microsoft products (`W Y f' gives you full deuglify. See `W Y C-h' or have a look at the menus for other deuglifications). Outlook deuglify is only available since Gnus 5.10.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-9, Next: FAQ 4-10, Prev: FAQ 4-8, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.9 ............ Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I highlight more interesting ones in some way? Answer ...... You want Scoring. Scoring means, that you define rules which assign each message an integer value. Depending on the value the message is highlighted in summary buffer (if it's high, say +2000) or automatically marked read (if the value is low, say -800) or some other action happens. There are basically three ways of setting up rules which assign the scoring-value to messages. The first and easiest way is to set up rules based on the article you are just reading. Say you're reading a message by a guy who always writes nonsense and you want to ignore his messages in the future. Hit `L', to set up a rule which lowers the score. Now Gnus asks you which the criteria for lowering the Score shall be. Hit `?' twice to see all possibilities, we want `a' which means the author (the from header). Now Gnus wants to know which kind of matching we want. Hit either `e' for an exact match or `s' for substring-match and delete afterwards everything but the name to score down all authors with the given name no matter which email address is used. Now you need to tell Gnus when to apply the rule and how long it should last, hit e.g. `p' to apply the rule now and let it last forever. If you want to raise the score instead of lowering it say `I' instead of `L'. You can also set up rules by hand. To do this say `V f' in summary buffer. Then you are asked for the name of the score file, it's name.of.group.SCORE for rules valid in only one group or all.Score for rules valid in all groups. See the Gnus manual for the exact syntax, basically it's one big list whose elements are lists again. the first element of those lists is the header to score on, then one more list with what to match, which score to assign, when to expire the rule and how to do the matching. If you find me very interesting, you could e.g. add the following to your all.Score: (("references" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 500 nil s)) ("message-id" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 999 nil s))) This would add 999 to the score of messages written by me and 500 to the score of messages which are a (possibly indirect) answer to a message written by me. Of course nobody with a sane mind would do this :-) The third alternative is adaptive scoring. This means Gnus watches you and tries to find out what you find interesting and what annoying and sets up rules which reflect this. Adaptive scoring can be a huge help when reading high traffic groups. If you want to activate adaptive scoring say (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t) in ~/.gnus.el.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-10, Next: FAQ 4-11, Prev: FAQ 4-9, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.10 ............. How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set other variables specific for some groups? Answer ...... While in group buffer move point over the group and hit `G c', this opens a buffer where you can set options for the group. At the bottom of the buffer you'll find an item that allows you to set variables locally for the group. To disable threading enter gnus-show-threads as name of variable and nil as value. Hit button done at the top of the buffer when you're ready.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-11, Next: FAQ 4-12, Prev: FAQ 4-10, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.11 ............. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those? Answer ...... Stop those "Can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes in Gnus Country :-). It's a three step process: First we make faces (specifications of how summary-line shall look like) for those postings, then we'll give them some special score and finally we'll tell Gnus to use the new faces. You can find detailed instructions on how to do it on my.gnus.org (http://my.gnus.org/node/view/224)  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-12, Next: FAQ 4-13, Prev: FAQ 4-11, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.12 ............. The number of total messages in a group which Gnus displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in mail groups. Is this a bug? Answer ...... No, that's a matter of design of Gnus, fixing this would mean reimplementation of major parts of Gnus' back ends. Gnus thinks "highest-article-number - lowest-article-number = total-number-of-articles". This works OK for Usenet groups, but if you delete and move many messages in mail groups, this fails. To cure the symptom, enter the group via `C-u RET' (this makes Gnus get all messages), then hit `M P b' to mark all messages and then say `B m name.of.group' to move all messages to the group they have been in before, they get new message numbers in this process and the count is right again (until you delete and move your mail to other groups again).  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-13, Next: FAQ 4-14, Prev: FAQ 4-12, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.13 ............. I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display? Answer ...... You can control the windows configuration by calling the function gnus-add-configuration. The syntax is a bit complicated but explained very well in the manual node "Window Layout". Some popular examples: Instead 25% summary 75% article buffer 35% summary and 65% article (the 1.0 for article means "take the remaining space"): (gnus-add-configuration '(article (vertical 1.0 (summary .35 point) (article 1.0)))) A three pane layout, Group buffer on the left, summary buffer top-right, article buffer bottom-right: (gnus-add-configuration '(article (horizontal 1.0 (vertical 25 (group 1.0)) (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point) (article 1.0))))) (gnus-add-configuration '(summary (horizontal 1.0 (vertical 25 (group 1.0)) (vertical 1.0 (summary 1.0 point)))))  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-14, Next: FAQ 4-15, Prev: FAQ 4-13, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.14 ............. I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it? Answer ...... You've got to play around with the variable gnus-summary-line-format. It's value is a string of symbols which stand for things like author, date, subject etc. A list of the available specifiers can be found in the manual node "Summary Buffer Lines" and the often forgotten node "Formatting Variables" and it's sub-nodes. There you'll find useful things like positioning the cursor and tabulators which allow you a summary in table form, but sadly hard tabulators are broken in 5.8.8. Since 5.10, Gnus offers you some very nice new specifiers, e.g. %B which draws a thread-tree and %&user-date which gives you a date where the details are dependent of the articles age. Here's an example which uses both: (setq gnus-summary-line-format ":%U%R %B %s %-60=|%4L |%-20,20f |%&user-date; \n") resulting in: :O Re: [Richard Stallman] rfc2047.el | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:06 :O Re: Revival of the ding-patches list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:12 :R > Re: Find correct list of articles for a gro| 25 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:16 :O \-> ... | 21 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:01 :R > Re: Cry for help: deuglify.el - moving stuf| 28 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:34 :O \-> ... | 115 |Raymond Scholz | 1:24 :O \-> ... | 19 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |15:33 :O Slow mailing list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:49 :O Re: `@' mark not documented | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:50 :R > Re: Gnus still doesn't count messages prope| 23 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:57 :O \-> ... | 18 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:35 :O \-> ... | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt | 0:56  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 4-15, Prev: FAQ 4-14, Up: FAQ 4 - Reading messages Question 4.15 ............. How to split incoming mails in several groups? Answer ...... Gnus offers two possibilities for splitting mail, the easy nnmail-split-methods and the more powerful Fancy Mail Splitting. I'll only talk about the first one, refer to the manual, node "Fancy Mail Splitting" for the latter. The value of nnmail-split-methods is a list, each element is a list which stands for a splitting rule. Each rule has the form "group where matching articles should go to", "regular expression which has to be matched", the first rule which matches wins. The last rule must always be a general rule (regular expression .*) which denotes where articles should go which don't match any other rule. If the folder doesn't exist yet, it will be created as soon as an article lands there. By default the mail will be send to all groups whose rules match. If you don't want that (you probably don't want), say (setq nnmail-crosspost nil) in ~/.gnus.el. An example might be better than thousand words, so here's my nnmail-split-methods. Note that I send duplicates in a special group and that the default group is spam, since I filter all mails out which are from some list I'm subscribed to or which are addressed directly to me before. Those rules kill about 80% of the Spam which reaches me (Email addresses are changed to prevent spammers from using them): (setq nnmail-split-methods '(("duplicates" "^Gnus-Warning:.*duplicate") ("XEmacs-NT" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@xemacs.invalid.*") ("Gnus-Tut" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@socha.invalid.*") ("tcsh" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@mx.gw.invalid.*") ("BAfH" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@.*uni-muenchen.invalid.*") ("Hamster-src" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*hamster-sourcen@yahoogroups.\\(de\\|com\\).*") ("Tagesschau" "^From: tagesschau $") ("Replies" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@Frank-Schmitt.invalid.*") ("EK" "^From:.*\\(localpart@privateprovider.invalid\\|localpart@workplace.invalid\\).*") ("Spam" "^Content-Type:.*\\(ks_c_5601-1987\\|EUC-KR\\|big5\\|iso-2022-jp\\).*") ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(This really work\\|XINGA\\|ADV:\\|XXX\\|adult\\|sex\\).*") ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(\=\?ks_c_5601-1987\?\\|\=\?euc-kr\?\\|\=\?big5\?\\).*") ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*BulkMailer.*\\|.*MIME::Lite.*\\|\\)") ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*CyberCreek Avalanche\\|.*http\:\/\/GetResponse\.com\\)") ("Spam" "^From:.*\\(verizon\.net\\|prontomail\.com\\|money\\|ConsumerDirect\\).*") ("Spam" "^Delivered-To: GMX delivery to spamtrap@gmx.invalid$") ("Spam" "^Received: from link2buy.com") ("Spam" "^CC: .*azzrael@t-online.invalid") ("Spam" "^X-Mailer-Version: 1.50 BETA") ("Uni" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@uni-koblenz.invalid.*") ("Inbox" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*\\(my\ name\\|address@one.invalid\\|adress@two.invalid\\)") ("Spam" "")))  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5 - Composing messages, Next: FAQ 6 - Old messages, Prev: FAQ 4 - Reading messages, Up: Frequently Asked Questions 10.9.5 Composing messages ------------------------- * Menu: * FAQ 5-1:: What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and postings? * FAQ 5-2:: How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages? * FAQ 5-3:: How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...? * FAQ 5-4:: Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group I post too? * FAQ 5-5:: Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking? * FAQ 5-6:: Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to? * FAQ 5-7:: Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all those email addresses? * FAQ 5-8:: Sometimes I see little images at the top of article buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my postings, too? * FAQ 5-9:: Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in newsgroups? * FAQ 5-10:: How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header? * FAQ 5-11:: I want Gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and news, how to do it? * FAQ 5-12:: I want Gnus to kill the buffer after successful sending instead of keeping it alive as "Sent mail to...", how to do it? * FAQ 5-13:: People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why aren't they and how to fix it?  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-1, Next: FAQ 5-2, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.1 ............ What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and postings? Answer ...... To start composing a new mail hit `m' either in Group or Summary buffer, for a posting, it's either `a' in Group buffer and filling the Newsgroups header manually or `a' in the Summary buffer of the group where the posting shall be send to. Replying by mail is `r' if you don't want to cite the author, or import the cited text manually and `R' to cite the text of the original message. For a follow up to a newsgroup, it's `f' and `F' (analogously to `r' and `R'). Enter new headers above the line saying "-text follows this line-", enter the text below the line. When ready hit `C-c C-c', to send the message, if you want to finish it later hit `C-c C-d' to save it in the drafts group, where you can start editing it again by saying `D e'.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-2, Next: FAQ 5-3, Prev: FAQ 5-1, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.2 ............ How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages? Answer ...... Starting from No Gnus, automatic word-wrap is already enabled by default, see the variable message-fill-column. For other versions of Gnus, say (unless (boundp 'message-fill-column) (add-hook 'message-mode-hook (lambda () (setq fill-column 72) (turn-on-auto-fill)))) in ~/.gnus.el. You can reformat a paragraph by hitting `M-q' (as usual).  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-3, Next: FAQ 5-4, Prev: FAQ 5-2, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.3 ............ How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...? Answer ...... There are other ways, but you should use posting styles for this. (See below why). This example should make the syntax clear: (setq gnus-posting-styles '((".*" (name "Frank Schmitt") (address "me@there.invalid") (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi") (signature-file "~/.signature") ("X-SampleHeader" "foobar") (eval (setq some-variable "Foo bar"))))) The ".*" means that this settings are the default ones (see below), valid values for the first element of the following lists are signature, signature-file, organization, address, name or body. The attribute name can also be a string. In that case, this will be used as a header name, and the value will be inserted in the headers of the article; if the value is `nil', the header name will be removed. You can also say (eval (foo bar)), then the function foo will be evaluated with argument bar and the result will be thrown away.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-4, Next: FAQ 5-5, Prev: FAQ 5-3, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.4 ............ Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group I post too? Answer ...... That's the strength of posting styles. Before, we used ".*" to set the default for all groups. You can use a regexp like "^gmane" and the following settings are only applied to postings you send to the gmane hierarchy, use ".*binaries" instead and they will be applied to postings send to groups containing the string binaries in their name etc. You can instead of specifying a regexp specify a function which is evaluated, only if it returns true, the corresponding settings take effect. Two interesting candidates for this are message-news-p which returns t if the current Group is a newsgroup and the corresponding message-mail-p. Note that all forms that match are applied, that means in the example below, when I post to gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general, the settings under ".*" are applied and the settings under message-news-p and those under "^gmane" and those under "^gmane\\.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$". Because of this put general settings at the top and specific ones at the bottom. (setq gnus-posting-styles '((".*" ;;default (name "Frank Schmitt") (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi") (signature-file "~/.signature")) ((message-news-p) ;;Usenet news? (address "mySpamTrap@Frank-Schmitt.invalid") (reply-to "hereRealRepliesOnlyPlease@Frank-Schmitt.invalid")) ((message-mail-p) ;;mail? (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.invalid")) ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.invalid") (reply-to nil)) ("^gmane\\.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$" (eval (set (make-local-variable 'message-sendmail-envelope-from) "Azzrael@rz-online.de")))))  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-5, Next: FAQ 5-6, Prev: FAQ 5-4, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.5 ............ Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking? Answer ...... You can use ispell.el to spell-check stuff in Emacs. So the first thing to do is to make sure that you've got either ispell (http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html) or aspell (http://aspell.sourceforge.net/) installed and in your Path. Then you need ispell.el (http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html) and for on-the-fly spell-checking flyspell.el (http://www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/personnel/Manuel.Serrano/flyspell/flyspell.html). Ispell.el is shipped with Emacs and available through the XEmacs package system, flyspell.el is shipped with Emacs and part of XEmacs text-modes package which is available through the package system, so there should be no need to install them manually. Ispell.el assumes you use ispell, if you choose aspell say (setq ispell-program-name "aspell") in your Emacs configuration file. If you want your outgoing messages to be spell-checked, say (add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message) In your ~/.gnus.el, if you prefer on-the-fly spell-checking say (add-hook 'message-mode-hook (lambda () (flyspell-mode 1)))  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-6, Next: FAQ 5-7, Prev: FAQ 5-5, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.6 ............ Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to? Answer ...... Yes, say something like (add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook (lambda () (cond ((string-match "^de\\." (gnus-group-real-name gnus-newsgroup-name)) (ispell-change-dictionary "deutsch8")) (t (ispell-change-dictionary "english"))))) in ~/.gnus.el. Change "^de\\." and "deutsch8" to something that suits your needs.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-7, Next: FAQ 5-8, Prev: FAQ 5-6, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.7 ............ Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all those email addresses? Answer ...... There's an very basic solution for this, mail aliases. You can store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple alias syntax: alias al "Al " Then typing your alias (followed by a space or punctuation character) on a To: or Cc: line in the message buffer will cause Gnus to insert the full address for you. See the node "Mail Aliases" in Message (not Gnus) manual for details. However, what you really want is the Insidious Big Brother Database bbdb. Get it through the XEmacs package system or from bbdb's homepage (http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/). Now place the following in ~/.gnus.el, to activate bbdb for Gnus: (require 'bbdb) (bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message) Now you probably want some general bbdb configuration, place them in ~/.emacs: (require 'bbdb) ;;If you don't live in Northern America, you should disable the ;;syntax check for telephone numbers by saying (setq bbdb-north-american-phone-numbers-p nil) ;;Tell bbdb about your email address: (setq bbdb-user-mail-names (regexp-opt '("Your.Email@here.invalid" "Your.other@mail.there.invalid"))) ;;cycling while completing email addresses (setq bbdb-complete-name-allow-cycling t) ;;No popup-buffers (setq bbdb-use-pop-up nil) Now you should be ready to go. Say `M-x bbdb RET RET' to open a bbdb buffer showing all entries. Say `c' to create a new entry, `b' to search your BBDB and `C-o' to add a new field to an entry. If you want to add a sender to the BBDB you can also just hit `:' on the posting in the summary buffer and you are done. When you now compose a new mail, hit `TAB' to cycle through know recipients.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-8, Next: FAQ 5-9, Prev: FAQ 5-7, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.8 ............ Sometimes I see little images at the top of article buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my postings, too? Answer ...... Those images are called X-Faces. They are 48*48 pixel b/w pictures, encoded in a header line. If you want to include one in your posts, you've got to convert some image to a X-Face. So fire up some image manipulation program (say Gimp), open the image you want to include, cut out the relevant part, reduce color depth to 1 bit, resize to 48*48 and save as bitmap. Now you should get the compface package from this site (ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/). and create the actual X-face by saying cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon | compface > file.face cat file.face | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g;s/\"/\\\"/g;' > file.face.quoted If you can't use compface, there's an online X-face converter at `http://www.dairiki.org/xface/'. If you use MS Windows, you could also use the WinFace program from `http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/'. Now you only have to tell Gnus to include the X-face in your postings by saying (setq message-default-headers (with-temp-buffer (insert "X-Face: ") (insert-file-contents "~/.xface") (buffer-string))) in ~/.gnus.el. If you use Gnus 5.10, you can simply add an entry (x-face-file "~/.xface") to gnus-posting-styles.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-9, Next: FAQ 5-10, Prev: FAQ 5-8, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.9 ............ Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in newsgroups? Answer ...... Put this in ~/.gnus.el: (setq gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news t) if you already use Gnus 5.10, if you still use 5.8.8 or 5.9 try this instead: (eval-after-load "gnus-msg" '(unless (boundp 'gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news) (defadvice gnus-summary-reply (around reply-in-news activate) "Request confirmation when replying to news." (interactive) (when (or (not (gnus-news-group-p gnus-newsgroup-name)) (y-or-n-p "Really reply by mail to article author? ")) ad-do-it))))  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-10, Next: FAQ 5-11, Prev: FAQ 5-9, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.10 ............. How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header? Answer ...... Since 5.10 Gnus doesn't generate a sender header by default. For older Gnus' try this in ~/.gnus.el: (eval-after-load "message" '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-11, Next: FAQ 5-12, Prev: FAQ 5-10, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.11 ............. I want Gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and news, how to do it? Answer ...... You must set the variable gnus-message-archive-group to do this. You can set it to a string giving the name of the group where the copies shall go or like in the example below use a function which is evaluated and which returns the group to use. (setq gnus-message-archive-group '((if (message-news-p) "nnml:Send-News" "nnml:Send-Mail")))  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-12, Next: FAQ 5-13, Prev: FAQ 5-11, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.12 ............. I want Gnus to kill the buffer after successful sending instead of keeping it alive as "Sent mail to...", how to do it? Answer ...... Add this to your ~/.gnus: (setq message-kill-buffer-on-exit t)  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 5-13, Prev: FAQ 5-12, Up: FAQ 5 - Composing messages Question 5.13 ............. People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why aren't they and how to fix it? Answer ...... The message-ID is an unique identifier for messages you send. To make it unique, Gnus need to know which machine name to put after the "@". If the name of the machine where Gnus is running isn't suitable (it probably isn't at most private machines) you can tell Gnus what to use by saying: (setq message-user-fqdn "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld") in ~/.gnus.el. If you use Gnus 5.9 or earlier, you can use this instead (works for newer versions as well): (eval-after-load "message" '(let ((fqdn "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld"));; <-- Edit this! (if (boundp 'message-user-fqdn) (setq message-user-fqdn fqdn) (gnus-message 1 "Redefining `message-make-fqdn'.") (defun message-make-fqdn () "Return user's fully qualified domain name." fqdn)))) If you have no idea what to insert for "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld", you've got several choices. You can either ask your provider if he allows you to use something like yourUserName.userfqdn.provider.net, or you can use somethingUnique.yourdomain.tld if you own the domain yourdomain.tld, or you can register at a service which gives private users a FQDN for free. Finally you can tell Gnus not to generate a Message-ID for News at all (and letting the server do the job) by saying (setq message-required-news-headers (remove' Message-ID message-required-news-headers)) you can also tell Gnus not to generate Message-IDs for mail by saying (setq message-required-mail-headers (remove' Message-ID message-required-mail-headers)) , however some mail servers don't generate proper Message-IDs, too, so test if your Mail Server behaves correctly by sending yourself a Mail and looking at the Message-ID.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 6 - Old messages, Next: FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment, Prev: FAQ 5 - Composing messages, Up: Frequently Asked Questions 10.9.6 Old messages ------------------- * Menu: * FAQ 6-1:: How to import my old mail into Gnus? * FAQ 6-2:: How to archive interesting messages? * FAQ 6-3:: How to search for a specific message? * FAQ 6-4:: How to get rid of old unwanted mail? * FAQ 6-5:: I want that all read messages are expired (at least in some groups). How to do it? * FAQ 6-6:: I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them to another group.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 6-1, Next: FAQ 6-2, Up: FAQ 6 - Old messages Question 6.1 ............ How to import my old mail into Gnus? Answer ...... The easiest way is to tell your old mail program to export the messages in mbox format. Most Unix mailers are able to do this, if you come from the MS Windows world, you may find tools at `http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/'. Now you've got to import this mbox file into Gnus. To do this, create a nndoc group based on the mbox file by saying `G f /path/file.mbox RET' in Group buffer. You now have read-only access to your mail. If you want to import the messages to your normal Gnus mail groups hierarchy, enter the nndoc group you've just created by saying `C-u RET' (thus making sure all messages are retrieved), mark all messages by saying `M P b' and either copy them to the desired group by saying `B c name.of.group RET' or send them through nnmail-split-methods (respool them) by saying `B r'.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 6-2, Next: FAQ 6-3, Prev: FAQ 6-1, Up: FAQ 6 - Old messages Question 6.2 ............ How to archive interesting messages? Answer ...... If you stumble across an interesting message, say in gnu.emacs.gnus and want to archive it there are several solutions. The first and easiest is to save it to a file by saying `O f'. However, wouldn't it be much more convenient to have more direct access to the archived message from Gnus? If you say yes, put this snippet by Frank Haun in ~/.gnus.el: (defun my-archive-article (&optional n) "Copies one or more article(s) to a corresponding `nnml:' group, e.g. `gnus.ding' goes to `nnml:1.gnus.ding'. And `nnml:List-gnus.ding' goes to `nnml:1.List-gnus-ding'. Use process marks or mark a region in the summary buffer to archive more then one article." (interactive "P") (let ((archive-name (format "nnml:1.%s" (if (featurep 'xemacs) (replace-in-string gnus-newsgroup-name "^.*:" "") (replace-regexp-in-string "^.*:" "" gnus-newsgroup-name))))) (gnus-summary-copy-article n archive-name))) You can now say `M-x my-archive-article' in summary buffer to archive the article under the cursor in a nnml group. (Change nnml to your preferred back end) Of course you can also make sure the cache is enabled by saying (setq gnus-use-cache t) then you only have to set either the tick or the dormant mark for articles you want to keep, setting the read mark will remove them from cache.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 6-3, Next: FAQ 6-4, Prev: FAQ 6-2, Up: FAQ 6 - Old messages Question 6.3 ............ How to search for a specific message? Answer ...... There are several ways for this, too. For a posting from a Usenet group the easiest solution is probably to ask groups.google.com (http://groups.google.com), if you found the posting there, tell Google to display the raw message, look for the message-id, and say `M-^ the@message.id RET' in a summary buffer. Since Gnus 5.10 there's also a Gnus interface for groups.google.com which you can call with `G W') in group buffer. Another idea which works for both mail and news groups is to enter the group where the message you are searching is and use the standard Emacs search `C-s', it's smart enough to look at articles in collapsed threads, too. If you want to search bodies, too try `M-s' instead. Further on there are the gnus-summary-limit-to-foo functions, which can help you, too. Of course you can also use grep to search through your local mail, but this is both slow for big archives and inconvenient since you are not displaying the found mail in Gnus. Here comes nnir into action. Nnir is a front end to search engines like swish-e or swish++ and others. You index your mail with one of those search engines and with the help of nnir you can search trough the indexed mail and generate a temporary group with all messages which met your search criteria. If this sound cool to you get nnir.el from `ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/' or `ftp://ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/'. Instructions on how to use it are at the top of the file.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 6-4, Next: FAQ 6-5, Prev: FAQ 6-3, Up: FAQ 6 - Old messages Question 6.4 ............ How to get rid of old unwanted mail? Answer ...... You can of course just mark the mail you don't need anymore by saying `#' with point over the mail and then say `B DEL' to get rid of them forever. You could also instead of actually deleting them, send them to a junk-group by saying `B m nnml:trash-bin' which you clear from time to time, but both are not the intended way in Gnus. In Gnus, we let mail expire like news expires on a news server. That means you tell Gnus the message is expirable (you tell Gnus "I don't need this mail anymore") by saying `E' with point over the mail in summary buffer. Now when you leave the group, Gnus looks at all messages which you marked as expirable before and if they are old enough (default is older than a week) they are deleted.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 6-5, Next: FAQ 6-6, Prev: FAQ 6-4, Up: FAQ 6 - Old messages Question 6.5 ............ I want that all read messages are expired (at least in some groups). How to do it? Answer ...... If you want all read messages to be expired (e.g. in mailing lists where there's an online archive), you've got two choices: auto-expire and total-expire. Auto-expire means, that every article which has no marks set and is selected for reading is marked as expirable, Gnus hits `E' for you every time you read a message. Total-expire follows a slightly different approach, here all article where the read mark is set are expirable. To activate auto-expire, include auto-expire in the Group parameters for the group. (Hit `G c' in summary buffer with point over the group to change group parameters). For total-expire add total-expire to the group-parameters. Which method you choose is merely a matter of taste: Auto-expire is faster, but it doesn't play together with Adaptive Scoring, so if you want to use this feature, you should use total-expire. If you want a message to be excluded from expiration in a group where total or auto expire is active, set either tick (hit `u') or dormant mark (hit `u'), when you use auto-expire, you can also set the read mark (hit `d').  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 6-6, Prev: FAQ 6-5, Up: FAQ 6 - Old messages Question 6.6 ............ I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them to another group. Answer ...... Say something like this in ~/.gnus.el: (setq nnmail-expiry-target "nnml:expired") (If you want to change the value of nnmail-expiry-target on a per group basis see the question "How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set other variables specific for some groups?")  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment, Next: FAQ 8 - Getting help, Prev: FAQ 6 - Old messages, Up: Frequently Asked Questions 10.9.7 Gnus in a dial-up environment ------------------------------------ * Menu: * FAQ 7-1:: I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I minimize the time I've got to be connected? * FAQ 7-2:: So what was this thing about the Agent? * FAQ 7-3:: I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it? * FAQ 7-4:: How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings while I'm offline?  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 7-1, Next: FAQ 7-2, Up: FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment Question 7.1 ............ I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I minimize the time I've got to be connected? Answer ...... You've got basically two options: Either you use the Gnus Agent (see below) for this, or you can install programs which fetch your news and mail to your local disk and Gnus reads the stuff from your local machine. If you want to follow the second approach, you need a program which fetches news and offers them to Gnus, a program which does the same for mail and a program which receives the mail you write from Gnus and sends them when you're online. Let's talk about Unix systems first: For the news part, the easiest solution is a small nntp server like Leafnode (http://www.leafnode.org/) or sn (http://infa.abo.fi/~patrik/sn/), of course you can also install a full featured news server like inn (http://www.isc.org/products/INN/). Then you want to fetch your Mail, popular choices are fetchmail (http://www.catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/) and getmail (http://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/software/getmail-3.0/). You should tell those to write the mail to your disk and Gnus to read it from there. Last but not least the mail sending part: This can be done with every MTA like sendmail (http://www.sendmail.org/), postfix (http://www.qmail.org/), exim (http://www.exim.org/) or qmail (http://www.qmail.org/). On windows boxes I'd vote for Hamster (http://www.tglsoft.de/), it's a small freeware, open-source program which fetches your mail and news from remote servers and offers them to Gnus (or any other mail and/or news reader) via nntp respectively POP3 or IMAP. It also includes a smtp server for receiving mails from Gnus.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 7-2, Next: FAQ 7-3, Prev: FAQ 7-1, Up: FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment Question 7.2 ............ So what was this thing about the Agent? Answer ...... The Gnus agent is part of Gnus, it allows you to fetch mail and news and store them on disk for reading them later when you're offline. It kind of mimics offline newsreaders like e.g. Forte Agent. If you want to use the Agent place the following in ~/.gnus.el if you are still using 5.8.8 or 5.9 (it's the default since 5.10): (setq gnus-agent t) Now you've got to select the servers whose groups can be stored locally. To do this, open the server buffer (that is press `^' while in the group buffer). Now select a server by moving point to the line naming that server. Finally, agentize the server by typing `J a'. If you make a mistake, or change your mind, you can undo this action by typing `J r'. When you're done, type 'q' to return to the group buffer. Now the next time you enter a group on a agentized server, the headers will be stored on disk and read from there the next time you enter the group.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 7-3, Next: FAQ 7-4, Prev: FAQ 7-2, Up: FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment Question 7.3 ............ I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it? Answer ...... You can tell the agent to automatically fetch the bodies of articles which fulfill certain predicates, this is done in a special buffer which can be reached by saying `J c' in group buffer. Please refer to the documentation for information which predicates are possible and how exactly to do it. Further on you can tell the agent manually which articles to store on disk. There are two ways to do this: Number one: In the summary buffer, process mark a set of articles that shall be stored in the agent by saying `#' with point over the article and then type `J s'. The other possibility is to set, again in the summary buffer, downloadable (%) marks for the articles you want by typing `@' with point over the article and then typing `J u'. What's the difference? Well, process marks are erased as soon as you exit the summary buffer while downloadable marks are permanent. You can actually set downloadable marks in several groups then use fetch session ('J s' in the GROUP buffer) to fetch all of those articles. The only downside is that fetch session also fetches all of the headers for every selected group on an agentized server. Depending on the volume of headers, the initial fetch session could take hours.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 7-4, Prev: FAQ 7-3, Up: FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment Question 7.4 ............ How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings while I'm offline? Answer ...... All you've got to do is to tell Gnus when you are online (plugged) and when you are offline (unplugged), the rest works automatically. You can toggle plugged/unplugged state by saying `J j' in group buffer. To start Gnus unplugged say `M-x gnus-unplugged' instead of `M-x gnus'. Note that for this to work, the agent must be active.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 8 - Getting help, Next: FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus, Prev: FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment, Up: Frequently Asked Questions 10.9.8 Getting help ------------------- * Menu: * FAQ 8-1:: How to find information and help inside Emacs? * FAQ 8-2:: I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g. attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented? * FAQ 8-3:: Which websites should I know? * FAQ 8-4:: Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there? * FAQ 8-5:: Where to report bugs? * FAQ 8-6:: I need real-time help, where to find it?  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 8-1, Next: FAQ 8-2, Up: FAQ 8 - Getting help Question 8.1 ............ How to find information and help inside Emacs? Answer ...... The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say `C-h i d m Gnus RET' to start the Gnus manual, then walk through the menus or do a full-text search with `s'). Then there are the general Emacs help commands starting with C-h, type `C-h ? ?' to get a list of all available help commands and their meaning. Finally `M-x apropos-command' lets you search through all available functions and `M-x apropos' searches the bound variables.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 8-2, Next: FAQ 8-3, Prev: FAQ 8-1, Up: FAQ 8 - Getting help Question 8.2 ............ I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g. attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented? Answer ...... There's not only the Gnus manual but also the manuals for message, emacs-mime, sieve and pgg. Those packages are distributed with Gnus and used by Gnus but aren't really part of core Gnus, so they are documented in different info files, you should have a look in those manuals, too.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 8-3, Next: FAQ 8-4, Prev: FAQ 8-2, Up: FAQ 8 - Getting help Question 8.3 ............ Which websites should I know? Answer ...... The two most important ones are the official Gnus website (http://www.gnus.org). and it's sister site my.gnus.org (MGO) (http://my.gnus.org), hosting an archive of lisp snippets, howtos, a (not really finished) tutorial and this FAQ. Tell me about other sites which are interesting.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 8-4, Next: FAQ 8-5, Prev: FAQ 8-3, Up: FAQ 8 - Getting help Question 8.4 ............ Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there? Answer ...... There's the newsgroup gnu.emacs.gnus (also available as gmane.emacs.gnus.user (http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.user)) which deals with general Gnus questions. If you have questions about development versions of Gnus, you should better ask on the ding mailing list, see below. If you want to stay in the big8, news.software.readers is also read by some Gnus users (but chances for qualified help are much better in the above groups). If you speak German, there's de.comm.software.gnus. The ding mailing list (ding@gnus.org) deals with development of Gnus. You can read the ding list via NNTP, too under the name gmane.emacs.gnus.general (http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general) from news.gmane.org.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 8-5, Next: FAQ 8-6, Prev: FAQ 8-4, Up: FAQ 8 - Getting help Question 8.5 ............ Where to report bugs? Answer ...... Say `M-x gnus-bug', this will start a message to the gnus bug mailing list including information about your environment which make it easier to help you.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 8-6, Prev: FAQ 8-5, Up: FAQ 8 - Getting help Question 8.6 ............ I need real-time help, where to find it? Answer ...... Point your IRC client to irc.freenode.net, channel #gnus.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus, Next: FAQ - Glossary, Prev: FAQ 8 - Getting help, Up: Frequently Asked Questions 10.9.9 Tuning Gnus ------------------ * Menu: * FAQ 9-1:: Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up? * FAQ 9-2:: How to speed up the process of entering a group? * FAQ 9-3:: Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 9-1, Next: FAQ 9-2, Up: FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus Question 9.1 ............ Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up? Answer ...... The reason for this could be the way Gnus reads it's active file, see the node "The Active File" in the Gnus manual for things you might try to speed the process up. An other idea would be to byte compile your ~/.gnus.el (say `M-x byte-compile-file RET ~/.gnus.el RET' to do it). Finally, if you have require statements in your .gnus, you could replace them with eval-after-load, which loads the stuff not at startup time, but when it's needed. Say you've got this in your ~/.gnus.el: (require 'message) (add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)) then as soon as you start Gnus, message.el is loaded. If you replace it with (eval-after-load "message" '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled))) it's loaded when it's needed.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 9-2, Next: FAQ 9-3, Prev: FAQ 9-1, Up: FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus Question 9.2 ............ How to speed up the process of entering a group? Answer ...... A speed killer is setting the variable gnus-fetch-old-headers to anything different from nil, so don't do this if speed is an issue. To speed up building of summary say (gnus-compile) at the bottom of your ~/.gnus.el, this will make gnus byte-compile things like gnus-summary-line-format. then you could increase the value of gc-cons-threshold by saying something like (setq gc-cons-threshold 3500000) in ~/.emacs. If you don't care about width of CJK characters or use Gnus 5.10 or younger together with a recent GNU Emacs, you should say (setq gnus-use-correct-string-widths nil) in ~/.gnus.el (thanks to Jesper harder for the last two suggestions). Finally if you are still using 5.8.8 or 5.9 and experience speed problems with summary buffer generation, you definitely should update to 5.10 since there quite some work on improving it has been done.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ 9-3, Prev: FAQ 9-2, Up: FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus Question 9.3 ............ Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up? Answer ...... The reason could be that you told Gnus to archive the messages you wrote by setting gnus-message-archive-group. Try to use a nnml group instead of an archive group, this should bring you back to normal speed.  File: gnus, Node: FAQ - Glossary, Prev: FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus, Up: Frequently Asked Questions 10.9.10 Glossary ---------------- "~/.gnus.el" When the term ~/.gnus.el is used it just means your Gnus configuration file. You might as well call it ~/.gnus or specify another name. "Back End" In Gnus terminology a back end is a virtual server, a layer between core Gnus and the real NNTP-, POP3-, IMAP- or whatever-server which offers Gnus a standardized interface to functions like "get message", "get Headers" etc. "Emacs" When the term Emacs is used in this FAQ, it means either GNU Emacs or XEmacs. "Message" In this FAQ message means a either a mail or a posting to a Usenet Newsgroup or to some other fancy back end, no matter of which kind it is. "MUA" MUA is an acronym for Mail User Agent, it's the program you use to read and write e-mails. "NUA" NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you use to read and write Usenet news.  File: gnus, Node: GNU Free Documentation License, Next: Index, Prev: Appendices, Up: Top 11 GNU Free Documentation License ********************************* Version 1.3, 3 November 2008 Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. `http://fsf.org/' Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. 0. PREAMBLE The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. 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