If your system administrator has set things up properly, starting Gnus and reading news is extremely easy--you just type M-x gnus in your Emacs.
If you want to start Gnus in a different frame, you can use the command M-x gnus-other-frame instead.
If things do not go smoothly at startup, you have to twiddle some variables in your `~/.gnus' file. This file is similar to `~/.emacs', but is read when gnus starts.
If you puzzle at any terms used in this manual, please refer to the terminology section (see section Terminology).
The gnus-select-method variable says where Gnus should look for
news. This variable should be a list where the first element says
how and the second element says where. This method is your
native method. All groups not fetched with this method are
foreign groups.
For instance, if the `news.somewhere.edu' NNTP server is where you want to get your daily dosage of news from, you'd say:
(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.somewhere.edu"))
If you want to read directly from the local spool, say:
(setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
If you can use a local spool, you probably should, as it will almost certainly be much faster.
If this variable is not set, Gnus will take a look at the
NNTPSERVER environment variable. If that variable isn't set,
Gnus will see whether gnus-nntpserver-file
(`/etc/nntpserver' by default) has any opinions on the matter. If
that fails as well, Gnus will try to use the machine running Emacs as an NNTP server. That's a long shot, though.
If gnus-nntp-server is set, this variable will override
gnus-select-method. You should therefore set
gnus-nntp-server to nil, which is what it is by default.
You can also make Gnus prompt you interactively for the name of an
NNTP server. If you give a non-numerical prefix to gnus
(i.e., C-u M-x gnus), Gnus will let you choose between the servers
in the gnus-secondary-servers list (if any). You can also just
type in the name of any server you feel like visiting.
However, if you use one NNTP server regularly and are just interested in a couple of groups from a different server, you would be better served by using the B command in the group buffer. It will let you have a look at what groups are available, and you can subscribe to any of the groups you want to. This also makes `.newsrc' maintenance much tidier. See section Foreign Groups.
A slightly different approach to foreign groups is to set the
gnus-secondary-select-methods variable. The select methods
listed in this variable are in many ways just as native as the
gnus-select-method server. They will also be queried for active
files during startup (if that's required), and new newsgroups that
appear on these servers will be subscribed (or not) just as native
groups are.
For instance, if you use the nnmbox backend to read your mail, you
would typically set this variable to
(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnmbox "")))
If no startup files exist, Gnus will try to determine what groups should be subscribed by default.
If the variable gnus-default-subscribed-newsgroups is set, Gnus
will subscribe you to just those groups in that list, leaving the rest
killed. Your system administrator should have set this variable to
something useful.
Since she hasn't, Gnus will just subscribe you to a few arbitrarily picked groups (i.e., `*.newusers'). (Arbitrary is defined here as whatever Lars thinks you should read.)
You'll also be subscribed to the Gnus documentation group, which should help you with most common problems.
If gnus-default-subscribed-newsgroups is t, Gnus will just
use the normal functions for handling new groups, and not do anything
special.
If the default server is down, Gnus will understandably have some problems starting. However, if you have some mail groups in addition to the news groups, you may want to start Gnus anyway.
Gnus, being the trusting sort of program, will ask whether to proceed without a native select method if that server can't be contacted. This will happen whether the server doesn't actually exist (i.e., you have given the wrong address) or the server has just momentarily taken ill for some reason or other. If you decide to continue and have no foreign groups, you'll find it difficult to actually do anything in the group buffer. But, hey, that's your problem. Blllrph!
If you know that the server is definitely down, or you just want to read
your mail without bothering with the server at all, you can use the
gnus-no-server command to start Gnus. That might come in handy
if you're in a hurry as well. This command will not attempt to contact
your primary server--instead, it will just activate all groups on level
1 and 2. (You should preferably keep no native groups on those two
levels.)
You might want to run more than one Emacs with more than one Gnus at the same time. If you are using different `.newsrc' files (e.g., if you are using the two different Gnusae to read from two different servers), that is no problem whatsoever. You just do it.
The problem appears when you want to run two Gnusae that use the same
.newsrc file.
To work around that problem some, we here at the Think-Tank at the Gnus Towers have come up with a new concept: Masters and slaves. (We have applied for a patent on this concept, and have taken out a copyright on those words. If you wish to use those words in conjunction with each other, you have to send $1 per usage instance to me. Usage of the patent (Master/Slave Relationships In Computer Applications) will be much more expensive, of course.)
Anyways, you start one Gnus up the normal way with M-x gnus (or however you do it). Each subsequent slave Gnusae should be started with M-x gnus-slave. These slaves won't save normal `.newsrc' files, but instead save slave files that contain information only on what groups have been read in the slave session. When a master Gnus starts, it will read (and delete) these slave files, incorporating all information from them. (The slave files will be read in the sequence they were created, so the latest changes will have precedence.)
Information from the slave files has, of course, precedence over the
information in the normal (i.e., master) .newsrc file.
It is sometimes convenient to be able to just say "I want to read this
group and I don't care whether Gnus has been started or not". This is
perhaps more useful for people who write code than for users, but the
command gnus-fetch-group provides this functionality in any case.
It takes the group name as a parameter.
If you are satisfied that you really never want to see any new groups,
you can set gnus-check-new-newsgroups to nil. This will
also save you some time at startup. Even if this variable is
nil, you can always subscribe to the new groups just by pressing
U in the group buffer (see section Group Maintenance). This variable
is ask-server by default. If you set this variable to
always, then Gnus will query the backends for new groups even
when you do the g command (see section Scanning New Messages).
Gnus normally determines whether a group is new or not by comparing the
list of groups from the active file(s) with the lists of subscribed and
dead groups. This isn't a particularly fast method. If
gnus-check-new-newsgroups is ask-server, Gnus will ask the
server for new groups since the last time. This is both faster and
cheaper. This also means that you can get rid of the list of killed
groups altogether, so you may set gnus-save-killed-list to
nil, which will save time both at startup, at exit, and all over.
Saves disk space, too. Why isn't this the default, then?
Unfortunately, not all servers support this command.
I bet I know what you're thinking now: How do I find out whether my
server supports ask-server? No? Good, because I don't have a
fail-safe answer. I would suggest just setting this variable to
ask-server and see whether any new groups appear within the next
few days. If any do, then it works. If none do, then it doesn't
work. I could write a function to make Gnus guess whether the server
supports ask-server, but it would just be a guess. So I won't.
You could telnet to the server and say HELP and see
whether it lists `NEWGROUPS' among the commands it understands. If
it does, then it might work. (But there are servers that lists
`NEWGROUPS' without supporting the function properly.)
This variable can also be a list of select methods. If so, Gnus will
issue an ask-server command to each of the select methods, and
subscribe them (or not) using the normal methods. This might be handy
if you are monitoring a few servers for new groups. A side effect is
that startup will take much longer, so you can meditate while waiting.
Use the mantra "dingnusdingnusdingnus" to achieve permanent bliss.
What Gnus does when it encounters a new group is determined by the
gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method variable.
This variable should contain a function. This function will be called with the name of the new group as the only parameter.
Some handy pre-fab functions are:
gnus-subscribe-zombies
gnus-subscribe-randomly
gnus-subscribe-alphabetically
gnus-subscribe-hierarchically
gnus-subscribe-alphabetically is slight.
gnus-subscribe-alphabetically will subscribe new groups in a strictly
alphabetical fashion, while this function will enter groups into it's
hierarchy. So if you want to have the `rec' hierarchy before the
`comp' hierarchy, this function will not mess that configuration
up. Or something like that.
gnus-subscribe-interactively
gnus-subscribe-killed
A closely related variable is
gnus-subscribe-hierarchical-interactive. (That's quite a
mouthful.) If this variable is non-nil, Gnus will ask you in a
hierarchical fashion whether to subscribe to new groups or not. Gnus
will ask you for each sub-hierarchy whether you want to descend the
hierarchy or not.
One common mistake is to set the variable a few paragraphs above
(gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method) to
gnus-subscribe-hierarchical-interactive. This is an error. This
will not work. This is ga-ga. So don't do it.
A nice and portable way to control which new newsgroups should be subscribed (or ignored) is to put an options line at the start of the `.newsrc' file. Here's an example:
options -n !alt.all !rec.all sci.all
This line obviously belongs to a serious-minded intellectual scientific
person (or she may just be plain old boring), because it says that all
groups that have names beginning with `alt' and `rec' should
be ignored, and all groups with names beginning with `sci' should
be subscribed. Gnus will not use the normal subscription method for
subscribing these groups.
gnus-subscribe-options-newsgroup-method is used instead. This
variable defaults to gnus-subscribe-alphabetically.
If you don't want to mess with your `.newsrc' file, you can just
set the two variables gnus-options-subscribe and
gnus-options-not-subscribe. These two variables do exactly the
same as the `.newsrc' `options -n' trick. Both are regexps,
and if the new group matches the former, it will be unconditionally
subscribed, and if it matches the latter, it will be ignored.
Yet another variable that meddles here is
gnus-auto-subscribed-groups. It works exactly like
gnus-options-subscribe, and is therefore really superfluous, but I
thought it would be nice to have two of these. This variable is more
meant for setting some ground rules, while the other variable is used
more for user fiddling. By default this variable makes all new groups
that come from mail backends (nnml, nnbabyl,
nnfolder, nnmbox, and nnmh) subscribed. If you
don't like that, just set this variable to nil.
New groups that match this regexp are subscribed using
gnus-subscribe-options-newsgroup-method.
Sometimes it is necessary to move from one NNTP server to another. This happens very rarely, but perhaps you change jobs, or one server is very flaky and you want to use another.
Changing the server is pretty easy, right? You just change
gnus-select-method to point to the new server?
Wrong!
Article numbers are not (in any way) kept synchronized between different
NNTP servers, and the only way Gnus keeps track of what articles
you have read is by keeping track of article numbers. So when you
change gnus-select-method, your `.newsrc' file becomes
worthless.
Gnus provides a few functions to attempt to translate a `.newsrc' file from one server to another. They all have one thing in common--they take a looong time to run. You don't want to use these functions more than absolutely necessary.
If you have access to both servers, Gnus can request the headers for all
the articles you have read and compare Message-IDs and map the
article numbers of the read articles and article marks. The M-x
gnus-change-server command will do this for all your native groups. It
will prompt for the method you want to move to.
You can also move individual groups with the M-x gnus-group-move-group-to-server command. This is useful if you want to move a (foreign) group from one server to another.
If you don't have access to both the old and new server, all your marks and read ranges have become worthless. You can use the M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups command to clear out all data that you have on your native groups. Use with caution.
Now, you all know about the `.newsrc' file. All subscription information is traditionally stored in this file.
Things got a bit more complicated with GNUS. In addition to keeping the `.newsrc' file updated, it also used a file called `.newsrc.el' for storing all the information that didn't fit into the `.newsrc' file. (Actually, it also duplicated everything in the `.newsrc' file.) GNUS would read whichever one of these files was the most recently saved, which enabled people to swap between GNUS and other newsreaders.
That was kinda silly, so Gnus went one better: In addition to the `.newsrc' and `.newsrc.el' files, Gnus also has a file called `.newsrc.eld'. It will read whichever of these files that are most recent, but it will never write a `.newsrc.el' file. You should never delete the `.newsrc.eld' file--it contains much information not stored in the `.newsrc' file.
You can turn off writing the `.newsrc' file by setting
gnus-save-newsrc-file to nil, which means you can delete
the file and save some space, as well as exiting from Gnus faster.
However, this will make it impossible to use other newsreaders than
Gnus. But hey, who would want to, right?
If gnus-save-killed-list (default t) is nil, Gnus
will not save the list of killed groups to the startup file. This will
save both time (when starting and quitting) and space (on disk). It
will also mean that Gnus has no record of what groups are new or old,
so the automatic new groups subscription methods become meaningless.
You should always set gnus-check-new-newsgroups to nil or
ask-server if you set this variable to nil (see section New Groups). This variable can also be a regular expression. If that's
the case, remove all groups that do not match this regexp before
saving. This can be useful in certain obscure situations that involve
several servers where not all servers support ask-server.
The gnus-startup-file variable says where the startup files are.
The default value is `~/.newsrc', with the Gnus (El Dingo) startup
file being whatever that one is, with a `.eld' appended.
gnus-save-newsrc-hook is called before saving any of the newsrc
files, while gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook is called just before
saving the `.newsrc.eld' file, and
gnus-save-standard-newsrc-hook is called just before saving the
`.newsrc' file. The latter two are commonly used to turn version
control on or off. Version control is on by default when saving the
startup files. If you want to turn backup creation off, say something like:
(defun turn-off-backup () (set (make-local-variable 'backup-inhibited) t)) (add-hook 'gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook 'turn-off-backup) (add-hook 'gnus-save-standard-newsrc-hook 'turn-off-backup)
When Gnus starts, it will read the gnus-site-init-file
(`.../site-lisp/gnus' by default) and gnus-init-file
(`~/.gnus' by default) files. These are normal Emacs Lisp files
and can be used to avoid cluttering your `~/.emacs' and
`site-init' files with Gnus stuff. Gnus will also check for files
with the same names as these, but with `.elc' and `.el'
suffixes. In other words, if you have set gnus-init-file to
`~/.gnus', it will look for `~/.gnus.elc', `~/.gnus.el',
and finally `~/.gnus' (in this order).
Whenever you do something that changes the Gnus data (reading articles, catching up, killing/subscribing groups), the change is added to a special dribble buffer. This buffer is auto-saved the normal Emacs way. If your Emacs should crash before you have saved the `.newsrc' files, all changes you have made can be recovered from this file.
If Gnus detects this file at startup, it will ask the user whether to read it. The auto save file is deleted whenever the real startup file is saved.
If gnus-use-dribble-file is nil, Gnus won't create and
maintain a dribble buffer. The default is t.
Gnus will put the dribble file(s) in gnus-dribble-directory. If
this variable is nil, which it is by default, Gnus will dribble
into the directory where the `.newsrc' file is located. (This is
normally the user's home directory.) The dribble file will get the same
file permissions as the .newsrc file.
If gnus-always-read-dribble-file is non-nil, Gnus will
read the dribble file on startup without querying the user.
When Gnus starts, or indeed whenever it tries to determine whether new articles have arrived, it reads the active file. This is a very large file that lists all the active groups and articles on the server.
Before examining the active file, Gnus deletes all lines that match the
regexp gnus-ignored-newsgroups. This is done primarily to reject
any groups with bogus names, but you can use this variable to make Gnus
ignore hierarchies you aren't ever interested in. However, this is not
recommended. In fact, it's highly discouraged. Instead, see section New Groups for an overview of other variables that can be used instead.
The active file can be rather Huge, so if you have a slow network, you
can set gnus-read-active-file to nil to prevent Gnus from
reading the active file. This variable is some by default.
Gnus will try to make do by getting information just on the groups that you actually subscribe to.
Note that if you subscribe to lots and lots of groups, setting this
variable to nil will probably make Gnus slower, not faster. At
present, having this variable nil will slow Gnus down
considerably, unless you read news over a 2400 baud modem.
This variable can also have the value some. Gnus will then
attempt to read active info only on the subscribed groups. On some
servers this is quite fast (on sparkling, brand new INN servers that
support the LIST ACTIVE group command), on others this isn't fast
at all. In any case, some should be faster than nil, and
is certainly faster than t over slow lines.
If this variable is nil, Gnus will ask for group info in total
lock-step, which isn't very fast. If it is some and you use an
NNTP server, Gnus will pump out commands as fast as it can, and
read all the replies in one swoop. This will normally result in better
performance, but if the server does not support the aforementioned
LIST ACTIVE group command, this isn't very nice to the server.
In any case, if you use some or nil, you should definitely
kill all groups that you aren't interested in to speed things up.
Note that this variable also affects active file retrieval from secondary select methods.
gnus-load-hook
gnus-before-startup-hook
gnus-startup-hook
gnus-started-hook
gnus-started-hook
gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups
nil, Gnus will check for and delete all bogus groups at
startup. A bogus group is a group that you have in your
`.newsrc' file, but doesn't exist on the news server. Checking for
bogus groups can take quite a while, so to save time and resources it's
best to leave this option off, and do the checking for bogus groups once
in a while from the group buffer instead (see section Group Maintenance).
gnus-inhibit-startup-message
nil, the startup message won't be displayed. That way,
your boss might not notice as easily that you are reading news instead
of doing your job. Note that this variable is used before
`.gnus.el' is loaded, so it should be set in .emacs instead.
gnus-no-groups-message
gnus-play-startup-jingle
nil, play the Gnus jingle at startup.
gnus-startup-jingle
nil. The
default is `Tuxedomoon.Jingle4.au'.
The group buffer lists all (or parts) of the available groups. It is the first buffer shown when Gnus starts, and will never be killed as long as Gnus is active.
The default format of the group buffer is nice and dull, but you can make it as exciting and ugly as you feel like.
Here's a couple of example group lines:
25: news.announce.newusers
* 0: alt.fan.andrea-dworkin
Quite simple, huh?
You can see that there are 25 unread articles in `news.announce.newusers'. There are no unread articles, but some ticked articles, in `alt.fan.andrea-dworkin' (see that little asterisk at the beginning of the line?).
You can change that format to whatever you want by fiddling with the
gnus-group-line-format variable. This variable works along the
lines of a format specification, which is pretty much the same as
a printf specifications, for those of you who use (feh!) C.
See section Formatting Variables.
`%M%S%5y: %(%g%)\n' is the value that produced those lines above.
There should always be a colon on the line; the cursor always moves to the colon after performing an operation. Nothing else is required--not even the group name. All displayed text is just window dressing, and is never examined by Gnus. Gnus stores all real information it needs using text properties.
(Note that if you make a really strange, wonderful, spreadsheet-like layout, everybody will believe you are hard at work with the accounting instead of wasting time reading news.)
Here's a list of all available format characters:
gnus-group-uncollapsed-levels
variable says how many levels to leave at the end of the group name.
The default is 1--this will mean that group names like
`gnu.emacs.gnus' will be shortened to `g.emacs.gnus'.
gnus-new-mail-mark) if there has arrived new mail to
the group lately.
gnus-user-format-function-`X', where `X' is the letter
following `%u'. The function will be passed a single dummy
parameter as argument. The function should return a string, which will
be inserted into the buffer just like information from any other
specifier.
All the "number-of" specs will be filled with an asterisk (`*') if no info is available--for instance, if it is a non-activated foreign group, or a bogus native group.
The mode line can be changed by setting
gnus-group-mode-line-format (see section Mode Line Formatting). It
doesn't understand that many format specifiers:
Highlighting in the group buffer is controlled by the
gnus-group-highlight variable. This is an alist with elements
that look like (form . face). If form evaluates to
something non-nil, the face will be used on the line.
Here's an example value for this variable that might look nice if the background is dark:
(face-spec-set 'my-group-face-1
'((t (:foreground "Red" :bold t))))
(face-spec-set 'my-group-face-2
'((t (:foreground "SeaGreen" :bold t))))
(face-spec-set 'my-group-face-3
'((t (:foreground "SpringGreen" :bold t))))
(face-spec-set 'my-group-face-4
'((t (:foreground "SteelBlue" :bold t))))
(face-spec-set 'my-group-face-5
'((t (:foreground "SkyBlue" :bold t))))
(setq gnus-group-highlight
'(((> unread 200) . my-group-face-1)
((and (< level 3) (zerop unread)) . my-group-face-2)
((< level 3) . my-group-face-3)
((zerop unread) . my-group-face-4)
(t . my-group-face-5)))
Also see section Faces and Fonts.
Variables that are dynamically bound when the forms are evaluated include:
group
unread
method
mailp
level
score
ticked
total
topic
When the forms are evaled, point is at the beginning of the line
of the group in question, so you can use many of the normal Gnus
functions for snarfing info on the group.
gnus-group-update-hook is called when a group line is changed.
It will not be called when gnus-visual is nil. This hook
calls gnus-group-highlight-line by default.
All movement commands understand the numeric prefix and will behave as expected, hopefully.
gnus-group-next-unread-group).
gnus-group-prev-unread-group).
gnus-group-next-group).
gnus-group-prev-group).
gnus-group-next-unread-group-same-level).
gnus-group-prev-unread-group-same-level).
Three commands for jumping to groups:
gnus-group-jump-to-group). Killed groups can be jumped to, just
like living groups.
gnus-group-best-unread-group).
gnus-group-first-unread-group).
If gnus-group-goto-unread is nil, all the movement
commands will move to the next group, not the next unread group. Even
the commands that say they move to the next unread group. The default
is t.
gnus-group-read-group). If there are no
unread articles in the group, or if you give a non-numerical prefix to
this command, Gnus will offer to fetch all the old articles in this
group from the server. If you give a numerical prefix N, N
determines the number of articles Gnus will fetch. If N is
positive, Gnus fetches the N newest articles, if N is
negative, Gnus fetches the abs(N) oldest articles.
gnus-group-select-group). Takes the same arguments as
gnus-group-read-group---the only difference is that this command
does not display the first unread article automatically upon group
entry.
gnus-group-quick-select-group). No
scoring/killing will be performed, there will be no highlights and no
expunging. This might be useful if you're in a real hurry and have to
enter some humongous group. If you give a 0 prefix to this command
(i.e., 0 M-RET), Gnus won't even generate the summary buffer,
which is useful if you want to toggle threading before generating the
summary buffer (see section Summary Generation Commands).
gnus-group-visible-select-group).
gnus-group-select-group-ephemerally). Even threading has been
turned off. Everything you do in the group after selecting it in this
manner will have no permanent effects.
The gnus-large-newsgroup variable says what Gnus should consider
to be a big group. This is 200 by default. If the group has more
(unread and/or ticked) articles than this, Gnus will query the user
before entering the group. The user can then specify how many articles
should be fetched from the server. If the user specifies a negative
number (-n), the n oldest articles will be fetched. If it
is positive, the n articles that have arrived most recently will
be fetched.
gnus-auto-select-first control whether any articles are selected
automatically when entering a group with the SPACE command.
nil
t
best
If you want to prevent automatic selection in some group (say, in a
binary group with Huge articles) you can set this variable to nil
in gnus-select-group-hook, which is called when a group is
selected.
gnus-group-unsubscribe-current-group).
gnus-group-unsubscribe-group).
gnus-group-kill-group).
gnus-group-yank-group).
gnus-group-transpose-groups). This isn't
really a subscription command, but you can use it instead of a
kill-and-yank sequence sometimes.
gnus-group-kill-region).
gnus-group-kill-all-zombies).
gnus-group-kill-level).
These groups can't be yanked back after killing, so this command should
be used with some caution. The only time where this command comes in
really handy is when you have a `.newsrc' with lots of unsubscribed
groups that you want to get rid off. S C-k on level 7 will
kill off all unsubscribed groups that do not have message numbers in the
`.newsrc' file.
Also see section Group Levels.
gnus-group-catchup-current).
gnus-group-catchup-group-hook is called when catching up a group from
the group buffer.
gnus-group-catchup-current-all).
gnus-group-clear-data).
All groups have a level of subscribedness. For instance, if a group is on level 2, it is more subscribed than a group on level 5. You can ask Gnus to just list groups on a given level or lower (see section Listing Groups), or to just check for new articles in groups on a given level or lower (see section Scanning New Messages).
Remember: The higher the level of the group, the less important it is.
Gnus considers groups from levels 1 to
gnus-level-subscribed (inclusive) (default 5) to be subscribed,
gnus-level-subscribed (exclusive) and
gnus-level-unsubscribed (inclusive) (default 7) to be
unsubscribed, gnus-level-zombie to be zombies (walking dead)
(default 8) and gnus-level-killed to be killed (completely dead)
(default 9). Gnus treats subscribed and unsubscribed groups exactly the
same, but zombie and killed groups have no information on what articles
you have read, etc, stored. This distinction between dead and living
groups isn't done because it is nice or clever, it is done purely for
reasons of efficiency.
It is recommended that you keep all your mail groups (if any) on quite low levels (e.g. 1 or 2).
If you want to play with the level variables, you should show some care. Set them once, and don't touch them ever again. Better yet, don't touch them at all unless you know exactly what you're doing.
Two closely related variables are gnus-level-default-subscribed
(default 3) and gnus-level-default-unsubscribed (default 6),
which are the levels that new groups will be put on if they are
(un)subscribed. These two variables should, of course, be inside the
relevant valid ranges.
If gnus-keep-same-level is non-nil, some movement commands
will only move to groups of the same level (or lower). In
particular, going from the last article in one group to the next group
will go to the next group of the same level (or lower). This might be
handy if you want to read the most important groups before you read the
rest.
All groups with a level less than or equal to
gnus-group-default-list-level will be listed in the group buffer
by default.
If gnus-group-list-inactive-groups is non-nil, non-active
groups will be listed along with the unread groups. This variable is
t by default. If it is nil, inactive groups won't be
listed.
If gnus-group-use-permanent-levels is non-nil, once you
give a level prefix to g or l, all subsequent commands will
use this level as the "work" level.
Gnus will normally just activate (i. e., query the server about) groups
on level gnus-activate-level or less. If you don't want to
activate unsubscribed groups, for instance, you might set this variable
to 5. The default is 6.
You would normally keep important groups on high levels, but that scheme is somewhat restrictive. Don't you wish you could have Gnus sort the group buffer according to how often you read groups, perhaps? Within reason?
This is what group score is for. You can assign a score to each group. You can then sort the group buffer based on this score. Alternatively, you can sort on score and then level. (Taken together, the level and the score is called the rank of the group. A group that is on level 4 and has a score of 1 has a higher rank than a group on level 5 that has a score of 300. (The level is the most significant part and the score is the least significant part.))
If you want groups you read often to get higher scores than groups you
read seldom you can add the gnus-summary-bubble-group function to
the gnus-summary-exit-hook hook. This will result (after
sorting) in a bubbling sort of action. If you want to see that in
action after each summary exit, you can add
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-rank or
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-score to the same hook, but that will
slow things down somewhat.
If you want to perform some command on several groups, and they appear subsequently in the group buffer, you would normally just give a numerical prefix to the command. Most group commands will then do your bidding on those groups.
However, if the groups are not in sequential order, you can still perform a command on several groups. You simply mark the groups first with the process mark and then execute the command.
gnus-group-mark-group).
gnus-group-unmark-group).
gnus-group-unmark-all-groups).
gnus-group-mark-region).
gnus-group-mark-buffer).
gnus-group-mark-regexp).
Also see section Process/Prefix.
If you want to execute some command on all groups that have been marked
with the process mark, you can use the M-&
(gnus-group-universal-argument) command. It will prompt you for
the command to be executed.
Below are some group mode commands for making and editing general foreign
groups, as well as commands to ease the creation of a few
special-purpose groups. All these commands insert the newly created
groups under point---gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method is not
consulted.
gnus-group-make-group). Gnus will prompt you
for a name, a method and possibly an address. For an easier way
to subscribe to NNTP groups, see section Browse Foreign Server.
gnus-group-rename-group). This is valid only on some
groups--mail groups mostly. This command might very well be quite slow
on some backends.
gnus-group-customize).
gnus-group-edit-group-method).
gnus-group-edit-group-parameters).
gnus-group-edit-group).
gnus-group-make-directory-group).
gnus-group-make-help-group).
gnus-group-make-archive-group). By
default a group pointing to the most recent articles will be created
(gnus-group-recent-archive-directory), but given a prefix, a full
group will be created from gnus-group-archive-directory.
gnus-group-make-kiboze-group).
See section Kibozed Groups.
nneething backend (gnus-group-enter-directory).
See section Anything Groups.
gnus-group-make-doc-group). If you give a prefix to this
command, you will be prompted for a file name and a file type.
Currently supported types are babyl, mbox, digest,
mmdf, news, rnews, clari-briefs,
rfc934, rfc822-forward, and forward. If you run
this command without a prefix, Gnus will guess at the file type.
See section Document Groups.
gnus-useful-groups
(gnus-group-make-useful-group).
gnus-group-make-web-group). If you give a prefix to this
command, make a solid group instead. You will be prompted for the
search engine type and the search string. Valid search engine types
include dejanews, altavista and reference.
See section Web Searches.
If you use the dejanews search engine, you can limit the search
to a particular group by using a match string like
`~g alt.sysadmin.recovery shaving'.
gnus-group-delete-group). If given a prefix, this function will
actually delete all the articles in the group, and forcibly remove the
group itself from the face of the Earth. Use a prefix only if you are
absolutely sure of what you are doing. This command can't be used on
read-only groups (like nntp group), though.
nnvirtual group
(gnus-group-make-empty-virtual). See section Virtual Groups.
nnvirtual group
(gnus-group-add-to-virtual). Uses the process/prefix convention.
See section Select Methods, for more information on the various select methods.
If gnus-activate-foreign-newsgroups is a positive number,
Gnus will check all foreign groups with this level or lower at startup.
This might take quite a while, especially if you subscribe to lots of
groups from different NNTP servers. Also see section Group Levels;
gnus-activate-level also affects activation of foreign
newsgroups.
The group parameters store information local to a particular group. Here's an example group parameter list:
((to-address . "ding@gnus.org") (auto-expire . t))
We see that each element consists of a "dotted pair"---the thing before the dot is the key, while the thing after the dot is the value. All the parameters have this form except local variable specs, which are not dotted pairs, but proper lists.
The following group parameters can be used:
to-address
(to-address . "some@where.com")This is primarily useful in mail groups that represent closed mailing lists--mailing lists where it's expected that everybody that writes to the mailing list is subscribed to it. Since using this parameter ensures that the mail only goes to the mailing list itself, it means that members won't receive two copies of your followups. Using
to-address will actually work whether the group is foreign
or not. Let's say there's a group on the server that is called
`fa.4ad-l'. This is a real newsgroup, but the server has gotten
the articles from a mail-to-news gateway. Posting directly to this
group is therefore impossible--you have to send mail to the mailing
list address instead.
to-list
(to-list . "some@where.com")It is totally ignored when doing a followup--except that if it is present in a news group, you'll get mail group semantics when doing f. If you do an a command in a mail group and you have neither a
to-list group parameter nor a to-address group parameter,
then a to-list group parameter will be added automatically upon
sending the message if gnus-add-to-list is set to t.
If you do an a command in a mail group and you don't have a
to-list group parameter, one will be added automatically upon
sending the message.
visible
(visible . t),
that group will always be visible in the Group buffer, regardless
of whether it has any unread articles.
broken-reply-to
(broken-reply-to . t) signals that Reply-To
headers in this group are to be ignored. This can be useful if you're
reading a mailing list group where the listserv has inserted
Reply-To headers that point back to the listserv itself. This is
broken behavior. So there!
to-group
(to-group . "some.group.name") means that all
posts in that group will be sent to some.group.name.
newsgroup
(newsgroup . t) in the group parameter list, Gnus
will treat all responses as if they were responses to news articles.
This can be useful if you have a mail group that's really a mirror of a
news group.
gcc-self
(gcc-self . t) is present in the group parameter list, newly
composed messages will be Gcc'd to the current group. If
(gcc-self . none) is present, no Gcc: header will be
generated, if (gcc-self . "string") is present, this string will
be inserted literally as a gcc header. This parameter takes
precedence over any default Gcc rules as described later
(see section Archived Messages).
auto-expire
(auto-expire
. t), all articles read will be marked as expirable. For an
alternative approach, see section Expiring Mail.
total-expire
(total-expire . t), all read articles will be put through the
expiry process, even if they are not marked as expirable. Use with
caution. Unread, ticked and dormant articles are not eligible for
expiry.
expiry-wait
(expiry-wait
. 10), this value will override any nnmail-expiry-wait and
nnmail-expiry-wait-function when expiring expirable messages.
The value can either be a number of days (not necessarily an integer) or
the symbols never or immediate.
score-file
(score-file . "file") will make
`file' into the current score file for the group in question. All
interactive score entries will be put into this file.
adapt-file
(adapt-file . "file") will make
`file' into the current adaptive file for the group in question.
All adaptive score entries will be put into this file.
admin-address
display
(display . MODE) say which articles to
display on entering the group. Valid values are:
all
default
comment
(comment . "This is a comment")
are arbitrary comments on the group. They are currently ignored by
Gnus, but provide a place for you to store information on particular
groups.
(variable form)
(gnus-show-threads nil) in the group parameters of
that group. gnus-show-threads will be made into a local variable
in the summary buffer you enter, and the form nil will be
evaled there.
This can also be used as a group-specific hook function, if you'd like.
If you want to hear a beep when you enter a group, you could put
something like (dummy-variable (ding)) in the parameters of that
group. dummy-variable will be set to the result of the
(ding) form, but who cares?
Use the G p command to edit group parameters of a group. You might also be interested in reading about topic parameters (see section Topic Parameters).
These commands all list various slices of the groups available.
gnus-group-list-groups). If the numeric prefix is used, this
command will list only groups of level ARG and lower. By default, it
only lists groups of level five (i. e.,
gnus-group-default-list-level) or lower (i.e., just subscribed
groups).
gnus-group-list-all-groups). If the numeric prefix is used,
this command will list only groups of level ARG and lower. By default,
it lists groups of level seven or lower (i.e., just subscribed and
unsubscribed groups).
gnus-group-list-level). If given a prefix, also list the groups
with no unread articles.
gnus-group-list-killed). If given a
prefix argument, really list all groups that are available, but aren't
currently (un)subscribed. This could entail reading the active file
from the server.
gnus-group-list-zombies).
gnus-group-list-matching).
gnus-group-list-all-matching).
gnus-group-list-active). This
might very well take quite a while. It might actually be a better idea
to do a A M to list all matching, and just give `.' as the
thing to match on. Also note that this command may list groups that
don't exist (yet)---these will be listed as if they were killed groups.
Take the output with some grains of salt.
gnus-group-apropos).
gnus-group-description-apropos).
Groups that match the gnus-permanently-visible-groups regexp will
always be shown, whether they have unread articles or not. You can also
add the visible element to the group parameters in question to
get the same effect.
Groups that have just ticked articles in it are normally listed in the
group buffer. If gnus-list-groups-with-ticked-articles is
nil, these groups will be treated just like totally empty
groups. It is t by default.
The C-c C-s (gnus-group-sort-groups) command sorts the
group buffer according to the function(s) given by the
gnus-group-sort-function variable. Available sorting functions
include:
gnus-group-sort-by-alphabet
gnus-group-sort-by-real-name
gnus-group-sort-by-level
gnus-group-sort-by-score
gnus-group-sort-by-rank
gnus-group-sort-by-unread
gnus-group-sort-by-method
gnus-group-sort-function can also be a list of sorting
functions. In that case, the most significant sort key function must be
the last one.
There are also a number of commands for sorting directly according to some sorting criteria:
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-alphabet).
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-unread).
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-level).
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-score). See section Group Score.
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-rank). See section Group Score.
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-method).
When given a prefix, all these commands will sort in reverse order.
You can also sort a subset of the groups:
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-alphabet).
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-unread).
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-level).
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-score). See section Group Score.
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-rank). See section Group Score.
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-method).
gnus-group-check-bogus-groups).
gnus-group-find-new-groups).
With 1 C-u, use the ask-server method to query the server
for new groups. With 2 C-u's, use most complete method possible
to query the server for new groups, and subscribe the new groups as
zombies.
gnus-group-expire-articles).
gnus-group-expire-all-groups).
gnus-group-browse-foreign-server).
A new buffer with a list of available groups will appear. This buffer
will use the gnus-browse-mode. This buffer looks a bit (well,
a lot) like a normal group buffer.
Here's a list of keystrokes available in the browse mode:
gnus-group-next-group).
gnus-group-prev-group).
gnus-browse-read-group).
gnus-browse-select-group).
gnus-browse-unsubscribe-current-group).
gnus-browse-exit).
gnus-browse-describe-briefly).
Yes, Gnus is ex(c)iting.
gnus-group-suspend). This doesn't really exit Gnus,
but it kills all buffers except the Group buffer. I'm not sure why this
is a gain, but then who am I to judge?
gnus-group-exit).
gnus-group-quit).
The dribble file will be saved, though (see section Auto Save).
gnus-suspend-gnus-hook is called when you suspend Gnus and
gnus-exit-gnus-hook is called when you quit Gnus, while
gnus-after-exiting-gnus-hook is called as the final item when
exiting Gnus.
If you wish to completely unload Gnus and all its adherents, you can use
the gnus-unload command. This command is also very handy when
trying to customize meta-variables.
Note:
Miss Lisa Cannifax, while sitting in English class, felt her feet go numbly heavy and herself fall into a hazy trance as the boy sitting behind her drew repeated lines with his pencil across the back of her plastic chair.
If you read lots and lots of groups, it might be convenient to group them hierarchically according to topics. You put your Emacs groups over here, your sex groups over there, and the rest (what, two groups or so?) you put in some misc section that you never bother with anyway. You can even group the Emacs sex groups as a sub-topic to either the Emacs groups or the sex groups--or both! Go wild!
Here's an example:
Gnus
Emacs -- I wuw it!
3: comp.emacs
2: alt.religion.emacs
Naughty Emacs
452: alt.sex.emacs
0: comp.talk.emacs.recovery
Misc
8: comp.binaries.fractals
13: comp.sources.unix
To get this fab functionality you simply turn on (ooh!) the
gnus-topic minor mode--type t in the group buffer. (This
is a toggling command.)
Go ahead, just try it. I'll still be here when you get back. La de dum... Nice tune, that... la la la... What, you're back? Yes, and now press l. There. All your groups are now listed under `misc'. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy? Hot and bothered?
If you want this permanently enabled, you should add that minor mode to the hook for the group mode:
(add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
Now, if you select a topic, it will fold/unfold that topic, which is really neat, I think.
The topic lines themselves are created according to the
gnus-topic-line-format variable (see section Formatting Variables).
Valid elements are:
Each sub-topic (and the groups in the sub-topics) will be indented with
gnus-topic-indent-level times the topic level number of spaces.
The default is 2.
gnus-topic-mode-hook is called in topic minor mode buffers.
The gnus-topic-display-empty-topics says whether to display even
topics that have no unread articles in them. The default is t.
When the topic minor mode is turned on, a new T submap will be available. In addition, a few of the standard keys change their definitions slightly.
gnus-topic-create-topic).
gnus-topic-move-group). This command uses the process/prefix
convention (see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-topic-copy-group). This command uses the process/prefix
convention (see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-topic-remove-group).
This command is mainly useful if you have the same group in several
topics and wish to remove it from one of the topics. You may also
remove a group from all topics, but in that case, Gnus will add it to
the root topic the next time you start Gnus. In fact, all new groups
(which, naturally, don't belong to any topic) will show up in the root
topic.
This command uses the process/prefix convention
(see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-topic-move-matching).
gnus-topic-copy-matching).
gnus-topic-toggle-display-empty-topics).
gnus-topic-mark-topic).
gnus-topic-unmark-topic).
gnus-topic-select-group).
When you perform this command on a group, you'll enter the group, as
usual. When done on a topic line, the topic will be folded (if it was
visible) or unfolded (if it was folded already). So it's basically a
toggling command on topics. In addition, if you give a numerical
prefix, group on that level (and lower) will be displayed.
gnus-topic-indent). If given a prefix,
"un-indent" the topic instead.
gnus-topic-unindent).
gnus-topic-kill-group). All groups in the
topic will be removed along with the topic.
gnus-topic-yank-group). Note that all topics will be yanked
before all groups.
gnus-topic-rename).
gnus-topic-delete).
gnus-topic-list-active).
gnus-topic-edit-parameters).
See section Topic Parameters.
You can sort the groups in each topic individually with the following commands:
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-alphabet).
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-unread).
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-level).
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-score). See section Group Score.
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-rank). See section Group Score.
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-method).
See section Sorting Groups, for more information about group sorting.
So, let's have a look at an example group buffer:
Gnus
Emacs -- I wuw it!
3: comp.emacs
2: alt.religion.emacs
Naughty Emacs
452: alt.sex.emacs
0: comp.talk.emacs.recovery
Misc
8: comp.binaries.fractals
13: comp.sources.unix
So, here we have one top-level topic (`Gnus'), two topics under that, and one sub-topic under one of the sub-topics. (There is always just one (1) top-level topic). This topology can be expressed as follows:
(("Gnus" visible)
(("Emacs -- I wuw it!" visible)
(("Naughty Emacs" visible)))
(("Misc" visible)))
This is in fact how the variable gnus-topic-topology would look
for the display above. That variable is saved in the `.newsrc.eld'
file, and shouldn't be messed with manually--unless you really want
to. Since this variable is read from the `.newsrc.eld' file,
setting it in any other startup files will have no effect.
This topology shows what topics are sub-topics of what topics (right),
and which topics are visible. Two settings are currently
allowed---visible and invisible.
All groups in a topic will inherit group parameters from the parent (and ancestor) topic parameters. All valid group parameters are valid topic parameters (see section Group Parameters).
Group parameters (of course) override topic parameters, and topic parameters in sub-topics override topic parameters in super-topics. You know. Normal inheritance rules. (Rules is here a noun, not a verb, although you may feel free to disagree with me here.)
Gnus
Emacs
3: comp.emacs
2: alt.religion.emacs
452: alt.sex.emacs
Relief
452: alt.sex.emacs
0: comp.talk.emacs.recovery
Misc
8: comp.binaries.fractals
13: comp.sources.unix
452: alt.sex.emacs
The `Emacs' topic has the topic parameter (score-file
. "emacs.SCORE"); the `Relief' topic has the topic parameter
(score-file . "relief.SCORE"); and the `Misc' topic has the
topic parameter (score-file . "emacs.SCORE"). In addition,
`alt.religion.emacs' has the group parameter (score-file
. "religion.SCORE").
Now, when you enter `alt.sex.emacs' in the `Relief' topic, you will get the `relief.SCORE' home score file. If you enter the same group in the `Emacs' topic, you'll get the `emacs.SCORE' home score file. If you enter the group `alt.religion.emacs', you'll get the `religion.SCORE' home score file.
This seems rather simple and self-evident, doesn't it? Well, yes. But
there are some problems, especially with the total-expiry
parameter. Say you have a mail group in two topics; one with
total-expiry and one without. What happens when you do M-x
gnus-expire-all-expirable-groups? Gnus has no way of telling which one
of these topics you mean to expire articles from, so anything may
happen. In fact, I hereby declare that it is undefined what
happens. You just have to be careful if you do stuff like that.
gnus-group-enter-server-mode).
See section The Server Buffer.
gnus-group-post-news). If given a
prefix, the current group name will be used as the default.
gnus-group-mail).
Variables for the group buffer:
gnus-group-mode-hook
gnus-group-prepare-hook
gnus-group-prepared-hook
gnus-permanently-visible-groups
gnus-group-get-new-news). If given a non-numerical prefix, this
command will force a total re-reading of the active file(s) from the
backend(s).
gnus-group-get-new-news-this-group).
gnus-goto-next-group-when-activating says whether this command is
to move point to the next group or not. It is t by default.
gnus-activate-all-groups).
gnus-group-restart). This saves the `.newsrc'
file(s), closes the connection to all servers, clears up all run-time
Gnus variables, and then starts Gnus all over again.
gnus-get-new-news-hook is run just before checking for new news.
gnus-after-getting-new-news-hook is run after checking for new
news.
gnus-group-fetch-faq). Gnus will try to get the FAQ from
gnus-group-faq-directory, which is usually a directory on a
remote machine. This variable can also be a list of directories. In
that case, giving a prefix to this command will allow you to choose
between the various sites. ange-ftp (or efs) will be used
for fetching the file.
If fetching from the first site is unsuccessful, Gnus will attempt to go
through gnus-group-faq-directory and try to open them one by one.
gnus-group-describe-group). If given
a prefix, force Gnus to re-read the description from the server.
gnus-group-describe-all-groups). If given a
prefix, force Gnus to re-read the description file from the server.
gnus-version).
gnus-group-describe-briefly).
gnus-info-find-node).
It can be convenient to let Gnus keep track of when you last read a
group. To set the ball rolling, you should add
gnus-group-set-timestamp to gnus-select-group-hook:
(add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook 'gnus-group-set-timestamp)
After doing this, each time you enter a group, it'll be recorded.
This information can be displayed in various ways--the easiest is to use the `%d' spec in the group line format:
(setq gnus-group-line-format
"%M\%S\%p\%P\%5y: %(%-40,40g%) %d\n")
This will result in lines looking like:
* 0: mail.ding 19961002T012943
0: custom 19961002T012713
As you can see, the date is displayed in compact ISO 8601 format. This may be a bit too much, so to just display the date, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-group-line-format
"%M\%S\%p\%P\%5y: %(%-40,40g%) %6,6~(cut 2)d\n")
gnus-init-file, which defaults to
`~/.gnus') (gnus-group-read-init-file).
gnus-group-save-newsrc). If given a prefix, force saving the
file(s) whether Gnus thinks it is necessary or not.
A line for each article is displayed in the summary buffer. You can move around, read articles, post articles and reply to articles.
The most common way to a summary buffer is to select a group from the group buffer (see section Selecting a Group).
You can have as many summary buffers open as you wish.
Gnus will use the value of the gnus-extract-address-components
variable as a function for getting the name and address parts of a
From header. Two pre-defined functions exist:
gnus-extract-address-components, which is the default, quite
fast, and too simplistic solution; and
mail-extract-address-components, which works very nicely, but is
slower. The default function will return the wrong answer in 5% of the
cases. If this is unacceptable to you, use the other function instead.
gnus-summary-same-subject is a string indicating that the current
article has the same subject as the previous. This string will be used
with those specs that require it. The default is "".
You can change the format of the lines in the summary buffer by changing
the gnus-summary-line-format variable. It works along the same
lines as a normal format string, with some extensions
(see section Formatting Variables).
The default string is `%U%R%z%I%(%[%4L: %-20,20n%]%) %s\n'.
The following format specification characters are understood:
gnus-summary-same-subject otherwise.
(gnus-summary-same-subject defaults to "".)
From header.
From header).
From header). This differs from the n
spec in that it uses the function designated by the
gnus-extract-address-components variable, which is slower, but
may be more thorough.
From header). This works the same way as
the a spec.
gnus-summary-default-score and the score is less than
gnus-summary-zcore-fuzz, this spec will not be used.
Xref.
Date.
Date in DD-MMM format.
Date in YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS format.
Message-ID.
References.
gnus-not-empty-thread-mark) will be displayed if the
article has any children.
gnus-user-format-function-`X', where `X' is the letter
following `%u'. The function will be passed the current header as
argument. The function should return a string, which will be inserted
into the summary just like information from any other summary specifier.
The `%U' (status), `%R' (replied) and `%z' (zcore) specs have to be handled with care. For reasons of efficiency, Gnus will compute what column these characters will end up in, and "hard-code" that. This means that it is invalid to have these specs after a variable-length spec. Well, you might not be arrested, but your summary buffer will look strange, which is bad enough.
The smart choice is to have these specs as far to the left as possible. (Isn't that the case with everything, though? But I digress.)
This restriction may disappear in later versions of Gnus.
You can also change the format of the summary mode bar (see section Mode Line Formatting). Set gnus-summary-mode-line-format to whatever you
like. The default is `Gnus: %%b [%A] %Z'.
Here are the elements you can play with:
gnus-visual-mark-article-hook
gnus-visual is nil.
gnus-summary-update-hook
gnus-visual is nil.
gnus-summary-selected-face
gnus-summary-highlight
(FORM . FACE). If you
would, for instance, like ticked articles to be italic and high-scored
articles to be bold, you could set this variable to something like
(((eq mark gnus-ticked-mark) . italic) ((> score default) . bold))As you may have guessed, if FORM returns a non-
nil value,
FACE will be applied to the line.
All the straight movement commands understand the numeric prefix and behave pretty much as you'd expect.
None of these commands select articles.
gnus-summary-next-unread-subject).
gnus-summary-prev-unread-subject).
Message-ID, and then go to that
article (gnus-summary-goto-article).
gnus-summary-goto-subject).
If Gnus asks you to press a key to confirm going to the next group, you can use the C-n and C-p keys to move around the group buffer, searching for the next group to read without actually returning to the group buffer.
Variables related to summary movement:
gnus-auto-select-next
t and the next group is
empty, Gnus will exit summary mode and return to the group buffer. If
this variable is neither t nor nil, Gnus will select the
next group, no matter whether it has any unread articles or not. As a
special case, if this variable is quietly, Gnus will select the
next group without asking for confirmation. If this variable is
almost-quietly, the same will happen only if you are located on
the last article in the group. Finally, if this variable is
slightly-quietly, the Z n command will go to the next group
without confirmation. Also see section Group Levels.
gnus-auto-select-same
nil, all the movement commands will try to go to the next
article with the same subject as the current. (Same here might
mean roughly equal. See gnus-summary-gather-subject-limit
for details (see section Customizing Threading).) If there are no more
articles with the same subject, go to the first unread article.
This variable is not particularly useful if you use a threaded display.
gnus-summary-check-current
nil, all the "unread" movement commands will not proceed
to the next (or previous) article if the current article is unread.
Instead, they will choose the current article.
gnus-auto-center-summary
nil, Gnus will keep the point in the summary buffer
centered at all times. This makes things quite tidy, but if you have a
slow network connection, or simply do not like this un-Emacsism, you can
set this variable to nil to get the normal Emacs scrolling
action. This will also inhibit horizontal re-centering of the summary
buffer, which might make it more inconvenient to read extremely long
threads.
None of the following movement commands understand the numeric prefix, and they all select and display an article.
gnus-summary-next-page).
gnus-summary-next-unread-article).
gnus-summary-prev-unread-article).
gnus-summary-next-article).
gnus-summary-prev-article).
gnus-summary-next-same-subject).
gnus-summary-prev-same-subject).
gnus-summary-first-unread-article).
gnus-summary-best-unread-article).
gnus-summary-goto-last-article).
gnus-summary-pop-article). This command differs from the
command above in that you can pop as many previous articles off the
history as you like, while l toggles the two last read articles.
For a somewhat related issue (if you use these commands a lot),
see section Article Backlog.
Some variables relevant for moving and selecting articles:
gnus-auto-extend-newsgroup
nil. Gnus will then fetch the article from
the server and display it in the article buffer.
gnus-select-article-hook
gnus-mark-article-hook
gnus-summary-mark-read-and-unread-as-read, and will change the
mark of almost any article you read to gnus-unread-mark. The
only articles not affected by this function are ticked, dormant, and
expirable articles. If you'd instead like to just have unread articles
marked as read, you can use gnus-summary-mark-unread-as-read
instead. It will leave marks like gnus-low-score-mark,
gnus-del-mark (and so on) alone.
gnus-summary-next-page).
gnus-summary-prev-page).
gnus-summary-scroll-up).
gnus-summary-scroll-down).
gnus-summary-show-article). If
given a prefix, fetch the current article, but don't run any of the
article treatment functions. This will give you a "raw" article, just
the way it came from the server.
gnus-summary-beginning-of-article).
gnus-summary-end-of-article).
gnus-summary-isearch-article).
gnus-summary-select-article-buffer).
Commands for composing a mail message:
gnus-summary-reply).
gnus-summary-reply-with-original). This
command uses the process/prefix convention.
gnus-summary-wide-reply). A wide reply is a reply that
goes out to all people listed in the To, From (or
Reply-to) and Cc headers.
gnus-summary-reply-with-original). This command uses
the process/prefix convention.
gnus-summary-mail-forward). If given a prefix, include the full
headers of the forwarded article.
gnus-summary-mail-other-window).
gnus-summary-resend-bounced-mail). You
will be popped into a mail buffer where you can edit the headers before
sending the mail off again. If you give a prefix to this command, and
the bounced mail is a reply to some other mail, Gnus will try to fetch
that mail and display it for easy perusal of its headers. This might
very well fail, though.
gnus-summary-resend-message will prompt you for an address to
send the current message off to, and then send it to that place. The
headers of the message won't be altered--but lots of headers that say
Resent-To, Resent-From and so on will be added. This
means that you actually send a mail to someone that has a To
header that (probably) points to yourself. This will confuse people.
So, natcherly you'll only do that if you're really eVIl.
This command is mainly used if you have several accounts and want to
ship a mail to a different account of yours. (If you're both
root and postmaster and get a mail for postmaster
to the root account, you may want to resend it to
postmaster. Ordnung muß sein!
This command understands the process/prefix convention
(see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-uu-digest-mail-forward). This command
uses the process/prefix convention (see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-summary-mail-crosspost-complaint).
This command is provided as a way to fight back against the current
crossposting pandemic that's sweeping Usenet. It will compose a reply
using the gnus-crosspost-complaint variable as a preamble. This
command understands the process/prefix convention
(see section Process/Prefix) and will prompt you before sending each mail.
Also @xref{(message)Header Commands} for more information.
Commands for posting a news article:
gnus-summary-post-news).
gnus-summary-followup).
gnus-summary-followup-with-original). This command uses the
process/prefix convention.
gnus-summary-followup-to-mail).
gnus-summary-followup-to-mail-with-original). This command uses
the process/prefix convention.
gnus-summary-post-forward). If given a prefix, include the full
headers of the forwarded article.
gnus-uu-digest-mail-forward). This command uses the
process/prefix convention.
gnus-uu-post-news). (see section Uuencoding and Posting).
Also @xref{(message)Header Commands} for more information.
Have you ever written something, and then decided that you really, really, really wish you hadn't posted that?
Well, you can't cancel mail, but you can cancel posts.
Find the article you wish to cancel (you can only cancel your own
articles, so don't try any funny stuff). Then press C or S
c (gnus-summary-cancel-article). Your article will be
canceled--machines all over the world will be deleting your article.
This command uses the process/prefix convention (see section Process/Prefix).
Be aware, however, that not all sites honor cancels, so your article may live on here and there, while most sites will delete the article in question.
Gnus will use the "current" select method when canceling. If you want to use the standard posting method, use the `a' symbolic prefix (see section Symbolic Prefixes).
If you discover that you have made some mistakes and want to do some corrections, you can post a superseding article that will replace your original article.
Go to the original article and press S s
(gnus-summary-supersede-article). You will be put in a buffer
where you can edit the article all you want before sending it off the
usual way.
The same goes for superseding as for canceling, only more so: Some sites do not honor superseding. On those sites, it will appear that you have posted almost the same article twice.
If you have just posted the article, and change your mind right away,
there is a trick you can use to cancel/supersede the article without
waiting for the article to appear on your site first. You simply return
to the post buffer (which is called *sent ...*). There you will
find the article you just posted, with all the headers intact. Change
the Message-ID header to a Cancel or Supersedes
header by substituting one of those words for the word
Message-ID. Then just press C-c C-c to send the article as
you would do normally. The previous article will be
canceled/superseded.
Just remember, kids: There is no 'c' in 'supersede'.
There are several marks you can set on an article.
You have marks that decide the readedness (whoo, neato-keano neologism ohoy!) of the article. Alphabetic marks generally mean read, while non-alphabetic characters generally mean unread.
In addition, you also have marks that do not affect readedness.
The following marks mark articles as (kinda) unread, in one form or other.
gnus-ticked-mark).
Ticked articles are articles that will remain visible always. If
you see an article that you find interesting, or you want to put off
reading it, or replying to it, until sometime later, you'd typically
tick it. However, articles can be expired, so if you want to keep an
article forever, you'll have to make it persistent (see section Persistent Articles).
gnus-dormant-mark).
Dormant articles will only appear in the summary buffer if there
are followups to it. If you want to see them even if they don't have
followups, you can use the / D command (see section Limiting).
gnus-unread-mark).
Unread articles are articles that haven't been read at all yet.
All the following marks mark articles as read.
gnus-del-mark).
gnus-read-mark).
gnus-ancient-mark).
gnus-killed-mark).
gnus-kill-file-mark).
gnus-low-score-mark).
gnus-catchup-mark).
gnus-canceled-mark)
gnus-souped-mark). See section SOUP.
gnus-sparse-mark). See section Customizing Threading.
gnus-duplicated-mark). See section Duplicate Suppression.
All these marks just mean that the article is marked as read, really. They are interpreted differently when doing adaptive scoring, though.
One more special mark, though:
gnus-expirable-mark).
Marking articles as expirable (or have them marked as such
automatically) doesn't make much sense in normal groups--a user doesn't
control expiring of news articles, but in mail groups, for instance,
articles marked as expirable can be deleted by Gnus at
any time.
There are some marks that have nothing to do with whether the article is read or not.
gnus-replied-mark).
gnus-cached-mark). See section Article Caching.
gnus-saved-mark).
gnus-not-empty-thread-mark and
gnus-empty-thread-mark in the third column, respectively.
gnus-process-mark). A
variety of commands react to the presence of the process mark. For
instance, X u (gnus-uu-decode-uu) will uudecode and view
all articles that have been marked with the process mark. Articles
marked with the process mark have a `#' in the second column.
You might have noticed that most of these "non-readedness" marks appear in the second column by default. So if you have a cached, saved, replied article that you have process-marked, what will that look like?
Nothing much. The precedence rules go as follows: process -> cache -> replied -> saved. So if the article is in the cache and is replied, you'll only see the cache mark and not the replied mark.
All the marking commands understand the numeric prefix.
gnus-summary-clear-mark-forward). In other words, mark the
article as unread.
gnus-summary-tick-article-forward).
See section Article Caching.
gnus-summary-mark-as-dormant). See section Article Caching.
gnus-summary-mark-as-read-forward).
gnus-summary-mark-as-read-backward).
gnus-summary-kill-same-subject-and-select).
gnus-summary-kill-same-subject).
gnus-summary-catchup).
gnus-summary-catchup-all).
gnus-summary-catchup-to-here).
gnus-summary-mark-region-as-read).
gnus-summary-kill-below).
gnus-summary-mark-as-expirable).
gnus-summary-set-bookmark).
gnus-summary-remove-bookmark).
gnus-summary-clear-above).
gnus-summary-tick-above).
gnus-summary-clear-above).
The gnus-summary-goto-unread variable controls what action should
be taken after setting a mark. If non-nil, point will move to
the next/previous unread article. If nil, point will just move
one line up or down. As a special case, if this variable is
never, all the marking commands as well as other commands (like
SPACE) will move to the next article, whether it is unread or not.
The default is t.
gnus-summary-mark-as-processable).
gnus-summary-unmark-as-processable).
gnus-summary-unmark-all-processable).
gnus-uu-invert-processable).
Subject header that matches a regular
expression (gnus-uu-mark-by-regexp).
gnus-uu-mark-region).
gnus-uu-mark-thread).
gnus-uu-unmark-thread).
gnus-uu-mark-over).
gnus-uu-mark-series).
gnus-uu-mark-sparse).
gnus-uu-mark-series).
gnus-uu-mark-buffer).
gnus-summary-kill-process-mark).
gnus-summary-yank-process-mark).
gnus-summary-save-process-mark).
It can be convenient to limit the summary buffer to just show some subset of the articles currently in the group. The effect most limit commands have is to remove a few (or many) articles from the summary buffer.
All limiting commands work on subsets of the articles already fetched from the servers. None of these commands query the server for additional articles.
gnus-summary-limit-to-subject).
gnus-summary-limit-to-author).
gnus-summary-limit-to-unread). If given a prefix, limit the
buffer to articles strictly unread. This means that ticked and
dormant articles will also be excluded.
gnus-summary-limit-to-marks).
gnus-summary-limit-to-marks). If given a prefix, limit to
articles younger than that number of days.
gnus-summary-limit-to-articles). Uses the process/prefix
convention (see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-summary-pop-limit). If given a prefix, pop all limits off
the stack.
gnus-summary-limit-to-score).
gnus-summary-limit-include-expunged).
gnus-summary-limit-include-dormant).
gnus-summary-limit-include-cached).
gnus-summary-limit-exclude-dormant).
gnus-summary-limit-exclude-childless-dormant).
gnus-summary-limit-mark-excluded-as-read). If given a prefix,
also mark excluded ticked and dormant articles as read.
Gnus threads articles by default. To thread is to put responses to articles directly after the articles they respond to--in a hierarchical fashion.
Threading is done by looking at the References headers of the
articles. In a perfect world, this would be enough to build pretty
trees, but unfortunately, the References header is often broken
or simply missing. Weird news propagation excarcerbates the problem,
so one has to employ other heuristics to get pleasing results. A
plethora of approaches exists, as detailed in horrible detail in
see section Customizing Threading.
First, a quick overview of the concepts:
gnus-summary-make-false-root
nil, Gnus will gather all loose subtrees into one big tree
and create a dummy root at the top. (Wait a minute. Root at the top?
Yup.) Loose subtrees occur when the real root has expired, or you've
read or killed the root in a previous session.
When there is no real root of a thread, Gnus will have to fudge
something. This variable says what fudging method Gnus should use.
There are four possible values:
adopt
dummy
gnus-summary-dummy-line-format is used to specify the
format of the dummy roots. It accepts only one format spec: `S',
which is the subject of the article. See section Formatting Variables.
empty
gnus-summary-same-subject as the subject (see section Summary Buffer Format).)
none
nil
gnus-summary-gather-subject-limit
nil, Gnus requires an exact match between the
subjects of the loose threads before gathering them into one big
super-thread. This might be too strict a requirement, what with the
presence of stupid newsreaders that chop off long subject lines. If
you think so, set this variable to, say, 20 to require that only the
first 20 characters of the subjects have to match. If you set this
variable to a really low number, you'll find that Gnus will gather
everything in sight into one thread, which isn't very helpful.
If you set this variable to the special value fuzzy, Gnus will
use a fuzzy string comparison algorithm on the subjects (see section Fuzzy Matching).
gnus-simplify-subject-fuzzy-regexp
gnus-simplify-ignored-prefixes
gnus-summary-gather-subject-limit to something as low
as 10, you might consider setting this variable to something sensible:
(setq gnus-simplify-ignored-prefixes
(concat
"\\`\\[?\\("
(mapconcat
'identity
'("looking"
"wanted" "followup" "summary\\( of\\)?"
"help" "query" "problem" "question"
"answer" "reference" "announce"
"How can I" "How to" "Comparison of"
;; ...
)
"\\|")
"\\)\\s *\\("
(mapconcat 'identity
'("for" "for reference" "with" "about")
"\\|")
"\\)?\\]?:?[ \t]*"))
All words that match this regexp will be removed before comparing two
subjects.
gnus-simplify-subject-functions
nil, this variable overrides
gnus-summary-gather-subject-limit. This variable should be a
list of functions to apply to the Subject string iteratively to
arrive at the simplified version of the string.
Useful functions to put in this list include:
gnus-simplify-subject-re
gnus-simplify-subject-fuzzy
gnus-simplify-whitespace
gnus-summary-gather-exclude-subject
gnus-summary-gather-exclude-subject to say
what subjects should be excluded from the gathering process.gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
Subject headers. This means
that totally unrelated articles may end up in the same "thread", which
is confusing. An alternate approach is to look at all the
Message-IDs in all the References headers to find matches.
This will ensure that no gathered threads ever include unrelated
articles, but it also means that people who have posted with broken
newsreaders won't be gathered properly. The choice is yours--plague or
cholera:
gnus-gather-threads-by-subject
Subjects exclusively.
gnus-gather-threads-by-references
References headers exclusively.
References, you could say
something like:
(setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
gnus-fetch-old-headers
nil, Gnus will attempt to build old threads by fetching
more old headers--headers to articles marked as read. If you
would like to display as few summary lines as possible, but still
connect as many loose threads as possible, you should set this variable
to some or a number. If you set it to a number, no more than
that number of extra old headers will be fetched. In either case,
fetching old headers only works if the backend you are using carries
overview files--this would normally be nntp, nnspool and
nnml. Also remember that if the root of the thread has been
expired by the server, there's not much Gnus can do about that.
This variable can also be set to invisible. This won't have any
visible effects, but is useful if you use the A T command a lot
(see section Finding the Parent).
gnus-build-sparse-threads
some. Gnus will then look at
the complete References headers of all articles and try to string
together articles that belong in the same thread. This will leave
gaps in the threading display where Gnus guesses that an article
is missing from the thread. (These gaps appear like normal summary
lines. If you select a gap, Gnus will try to fetch the article in
question.) If this variable is t, Gnus will display all these
"gaps" without regard for whether they are useful for completing the
thread or not. Finally, if this variable is more, Gnus won't cut
off sparse leaf nodes that don't lead anywhere. This variable is
nil by default.
gnus-show-threads
nil, no threading will be done, and all of
the rest of the variables here will have no effect. Turning threading
off will speed group selection up a bit, but it is sure to make reading
slower and more awkward.
gnus-thread-hide-subtree
nil, all threads will be hidden when the summary buffer is
generated.
gnus-thread-expunge-below
gnus-thread-score-function) less than this number will be
expunged. This variable is nil by default, which means that no
threads are expunged.
gnus-thread-hide-killed
nil, the subtree
will be hidden.
gnus-thread-ignore-subject
nil, the subject change is ignored. If it
is nil, which is the default, a change in the subject will result
in a new thread.
gnus-thread-indent-level
gnus-parse-headers-hook
(gnus-decode-rfc1522), which means that QPized headers will be
slightly decoded in a hackish way. This is likely to change in the
future when Gnus becomes MIME'ified.
gnus-alter-header-function
nil, this function will be called to allow alteration of
article header structures. The function is called with one parameter,
the article header vector, which it may alter in any way. For instance,
if you have a mail-to-news gateway which alters the Message-IDs
in systematic ways (by adding prefixes and such), you can use this
variable to un-scramble the Message-IDs so that they are more
meaningful. Here's one example:
(setq gnus-alter-header-function 'my-alter-message-id)
(defun my-alter-message-id (header)
(let ((id (mail-header-id header)))
(when (string-match
"\\(<[^<>@]*\\)\\.?cygnus\\..*@\\([^<>@]*>\\)" id)
(mail-header-set-id
(concat (match-string 1 id) "@" (match-string 2 id))
header))))
gnus-summary-kill-thread). If the prefix argument is positive,
remove all marks instead. If the prefix argument is negative, tick
articles instead.
gnus-summary-lower-thread).
gnus-summary-raise-thread).
gnus-uu-mark-thread).
gnus-uu-unmark-thread).
gnus-summary-toggle-threads).
gnus-summary-show-thread).
gnus-summary-hide-thread).
gnus-summary-show-all-threads).
gnus-summary-hide-all-threads).
gnus-summary-rethread-current). This works even when the
summary buffer is otherwise unthreaded.
gnus-summary-reparent-thread).
The following commands are thread movement commands. They all understand the numeric prefix.
gnus-summary-next-thread).
gnus-summary-prev-thread).
gnus-summary-down-thread).
gnus-summary-up-thread).
gnus-summary-top-thread).
If you ignore subject while threading, you'll naturally end up with
threads that have several different subjects in them. If you then issue
a command like `T k' (gnus-summary-kill-thread) you might not
wish to kill the entire thread, but just those parts of the thread that
have the same subject as the current article. If you like this idea,
you can fiddle with gnus-thread-operation-ignore-subject. If it
is non-nil (which it is by default), subjects will be ignored
when doing thread commands. If this variable is nil, articles in
the same thread with different subjects will not be included in the
operation in question. If this variable is fuzzy, only articles
that have subjects fuzzily equal will be included (see section Fuzzy Matching).
If you are using a threaded summary display, you can sort the threads by
setting gnus-thread-sort-functions, which is a list of functions.
By default, sorting is done on article numbers. Ready-made sorting
predicate functions include gnus-thread-sort-by-number,
gnus-thread-sort-by-author, gnus-thread-sort-by-subject,
gnus-thread-sort-by-date, gnus-thread-sort-by-score, and
gnus-thread-sort-by-total-score.
Each function takes two threads and returns non-nil if the first
thread should be sorted before the other. Note that sorting really is
normally done by looking only at the roots of each thread. If you use
more than one function, the primary sort key should be the last function
in the list. You should probably always include
gnus-thread-sort-by-number in the list of sorting
functions--preferably first. This will ensure that threads that are
equal with respect to the other sort criteria will be displayed in
ascending article order.
If you would like to sort by score, then by subject, and finally by number, you could do something like:
(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions
'(gnus-thread-sort-by-number
gnus-thread-sort-by-subject
gnus-thread-sort-by-total-score))
The threads that have highest score will be displayed first in the summary buffer. When threads have the same score, they will be sorted alphabetically. The threads that have the same score and the same subject will be sorted by number, which is (normally) the sequence in which the articles arrived.
If you want to sort by score and then reverse arrival order, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions
'((lambda (t1 t2)
(not (gnus-thread-sort-by-number t1 t2)))
gnus-thread-sort-by-score))
The function in the gnus-thread-score-function variable (default
+) is used for calculating the total score of a thread. Useful
functions might be max, min, or squared means, or whatever
tickles your fancy.
If you are using an unthreaded display for some strange reason or other,
you have to fiddle with the gnus-article-sort-functions variable.
It is very similar to the gnus-thread-sort-functions, except that
it uses slightly different functions for article comparison. Available
sorting predicate functions are gnus-article-sort-by-number,
gnus-article-sort-by-author, gnus-article-sort-by-subject,
gnus-article-sort-by-date, and gnus-article-sort-by-score.
If you want to sort an unthreaded summary display by subject, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-article-sort-functions
'(gnus-article-sort-by-number
gnus-article-sort-by-subject))
If you read your news from an NNTP server that's far away, the network latencies may make reading articles a chore. You have to wait for a while after pressing n to go to the next article before the article appears. Why can't Gnus just go ahead and fetch the article while you are reading the previous one? Why not, indeed.
First, some caveats. There are some pitfalls to using asynchronous article fetching, especially the way Gnus does it.
Let's say you are reading article 1, which is short, and article 2 is quite long, and you are not interested in reading that. Gnus does not know this, so it goes ahead and fetches article 2. You decide to read article 3, but since Gnus is in the process of fetching article 2, the connection is blocked.
To avoid these situations, Gnus will open two (count 'em two) connections to the server. Some people may think this isn't a very nice thing to do, but I don't see any real alternatives. Setting up that extra connection takes some time, so Gnus startup will be slower.
Gnus will fetch more articles than you will read. This will mean that the link between your machine and the NNTP server will become more loaded than if you didn't use article pre-fetch. The server itself will also become more loaded--both with the extra article requests, and the extra connection.
Ok, so now you know that you shouldn't really use this thing... unless you really want to.
Here's how: Set gnus-asynchronous to t. The rest should
happen automatically.
You can control how many articles are to be pre-fetched by setting
gnus-use-article-prefetch. This is 30 by default, which means
that when you read an article in the group, the backend will pre-fetch
the next 30 articles. If this variable is t, the backend will
pre-fetch all the articles it can without bound. If it is
nil, no pre-fetching will be done.
There are probably some articles that you don't want to pre-fetch--read
articles, for instance. The gnus-async-prefetch-article-p variable controls whether an article is to be pre-fetched. This function should
return non-nil when the article in question is to be
pre-fetched. The default is gnus-async-read-p, which returns
nil on read articles. The function is called with an article
data structure as the only parameter.
If, for instance, you wish to pre-fetch only unread articles shorter than 100 lines, you could say something like:
(defun my-async-short-unread-p (data)
"Return non-nil for short, unread articles."
(and (gnus-data-unread-p data)
(< (mail-header-lines (gnus-data-header data))
100)))
(setq gnus-async-prefetch-article-p 'my-async-short-unread-p)
These functions will be called many, many times, so they should preferably be short and sweet to avoid slowing down Gnus too much. It's probably a good idea to byte-compile things like this.
Articles have to be removed from the asynch buffer sooner or later. The
gnus-prefetched-article-deletion-strategy says when to remove
articles. This is a list that may contain the following elements:
read
exit
The default value is (read exit).
If you have an extremely slow NNTP connection, you may consider turning article caching on. Each article will then be stored locally under your home directory. As you may surmise, this could potentially use huge amounts of disk space, as well as eat up all your inodes so fast it will make your head swim. In vodka.
Used carefully, though, it could be just an easier way to save articles.
To turn caching on, set gnus-use-cache to t. By default,
all articles ticked or marked as dormant will then be copied
over to your local cache (gnus-cache-directory). Whether this
cache is flat or hierarchal is controlled by the
gnus-use-long-file-name variable, as usual.
When re-selecting a ticked or dormant article, it will be fetched from the cache instead of from the server. As articles in your cache will never expire, this might serve as a method of saving articles while still keeping them where they belong. Just mark all articles you want to save as dormant, and don't worry.
When an article is marked as read, is it removed from the cache.
The entering/removal of articles from the cache is controlled by the
gnus-cache-enter-articles and gnus-cache-remove-articles
variables. Both are lists of symbols. The first is (ticked
dormant) by default, meaning that ticked and dormant articles will be
put in the cache. The latter is (read) by default, meaning that
articles marked as read are removed from the cache. Possibly
symbols in these two lists are ticked, dormant,
unread and read.
So where does the massive article-fetching and storing come into the
picture? The gnus-jog-cache command will go through all
subscribed newsgroups, request all unread articles, score them, and
store them in the cache. You should only ever, ever ever ever, use this
command if 1) your connection to the NNTP server is really, really,
really slow and 2) you have a really, really, really huge disk.
Seriously. One way to cut down on the number of articles downloaded is
to score unwanted articles down and have them marked as read. They will
not then be downloaded by this command.
It is likely that you do not want caching on all groups. For instance,
if your nnml mail is located under your home directory, it makes no
sense to cache it somewhere else under your home directory. Unless you
feel that it's neat to use twice as much space.
To limit the caching, you could set gnus-cacheable-groups to a
regexp of groups to cache, `^nntp' for instance, or set the
gnus-uncacheable-groups regexp to `^nnml', for instance.
Both variables are nil by default. If a group matches both
variables, the group is not cached.
The cache stores information on what articles it contains in its active
file (gnus-cache-active-file). If this file (or any other parts
of the cache) becomes all messed up for some reason or other, Gnus
offers two functions that will try to set things right. M-x
gnus-cache-generate-nov-databases will (re)build all the NOV
files, and gnus-cache-generate-active will (re)generate the active
file.
Closely related to article caching, we have persistent articles. In fact, it's just a different way of looking at caching, and much more useful in my opinion.
Say you're reading a newsgroup, and you happen on to some valuable gem that you want to keep and treasure forever. You'd normally just save it (using one of the many saving commands) in some file. The problem with that is that it's just, well, yucky. Ideally you'd prefer just having the article remain in the group where you found it forever; untouched by the expiry going on at the news server.
This is what a persistent article is--an article that just won't be deleted. It's implemented using the normal cache functions, but you use two explicit commands for managing persistent articles:
gnus-cache-enter-article).
gnus-cache-remove-article). This will normally delete the
article.
Both these commands understand the process/prefix convention.
To avoid having all ticked articles (and stuff) entered into the cache,
you should set gnus-use-cache to passive if you're just
interested in persistent articles:
(setq gnus-use-cache 'passive)
If you have a slow connection, but the idea of using caching seems unappealing to you (and it is, really), you can help the situation some by switching on the backlog. This is where Gnus will buffer already read articles so that it doesn't have to re-fetch articles you've already read. This only helps if you are in the habit of re-selecting articles you've recently read, of course. If you never do that, turning the backlog on will slow Gnus down a little bit, and increase memory usage some.
If you set gnus-keep-backlog to a number n, Gnus will store
at most n old articles in a buffer for later re-fetching. If this
variable is non-nil and is not a number, Gnus will store
all read articles, which means that your Emacs will grow without
bound before exploding and taking your machine down with you. I put
that in there just to keep y'all on your toes.
This variable is nil by default.
Gnus can save articles in a number of ways. Below is the documentation
for saving articles in a fairly straight-forward fashion (i.e., little
processing of the article is done before it is saved). For a different
approach (uudecoding, unsharing) you should use gnus-uu
(see section Decoding Articles).
If gnus-save-all-headers is non-nil, Gnus will not delete
unwanted headers before saving the article.
If the preceding variable is nil, all headers that match the
gnus-saved-headers regexp will be kept, while the rest will be
deleted before saving.
gnus-summary-save-article).
gnus-summary-save-article-mail).
gnus-summary-save-article-rmail).
gnus-summary-save-article-file).
gnus-summary-write-article-file).
gnus-summary-save-article-body-file).
gnus-summary-save-article-folder).
gnus-summary-save-article-vm).
gnus-summary-pipe-output).
All these commands use the process/prefix convention
(see section Process/Prefix). If you save bunches of articles using these
functions, you might get tired of being prompted for files to save each
and every article in. The prompting action is controlled by
the gnus-prompt-before-saving variable, which is always by
default, giving you that excessive prompting action you know and
loathe. If you set this variable to t instead, you'll be prompted
just once for each series of articles you save. If you like to really
have Gnus do all your thinking for you, you can even set this variable
to nil, which means that you will never be prompted for files to
save articles in. Gnus will simply save all the articles in the default
files.
You can customize the gnus-default-article-saver variable to make
Gnus do what you want it to. You can use any of the four ready-made
functions below, or you can create your own.
gnus-summary-save-in-rmail
gnus-rmail-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-plain-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-in-mail
gnus-mail-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-plain-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-in-file
gnus-file-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-numeric-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-body-in-file
gnus-file-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-numeric-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-in-folder
rcvstore from the MH
library. Uses the function in the gnus-folder-save-name variable
to get a file name to save the article in. The default is
gnus-folder-save-name, but you can also use
gnus-Folder-save-name, which creates capitalized names.
gnus-summary-save-in-vm
All of these functions, except for the last one, will save the article
in the gnus-article-save-directory, which is initialized from the
SAVEDIR environment variable. This is `~/News/' by
default.
As you can see above, the functions use different functions to find a suitable name of a file to save the article in. Below is a list of available functions that generate names:
gnus-Numeric-save-name
gnus-numeric-save-name
gnus-Plain-save-name
gnus-plain-save-name
You can have Gnus suggest where to save articles by plonking a regexp into
the gnus-split-methods alist. For instance, if you would like to
save articles related to Gnus in the file `gnus-stuff', and articles
related to VM in vm-stuff, you could set this variable to something
like:
(("^Subject:.*gnus\\|^Newsgroups:.*gnus" "gnus-stuff")
("^Subject:.*vm\\|^Xref:.*vm" "vm-stuff")
(my-choosing-function "../other-dir/my-stuff")
((equal gnus-newsgroup-name "mail.misc") "mail-stuff"))
We see that this is a list where each element is a list that has two
elements--the match and the file. The match can either be
a string (in which case it is used as a regexp to match on the article
head); it can be a symbol (which will be called as a function with the
group name as a parameter); or it can be a list (which will be
evaled). If any of these actions have a non-nil result,
the file will be used as a default prompt. In addition, the
result of the operation itself will be used if the function or form
called returns a string or a list of strings.
You basically end up with a list of file names that might be used when saving the current article. (All "matches" will be used.) You will then be prompted for what you really want to use as a name, with file name completion over the results from applying this variable.
This variable is ((gnus-article-archive-name)) by default, which
means that Gnus will look at the articles it saves for an
Archive-name line and use that as a suggestion for the file
name.
Here's an example function to clean up file names somewhat. If you have lots of mail groups called things like `nnml:mail.whatever', you may want to chop off the beginning of these group names before creating the file name to save to. The following will do just that:
(defun my-save-name (group)
(when (string-match "^nnml:mail." group)
(substring group (match-end 0))))
(setq gnus-split-methods
'((gnus-article-archive-name)
(my-save-name)))
Finally, you have the gnus-use-long-file-name variable. If it is
nil, all the preceding functions will replace all periods
(`.') in the group names with slashes (`/')---which means that
the functions will generate hierarchies of directories instead of having
all the files in the top level directory
(`~/News/alt/andrea-dworkin' instead of
`~/News/alt.andrea-dworkin'.) This variable is t by default
on most systems. However, for historical reasons, this is nil on
Xenix and usg-unix-v machines by default.
This function also affects kill and score file names. If this variable
is a list, and the list contains the element not-score, long file
names will not be used for score files, if it contains the element
not-save, long file names will not be used for saving, and if it
contains the element not-kill, long file names will not be used
for kill files.
If you'd like to save articles in a hierarchy that looks something like a spool, you could
(setq gnus-use-long-file-name '(not-save)) ; to get a hierarchy (setq gnus-default-article-saver 'gnus-summary-save-in-file) ; no encoding
Then just save with o. You'd then read this hierarchy with
ephemeral nneething groups---G D in the group buffer, and
the top level directory as the argument (`~/News/'). Then just walk
around to the groups/directories with nneething.
Sometime users post articles (or series of articles) that have been encoded in some way or other. Gnus can decode them for you.
All these functions use the process/prefix convention (see section Process/Prefix) for finding out what articles to work on, with the extension that a "single article" means "a single series". Gnus can find out by itself what articles belong to a series, decode all the articles and unpack/view/save the resulting file(s).
Gnus guesses what articles are in the series according to the following simplish rule: The subjects must be (nearly) identical, except for the last two numbers of the line. (Spaces are largely ignored, however.)
For example: If you choose a subject called `cat.gif (2/3)', Gnus will find all the articles that match the regexp `^cat.gif ([0-9]+/[0-9]+).*$'.
Subjects that are non-standard, like `cat.gif (2/3) Part 6 of a series', will not be properly recognized by any of the automatic viewing commands, and you have to mark the articles manually with #.
gnus-uu-decode-uu).
gnus-uu-decode-uu-and-save).
gnus-uu-decode-uu-view).
gnus-uu-decode-uu-and-save-view).
Remember that these all react to the presence of articles marked with
the process mark. If, for instance, you'd like to decode and save an
entire newsgroup, you'd typically do M P a
(gnus-uu-mark-all) and then X U
(gnus-uu-decode-uu-and-save).
All this is very much different from how gnus-uu worked with
GNUS 4.1, where you had explicit keystrokes for everything under
the sun. This version of gnus-uu generally assumes that you mark
articles in some way (see section Setting Process Marks) and then press
X u.
Note: When trying to decode articles that have names matching
gnus-uu-notify-files, which is hard-coded to
`[Cc][Ii][Nn][Dd][Yy][0-9]+.\\(gif\\|jpg\\)', gnus-uu will
automatically post an article on `comp.unix.wizards' saying that
you have just viewed the file in question. This feature can't be turned
off.
Shell archives ("shar files") used to be a popular way to distribute sources, but it isn't used all that much today. In any case, we have some commands to deal with these:
gnus-uu-decode-unshar).
gnus-uu-decode-unshar-and-save).
gnus-uu-decode-unshar-view).
gnus-uu-decode-unshar-and-save-view).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript-and-save).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript-view).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript-and-save-view).
gnus-uu-decode-save).
gnus-uu-decode-binhex). This
doesn't really work yet.
Adjective, not verb.
Gnus uses rule variables to decide how to view a file. All these variables are of the form
(list '(regexp1 command2)
'(regexp2 command2)
...)
gnus-uu-user-view-rules
sox to convert an `.au' sound file, you could
say something like:
(setq gnus-uu-user-view-rules
(list '(\"\\\\.au$\" \"sox %s -t .aiff > /dev/audio\")))
gnus-uu-user-view-rules-end
gnus-uu-user-archive-rules
gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions
gnus-uu-grab-view
gnus-uu-grab-move
gnus-uu-be-dangerous
nil, be as conservative as possible. If t, ignore things
that didn't work, and overwrite existing files. Otherwise, ask each
time.
gnus-uu-ignore-files-by-name
gnus-uu-ignore-files-by-type
gnus-uu is not a MIME package (yet), so this is slightly
kludgey.
gnus-uu-tmp-dir
gnus-uu does its work.
gnus-uu-do-not-unpack-archives
nil means that gnus-uu won't peek inside archives
looking for files to display.
gnus-uu-view-and-save
nil means that the user will always be asked to save a file
after viewing it.
gnus-uu-ignore-default-view-rules
nil means that gnus-uu will ignore the default viewing
rules.
gnus-uu-ignore-default-archive-rules
nil means that gnus-uu will ignore the default archive
unpacking commands.
gnus-uu-kill-carriage-return
nil means that gnus-uu will strip all carriage returns
from articles.
gnus-uu-unmark-articles-not-decoded
nil means that gnus-uu will mark unsuccessfully
decoded articles as unread.
gnus-uu-correct-stripped-uucode
nil means that gnus-uu will try to fix
uuencoded files that have had trailing spaces deleted.
gnus-uu-pre-uudecode-hook
uudecode.
gnus-uu-view-with-metamail
nil means that gnus-uu will ignore the viewing
commands defined by the rule variables and just fudge a MIME
content type based on the file name. The result will be fed to
metamail for viewing.
gnus-uu-save-in-digest
nil means that gnus-uu, when asked to save without
decoding, will save in digests. If this variable is nil,
gnus-uu will just save everything in a file without any
embellishments. The digesting almost conforms to RFC1153--no easy way
to specify any meaningful volume and issue numbers were found, so I
simply dropped them.
gnus-uu-post-include-before-composing
nil means that gnus-uu will ask for a file to encode
before you compose the article. If this variable is t, you can
either include an encoded file with C-c C-i or have one included
for you when you post the article.
gnus-uu-post-length
gnus-uu-post-threaded
nil means that gnus-uu will post the encoded file in a
thread. This may not be smart, as no other decoder I have seen is able
to follow threads when collecting uuencoded articles. (Well, I have
seen one package that does that---gnus-uu, but somehow, I don't
think that counts...) Default is nil.
gnus-uu-post-separate-description
nil means that the description will be posted in a separate
article. The first article will typically be numbered (0/x). If this
variable is nil, the description the user enters will be included
at the beginning of the first article, which will be numbered (1/x).
Default is t.
After decoding, if the file is some sort of archive, Gnus will attempt to unpack the archive and see if any of the files in the archive can be viewed. For instance, if you have a gzipped tar file `pics.tar.gz' containing the files `pic1.jpg' and `pic2.gif', Gnus will uncompress and de-tar the main file, and then view the two pictures. This unpacking process is recursive, so if the archive contains archives of archives, it'll all be unpacked.
Finally, Gnus will normally insert a pseudo-article for each extracted file into the summary buffer. If you go to these "articles", you will be prompted for a command to run (usually Gnus will make a suggestion), and then the command will be run.
If gnus-view-pseudo-asynchronously is nil, Emacs will wait
until the viewing is done before proceeding.
If gnus-view-pseudos is automatic, Gnus will not insert
the pseudo-articles into the summary buffer, but view them
immediately. If this variable is not-confirm, the user won't even
be asked for a confirmation before viewing is done.
If gnus-view-pseudos-separately is non-nil, one
pseudo-article will be created for each file to be viewed. If
nil, all files that use the same viewing command will be given as
a list of parameters to that command.
If gnus-insert-pseudo-articles is non-nil, insert
pseudo-articles when decoding. It is t by default.
So; there you are, reading your pseudo-articles in your virtual newsgroup from the virtual server; and you think: Why isn't anything real anymore? How did we get here?
Reading through this huge manual, you may have quite forgotten that the object of newsreaders is to actually, like, read what people have written. Reading articles. Unfortunately, people are quite bad at writing, so there are tons of functions and variables to make reading these articles easier.
Not only do you want your article buffer to look like fruit salad, but you want it to look like technicolor fruit salad.
gnus-article-highlight). This function highlights header, cited
text, the signature, and adds buttons to the body and the head.
Most users would prefer using gnus-article-maybe-highlight in
gnus-article-display-hook (see section Customizing Articles) instead.
This is a bit less agressive--it highlights only the headers, the
signature and adds buttons.
gnus-article-highlight-headers). The
highlighting will be done according to the gnus-header-face-alist
variable, which is a list where each element has the form
(regexp name content).
regexp is a regular expression for matching the
header, name is the face used for highlighting the header name
(see section Faces and Fonts) and content is the face for highlighting
the header value. The first match made will be used. Note that
regexp shouldn't have `^' prepended--Gnus will add one.
gnus-article-highlight-citation).
Some variables to customize the citation highlights:
gnus-cite-parse-max-size
gnus-cite-prefix-regexp
gnus-cite-max-prefix
gnus-cite-face-list
gnus-supercite-regexp
gnus-supercite-secondary-regexp
gnus-cite-minimum-match-count
gnus-cite-attribution-prefix
gnus-cite-attribution-suffix
gnus-cite-attribution-face
gnus-article-highlight-signature).
Everything after gnus-signature-separator (see section Article Signature) in an article will be considered a signature and will be
highlighted with gnus-signature-face, which is italic by
default.
See section Customizing Articles, for how to highlight articles automatically.
People commonly add emphasis to words in news articles by writing things
like `_this_' or `*this*'. Gnus can make this look nicer by
running the article through the W e
(gnus-article-emphasize) command.
How the emphasis is computed is controlled by the
gnus-emphasis-alist variable. This is an alist where the first
element is a regular expression to be matched. The second is a number
that says what regular expression grouping is used to find the entire
emphasized word. The third is a number that says what regexp grouping
should be displayed and highlighted. (The text between these two
groupings will be hidden.) The fourth is the face used for
highlighting.
(setq gnus-article-emphasis
'(("_\\(\\w+\\)_" 0 1 gnus-emphasis-underline)
("\\*\\(\\w+\\)\\*" 0 1 gnus-emphasis-bold)))
By default, there are seven rules, and they use the following faces:
gnus-emphasis-bold, gnus-emphasis-italic,
gnus-emphasis-underline, gnus-emphasis-bold-italic,
gnus-emphasis-underline-italic,
gnus-emphasis-underline-bold, and
gnus-emphasis-underline-bold-italic.
If you want to change these faces, you can either use M-x
customize, or you can use copy-face. For instance, if you want
to make gnus-emphasis-italic use a red face instead, you could
say something like:
(copy-face 'red 'gnus-emphasis-italic)
See section Customizing Articles, for how to fontize articles automatically.
Or rather, hiding certain things in each article. There usually is much too much cruft in most articles.
gnus-article-hide-headers). See section Hiding Headers.
gnus-article-hide-boring-headers). See section Hiding Headers.
gnus-article-hide-signature). See section Article Signature.
gnus-article-hide-pgp). The
gnus-article-hide-pgp-hook hook will be run after a PGP
signature has been hidden.
gnus-article-hide-pem).
gnus-article-hide-citation). Some variables for
customizing the hiding:
gnus-cited-opened-text-button-line-format
gnus-cited-closed-text-button-line-format
gnus-cited-lines-visible
gnus-article-hide-citation-maybe) depending on the
following two variables:
gnus-cite-hide-percentage
gnus-cite-hide-absolute
gnus-article-hide-citation-in-followups). This isn't very
useful as an interactive command, but might be a handy function to stick
in gnus-article-display-hook (see section Customizing Articles).
All these "hiding" commands are toggles, but if you give a negative prefix to these commands, they will show what they have previously hidden. If you give a positive prefix, they will always hide.
Also see section Article Highlighting for further variables for citation customization.
See section Customizing Articles, for how to hide article elements automatically.
We call this "article washing" for a really good reason. Namely, the A key was taken, so we had to use the W key instead.
Washing is defined by us as "changing something from something to something else", but normally results in something looking better. Cleaner, perhaps.
gnus-summary-stop-page-breaking). See section Misc Article, for page
delimiters.
gnus-summary-caesar-message).
Unreadable articles that tell you to read them with Caesar rotate or rot13.
(Typically offensive jokes and such.)
It's commonly called "rot13" because each letter is rotated 13
positions in the alphabet, e. g. `B' (letter #2) -> `O' (letter
#15). It is sometimes referred to as "Caesar rotate" because Caesar
is rumored to have employed this form of, uh, somewhat weak encryption.
gnus-summary-toggle-header).
gnus-summary-verbose-header).
gnus-summary-toggle-mime).
gnus-article-treat-overstrike).
gnus-article-treat-dumbquotes).
gnus-article-fill-cited-article). If you use this
function in gnus-article-display-hook, it should be run fairly
late and certainly after any highlighting.
You can give the command a numerical prefix to specify the width to use
when filling.
gnus-article-remove-cr).
gnus-article-de-quoted-unreadable).
Quoted-Printable is one common MIME encoding employed when sending
non-ASCII (i. e., 8-bit) articles. It typically makes strings like
`déjà vu' look like `d=E9j=E0 vu', which doesn't look very
readable to me.
gnus-article-display-x-face). The command executed by this
function is given by the gnus-article-x-face-command variable.
If this variable is a string, this string will be executed in a
sub-shell. If it is a function, this function will be called with the
face as the argument. If the gnus-article-x-face-too-ugly (which
is a regexp) matches the From header, the face will not be shown.
The default action under Emacs is to fork off an xv to view the
face; under XEmacs the default action is to display the face before the
From header. (It's nicer if XEmacs has been compiled with X-Face
support--that will make display somewhat faster. If there's no native
X-Face support, Gnus will try to convert the X-Face header using
external programs from the pbmplus package and friends.) If you
want to have this function in the display hook, it should probably come
last.
gnus-article-add-buttons).
See section Article Buttons.
gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head).
gnus-article-strip-leading-blank-lines).
gnus-article-strip-multiple-blank-lines).
gnus-article-remove-trailing-blank-lines).
gnus-article-strip-blank-lines).
gnus-article-strip-all-blank-lines).
gnus-article-strip-leading-space).
See section Customizing Articles, for how to wash articles automatically.
People often include references to other stuff in articles, and it would be nice if Gnus could just fetch whatever it is that people talk about with the minimum of fuzz when you hit RET or use the middle mouse button on these references.
Gnus adds buttons to certain standard references by default: Well-formed URLs, mail addresses and Message-IDs. This is controlled by two variables, one that handles article bodies and one that handles article heads:
gnus-button-alist
(REGEXP BUTTON-PAR USE-P FUNCTION DATA-PAR)
evaled, and if the result is non-nil,
this is considered a match. This is useful if you want extra sifting to
avoid false matches.
("<URL:\\([^\n\r>]*\\)>" 0 t gnus-button-url 1)
gnus-header-button-alist
(HEADER REGEXP BUTTON-PAR USE-P FUNCTION DATA-PAR)HEADER is a regular expression.
gnus-button-url-regexp
gnus-article-button-face
gnus-article-mouse-face
See section Customizing Articles, for how to buttonize articles automatically.
The date is most likely generated in some obscure timezone you've never heard of, so it's quite nice to be able to find out what the time was when the article was sent.
gnus-article-date-ut).
gnus-article-date-iso8601).
gnus-article-date-local).
gnus-article-date-user). The format is specified by the
gnus-article-time-format variable, and is a string that's passed
to format-time-string. See the documentation of that variable
for a list of possible format specs.
gnus-article-date-lapsed). If you want to have this line
updated continually, you can put
(gnus-start-date-timer)in your `.gnus.el' file, or you can run it off of some hook. If you want to stop the timer, you can use the
gnus-stop-date-timer
command.
gnus-article-date-original). This can
be useful if you normally use some other conversion function and are
worried that it might be doing something totally wrong. Say, claiming
that the article was posted in 1854. Although something like that is
totally impossible. Don't you trust me? *titter*
See section Customizing Articles, for how to display the date in your preferred format automatically.
Each article is divided into two parts--the head and the body. The
body can be divided into a signature part and a text part. The variable
that says what is to be considered a signature is
gnus-signature-separator. This is normally the standard
`^-- $' as mandated by son-of-RFC 1036. However, many people use
non-standard signature separators, so this variable can also be a list
of regular expressions to be tested, one by one. (Searches are done
from the end of the body towards the beginning.) One likely value is:
(setq gnus-signature-separator
'("^-- $" ; The standard
"^-- *$" ; A common mangling
"^-------*$" ; Many people just use a looong
; line of dashes. Shame!
"^ *--------*$" ; Double-shame!
"^________*$" ; Underscores are also popular
"^========*$")) ; Pervert!
The more permissive you are, the more likely it is that you'll get false positives.
gnus-signature-limit provides a limit to what is considered a
signature.
nil, there is no signature in the buffer.
This variable can also be a list where the elements may be of the types listed above. Here's an example:
(setq gnus-signature-limit
'(200.0 "^---*Forwarded article"))
This means that if there are more than 200 lines after the signature separator, or the text after the signature separator is matched by the regular expression `^---*Forwarded article', then it isn't a signature after all.
gnus-summary-print-article). gnus-ps-print-hook will be
run just before printing the buffer.
You can have the summary buffer sorted in various ways, even though I can't really see why you'd want that.
gnus-summary-sort-by-number).
gnus-summary-sort-by-author).
gnus-summary-sort-by-subject).
gnus-summary-sort-by-date).
gnus-summary-sort-by-lines).
gnus-summary-sort-by-score).
These functions will work both when you use threading and when you don't use threading. In the latter case, all summary lines will be sorted, line by line. In the former case, sorting will be done on a root-by-root basis, which might not be what you were looking for. To toggle whether to use threading, type T T (see section Thread Commands).
References in the current article are not mangled, you
can just press ^ or A r
(gnus-summary-refer-parent-article). If everything goes well,
you'll get the parent. If the parent is already displayed in the
summary buffer, point will just move to this article.
If given a positive numerical prefix, fetch that many articles back into
the ancestry. If given a negative numerical prefix, fetch just that
ancestor. So if you say 3 ^, Gnus will fetch the parent, the
grandparent and the grandgrandparent of the current article. If you say
-3 ^, Gnus will only fetch the grandgrandparent of the current
article.
References header of the
article (gnus-summary-refer-references).
gnus-summary-refer-thread). This command has to fetch all the
headers in the current group to work, so it usually takes a while. If
you do it often, you may consider setting gnus-fetch-old-headers
to invisible (see section Filling In Threads). This won't have any
visible effects normally, but it'll make this command work a whole lot
faster. Of course, it'll make group entry somewhat slow.
The gnus-refer-thread-limit variable says how many old (i. e.,
articles before the first displayed in the current group) headers to
fetch when doing this command. The default is 200. If t, all
the available headers will be fetched. This variable can be overridden
by giving the A T command a numerical prefix.
gnus-summary-refer-article) will ask you for a
Message-ID, which is one of those long, hard-to-read thingies
that look something like `<38o6up$6f2@hymir.ifi.uio.no>'. You
have to get it all exactly right. No fuzzy searches, I'm afraid.
The current select method will be used when fetching by
Message-ID from non-news select method, but you can override this
by giving this command a prefix.
If the group you are reading is located on a backend that does not
support fetching by Message-ID very well (like nnspool),
you can set gnus-refer-article-method to an NNTP method. It
would, perhaps, be best if the NNTP server you consult is the one
updating the spool you are reading from, but that's not really
necessary.
Most of the mail backends support fetching by Message-ID, but do
not do a particularly excellent job at it. That is, nnmbox and
nnbabyl are able to locate articles from any groups, while
nnml and nnfolder are only able to locate articles that
have been posted to the current group. (Anything else would be too time
consuming.) nnmh does not support this at all.
Different people like to read news using different methods. This being Gnus, we offer a small selection of minor modes for the summary buffers.
Some newsreaders (like nn and, uhm, Netnews on VM/CMS) use
a two-phased reading interface. The user first marks in a summary
buffer the articles she wants to read. Then she starts reading the
articles with just an article buffer displayed.
Gnus provides a summary buffer minor mode that allows
this---gnus-pick-mode. This basically means that a few process
mark commands become one-keystroke commands to allow easy marking, and
it provides one additional command for switching to the summary buffer.
Here are the available keystrokes when using pick mode:
gnus-pick-article-or-thread). If the variable
gnus-thread-hide-subtree is true, then this key selects the
entire thread when used at the first article of the thread. Otherwise,
it selects just the article. If given a numerical prefix, go to that
thread or article and pick it. (The line number is normally displayed
at the beginning of the summary pick lines.)
gnus-pick-next-page). If
at the end of the buffer, start reading the picked articles.
gnus-pick-unmark-article-or-thread). If the variable
gnus-thread-hide-subtree is true, then this key unpicks the
thread if used at the first article of the thread. Otherwise it unpicks
just the article. You can give this key a numerical prefix to unpick
the thread or article at that line.
gnus-pick-start-reading). If
given a prefix, mark all unpicked articles as read first. If
gnus-pick-display-summary is non-nil, the summary buffer
will still be visible when you are reading.
All the normal summary mode commands are still available in the
pick-mode, with the exception of u. However ! is available
which is mapped to the same function
gnus-summary-tick-article-forward.
If this sounds like a good idea to you, you could say:
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
gnus-pick-mode-hook is run in pick minor mode buffers.
If gnus-mark-unpicked-articles-as-read is non-nil, mark
all unpicked articles as read. The default is nil.
The summary line format in pick mode is slightly different from the
standard format. At the beginning of each line the line number is
displayed. The pick mode line format is controlled by the
gnus-summary-pick-line-format variable (see section Formatting Variables). It accepts the same format specs that
gnus-summary-line-format does (see section Summary Buffer Lines).
If you spend much time in binary groups, you may grow tired of hitting X u, n, RET all the time. M-x gnus-binary-mode is a minor mode for summary buffers that makes all ordinary Gnus article selection functions uudecode series of articles and display the result instead of just displaying the articles the normal way.
The only way, in fact, to see the actual articles is the g
command, when you have turned on this mode
(gnus-binary-show-article).
gnus-binary-mode-hook is called in binary minor mode buffers.
If you don't like the normal Gnus summary display, you might try setting
gnus-use-trees to t. This will create (by default) an
additional tree buffer. You can execute all summary mode commands
in the tree buffer.
There are a few variables to customize the tree display, of course:
gnus-tree-mode-hook
gnus-tree-mode-line-format
gnus-selected-tree-face
modeline.
gnus-tree-line-format
From header.
gnus-tree-brackets
((real-open . real-close)
(sparse-open . sparse-close) (dummy-open . dummy-close)), and the
default is ((?[ . ?]) (?( . ?)) (?{ . ?}) (?< . ?>)).
gnus-tree-parent-child-edges
(?- ?\\ ?|).
gnus-tree-minimize-window
nil, Gnus will try to keep the tree
buffer as small as possible to allow more room for the other Gnus
windows. If this variable is a number, the tree buffer will never be
higher than that number. The default is t. Note that if you
have several windows displayed side-by-side in a frame and the tree
buffer is one of these, minimizing the tree window will also resize all
other windows displayed next to it.
gnus-generate-tree-function
gnus-generate-horizontal-tree and
gnus-generate-vertical-tree (which is the default).
Here's an example from a horizontal tree buffer:
{***}-(***)-[odd]-[Gun]
| \[Jan]
| \[odd]-[Eri]
| \(***)-[Eri]
| \[odd]-[Paa]
\[Bjo]
\[Gun]
\[Gun]-[Jor]
Here's the same thread displayed in a vertical tree buffer:
{***}
|--------------------------\-----\-----\
(***) [Bjo] [Gun] [Gun]
|--\-----\-----\ |
[odd] [Jan] [odd] (***) [Jor]
| | |--\
[Gun] [Eri] [Eri] [odd]
|
[Paa]
If you're using horizontal trees, it might be nice to display the trees side-by-side with the summary buffer. You could add something like the following to your `.gnus.el' file:
(setq gnus-use-trees t
gnus-generate-tree-function 'gnus-generate-horizontal-tree
gnus-tree-minimize-window nil)
(gnus-add-configuration
'(article
(vertical 1.0
(horizontal 0.25
(summary 0.75 point)
(tree 1.0))
(article 1.0))))
See section Windows Configuration.
Some commands only make sense in mail groups. If these commands are invalid in the current group, they will raise a hell and let you know.
All these commands (except the expiry and edit commands) use the process/prefix convention (see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-summary-expire-articles).
gnus-summary-expire-articles-now). This means that all
articles eligible for expiry in the current group will
disappear forever into that big `/dev/null' in the sky.
gnus-summary-delete-article).
gnus-summary-move-article).
gnus-summary-copy-article).
gnus-summary-crosspost-article). This will create a new copy of
the article in the other group, and the Xref headers of the article will
be properly updated.
gnus-summary-import-article). You will be prompted for a file
name, a From header and a Subject header.
gnus-summary-respool-article).
gnus-summary-respool-default-method will be used as the default
select method when respooling. This variable is nil by default,
which means that the current group select method will be used instead.
gnus-summary-edit-article). To finish
editing and make the changes permanent, type C-c C-c
(gnus-summary-edit-article-done). If you give a prefix to the
C-c C-c command, Gnus won't re-highlight the article.
gnus-summary-respool-query).
gnus-summary-respool-trace).
Newsgroups header in them, but not always. This command
(gnus-summary-article-posted-p) will try to fetch the current
article from your news server (or rather, from
gnus-refer-article-method or gnus-select-method) and will
report back whether it found the article or not. Even if it says that
it didn't find the article, it may have been posted anyway--mail
propagation is much faster than news propagation, and the news copy may
just not have arrived yet.
If you move (or copy) articles regularly, you might wish to have Gnus
suggest where to put the articles. gnus-move-split-methods is a
variable that uses the same syntax as gnus-split-methods
(see section Saving Articles). You may customize that variable to create
suggestions you find reasonable.
(setq gnus-move-split-methods
'(("^From:.*Lars Magne" "nnml:junk")
("^Subject:.*gnus" "nnfolder:important")
(".*" "nnml:misc")))
gnus-summary-mode-hook
gnus-summary-generate-hook
gnus-summary-prepare-hook
gnus-summary-ignore-duplicates
Message-ID,
it has to do something drastic. No articles are allowed to have the
same Message-ID, but this may happen when reading mail from some
sources. Gnus allows you to customize what happens with this variable.
If it is nil (which is the default), Gnus will rename the
Message-ID (for display purposes only) and display the article as
any other article. If this variable is t, it won't display the
article--it'll be as if it never existed.
gnus-summary-fetch-faq). Gnus will try to get the
FAQ from gnus-group-faq-directory, which is usually a directory
on a remote machine. This variable can also be a list of directories.
In that case, giving a prefix to this command will allow you to choose
between the various sites. ange-ftp or efs will probably
be used for fetching the file.
gnus-summary-describe-group). If given a prefix, force
rereading the description from the server.
gnus-summary-describe-briefly).
gnus-info-find-node).
gnus-summary-search-article-forward).
gnus-summary-search-article-backward).
gnus-summary-execute-command). If given a prefix, search
backward instead.
gnus-summary-universal-argument).
gnus-summary-prepare).
gnus-summary-insert-cached-articles).
gnus-summary-enter-digest-group). Gnus will try to
guess what article type is currently displayed unless you give a prefix
to this command, which forces a "digest" interpretation. Basically,
whenever you see a message that is a collection of other messages of
some format, you C-d and read these messages in a more convenient
fashion.
gnus-summary-read-document). It does this by opening several
nndoc groups for each document, and then opening an
nnvirtual group on top of these nndoc groups. This
command understands the process/prefix convention
(see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-summary-toggle-truncation). This will probably confuse the
line centering function in the summary buffer, so it's not a good idea
to have truncation switched off while reading articles.
gnus-summary-expand-window).
If given a prefix, force an article window configuration.
gnus-summary-edit-parameters).
Exiting from the summary buffer will normally update all info on the group and return you to the group buffer.
gnus-summary-exit). gnus-summary-prepare-exit-hook is
called before doing much of the exiting, which calls
gnus-summary-expire-articles by default.
gnus-summary-exit-hook is called after finishing the exit
process. gnus-group-no-more-groups-hook is run when returning to
group mode having no more (unread) groups.
gnus-summary-exit-no-update).
gnus-summary-catchup-and-exit).
gnus-summary-catchup-all-and-exit).
gnus-summary-catchup-and-goto-next-group).
gnus-summary-reselect-current-group). If given a prefix, select
all articles, both read and unread.
gnus-summary-rescan-group). If given a prefix, select all
articles, both read and unread.
gnus-summary-next-group).
gnus-summary-prev-group).
gnus-summary-save-newsrc). If
given a prefix, also save the `.newsrc' file(s). Using this
command will make exit without updating (the Q command) worthless.
gnus-exit-group-hook is called when you exit the current
group.
If you're in the habit of exiting groups, and then changing your mind
about it, you might set gnus-kill-summary-on-exit to nil.
If you do that, Gnus won't kill the summary buffer when you exit it.
(Quelle surprise!) Instead it will change the name of the buffer to
something like `*Dead Summary ... *' and install a minor mode
called gnus-dead-summary-mode. Now, if you switch back to this
buffer, you'll find that all keys are mapped to a function called
gnus-summary-wake-up-the-dead. So tapping any keys in a dead
summary buffer will result in a live, normal summary buffer.
There will never be more than one dead summary buffer at any one time.
The data on the current group will be updated (which articles you have
read, which articles you have replied to, etc.) when you exit the
summary buffer. If the gnus-use-cross-reference variable is
t (which is the default), articles that are cross-referenced to
this group and are marked as read, will also be marked as read in the
other subscribed groups they were cross-posted to. If this variable is
neither nil nor t, the article will be marked as read in
both subscribed and unsubscribed groups (see section Crosspost Handling).
Marking cross-posted articles as read ensures that you'll never have to read the same article more than once. Unless, of course, somebody has posted it to several groups separately. Posting the same article to several groups (not cross-posting) is called spamming, and you are by law required to send nasty-grams to anyone who perpetrates such a heinous crime. You may want to try NoCeM handling to filter out spam (see section NoCeM).
Remember: Cross-posting is kinda ok, but posting the same article
separately to several groups is not. Massive cross-posting (aka.
velveeta) is to be avoided at all costs, and you can even use the
gnus-summary-mail-crosspost-complaint command to complain about
excessive crossposting (see section Summary Mail Commands).
One thing that may cause Gnus to not do the cross-posting thing
correctly is if you use an NNTP server that supports XOVER
(which is very nice, because it speeds things up considerably) which
does not include the Xref header in its NOV lines. This is
Evil, but all too common, alas, alack. Gnus tries to Do The Right Thing
even with XOVER by registering the Xref lines of all
articles you actually read, but if you kill the articles, or just mark
them as read without reading them, Gnus will not get a chance to snoop
the Xref lines out of these articles, and will be unable to use
the cross reference mechanism.
To check whether your NNTP server includes the Xref header
in its overview files, try `telnet your.nntp.server nntp',
`MODE READER' on inn servers, and then say `LIST
overview.fmt'. This may not work, but if it does, and the last line you
get does not read `Xref:full', then you should shout and whine at
your news admin until she includes the Xref header in the
overview files.
If you want Gnus to get the Xrefs right all the time, you have to
set gnus-nov-is-evil to t, which slows things down
considerably.
C'est la vie.
For an alternative approach, see section Duplicate Suppression.
By default, Gnus tries to make sure that you don't have to read the same article more than once by utilizing the crossposting mechanism (see section Crosspost Handling). However, that simple and efficient approach may not work satisfactory for some users for various reasons.
Xref header. This
is evil and not very common.
Xref header in the
`.overview' data bases. This is evil and all too common, alas.
I'm sure there are other situations where Xref handling fails as
well, but these four are the most common situations.
If, and only if, Xref handling fails for you, then you may
consider switching on duplicate suppression. If you do so, Gnus
will remember the Message-IDs of all articles you have read or
otherwise marked as read, and then, as if by magic, mark them as read
all subsequent times you see them--in all groups. Using this
mechanism is quite likely to be somewhat inefficient, but not overly
so. It's certainly preferable to reading the same articles more than
once.
Duplicate suppression is not a very subtle instrument. It's more like a sledge hammer than anything else. It works in a very simple fashion--if you have marked an article as read, it adds this Message-ID to a cache. The next time it sees this Message-ID, it will mark the article as read with the `M' mark. It doesn't care what group it saw the article in.
gnus-suppress-duplicates
nil, suppress duplicates.
gnus-save-duplicate-list
nil, save the list of duplicates to a file. This will
make startup and shutdown take longer, so the default is nil.
However, this means that only duplicate articles read in a single Gnus
session are suppressed.
gnus-duplicate-list-length
Message-IDs to keep in the duplicate
suppression list. The default is 10000.
gnus-duplicate-file
If you have a tendency to stop and start Gnus often, setting
gnus-save-duplicate-list to t is probably a good idea. If
you leave Gnus running for weeks on end, you may have it nil. On
the other hand, saving the list makes startup and shutdown much slower,
so that means that if you stop and start Gnus often, you should set
gnus-save-duplicate-list to nil. Uhm. I'll leave this up
to you to figure out, I think.
The articles are displayed in the article buffer, of which there is only one. All the summary buffers share the same article buffer unless you tell Gnus otherwise.
The top section of each article is the head. (The rest is the body, but you may have guessed that already.)
There is a lot of useful information in the head: the name of the person
who wrote the article, the date it was written and the subject of the
article. That's well and nice, but there's also lots of information
most people do not want to see--what systems the article has passed
through before reaching you, the Message-ID, the
References, etc. ad nauseum--and you'll probably want to get rid
of some of those lines. If you want to keep all those lines in the
article buffer, you can set gnus-show-all-headers to t.
Gnus provides you with two variables for sifting headers:
gnus-visible-headers
nil, it should be a regular expression
that says what headers you wish to keep in the article buffer. All
headers that do not match this variable will be hidden.
For instance, if you only want to see the name of the person who wrote
the article and the subject, you'd say:
(setq gnus-visible-headers "^From:\\|^Subject:")This variable can also be a list of regexps to match headers to remain visible.
gnus-ignored-headers
gnus-visible-headers. If this
variable is set (and gnus-visible-headers is nil), it
should be a regular expression that matches all lines that you want to
hide. All lines that do not match this variable will remain visible.
For instance, if you just want to get rid of the References line
and the Xref line, you might say:
(setq gnus-ignored-headers "^References:\\|^Xref:")This variable can also be a list of regexps to match headers to be removed. Note that if
gnus-visible-headers is non-nil, this
variable will have no effect.
Gnus can also sort the headers for you. (It does this by default.) You
can control the sorting by setting the gnus-sorted-header-list
variable. It is a list of regular expressions that says in what order
the headers are to be displayed.
For instance, if you want the name of the author of the article first, and then the subject, you might say something like:
(setq gnus-sorted-header-list '("^From:" "^Subject:"))
Any headers that are to remain visible, but are not listed in this variable, will be displayed in random order after all the headers listed in this variable.
You can hide further boring headers by entering
gnus-article-hide-boring-headers into
gnus-article-display-hook. What this function does depends on
the gnus-boring-article-headers variable. It's a list, but this
list doesn't actually contain header names. Instead is lists various
boring conditions that Gnus can check and remove from sight.
These conditions are:
empty
followup-to
Followup-To header if it is identical to the
Newsgroups header.
reply-to
Reply-To header if it lists the same address as the
From header.
newsgroups
Newsgroups header if it only contains the current group
name.
date
Date header if the article is less than three days
old.
long-to
To header if it is very long.
many-to
To headers if there are more than one.
To include the four three elements, you could say something like;
(setq gnus-boring-article-headers
'(empty followup-to reply-to))
This is also the default value for this variable.
Mime is a standard for waving your hands through the air, aimlessly, while people stand around yawning.
MIME, however, is a standard for encoding your articles, aimlessly, while all newsreaders die of fear.
MIME may specify what character set the article uses, the encoding of the characters, and it also makes it possible to embed pictures and other naughty stuff in innocent-looking articles.
Gnus handles MIME by pushing the articles through
gnus-show-mime-method, which is metamail-buffer by
default. This function calls the external metamail program to
actually do the work. One common problem with this program is that is
thinks that it can't display 8-bit things in the Emacs buffer. To tell
it the truth, put something like the following in your
`.bash_profile' file. (You do use bash, don't you?)
export MM_CHARSET="iso-8859-1"
For more information on metamail, see its manual page.
Set gnus-show-mime to t if you want to use
MIME all the time. However, if gnus-strict-mime is
non-nil, the MIME method will only be used if there are
MIME headers in the article. If you have gnus-show-mime
set, then you'll see some unfortunate display glitches in the article
buffer. These can't be avoided.
It might be best to just use the toggling functions from the summary buffer to avoid getting nasty surprises. (For instance, you enter the group `alt.sing-a-long' and, before you know it, MIME has decoded the sound file in the article and some horrible sing-a-long song comes screaming out your speakers, and you can't find the volume button, because there isn't one, and people are starting to look at you, and you try to stop the program, but you can't, and you can't find the program to control the volume, and everybody else in the room suddenly decides to look at you disdainfully, and you'll feel rather stupid.)
Any similarity to real events and people is purely coincidental. Ahem.
The gnus-article-display-hook is called after the article has
been inserted into the article buffer. It is meant to handle all
treatment of the article before it is displayed.
By default this hook just contains
gnus-article-maybe-hide-headers,
gnus-hide-boring-headers, gnus-article-treat-overstrike,
and gnus-article-maybe-highlight (and under XEmacs,
gnus-article-display-x-face), but there are thousands, nay
millions, of functions you can put in this hook. For an overview of
functions see section Article Highlighting, see section Article Hiding,
see section Article Washing, see section Article Buttons and see section Article Date. Note that the order of functions in this hook might affect
things, so you may have to fiddle a bit to get the desired results.
You can, of course, write your own functions. The functions are called from the article buffer, and you can do anything you like, pretty much. There is no information that you have to keep in the buffer--you can change everything. However, you shouldn't delete any headers. Instead make them invisible if you want to make them go away.
Most of the keystrokes in the summary buffer can also be used in the article buffer. They should behave as if you typed them in the summary buffer, which means that you don't actually have to have a summary buffer displayed while reading. You can do it all from the article buffer.
A few additional keystrokes are available:
gnus-article-next-page).
gnus-article-prev-page).
Message-ID and you press
C-c ^, Gnus will try to get that article from the server
(gnus-article-refer-article).
gnus-article-mail). If
given a prefix, include the mail.
gnus-article-show-summary).
gnus-article-describe-briefly).
gnus-article-next-button). This
only makes sense if you have buttonizing turned on.
gnus-article-prev-button).
gnus-single-article-buffer
nil, use the same article buffer for all the groups.
(This is the default.) If nil, each group will have its own
article buffer.
gnus-article-prepare-hook
gnus-article-display-hook
gnus-article-mode-hook
gnus-article-mode-syntax-table
text-mode-syntax-table.
gnus-article-mode-line-format
gnus-summary-mode-line-format (see section Mode Line Formatting). It
accepts the same format specifications as that variable, with one
extension:
gnus-break-pages
nil, the articles will be divided into pages whenever a
page delimiter appears in the article. If this variable is nil,
paging will not be done.
gnus-page-delimiter
All commands for posting and mailing will put you in a message buffer where you can edit the article all you like, before you send the article by pressing C-c C-c. See section `Top' in The Message Manual. If you are in a foreign news group, and you wish to post the article using the foreign server, you can give a prefix to C-c C-c to make Gnus try to post using the foreign server.
Also see see section Canceling Articles for information on how to remove articles you shouldn't have posted.
Variables for customizing outgoing mail:
gnus-uu-digest-headers
gnus-add-to-list
nil, add a to-list group parameter to mail groups
that have none when you do a a.
Variables for composing news articles:
gnus-sent-message-ids-file
Message-ID history file of all the mails it has
sent. If it discovers that it has already sent a mail, it will ask the
user whether to re-send the mail. (This is primarily useful when
dealing with SOUP packets and the like where one is apt to send the
same packet multiple times.) This variable says what the name of this
history file is. It is `~/News/Sent-Message-IDs' by default. Set
this variable to nil if you don't want Gnus to keep a history
file.
gnus-sent-message-ids-length
Message-IDs to keep in the history
file. It is 1000 by default.
When you press those magical C-c C-c keys to ship off your latest (extremely intelligent, of course) article, where does it go?
Thank you for asking. I hate you.
It can be quite complicated. Normally, Gnus will use the same native
server. However. If your native server doesn't allow posting, just
reading, you probably want to use some other server to post your
(extremely intelligent and fabulously interesting) articles. You can
then set the gnus-post-method to some other method:
(setq gnus-post-method '(nnspool ""))
Now, if you've done this, and then this server rejects your article, or this server is down, what do you do then? To override this variable you can use a non-zero prefix to the C-c C-c command to force using the "current" server for posting.
If you give a zero prefix (i.e., C-u 0 C-c C-c) to that command, Gnus will prompt you for what method to use for posting.
You can also set gnus-post-method to a list of select methods.
If that's the case, Gnus will always prompt you for what method to use
for posting.
Finally, if you want to always post using the same select method as
you're reading from (which might be convenient if you're reading lots of
groups from different private servers), you can set this variable to
current.
Here's a list of variables relevant to both mailing and posting:
gnus-mailing-list-groups
to-address to the group parameters
(see section Group Parameters). An easier thing to do is set the
gnus-mailing-list-groups to a regexp that matches the groups that
really are mailing lists. Then, at least, followups to the mailing
lists will work most of the time. Posting to these groups (a) is
still a pain, though.
You may want to do spell-checking on messages that you send out. Or, if
you don't want to spell-check by hand, you could add automatic
spell-checking via the ispell package:
(add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)
Gnus provides a few different methods for storing the mail and news you
send. The default method is to use the archive virtual server to
store the messages. If you want to disable this completely, the
gnus-message-archive-group variable should be nil, which
is the default.
gnus-message-archive-method says what virtual server Gnus is to
use to store sent messages. The default is:
(nnfolder "archive"
(nnfolder-directory "~/Mail/archive")
(nnfolder-active-file "~/Mail/archive/active")
(nnfolder-get-new-mail nil)
(nnfolder-inhibit-expiry t))
You can, however, use any mail select method (nnml,
nnmbox, etc.). nnfolder is a quite likeable select method
for doing this sort of thing, though. If you don't like the default
directory chosen, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-message-archive-method
'(nnfolder "archive"
(nnfolder-inhibit-expiry t)
(nnfolder-active-file "~/News/sent-mail/active")
(nnfolder-directory "~/News/sent-mail/")))
Gnus will insert Gcc headers in all outgoing messages that point
to one or more group(s) on that server. Which group to use is
determined by the gnus-message-archive-group variable.
This variable can be used to do the following:
nil
No message archiving will take place. This is the default.
Let's illustrate:
Just saving to a single group called `MisK':
(setq gnus-message-archive-group "MisK")
Saving to two groups, `MisK' and `safe':
(setq gnus-message-archive-group '("MisK" "safe"))
Save to different groups based on what group you are in:
(setq gnus-message-archive-group
'(("^alt" "sent-to-alt")
("mail" "sent-to-mail")
(".*" "sent-to-misc")))
More complex stuff:
(setq gnus-message-archive-group
'((if (message-news-p)
"misc-news"
"misc-mail")))
How about storing all news messages in one file, but storing all mail messages in one file per month:
(setq gnus-message-archive-group
'((if (message-news-p)
"misc-news"
(concat "mail." (format-time-string
"%Y-%m" (current-time))))))
(XEmacs 19.13 doesn't have format-time-string, so you'll have to
use a different value for gnus-message-archive-group there.)
Now, when you send a message off, it will be stored in the appropriate
group. (If you want to disable storing for just one particular message,
you can just remove the Gcc header that has been inserted.) The
archive group will appear in the group buffer the next time you start
Gnus, or the next time you press F in the group buffer. You can
enter it and read the articles in it just like you'd read any other
group. If the group gets really big and annoying, you can simply rename
if (using G r in the group buffer) to something
nice---`misc-mail-september-1995', or whatever. New messages will
continue to be stored in the old (now empty) group.
That's the default method of archiving sent messages. Gnus offers a
different way for the people who don't like the default method. In that
case you should set gnus-message-archive-group to nil;
this will disable archiving.
gnus-outgoing-message-group
gnus-message-archive-group,
but the latter is the preferred method.
All them variables, they make my head swim.
So what if you want a different Organization and signature based
on what groups you post to? And you post both from your home machine
and your work machine, and you want different From lines, and so
on?
One way to do stuff like that is to write clever hooks that change the
variables you need to have changed. That's a bit boring, so somebody
came up with the bright idea of letting the user specify these things in
a handy alist. Here's an example of a gnus-posting-styles
variable:
((".*"
(signature "Peace and happiness")
(organization "What me?"))
("^comp"
(signature "Death to everybody"))
("comp.emacs.i-love-it"
(organization "Emacs is it")))
As you might surmise from this example, this alist consists of several
styles. Each style will be applicable if the first element
"matches", in some form or other. The entire alist will be iterated
over, from the beginning towards the end, and each match will be
applied, which means that attributes in later styles that match override
the same attributes in earlier matching styles. So
`comp.programming.literate' will have the `Death to everybody'
signature and the `What me?' Organization header.
The first element in each style is called the match. If it's a
string, then Gnus will try to regexp match it against the group name.
If it's a function symbol, that function will be called with no
arguments. If it's a variable symbol, then the variable will be
referenced. If it's a list, then that list will be evaled. In
any case, if this returns a non-nil value, then the style is said
to match.
Each style may contain a arbitrary amount of attributes. Each
attribute consists of a (name . value) pair. The
attribute name can be one of 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.
The attribute value can be a string (used verbatim), a function (the
return value will be used), a variable (its value will be used) or a
list (it will be evaled and the return value will be used).
If you wish to check whether the message you are about to compose is
meant to be a news article or a mail message, you can check the values
of the two dynamically bound variables message-this-is-news and
message-this-is-mail.
So here's a new example:
(setq gnus-posting-styles
'((".*"
(signature-file "~/.signature")
(name "User Name")
("X-Home-Page" (getenv "WWW_HOME"))
(organization "People's Front Against MWM"))
("^rec.humor"
(signature my-funny-signature-randomizer))
((equal (system-name) "gnarly")
(signature my-quote-randomizer))
(message-this-is-news
(signature my-news-signature))
(posting-from-work-p
(signature-file "~/.work-signature")
(address "user@bar.foo")
(body "You are fired.\n\nSincerely, your boss.")
(organization "Important Work, Inc"))
("^nn.+:"
(signature-file "~/.mail-signature"))))
If you are writing a message (mail or news) and suddenly remember that you have a steak in the oven (or some pesto in the food processor, you craaazy vegetarians), you'll probably wish there was a method to save the message you are writing so that you can continue editing it some other day, and send it when you feel its finished.
Well, don't worry about it. Whenever you start composing a message of some sort using the Gnus mail and post commands, the buffer you get will automatically associate to an article in a special draft group. If you save the buffer the normal way (C-x C-s, for instance), the article will be saved there. (Auto-save files also go to the draft group.)
The draft group is a special group (which is implemented as an
nndraft group, if you absolutely have to know) called
`nndraft:drafts'. The variable nndraft-directory says where
nndraft is to store its files. What makes this group special is
that you can't tick any articles in it or mark any articles as
read--all articles in the group are permanently unread.
If the group doesn't exist, it will be created and you'll be subscribed to it. The only way to make it disappear from the Group buffer is to unsubscribe it.
When you want to continue editing the article, you simply enter the
draft group and push D e (gnus-draft-edit-message) to do
that. You will be placed in a buffer where you left off.
Rejected articles will also be put in this draft group (see section Rejected Articles).
If you have lots of rejected messages you want to post (or mail) without
doing further editing, you can use the D s command
(gnus-draft-send-message). This command understands the
process/prefix convention (see section Process/Prefix). The D S
command (gnus-draft-send-all-messages) will ship off all messages
in the buffer.
If you have some messages that you wish not to send, you can use the
D t (gnus-draft-toggle-sending) command to mark the message
as unsendable. This is a toggling command.
Sometimes a news server will reject an article. Perhaps the server doesn't like your face. Perhaps it just feels miserable. Perhaps there be demons. Perhaps you have included too much cited text. Perhaps the disk is full. Perhaps the server is down.
These situations are, of course, totally beyond the control of Gnus. (Gnus, of course, loves the way you look, always feels great, has angels fluttering around inside of it, doesn't care about how much cited text you include, never runs full and never goes down.) So Gnus saves these articles until some later time when the server feels better.
The rejected articles will automatically be put in a special draft group (see section Drafts). When the server comes back up again, you'd then typically enter that group and send all the articles off.
A foreign group is a group not read by the usual (or default) means. It could be, for instance, a group from a different NNTP server, it could be a virtual group, or it could be your own personal mail group.
A foreign group (or any group, really) is specified by a name and
a select method. To take the latter first, a select method is a
list where the first element says what backend to use (e.g. nntp,
nnspool, nnml) and the second element is the server
name. There may be additional elements in the select method, where the
value may have special meaning for the backend in question.
One could say that a select method defines a virtual server---so we do just that (see section The Server Buffer).
The name of the group is the name the backend will recognize the group as.
For instance, the group `soc.motss' on the NNTP server
`some.where.edu' will have the name `soc.motss' and select
method (nntp "some.where.edu"). Gnus will call this group
`nntp+some.where.edu:soc.motss', even though the nntp
backend just knows this group as `soc.motss'.
The different methods all have their peculiarities, of course.
Traditionally, a server is a machine or a piece of software that one connects to, and then requests information from. Gnus does not connect directly to any real servers, but does all transactions through one backend or other. But that's just putting one layer more between the actual media and Gnus, so we might just as well say that each backend represents a virtual server.
For instance, the nntp backend may be used to connect to several
different actual NNTP servers, or, perhaps, to many different ports
on the same actual NNTP server. You tell Gnus which backend to
use, and what parameters to set by specifying a select method.
These select method specifications can sometimes become quite complicated--say, for instance, that you want to read from the NNTP server `news.funet.fi' on port number 13, which hangs if queried for NOV headers and has a buggy select. Ahem. Anyways, if you had to specify that for each group that used this server, that would be too much work, so Gnus offers a way of naming select methods, which is what you do in the server buffer.
To enter the server buffer, use the ^
(gnus-group-enter-server-mode) command in the group buffer.
gnus-server-mode-hook is run when creating the server buffer.
You can change the look of the server buffer lines by changing the
gnus-server-line-format variable. This is a format-like
variable, with some simple extensions:
The mode line can also be customized by using the
gnus-server-mode-line-format variable (see section Mode Line Formatting). The following specs are understood:
Also see section Formatting Variables.
gnus-server-add-server).
gnus-server-edit-server).
gnus-server-read-server).
gnus-server-exit).
gnus-server-kill-server).
gnus-server-yank-server).
gnus-server-copy-server).
gnus-server-list-servers).
gnus-server-scan-server). This is mainly sensible with mail
servers.
gnus-server-regenerate-server). This can be useful if you have
a mail backend that has gotten out of synch.
Most select methods are pretty simple and self-explanatory:
(nntp "news.funet.fi")
Reading directly from the spool is even simpler:
(nnspool "")
As you can see, the first element in a select method is the name of the backend, and the second is the address, or name, if you will.
After these two elements, there may be an arbitrary number of
(variable form) pairs.
To go back to the first example--imagine that you want to read from port 15 on that machine. This is what the select method should look like then:
(nntp "news.funet.fi" (nntp-port-number 15))
You should read the documentation to each backend to find out what
variables are relevant, but here's an nnmh example:
nnmh is a mail backend that reads a spool-like structure. Say
you have two structures that you wish to access: One is your private
mail spool, and the other is a public one. Here's the possible spec for
your private mail:
(nnmh "private" (nnmh-directory "~/private/mail/"))
(This server is then called `private', but you may have guessed that.)
Here's the method for a public spool:
(nnmh "public"
(nnmh-directory "/usr/information/spool/")
(nnmh-get-new-mail nil))
If you are behind a firewall and only have access to the NNTP
server from the firewall machine, you can instruct Gnus to rlogin
on the firewall machine and telnet from there to the NNTP server.
Doing this can be rather fiddly, but your virtual server definition
should probably look something like this:
(nntp "firewall"
(nntp-address "the.firewall.machine")
(nntp-open-connection-function nntp-open-rlogin)
(nntp-end-of-line "\n")
(nntp-rlogin-parameters
("telnet" "the.real.nntp.host" "nntp")))
If you want to use the wonderful ssh program to provide a
compressed connection over the modem line, you could create a virtual
server that would look something like this:
(nntp "news"
(nntp-address "copper.uio.no")
(nntp-rlogin-program "ssh")
(nntp-open-connection-function nntp-open-rlogin)
(nntp-end-of-line "\n")
(nntp-rlogin-parameters
("telnet" "news.uio.no" "nntp")))
This means that you have to have set up ssh-agent correctly to
provide automatic authorization, of course. And to get a compressed
connection, you have to have the `Compression' option in the
ssh `config' file.
If you're saving lots of articles in the cache by using persistent articles, you may want to create a virtual server to read the cache.
First you need to add a new server. The a command does that. It
would probably be best to use nnspool to read the cache. You
could also use nnml or nnmh, though.
Type a nnspool RET cache RET.
You should now have a brand new nnspool virtual server called
`cache'. You now need to edit it to have the right definitions.
Type e to edit the server. You'll be entered into a buffer that
will contain the following:
(nnspool "cache")
Change that to:
(nnspool "cache"
(nnspool-spool-directory "~/News/cache/")
(nnspool-nov-directory "~/News/cache/")
(nnspool-active-file "~/News/cache/active"))
Type C-c C-c to return to the server buffer. If you now press RET over this virtual server, you should be entered into a browse buffer, and you should be able to enter any of the groups displayed.
One sticky point when defining variables (both on backends and in Emacs in general) is that some variables are typically initialized from other variables when the definition of the variables is being loaded. If you change the "base" variable after the variables have been loaded, you won't change the "derived" variables.
This typically affects directory and file variables. For instance,
nnml-directory is `~/Mail/' by default, and all nnml
directory variables are initialized from that variable, so
nnml-active-file will be `~/Mail/active'. If you define a
new virtual nnml server, it will not suffice to set just
nnml-directory---you have to explicitly set all the file
variables to be what you want them to be. For a complete list of
variables for each backend, see each backend's section later in this
manual, but here's an example nnml definition:
(nnml "public"
(nnml-directory "~/my-mail/")
(nnml-active-file "~/my-mail/active")
(nnml-newsgroups-file "~/my-mail/newsgroups"))
Wherever you would normally use a select method
(e.g. gnus-secondary-select-method, in the group select method,
when browsing a foreign server) you can use a virtual server name
instead. This could potentially save lots of typing. And it's nice all
over.
If a server seems to be unreachable, Gnus will mark that server as
denied. That means that any subsequent attempt to make contact
with that server will just be ignored. "It can't be opened," Gnus
will tell you, without making the least effort to see whether that is
actually the case or not.
That might seem quite naughty, but it does make sense most of the time. Let's say you have 10 groups subscribed to on server `nephelococcygia.com'. This server is located somewhere quite far away from you and the machine is quite slow, so it takes 1 minute just to find out that it refuses connection to you today. If Gnus were to attempt to do that 10 times, you'd be quite annoyed, so Gnus won't attempt to do that. Once it has gotten a single "connection refused", it will regard that server as "down".
So, what happens if the machine was only feeling unwell temporarily? How do you test to see whether the machine has come up again?
You jump to the server buffer (see section The Server Buffer) and poke it with the following commands:
gnus-server-open-server).
gnus-server-close-server).
gnus-server-deny-server).
gnus-server-open-all-servers).
gnus-server-close-all-servers).
gnus-server-remove-denials).
A newsreader is normally used for reading news. Gnus currently provides only two methods of getting news--it can read from an NNTP server, or it can read from a local spool.
Subscribing to a foreign group from an NNTP server is rather easy.
You just specify nntp as method and the address of the NNTP
server as the, uhm, address.
If the NNTP server is located at a non-standard port, setting the third element of the select method to this port number should allow you to connect to the right port. You'll have to edit the group info for that (see section Foreign Groups).
The name of the foreign group can be the same as a native group. In fact, you can subscribe to the same group from as many different servers you feel like. There will be no name collisions.
The following variables can be used to create a virtual nntp
server:
nntp-server-opened-hook
MODE READER to the server with the
nntp-send-mode-reader function. This function should always be
present in this hook.
nntp-authinfo-function
nntp-send-authinfo, which looks
through your `~/.authinfo' (or whatever you've set the
nntp-authinfo-file variable to) for applicable entries. If none
are found, it will prompt you for a login name and a password. The
format of the `~/.authinfo' file is (almost) the same as the
ftp `~/.netrc' file, which is defined in the ftp
manual page, but here are the salient facts:
ftp token, which is the only way the
`.authinfo' file format deviates from the `.netrc' file
format.)
machine news.uio.no login larsi password geheimnis machine nntp.ifi.uio.no login larsi force yesThe token/value pairs may appear in any order; `machine' doesn't have to be first, for instance. In this example, both login name and password have been supplied for the former server, while the latter has only the login name listed, and the user will be prompted for the password. The latter also has the `force' tag, which means that the authinfo will be sent to the nntp server upon connection; the default (i.e., when there is not `force' tag) is to not send authinfo to the nntp server until the nntp server asks for it. You can also add `default' lines that will apply to all servers that don't have matching `machine' lines.
default force yesThis will force sending `AUTHINFO' commands to all servers not previously mentioned. Remember to not leave the `~/.authinfo' file world-readable.
nntp-server-action-alist
(setq nntp-server-action-alist
'(("innd" (ding))))
You probably don't want to do that, though.
The default value is
'(("nntpd 1\\.5\\.11t"
(remove-hook 'nntp-server-opened-hook 'nntp-send-mode-reader)))
This ensures that Gnus doesn't send the MODE READER command to
nntpd 1.5.11t, since that command chokes that server, I've been told.
nntp-maximum-request
head commands. To
speed things up, the backend sends lots of these commands without
waiting for reply, and then reads all the replies. This is controlled
by the nntp-maximum-request variable, and is 400 by default. If
your network is buggy, you should set this to 1.
nntp-connection-timeout
nntp groups that you connect to
regularly, you're sure to have problems with NNTP servers not
responding properly, or being too loaded to reply within reasonable
time. This is can lead to awkward problems, which can be helped
somewhat by setting nntp-connection-timeout. This is an integer
that says how many seconds the nntp backend should wait for a
connection before giving up. If it is nil, which is the default,
no timeouts are done.
nntp-server-hook
nntp-open-connection-function
nntp-open-network-stream
nntp-open-rlogin
nntp-open-rlogin-related variables:
nntp-rlogin-program
nntp-rlogin-parameters
rsh.
nntp-rlogin-user-name
nntp-open-telnet
nntp-open-telnet-related variables:
nntp-telnet-command
telnet.
nntp-telnet-switches
telnet command.
nntp-telnet-user-name
nntp-telnet-passwd
nntp-telnet-parameters
telnet.
nntp-telnet-shell-prompt
nntp-open-telnet-envuser
nil, the telnet session (client and server both)
will support the ENVIRON option and not prompt for login name.
This works for Solaris telnet, for instance.
nntp-open-ssl-stream
;; Type `C-c C-c' after you've finished editing.
;;
;; "snews" is port 563 and is predefined in our /etc/services
;;
(nntp "snews.bar.com"
(nntp-open-connection-function nntp-open-ssl-stream)
(nntp-port-number "snews")
(nntp-address "snews.bar.com"))
nntp-end-of-line
rlogin to talk to the server.
nntp-rlogin-user-name
rlogin connect
function.
nntp-address
nntp-port-number
nntp-open-network-stream
connect function.
nntp-buggy-select
nil if your select routine is buggy.
nntp-nov-is-evil
t, but nntp usually checks automatically whether NOV
can be used.
nntp-xover-commands
("XOVER"
"XOVERVIEW").
nntp-nov-gap
nntp normally sends just one big request for NOV lines to
the server. The server responds with one huge list of lines. However,
if you have read articles 2-5000 in the group, and only want to read
article 1 and 5001, that means that nntp will fetch 4999 NOV
lines that you will not need. This variable says how
big a gap between two consecutive articles is allowed to be before the
XOVER request is split into several request. Note that if your
network is fast, setting this variable to a really small number means
that fetching will probably be slower. If this variable is nil,
nntp will never split requests. The default is 5.
nntp-prepare-server-hook
nntp-warn-about-losing-connection
nil, some noise will be made when a
server closes connection.
nntp-record-commands
nil, nntp will log all commands it sends to the
NNTP server (along with a timestep) in the `*nntp-log*'
buffer. This is useful if you are debugging a Gnus/NNTP connection
that doesn't seem to work.
Subscribing to a foreign group from the local spool is extremely easy, and might be useful, for instance, to speed up reading groups that contain very big articles---`alt.binaries.pictures.furniture', for instance.
Anyways, you just specify nnspool as the method and "" (or
anything else) as the address.
If you have access to a local spool, you should probably use that as the
native select method (see section Finding the News). It is normally faster
than using an nntp select method, but might not be. It depends.
You just have to try to find out what's best at your site.
nnspool-inews-program
nnspool-inews-switches
nnspool-spool-directory
nnspool looks for the articles. This is normally
`/usr/spool/news/'.
nnspool-nov-directory
nnspool will look for NOV files. This is normally
`/usr/spool/news/over.view/'.
nnspool-lib-dir
nnspool-active-file
nnspool-newsgroups-file
nnspool-history-file
nnspool-active-times-file
nnspool-nov-is-evil
nil, nnspool won't try to use any NOV files
that it finds.
nnspool-sift-nov-with-sed
nil, which is the default, use sed to get the
relevant portion from the overview file. If nil, nnspool will
load the entire file into a buffer and process it there.
Reading mail with a newsreader--isn't that just plain WeIrD? But of course.
It's quite easy to use Gnus to read your new mail. You just plonk the
mail backend of your choice into gnus-secondary-select-methods,
and things will happen automatically.
For instance, if you want to use nnml (which is a "one file per
mail" backend), you could put the following in your `.gnus' file:
(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
'((nnml "private")))
Now, the next time you start Gnus, this backend will be queried for new
articles, and it will move all the messages in your spool file to its
directory, which is ~/Mail/ by default. The new group that will
be created (`mail.misc') will be subscribed, and you can read it
like any other group.
You will probably want to split the mail into several groups, though:
(setq nnmail-split-methods
'(("junk" "^From:.*Lars Ingebrigtsen")
("crazy" "^Subject:.*die\\|^Organization:.*flabby")
("other" "")))
This will result in three new nnml mail groups being created:
`nnml:junk', `nnml:crazy', and `nnml:other'. All the
mail that doesn't fit into the first two groups will be placed in the
last group.
This should be sufficient for reading mail with Gnus. You might want to give the other sections in this part of the manual a perusal, though. Especially see section Choosing a Mail Backend and see section Expiring Mail.
The nnmail-split-methods variable says how the incoming mail is
to be split into groups.
(setq nnmail-split-methods
'(("mail.junk" "^From:.*Lars Ingebrigtsen")
("mail.crazy" "^Subject:.*die\\|^Organization:.*flabby")
("mail.other" "")))
This variable is a list of lists, where the first element of each of
these lists is the name of the mail group (they do not have to be called
something beginning with `mail', by the way), and the second
element is a regular expression used on the header of each mail to
determine if it belongs in this mail group. The first string may
contain `\\1' forms, like the ones used by replace-match to
insert sub-expressions from the matched text. For instance:
("list.\\1" "From:.*\\(.*\\)-list@majordomo.com")
The second element can also be a function. In that case, it will be
called narrowed to the headers with the first element of the rule as the
argument. It should return a non-nil value if it thinks that the
mail belongs in that group.
The last of these groups should always be a general one, and the regular expression should always be `' so that it matches any mails that haven't been matched by any of the other regexps. (These rules are processed from the beginning of the alist toward the end. The first rule to make a match will "win", unless you have crossposting enabled. In that case, all matching rules will "win".)
If you like to tinker with this yourself, you can set this variable to a function of your choice. This function will be called without any arguments in a buffer narrowed to the headers of an incoming mail message. The function should return a list of group names that it thinks should carry this mail message.
Note that the mail backends are free to maul the poor, innocent,
incoming headers all they want to. They all add Lines headers;
some add X-Gnus-Group headers; most rename the Unix mbox
From<SPACE> line to something else.
The mail backends all support cross-posting. If several regexps match,
the mail will be "cross-posted" to all those groups.
nnmail-crosspost says whether to use this mechanism or not. Note
that no articles are crossposted to the general (`') group.
nnmh and nnml makes crossposts by creating hard links to
the crossposted articles. However, not all file systems support hard
links. If that's the case for you, set
nnmail-crosspost-link-function to copy-file. (This
variable is add-name-to-file by default.)
If you wish to see where the previous mail split put the messages, you can use the M-x nnmail-split-history command.
Gnus gives you all the opportunity you could possibly want for shooting yourself in the foot. Let's say you create a group that will contain all the mail you get from your boss. And then you accidentally unsubscribe from the group. Gnus will still put all the mail from your boss in the unsubscribed group, and so, when your boss mails you "Have that report ready by Monday or you're fired!", you'll never see it and, come Tuesday, you'll still believe that you're gainfully employed while you really should be out collecting empty bottles to save up for next month's rent money.
These variables are (for the most part) pertinent to all the various mail backends.
nnmail-read-incoming-hook
nnmail-spool-file
nil, the mail backends will never attempt to fetch mail by
themselves. If you are using a POP mail server and your name is
`larsi', you should set this variable to `po:larsi'. If
your name is not `larsi', you should probably modify that
slightly, but you may have guessed that already, you smart & handsome
devil! You can also set this variable to pop, and Gnus will try
to figure out the POP mail string by itself. In any case, Gnus will
call movemail which will contact the POP server named in the
MAILHOST environment variable. If the POP server needs a
password, you can either set nnmail-pop-password-required to
t and be prompted for the password, or set
nnmail-pop-password to the password itself.
nnmail-spool-file can also be a list of mailboxes.
Your Emacs has to have been configured with `--with-pop' before
compilation. This is the default, but some installations have it
switched off.
When you use a mail backend, Gnus will slurp all your mail from your
inbox and plonk it down in your home directory. Gnus doesn't move any
mail if you're not using a mail backend--you have to do a lot of magic
invocations first. At the time when you have finished drawing the
pentagram, lightened the candles, and sacrificed the goat, you really
shouldn't be too surprised when Gnus moves your mail.
nnmail-use-procmail
nil, the mail backends will look in
nnmail-procmail-directory for incoming mail. All the files in
that directory that have names ending in nnmail-procmail-suffix
will be considered incoming mailboxes, and will be searched for new
mail.
nnmail-crash-box
nnmail-prepare-incoming-hook
nnmail-split-hook
gnus-article-decode-rfc1522
is one likely function to add to this hook.
nnmail-pre-get-new-mail-hook
nnmail-post-get-new-mail-hook
nnmail-pre-get-new-mail-hook (is called just before
starting to handle the new mail) and
nnmail-post-get-new-mail-hook (is called when the mail handling
is done). Here's and example of using these two hooks to change the
default file modes the new mail files get:
(add-hook 'gnus-pre-get-new-mail-hook
(lambda () (set-default-file-modes 511)))
(add-hook 'gnus-post-get-new-mail-hook
(lambda () (set-default-file-modes 551)))
nnmail-tmp-directory
nil,
it will be used instead.
nnmail-movemail-program
nnmail-delete-incoming
nil, the mail backends will delete the temporary incoming
file after splitting mail into the proper groups. This is t by
default.
(No Gnus release since (ding) Gnus 0.10 (or something like that) have
lost mail, I think, but that's not the point. (Except certain versions
of Red Gnus.)) By not deleting the Incoming* files, one can be sure not
to lose mail -- if Gnus totally whacks out, one can always recover what
was lost.
You may delete the `Incoming*' files at will.
nnmail-use-long-file-names
nil, the mail backends will use long file and directory
names. Groups like `mail.misc' will end up in directories
(assuming use of nnml backend) or files (assuming use of
nnfolder backend) like `mail.misc'. If it is nil,
the same group will end up in `mail/misc'.
nnmail-delete-file-function
delete-file by default.
nnmail-cache-accepted-message-ids
nil, put the Message-IDs of articles imported into
the backend (via Gcc, for instance) into the mail duplication
discovery cache. The default is nil.
If the rather simple, standard method for specifying how to split mail
doesn't allow you to do what you want, you can set
nnmail-split-methods to nnmail-split-fancy. Then you can
play with the nnmail-split-fancy variable.
Let's look at an example value of this variable first:
;; Messages from the mailer daemon are not crossposted to any of
;; the ordinary groups. Warnings are put in a separate group
;; from real errors.
(| ("from" mail (| ("subject" "warn.*" "mail.warning")
"mail.misc"))
;; Non-error messages are crossposted to all relevant
;; groups, but we don't crosspost between the group for the
;; (ding) list and the group for other (ding) related mail.
(& (| (any "ding@ifi\\.uio\\.no" "ding.list")
("subject" "ding" "ding.misc"))
;; Other mailing lists...
(any "procmail@informatik\\.rwth-aachen\\.de" "procmail.list")
(any "SmartList@informatik\\.rwth-aachen\\.de" "SmartList.list")
;; People...
(any "larsi@ifi\\.uio\\.no" "people.Lars_Magne_Ingebrigtsen"))
;; Unmatched mail goes to the catch all group.
"misc.misc")
This variable has the format of a split. A split is a (possibly) recursive structure where each split may contain other splits. Here are the five possible split syntaxes:
(field value split): If the split is a list,
the first element of which is a string, then store the message as
specified by split, if header field (a regexp) contains
value (also a regexp).
(|split...): If the split is a list, and the first element is
| (vertical bar), then process each split until one of them
matches. A split is said to match if it will cause the mail message to
be stored in one or more groups.
(&split...): If the split is a list, and the first element is
&, then process all splits in the list.
junk: If the split is the symbol junk, then don't save
this message. Use with extreme caution.
(: function arg1 arg2 ...): If the split is
a list, and the first element is :, then the second element will
be called as a function with args given as arguments. The
function should return a split.
nil: If the split is nil, it is ignored.
In these splits, field must match a complete field name.
value must match a complete word according to the fundamental mode
syntax table. You can use .* in the regexps to match partial
field names or words. In other words, all value's are wrapped in
`\<' and `\>' pairs.
field and value can also be lisp symbols, in that case they
are expanded as specified by the variable
nnmail-split-abbrev-alist. This is an alist of cons cells, where
the car of a cell contains the key, and the cdr contains the associated
value.
nnmail-split-fancy-syntax-table is the syntax table in effect
when all this splitting is performed.
If you want to have Gnus create groups dynamically based on some
information in the headers (i.e., do replace-match-like
substitutions in the group names), you can say things like:
(any "debian-\\b\\(\\w+\\)@lists.debian.org" "mail.debian.\\1")
If the string contains the element `\&', then the previously matched string will be substituted. Similarly, the elements `\\1' up to `\\9' will be substituted with the text matched by the groupings 1 through 9.
Many people use procmail (or some other mail filter program or
external delivery agent---slocal, elm, etc) to split
incoming mail into groups. If you do that, you should set
nnmail-spool-file to procmail to ensure that the mail
backends never ever try to fetch mail by themselves.
If you have a combined procmail/POP/mailbox setup, you can do
something like the following:
(setq nnmail-use-procmail t)
(setq nnmail-spool-file
'("/usr/spool/mail/my-name" "po:my-name"))
This also means that you probably don't want to set
nnmail-split-methods either, which has some, perhaps, unexpected
side effects.
When a mail backend is queried for what groups it carries, it replies
with the contents of that variable, along with any groups it has figured
out that it carries by other means. None of the backends, except
nnmh, actually go out to the disk and check what groups actually
exist. (It's not trivial to distinguish between what the user thinks is
a basis for a newsgroup and what is just a plain old file or directory.)
This means that you have to tell Gnus (and the backends) by hand what groups exist.
Let's take the nnmh backend as an example:
The folders are located in nnmh-directory, say, `~/Mail/'.
There are three folders, `foo', `bar' and `mail.baz'.
Go to the group buffer and type G m. When prompted, answer `foo' for the name and `nnmh' for the method. Repeat twice for the two other groups, `bar' and `mail.baz'. Be sure to include all your mail groups.
That's it. You are now set to read your mail. An active file for this method will be created automatically.
If you use nnfolder or any other backend that store more than a
single article in each file, you should never have procmail add mails to
the file that Gnus sees. Instead, procmail should put all incoming mail
in nnmail-procmail-directory. To arrive at the file name to put
the incoming mail in, append nnmail-procmail-suffix to the group
name. The mail backends will read the mail from these files.
When Gnus reads a file called `mail.misc.spool', this mail will be
put in the mail.misc, as one would expect. However, if you want
Gnus to split the mail the normal way, you could set
nnmail-resplit-incoming to t.
If you use procmail to split things directly into an nnmh
directory (which you shouldn't do), you should set
nnmail-keep-last-article to non-nil to prevent Gnus from
ever expiring the final article (i.e., the article with the highest
article number) in a mail newsgroup. This is quite, quite important.
Here's an example setup: The incoming spools are located in
`~/incoming/' and have `""' as suffixes (i.e., the incoming
spool files have the same names as the equivalent groups). The
nnfolder backend is to be used as the mail interface, and the
nnfolder directory is `~/fMail/'.
(setq nnfolder-directory "~/fMail/") (setq nnmail-spool-file 'procmail) (setq nnmail-procmail-directory "~/incoming/") (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnfolder ""))) (setq nnmail-procmail-suffix "")
Most people have lots of old mail stored in various file formats. If you have set up Gnus to read mail using one of the spiffy Gnus mail backends, you'll probably wish to have that old mail incorporated into your mail groups.
Doing so can be quite easy.
To take an example: You're reading mail using nnml
(see section Mail Spool), and have set nnmail-split-methods to a
satisfactory value (see section Splitting Mail). You have an old Unix mbox
file filled with important, but old, mail. You want to move it into
your nnml groups.
Here's how:
nndoc group from the mbox file (see section Foreign Groups).
All the mail messages in the mbox file will now also be spread out over
all your nnml groups. Try entering them and check whether things
have gone without a glitch. If things look ok, you may consider
deleting the mbox file, but I wouldn't do that unless I was absolutely
sure that all the mail has ended up where it should be.
Respooling is also a handy thing to do if you're switching from one mail backend to another. Just respool all the mail in the old mail groups using the new mail backend.
Traditional mail readers have a tendency to remove mail articles when you mark them as read, in some way. Gnus takes a fundamentally different approach to mail reading.
Gnus basically considers mail just to be news that has been received in a rather peculiar manner. It does not think that it has the power to actually change the mail, or delete any mail messages. If you enter a mail group, and mark articles as "read", or kill them in some other fashion, the mail articles will still exist on the system. I repeat: Gnus will not delete your old, read mail. Unless you ask it to, of course.
To make Gnus get rid of your unwanted mail, you have to mark the articles as expirable. This does not mean that the articles will disappear right away, however. In general, a mail article will be deleted from your system if, 1) it is marked as expirable, AND 2) it is more than one week old. If you do not mark an article as expirable, it will remain on your system until hell freezes over. This bears repeating one more time, with some spurious capitalizations: IF you do NOT mark articles as EXPIRABLE, Gnus will NEVER delete those ARTICLES.
You do not have to mark articles as expirable by hand. Groups that
match the regular expression gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups will
have all articles that you read marked as expirable automatically. All
articles marked as expirable have an `E' in the first
column in the summary buffer.
By default, if you have auto expiry switched on, Gnus will mark all the articles you read as expirable, no matter if they were read or unread before. To avoid having articles marked as read marked as expirable automatically, you can put something like the following in your `.gnus' file:
(remove-hook 'gnus-mark-article-hook
'gnus-summary-mark-read-and-unread-as-read)
(add-hook 'gnus-mark-article-hook 'gnus-summary-mark-unread-as-read)
Note that making a group auto-expirable doesn't mean that all read articles are expired--only the articles marked as expirable will be expired. Also note that using the d command won't make groups expirable--only semi-automatic marking of articles as read will mark the articles as expirable in auto-expirable groups.
Let's say you subscribe to a couple of mailing lists, and you want the articles you have read to disappear after a while:
(setq gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups
"mail.nonsense-list\\|mail.nice-list")
Another way to have auto-expiry happen is to have the element
auto-expire in the group parameters of the group.
If you use adaptive scoring (see section Adaptive Scoring) and auto-expiring, you'll have problems. Auto-expiring and adaptive scoring don't really mix very well.
The nnmail-expiry-wait variable supplies the default time an
expirable article has to live. Gnus starts counting days from when the
message arrived, not from when it was sent. The default is seven
days.
Gnus also supplies a function that lets you fine-tune how long articles are to live, based on what group they are in. Let's say you want to have one month expiry period in the `mail.private' group, a one day expiry period in the `mail.junk' group, and a six day expiry period everywhere else:
(setq nnmail-expiry-wait-function
(lambda (group)
(cond ((string= group "mail.private")
31)
((string= group "mail.junk")
1)
((string= group "important")
'never)
(t
6))))
The group names this function is fed are "unadorned" group names--no `nnml:' prefixes and the like.
The nnmail-expiry-wait variable and
nnmail-expiry-wait-function function can either be a number (not
necessarily an integer) or one of the symbols immediate or
never.
You can also use the expiry-wait group parameter to selectively
change the expiry period (see section Group Parameters).
If nnmail-keep-last-article is non-nil, Gnus will never
expire the final article in a mail newsgroup. This is to make life
easier for procmail users.
By the way: That line up there, about Gnus never expiring non-expirable
articles, is a lie. If you put total-expire in the group
parameters, articles will not be marked as expirable, but all read
articles will be put through the expiry process. Use with extreme
caution. Even more dangerous is the
gnus-total-expirable-newsgroups variable. All groups that match
this regexp will have all read articles put through the expiry process,
which means that all old mail articles in the groups in question
will be deleted after a while. Use with extreme caution, and don't come
crying to me when you discover that the regexp you used matched the
wrong group and all your important mail has disappeared. Be a
man! Or a woman! Whatever you feel more comfortable
with! So there!
Most people make most of their mail groups total-expirable, though.
Mailers and list servers are notorious for doing all sorts of really,
really stupid things with mail. "Hey, RFC822 doesn't explicitly
prohibit us from adding the string wE aRe ElItE!!!!!1!! to the
end of all lines passing through our server, so let's do that!!!!1!"
Yes, but RFC822 wasn't designed to be read by morons. Things that were
considered to be self-evident were not discussed. So. Here we are.
Case in point: The German version of Microsoft Exchange adds `AW: ' to the subjects of replies instead of `Re: '. I could pretend to be shocked and dismayed by this, but I haven't got the energy. It is to laugh.
Gnus provides a plethora of functions for washing articles while displaying them, but it might be nicer to do the filtering before storing the mail to disc. For that purpose, we have three hooks and various functions that can be put in these hooks.
nnmail-prepare-incoming-hook
nnheader-ms-strip-cr
nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook
nnmail-remove-leading-whitespace
nnmail-remove-list-identifiers
Subject headers. I'm sure that's nice for
people who use stone age mail readers. This function will remove
strings that match the nnmail-list-identifiers regexp, which can
also be a list of regexp.
For instance, if you want to remove the `(idm)' and the
`nagnagnag' identifiers:
(setq nnmail-list-identifiers
'("(idm)" "nagnagnag"))
nnmail-remove-tabs
nnmail-prepare-incoming-message-hook
article-de-quoted-unreadable
If you are a member of a couple of mailing lists, you will sometimes
receive two copies of the same mail. This can be quite annoying, so
nnmail checks for and treats any duplicates it might find. To do
this, it keeps a cache of old Message-IDs---
nnmail-message-id-cache-file, which is `~/.nnmail-cache' by
default. The approximate maximum number of Message-IDs stored
there is controlled by the nnmail-message-id-cache-length
variable, which is 1000 by default. (So 1000 Message-IDs will be
stored.) If all this sounds scary to you, you can set
nnmail-treat-duplicates to warn (which is what it is by
default), and nnmail won't delete duplicate mails. Instead it
will insert a warning into the head of the mail saying that it thinks
that this is a duplicate of a different message.
This variable can also be a function. If that's the case, the function
will be called from a buffer narrowed to the message in question with
the Message-ID as a parameter. The function must return either
nil, warn, or delete.
You can turn this feature off completely by setting the variable to
nil.
If you want all the duplicate mails to be put into a special duplicates group, you could do that using the normal mail split methods:
(setq nnmail-split-fancy
'(| ;; Messages duplicates go to a separate group.
("gnus-warning" "duplication of message" "duplicate")
;; Message from daemons, postmaster, and the like to another.
(any mail "mail.misc")
;; Other rules.
[ ... ] ))
Or something like:
(setq nnmail-split-methods
'(("duplicates" "^Gnus-Warning:")
;; Other rules.
[...]))
Here's a neat feature: If you know that the recipient reads her mail
with Gnus, and that she has nnmail-treat-duplicates set to
delete, you can send her as many insults as you like, just by
using a Message-ID of a mail that you know that she's already
received. Think of all the fun! She'll never see any of it! Whee!
If you start using any of the mail backends, they have the annoying habit of assuming that you want to read mail with them. This might not be unreasonable, but it might not be what you want.
If you set nnmail-spool-file to nil, none of the backends
will ever attempt to read incoming mail, which should help.
This might be too much, if, for instance, you are reading mail quite
happily with nnml and just want to peek at some old RMAIL
file you have stashed away with nnbabyl. All backends have
variables called backend-get-new-mail. If you want to disable
the nnbabyl mail reading, you edit the virtual server for the
group to have a setting where nnbabyl-get-new-mail to nil.
All the mail backends will call nn*-prepare-save-mail-hook
narrowed to the article to be saved before saving it when reading
incoming mail.
Gnus will read the mail spool when you activate a mail group. The mail file is first copied to your home directory. What happens after that depends on what format you want to store your mail in.
The nnmbox backend will use the standard Un*x mbox file to store
mail. nnmbox will add extra headers to each mail article to say
which group it belongs in.
Virtual server settings:
nnmbox-mbox-file
nnmbox-active-file
nnmbox-get-new-mail
nil, nnmbox will read incoming mail and split it
into groups.
The nnbabyl backend will use a babyl mail box (aka. rmail
mbox) to store mail. nnbabyl will add extra headers to each mail
article to say which group it belongs in.
Virtual server settings:
nnbabyl-mbox-file
nnbabyl-active-file
nnbabyl-get-new-mail
nil, nnbabyl will read incoming mail.
The nnml spool mail format isn't compatible with any other known format. It should be used with some caution.
If you use this backend, Gnus will split all incoming mail into files,
one file for each mail, and put the articles into the corresponding
directories under the directory specified by the nnml-directory
variable. The default value is `~/Mail/'.
You do not have to create any directories beforehand; Gnus will take care of all that.
If you have a strict limit as to how many files you are allowed to store in your account, you should not use this backend. As each mail gets its own file, you might very well occupy thousands of inodes within a few weeks. If this is no problem for you, and it isn't a problem for you having your friendly systems administrator walking around, madly, shouting "Who is eating all my inodes?! Who? Who!?!", then you should know that this is probably the fastest format to use. You do not have to trudge through a big mbox file just to read your new mail.
nnml is probably the slowest backend when it comes to article
splitting. It has to create lots of files, and it also generates
NOV databases for the incoming mails. This makes it the fastest
backend when it comes to reading mail.
Virtual server settings:
nnml-directory
nnml directories will be placed under this directory.
nnml-active-file
nnml server.
nnml-newsgroups-file
nnml group descriptions file. See section Newsgroups File Format.
nnml-get-new-mail
nil, nnml will read incoming mail.
nnml-nov-is-evil
nil, this backend will ignore any NOV files.
nnml-nov-file-name
nnml-prepare-save-mail-hook
If your nnml groups and NOV files get totally out of whack,
you can do a complete update by typing M-x
nnml-generate-nov-databases. This command will trawl through the
entire nnml hierarchy, looking at each and every article, so it
might take a while to complete. A better interface to this
functionality can be found in the server buffer (see section Server Commands).
nnmh is just like nnml, except that is doesn't generate
NOV databases and it doesn't keep an active file. This makes
nnmh a much slower backend than nnml, but it also
makes it easier to write procmail scripts for.
Virtual server settings:
nnmh-directory
nnmh directories will be located under this directory.
nnmh-get-new-mail
nil, nnmh will read incoming mail.
nnmh-be-safe
nil, nnmh will go to ridiculous lengths to make
sure that the articles in the folder are actually what Gnus thinks they
are. It will check date stamps and stat everything in sight, so
setting this to t will mean a serious slow-down. If you never
use anything but Gnus to read the nnmh articles, you do not have
to set this variable to t.
nnfolder is a backend for storing each mail group in a separate
file. Each file is in the standard Un*x mbox format. nnfolder
will add extra headers to keep track of article numbers and arrival
dates.
Virtual server settings:
nnfolder-directory
nnfolder mail boxes will be stored under this directory.
nnfolder-active-file
nnfolder-newsgroups-file
nnfolder-get-new-mail
nil, nnfolder will read incoming mail.
nnfolder-save-buffer-hook
nnfolder buffers. If you
wish to switch this off, you could say something like the following in
your `.emacs' file:
(defun turn-off-backup () (set (make-local-variable 'backup-inhibited) t)) (add-hook 'nnfolder-save-buffer-hook 'turn-off-backup)
If you have lots of nnfolder-like files you'd like to read with
nnfolder, you can use the M-x nnfolder-generate-active-file
command to make nnfolder aware of all likely files in
nnfolder-directory.
Gnus can do more than just read news or mail. The methods described below allow Gnus to view directories and files as if they were newsgroups.
If you have a directory that has lots of articles in separate files in it, you might treat it as a newsgroup. The files have to have numerical names, of course.
This might be an opportune moment to mention ange-ftp (and its
successor efs), that most wonderful of all wonderful Emacs
packages. When I wrote nndir, I didn't think much about it--a
backend to read directories. Big deal.
ange-ftp changes that picture dramatically. For instance, if you
enter the ange-ftp file name
`/ftp.hpc.uh.edu:/pub/emacs/ding-list/' as the directory name,
ange-ftp or efs will actually allow you to read this
directory over at `sina' as a newsgroup. Distributed news ahoy!
nndir will use NOV files if they are present.
nndir is a "read-only" backend--you can't delete or expire
articles with this method. You can use nnmh or nnml for
whatever you use nndir for, so you could switch to any of those
methods if you feel the need to have a non-read-only nndir.
From the nndir backend (which reads a single spool-like
directory), it's just a hop and a skip to nneething, which
pretends that any arbitrary directory is a newsgroup. Strange, but
true.
When nneething is presented with a directory, it will scan this
directory and assign article numbers to each file. When you enter such
a group, nneething must create "headers" that Gnus can use.
After all, Gnus is a newsreader, in case you're
forgetting. nneething does this in a two-step process. First, it
snoops each file in question. If the file looks like an article (i.e.,
the first few lines look like headers), it will use this as the head.
If this is just some arbitrary file without a head (e.g. a C source
file), nneething will cobble up a header out of thin air. It
will use file ownership, name and date and do whatever it can with these
elements.
All this should happen automatically for you, and you will be presented with something that looks very much like a newsgroup. Totally like a newsgroup, to be precise. If you select an article, it will be displayed in the article buffer, just as usual.
If you select a line that represents a directory, Gnus will pop you into
a new summary buffer for this nneething group. And so on. You can
traverse the entire disk this way, if you feel like, but remember that
Gnus is not dired, really, and does not intend to be, either.
There are two overall modes to this action--ephemeral or solid. When
doing the ephemeral thing (i.e., G D from the group buffer), Gnus
will not store information on what files you have read, and what files
are new, and so on. If you create a solid nneething group the
normal way with G m, Gnus will store a mapping table between
article numbers and file names, and you can treat this group like any
other groups. When you activate a solid nneething group, you will
be told how many unread articles it contains, etc., etc.
Some variables:
nneething-map-file-directory
nneething groups will be stored
in this directory, which defaults to `~/.nneething/'.
nneething-exclude-files
nneething-map-file
nndoc is a cute little thing that will let you read a single file
as a newsgroup. Several files types are supported:
babyl
mbox
mmdf
news
rnews
forward
mime-parts
mime-digest
standard-digest
slack-digest
You can also use the special "file type" guess, which means
that nndoc will try to guess what file type it is looking at.
digest means that nndoc should guess what digest type the
file is.
nndoc will not try to change the file or insert any extra headers into
it--it will simply, like, let you use the file as the basis for a
group. And that's it.
If you have some old archived articles that you want to insert into your
new & spiffy Gnus mail backend, nndoc can probably help you with
that. Say you have an old `RMAIL' file with mail that you now want
to split into your new nnml groups. You look at that file using
nndoc (using the G f command in the group buffer
(see section Foreign Groups)), set the process mark on all the articles in
the buffer (M P b, for instance), and then re-spool (B r)
using nnml. If all goes well, all the mail in the `RMAIL'
file is now also stored in lots of nnml directories, and you can
delete that pesky `RMAIL' file. If you have the guts!
Virtual server variables:
nndoc-article-type
mbox, babyl, digest,
news, rnews, mmdf, forward, rfc934,
rfc822-forward, mime-parts, mime-digest,
standard-digest, slack-digest, clari-briefs or
guess.
nndoc-post-type
mail (the default)
and news.
Adding new document types to be recognized by nndoc isn't
difficult. You just have to whip up a definition of what the document
looks like, write a predicate function to recognize that document type,
and then hook into nndoc.
First, here's an example document type definition:
(mmdf (article-begin . "^\^A\^A\^A\^A\n") (body-end . "^\^A\^A\^A\^A\n"))
The definition is simply a unique name followed by a series of regexp pseudo-variable settings. Below are the possible variables--don't be daunted by the number of variables; most document types can be defined with very few settings:
first-article
nndoc will skip past all text until it finds
something that match this regexp. All text before this will be
totally ignored.
article-begin
head-begin-function
nndoc-head-begin
nndoc-head-end
body-begin-function
body-begin
body-end-function
body-end
file-end
So, using these variables nndoc is able to dissect a document
file into a series of articles, each with a head and a body. However, a
few more variables are needed since not all document types are all that
news-like--variables needed to transform the head or the body into
something that's palatable for Gnus:
prepare-body-function
article-transform-function
generate-head-function
Let's look at the most complicated example I can come up with--standard digests:
(standard-digest (first-article . ,(concat "^" (make-string 70 ?-) "\n\n+")) (article-begin . ,(concat "\n\n" (make-string 30 ?-) "\n\n+")) (prepare-body-function . nndoc-unquote-dashes) (body-end-function . nndoc-digest-body-end) (head-end . "^ ?$") (body-begin . "^ ?\n") (file-end . "^End of .*digest.*[0-9].*\n\\*\\*\\|^End of.*Digest *$") (subtype digest guess))
We see that all text before a 70-width line of dashes is ignored; all
text after a line that starts with that `^End of' is also ignored;
each article begins with a 30-width line of dashes; the line separating
the head from the body may contain a single space; and that the body is
run through nndoc-unquote-dashes before being delivered.
To hook your own document definition into nndoc, use the
nndoc-add-type function. It takes two parameters--the first is
the definition itself and the second (optional) parameter says where in
the document type definition alist to put this definition. The alist is
traversed sequentially, and nndoc-TYPE-type-p is called for a given type TYPE. So nndoc-mmdf-type-p is called to see whether a document
is of mmdf type, and so on. These type predicates should return
nil if the document is not of the correct type; t if it is
of the correct type; and a number if the document might be of the
correct type. A high number means high probability; a low number means
low probability with `0' being the lowest valid number.
In the PC world people often talk about "offline" newsreaders. These are thingies that are combined reader/news transport monstrosities. With built-in modem programs. Yecchh!
Of course, us Unix Weenie types of human beans use things like
uucp and, like, nntpd and set up proper news and mail
transport things like Ghod intended. And then we just use normal
newsreaders.
However, it can sometimes be convenient to do something a that's a bit easier on the brain if you have a very slow modem, and you're not really that interested in doing things properly.
A file format called SOUP has been developed for transporting news and mail from servers to home machines and back again. It can be a bit fiddly.
First some terminology:
awk program), or you
can use Gnus to create the packet with its SOUP commands (O
s and/or G s b; and then G s p) (see section SOUP Commands).
nnsoup backend as
the native or secondary server.
So you basically have a bipartite system--you use nnsoup for
reading and Gnus for packing/sending these SOUP packets.
These are commands for creating and manipulating SOUP packets.
gnus-group-brew-soup). This command understands the
process/prefix convention.
gnus-soup-save-areas).
gnus-soup-send-replies).
gnus-soup-pack-packet).
nnsoup-pack-replies).
gnus-soup-add-article). It understands the process/prefix
convention (see section Process/Prefix).
There are a few variables to customize where Gnus will put all these thingies:
gnus-soup-directory
gnus-soup-replies-directory
gnus-soup-prefix-file
gnus-soup-packer
gnus-soup-unpacker
gnus-soup-packet-directory
gnus-soup-packet-regexp
gnus-soup-packet-directory.
nnsoup is the backend for reading SOUP packets. It will
read incoming packets, unpack them, and put them in a directory where
you can read them at leisure.
These are the variables you can use to customize its behavior:
nnsoup-tmp-directory
nnsoup unpacks a SOUP packet, it does it in this
directory. (`/tmp/' by default.)
nnsoup-directory
nnsoup then moves each message and index file to this directory.
The default is `~/SOUP/'.
nnsoup-replies-directory
nnsoup-replies-format-type
nnsoup-replies-index-type
nnsoup-active-file
nnsoup stores lots of information. This is not an "active
file" in the nntp sense; it's an Emacs Lisp file. If you lose
this file or mess it up in any way, you're dead. The default is
`~/SOUP/active'.
nnsoup-packer
nnsoup-unpacker
nnsoup-packet-directory
nnsoup will look for incoming packets. The default is
`~/'.
nnsoup-packet-regexp
nnsoup-always-save
nil, save the replies buffer after each posted message.
Just using nnsoup won't mean that your postings and mailings end
up in SOUP reply packets automagically. You have to work a bit
more for that to happen.
The nnsoup-set-variables command will set the appropriate
variables to ensure that all your followups and replies end up in the
SOUP system.
In specific, this is what it does:
(setq message-send-news-function 'nnsoup-request-post) (setq message-send-mail-function 'nnsoup-request-mail)
And that's it, really. If you only want news to go into the SOUP system you just use the first line. If you only want mail to be SOUPed you use the second.
It's, like, too neat to search the Usenet for articles that match a string, but it, like, totally sucks, like, totally, to use one of those, like, Web browsers, and you, like, have to, rilly, like, look at the commercials, so, like, with Gnus you can do rad, rilly, searches without having to use a browser.
The nnweb backend allows an easy interface to the mighty search
engine. You create an nnweb group, enter a search pattern, and
then enter the group and read the articles like you would any normal
group. The G w command in the group buffer (see section Foreign Groups) will do this in an easy-to-use fashion.
nnweb groups don't really lend themselves to being solid
groups--they have a very fleeting idea of article numbers. In fact,
each time you enter an nnweb group (not even changing the search
pattern), you are likely to get the articles ordered in a different
manner. Not even using duplicate suppression (see section Duplicate Suppression) will help, since nnweb doesn't even know the
Message-ID of the articles before reading them using some search
engines (DejaNews, for instance). The only possible way to keep track
of which articles you've read is by scoring on the Date
header--mark all articles posted before the last date you read the
group as read.
If the search engine changes its output substantially, nnweb
won't be able to parse it and will fail. One could hardly fault the Web
providers if they were to do this--their raison d'être is to
make money off of advertisements, not to provide services to the
community. Since nnweb washes the ads off all the articles, one
might think that the providers might be somewhat miffed. We'll see.
You must have the url and w3 package installed to be able
to use nnweb.
Virtual server variables:
nnweb-type
dejanews, dejanewsold, altavista and
reference.
nnweb-search
nnweb-max-hits
nnweb-type-definition
nnweb should do
with the various search engine types. The following elements must be
present:
article
map
search
address
id
Message-ID.
If your local nntp server doesn't allow posting, for some reason
or other, you can post using one of the numerous mail-to-news gateways.
The nngateway backend provides the interface.
Note that you can't read anything from this backend--it can only be used to post with.
Server variables:
nngateway-address
nngateway-header-transformation
nngateway-simple-header-transformation. The function is called
narrowed to the headers to be transformed and with one parameter--the
gateway address.
This default function just inserts a new To header based on the
Newsgroups header and the gateway address.
For instance, an article with this Newsgroups header:
Newsgroups: alt.religion.emacswill get this
From header inserted:
To: alt-religion-emacs@GATEWAYThe following pre-defined functions exist:
nngateway-simple-header-transformation
To header that looks like
newsgroup@nngateway-address.
nngateway-mail2news-header-transformation
To header that looks like
nngateway-address.
Here's an example:
(setq gnus-post-method
'(nngateway "mail2news@replay.com"
(nngateway-header-transformation
nngateway-mail2news-header-transformation)))
So, to use this, simply say something like:
(setq gnus-post-method '(nngateway "GATEWAY.ADDRESS"))
Gnus allows combining a mixture of all the other group types into bigger groups.
An nnvirtual group is really nothing more than a collection of other groups.
For instance, if you are tired of reading many small groups, you can put them all in one big group, and then grow tired of reading one big, unwieldy group. The joys of computing!
You specify nnvirtual as the method. The address should be a
regexp to match component groups.
All marks in the virtual group will stick to the articles in the component groups. So if you tick an article in a virtual group, the article will also be ticked in the component group from whence it came. (And vice versa--marks from the component groups will also be shown in the virtual group.)
Here's an example nnvirtual method that collects all Andrea Dworkin
newsgroups into one, big, happy newsgroup:
(nnvirtual "^alt\\.fan\\.andrea-dworkin$\\|^rec\\.dworkin.*")
The component groups can be native or foreign; everything should work smoothly, but if your computer explodes, it was probably my fault.
Collecting the same group from several servers might actually be a good idea if users have set the Distribution header to limit distribution. If you would like to read `soc.motss' both from a server in Japan and a server in Norway, you could use the following as the group regexp:
"^nntp\\+server\\.jp:soc\\.motss$\\|^nntp\\+server\\.no:soc\\.motss$"
(Remember, though, that if you're creating the group with G m, you shouldn't double the backslashes, and you should leave off the quote characters at the beginning and the end of the string.)
This should work kinda smoothly--all articles from both groups should end up in this one, and there should be no duplicates. Threading (and the rest) will still work as usual, but there might be problems with the sequence of articles. Sorting on date might be an option here (see section Selecting a Group).
One limitation, however--all groups included in a virtual
group have to be alive (i.e., subscribed or unsubscribed). Killed or
zombie groups can't be component groups for nnvirtual groups.
If the nnvirtual-always-rescan is non-nil,
nnvirtual will always scan groups for unread articles when
entering a virtual group. If this variable is nil (which is the
default) and you read articles in a component group after the virtual
group has been activated, the read articles from the component group
will show up when you enter the virtual group. You'll also see this
effect if you have two virtual groups that have a component group in
common. If that's the case, you should set this variable to t.
Or you can just tap M-g on the virtual group every time before
you enter it--it'll have much the same effect.
nnvirtual can have both mail and news groups as component groups.
When responding to articles in nnvirtual groups, nnvirtual
has to ask the backend of the component group the article comes from
whether it is a news or mail backend. However, when you do a ^,
there is typically no sure way for the component backend to know this,
and in that case nnvirtual tells Gnus that the article came from a
not-news backend. (Just to be on the safe side.)
C-c C-t in the message buffer will insert the Newsgroups
line from the article you respond to in these cases.
Kibozing is defined by OED as "grepping through (parts of)
the news feed". nnkiboze is a backend that will do this for
you. Oh joy! Now you can grind any NNTP server down to a halt
with useless requests! Oh happiness!
To create a kibozed group, use the G k command in the group buffer.
The address field of the nnkiboze method is, as with
nnvirtual, a regexp to match groups to be "included" in the
nnkiboze group. That's where most similarities between nnkiboze
and nnvirtual end.
In addition to this regexp detailing component groups, an nnkiboze group
must have a score file to say what articles are to be included in
the group (see section Scoring).
You must run M-x nnkiboze-generate-groups after creating the
nnkiboze groups you want to have. This command will take time. Lots of
time. Oodles and oodles of time. Gnus has to fetch the headers from
all the articles in all the component groups and run them through the
scoring process to determine if there are any articles in the groups
that are to be part of the nnkiboze groups.
Please limit the number of component groups by using restrictive regexps. Otherwise your sysadmin may become annoyed with you, and the NNTP site may throw you off and never let you back in again. Stranger things have happened.
nnkiboze component groups do not have to be alive--they can be dead,
and they can be foreign. No restrictions.
The generation of an nnkiboze group means writing two files in
nnkiboze-directory, which is `~/News/' by default. One
contains the NOV header lines for all the articles in the group,
and the other is an additional `.newsrc' file to store information
on what groups have been searched through to find component articles.
Articles marked as read in the nnkiboze group will have
their NOV lines removed from the NOV file.
In olden times (ca. February '88), people used to run their newsreaders on big machines with permanent connections to the net. News transport was dealt with by news servers, and all the newsreaders had to do was to read news. Believe it or not.
Nowadays most people read news and mail at home, and use some sort of modem to connect to the net. To avoid running up huge phone bills, it would be nice to have a way to slurp down all the news and mail, hang up the phone, read for several hours, and then upload any responses you have to make. And then you repeat the procedure.
Of course, you can use news servers for doing this as well. I've used
inn together with slurp, pop and sendmail
for some years, but doing that's a bore. Moving the news server
functionality up to the newsreader makes sense if you're the only person
reading news on a machine.
Using Gnus as an "offline" newsreader is quite simple.
(gnus-agentize)
That's it. Gnus is now an "offline" newsreader.
Of course, to use it as such, you have to learn a few new commands.
First, let's get some terminology out of the way.
The Gnus Agent is said to be unplugged when you have severed the connection to the net (and notified the Agent that this is the case). When the connection to the net is up again (and Gnus knows this), the Agent is plugged.
The local machine is the one you're running on, and which isn't connected to the net continuously.
Downloading means fetching things from the net to your local machine. Uploading is doing the opposite.
Let's take a typical Gnus session using the Agent.
gnus-unplugged. This brings up the Gnus
Agent in a disconnected state. You can read all the news that you have
already fetched while in this mode.
Here are some things you should do the first time (or so) that you use the Agent.
One of the main reasons to integrate the news transport layer into the newsreader is to allow greater control over what articles to download. There's not much point in downloading huge amounts of articles, just to find out that you're not interested in reading any of them. It's better to be somewhat more conservative in choosing what to download, and then mark the articles for downloading manually if it should turn out that you're interested in the articles anyway.
The main way to control what is to be downloaded is to create a category and then assign some (or all) groups to this category. Gnus has its own buffer for creating and managing categories.
A category consists of two things.
A predicate consists of predicates with logical operators sprinkled in between.
Perhaps some examples are in order.
Here's a simple predicate. (It's the default predicate, in fact, used for all groups that don't belong to any other category.)
short
Quite simple, eh? This predicate is true if and only if the article is short (for some value of "short").
Here's a more complex predicate:
(or high
(and
(not low)
(not long)))
This means that an article should be downloaded if it has a high score, or if the score is not low and the article is not long. You get the drift.
The available logical operators are or, and and
not. (If you prefer, you can use the more "C"-ish operators
`|', & and ! instead.)
The following predicates are pre-defined, but if none of these fit what you want to do, you can write your own.
short
gnus-agent-short-article
lines; default 100.
long
gnus-agent-long-article
lines; default 200.
low
gnus-agent-low-score; default 0.
high
gnus-agent-high-score; default 0.
spam
true
false
If you want to create your own predicate function, here's what you have
to know: The functions are called with no parameters, but the
gnus-headers and gnus-score dynamic variables are bound to
useful values.
Now, the syntax of the download score is the same as the syntax of
normal score files, except that all elements that require actually
seeing the article itself are verboten. This means that only the
following headers can be scored on: From, Subject,
Date, Xref, Lines, Chars, Message-ID,
and References.
You'd normally do all category maintenance from the category buffer.
When you enter it for the first time (with the J c command from
the group buffer), you'll only see the default category.
The following commands are available in this buffer:
gnus-category-exit).
gnus-category-kill).
gnus-category-copy).
gnus-category-add).
gnus-category-edit-predicate).
gnus-category-edit-groups).
gnus-category-edit-score).
gnus-category-list).
gnus-category-mode-hook
gnus-category-line-format
gnus-category-mode-line-format
gnus-agent-short-article
gnus-agent-long-article
gnus-agent-low-score
gnus-agent-high-score
All the Gnus Agent commands are on the J submap. The J j
(gnus-agent-toggle-plugged command works in all modes, and
toggles the plugged/unplugged state of the Gnus Agent.
You can run a complete batch fetch from the command line with the following incantation:
$ emacs -batch -l ~/.gnus.el -f gnus-agent-batch-fetch
gnus-agent-fetch-groups).
gnus-enter-category-buffer).
gnus-agent-fetch-session).
gnus-agent-fetch-session). See section Drafts.
gnus-agent-add-group).
gnus-agent-mark-article).
gnus-agent-unmark-article).
gnus-agent-toggle-mark).
gnus-agent-catchup).
gnus-agent-add-server).
gnus-agent-remove-server).
nnagent doesn't handle expiry. Instead, there's a special
gnus-agent-expire command that will expire all read articles that
are older than gnus-agent-expire-days days. It can be run
whenever you feel that you're running out of space. It's not
particularly fast or efficient, and it's not a particularly good idea to
interrupt it (with C-g or anything else) once you've started it.
if gnus-agent-expire-all is non-nil, this command will
expire all articles--unread, read, ticked and dormant. If nil
(which is the default), only read articles are eligible for expiry, and
unread, ticked and dormant articles will be kept indefinitely.
When Gnus is unplugged, all outgoing messages (both mail and news) are stored in the draft groups (see section Drafts). You can view them there after posting, and edit them at will.
When Gnus is plugged again, you can send the messages either from the draft group with the special commands available there, or you can use the J S command in the group buffer to send all the sendable messages in the draft group.
gnus-agent-directory
gnus-agent-handle-level
gnus-level-subscribed,
which means that only subscribed group will be considered by the Agent
by default.
gnus-agent-plugged-hook
gnus-agent-unplugged-hook
If you don't want to read this manual, and you have a fairly standard setup, you may be able to use something like the following as your `.gnus.el' file to get started.
;;; Define how Gnus is to fetch news. We do this over NNTP ;;; from your ISP's server. (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "nntp.your-isp.com")) ;;; Define how Gnus is to read your mail. We read mail from ;;; your ISP's POP server. (setenv "MAILHOST" "pop.your-isp.com") (setq nnmail-spool-file "po:username") ;;; Say how Gnus is to store the mail. We use nnml groups. (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml ""))) ;;; Make Gnus into an offline newsreader. (gnus-agentize)
That should be it, basically. Put that in your `~/.gnus.el' file, edit to suit your needs, start up PPP (or whatever), and type M-x gnus.
If this is the first time you've run Gnus, you will be subscribed automatically to a few default newsgroups. You'll probably want to subscribe to more groups, and to do that, you have to query the NNTP server for a complete list of groups with the A A command. This usually takes quite a while, but you only have to do it once.
After reading and parsing a while, you'll be presented with a list of groups. Subscribe to the ones you want to read with the u command. l to make all the killed groups disappear after you've subscribe to all the groups you want to read. (A k will bring back all the killed groups.)
You can now read the groups at once, or you can download the articles with the J s command. And then read the rest of this manual to find out which of the other gazillion things you want to customize.
Having the Gnus Agent fetch articles (and post whatever messages you've written) is quite easy once you've gotten things set up properly. The following shell script will do everything that is necessary:
#!/bin/sh emacs -batch -l ~/.emacs -f gnus-agent-batch >/dev/null
Other people use kill files, but we here at Gnus Towers like scoring better than killing, so we'd rather switch than fight. They do something completely different as well, so sit up straight and pay attention!
All articles have a default score (gnus-summary-default-score),
which is 0 by default. This score may be raised or lowered either
interactively or by score files. Articles that have a score lower than
gnus-summary-mark-below are marked as read.
Gnus will read any score files that apply to the current group before generating the summary buffer.
There are several commands in the summary buffer that insert score entries based on the current article. You can, for instance, ask Gnus to lower or increase the score of all articles with a certain subject.
There are two sorts of scoring entries: Permanent and temporary. Temporary score entries are self-expiring entries. Any entries that are temporary and have not been used for, say, a week, will be removed silently to help keep the sizes of the score files down.
The score commands that alter score entries do not actually modify real score files. That would be too inefficient. Gnus maintains a cache of previously loaded score files, one of which is considered the current score file alist. The score commands simply insert entries into this list, and upon group exit, this list is saved.
The current score file is by default the group's local score file, even if no such score file actually exists. To insert score commands into some other score file (e.g. `all.SCORE'), you must first make this score file the current one.
General score commands that don't actually change the score file:
gnus-summary-set-score).
gnus-summary-current-score).
gnus-score-find-trace).
gnus-summary-rescore). This might be useful if you're playing
around with your score files behind Gnus' back and want to see the
effect you're having.
gnus-score-change-score-file).
gnus-score-edit-current-scores).
You will be popped into a gnus-score-mode buffer (see section Score File Editing).
gnus-score-edit-file).
gnus-score-flush-cache). This is useful
after editing score files.
gnus-score-customize).
The rest of these commands modify the local score file.
gnus-score-set-mark-below).
gnus-score-set-expunge-below).
The keystrokes for actually making score entries follow a very regular pattern, so there's no need to list all the commands. (Hundreds of them.)
strings
date
number
So, let's say you want to increase the score on the current author with exact matching permanently: I a e p. If you want to lower the score based on the subject line, using substring matching, and make a temporary score entry: L s s t. Pretty easy.
To make things a bit more complicated, there are shortcuts. If you use a capital letter on either the second or third keys, Gnus will use defaults for the remaining one or two keystrokes. The defaults are "substring" and "temporary". So I A is the same as I a s t, and I a R is the same as I a r t.
These functions take both the numerical prefix and the symbolic prefix
(see section Symbolic Prefixes). A numerical prefix says how much to lower
(or increase) the score of the article. A symbolic prefix of a
says to use the `all.SCORE' file for the command instead of the
current score file.
The gnus-score-mimic-keymap says whether these commands will
pretend they are keymaps or not.
There aren't many of these as yet, I'm afraid.
gnus-score-flush-cache).
You can do scoring from the command line by saying something like:
$ emacs -batch -l ~/.emacs -l gnus -f gnus-batch-score
gnus-use-scoring
nil, Gnus will not check for score files, and will not, in
general, do any score-related work. This is t by default.
gnus-kill-killed
nil, Gnus will never apply score files to
articles that have already been through the kill process. While this
may save you lots of time, it also means that if you apply a kill file
to a group, and then change the kill file and want to run it over you
group again to kill more articles, it won't work. You have to set this
variable to t to do that. (It is t by default.)
gnus-kill-files-directory
SAVEDIR environment variable by default.
This is `~/News/' by default.
gnus-score-file-suffix
gnus-score-uncacheable-files
gnus-save-score
t. This will make
Gnus save the scores into the `.newsrc.eld' file.
gnus-score-interactive-default-score
gnus-summary-default-score
gnus-summary-expunge-below
nil by default, which means that no
articles will be hidden. This variable is local to the summary buffers,
and has to be set from gnus-summary-mode-hook.
gnus-score-over-mark
gnus-score-below-mark
gnus-score-find-score-files-function
gnus-score-find-single
gnus-score-find-bnews
gnus-score-find-hierarchical
gnus-score-expiry-days
nil, no score file entries
are expired. It's 7 by default.
gnus-update-score-entry-dates
nil, matching score entries will have
their dates updated. (This is how Gnus controls expiry--all
non-matching entries will become too old while matching entries will
stay fresh and young.) However, if you set this variable to nil,
even matching entries will grow old and will have to face that oh-so
grim reaper.
gnus-score-after-write-file-function
gnus-score-thread-simplify
nil, article subjects will be simplified
for subject scoring purposes in the same manner as with
threading--according to the current value of
gnus-simplify-subject-functions. If the scoring entry uses
substring or exact matching, the match will also be
simplified in this manner.
A score file is an emacs-lisp file that normally contains just a
single form. Casual users are not expected to edit these files;
everything can be changed from the summary buffer.
Anyway, if you'd like to dig into it yourself, here's an example:
(("from"
("Lars Ingebrigtsen" -10000)
("Per Abrahamsen")
("larsi\\|lmi" -50000 nil R))
("subject"
("Ding is Badd" nil 728373))
("xref"
("alt.politics" -1000 728372 s))
("lines"
(2 -100 nil <))
(mark 0)
(expunge -1000)
(mark-and-expunge -10)
(read-only nil)
(orphan -10)
(adapt t)
(files "/hom/larsi/News/gnu.SCORE")
(exclude-files "all.SCORE")
(local (gnus-newsgroup-auto-expire t)
(gnus-summary-make-false-root empty))
(eval (ding)))
This example demonstrates most score file elements. For a different approach, see see section Advanced Scoring.
Even though this looks much like lisp code, nothing here is actually
evaled. The lisp reader is used to read this form, though, so it
has to be valid syntactically, if not semantically.
Six keys are supported by this alist:
STRING
From, Subject, References, Message-ID,
Xref, Lines, Chars and Date. In addition to
these headers, there are three strings to tell Gnus to fetch the entire
article and do the match on larger parts of the article: Body
will perform the match on the body of the article, Head will
perform the match on the head of the article, and All will
perform the match on the entire article. Note that using any of these
last three keys will slow down group entry considerably. The
final "header" you can score on is Followup. These score
entries will result in new score entries being added for all follow-ups
to articles that matches these score entries.
Following this key is a arbitrary number of score entries, where each
score entry has one to four elements.
gnus-score-interactive-default-score number will be used
instead. This is 1000 by default.
r and R (regexp), as
well as s and S (substring) types, and e and
E (exact match), and w (word match) types. If this
element is not present, Gnus will assume that substring matching should
be used. R, S, and E differ from the others in
that the matches will be done in a case-sensitive manner. All these
one-letter types are really just abbreviations for the regexp,
string, exact, and word types, which you can use
instead, if you feel like.
<, >,
=, >= and <=.
These predicates are true if
(PREDICATE HEADER MATCH)evaluates to non-
nil. For instance, the advanced match
("lines" 4 <) (see section Advanced Scoring) will result in the
following form:
(< header-value 4)Or to put it another way: When using
< on Lines with 4 as
the match, we get the score added if the article has less than 4 lines.
(It's easy to get confused and think it's the other way around. But
it's not. I think.)
When matching on Lines, be careful because some backends (like
nndir) do not generate Lines header, so every article ends
up being marked as having 0 lines. This can lead to strange results if
you happen to lower score of the articles with few lines.
before, at and after. I can't really imagine this
ever being useful, but, like, it would feel kinda silly not to provide
this function. Just in case. You never know. Better safe than sorry.
Once burnt, twice shy. Don't judge a book by its cover. Never not have
sex on a first date. (I have been told that at least one person, and I
quote, "found this function indispensable", however.)
A more useful match type is regexp. With it, you can match the
date string using a regular expression. The date is normalized to
ISO8601 compact format first---YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS. If
you want to match all articles that have been posted on April 1st in
every year, you could use `....0401.........' as a match string,
for instance. (Note that the date is kept in its original time zone, so
this will match articles that were posted when it was April 1st where
the article was posted from. Time zones are such wholesome fun for the
whole family, eh?)
From (etc)
header uses.
From header, and affect the score of not only the matching
articles, but also all followups to the matching articles. This allows
you e.g. increase the score of followups to your own articles, or
decrease the score of followups to the articles of some known
trouble-maker. Uses the same match types as the From header
uses. (Using this match key will lead to creation of `ADAPT'
files.)
Followup match
key. If you say that you want to score on a (sub-)thread started by an article with a Message-ID X, then you add a
`thread' match. This will add a new `thread' match for each
article that has X in its References header. (These new
`thread' matches will use the Message-IDs of these matching
articles.) This will ensure that you can raise/lower the score of an
entire thread, even though some articles in the thread may not have
complete References headers. Note that using this may lead to
undeterministic scores of the articles in the thread. (Using this match
key will lead to creation of `ADAPT' files.)
mark
expunge
mark-and-expunge
thread-mark-and-expunge
gnus-thread-score-function
says how to compute the total score for a thread.
files
exclude-files
eval
evalel. This element will be
ignored when handling global score files.
read-only
orphan
(orphan -500)
(mark-and-expunge -100)
When you enter the group the first time, you will only see the new
threads. You then raise the score of the threads that you find
interesting (with I T or I S), and ignore (C y) the
rest. Next time you enter the group, you will see new articles in the
interesting threads, plus any new threads.
I.e.---the orphan score atom is for high-volume groups where there
exist a few interesting threads which can't be found automatically by
ordinary scoring rules.
adapt
t, the
default adaptive scoring rules will be used. If it is ignore, no
adaptive scoring will be performed on this group. If it is a list, this
list will be used as the adaptive scoring rules. If it isn't present,
or is something other than t or ignore, the default
adaptive scoring rules will be used. If you want to use adaptive
scoring on most groups, you'd set gnus-use-adaptive-scoring to
t, and insert an (adapt ignore) in the groups where you do
not want adaptive scoring. If you only want adaptive scoring in a few
groups, you'd set gnus-use-adaptive-scoring to nil, and
insert (adapt t) in the score files of the groups where you want
it.
adapt-file
local
(VAR VALUE) pairs.
Each var will be made buffer-local to the current summary buffer,
and set to the value specified. This is a convenient, if somewhat
strange, way of setting variables in some groups if you don't like hooks
much. Note that the value won't be evaluated.
You normally enter all scoring commands from the summary buffer, but you might feel the urge to edit them by hand as well, so we've supplied you with a mode for that.
It's simply a slightly customized emacs-lisp mode, with these
additional commands:
gnus-score-edit-done).
gnus-score-edit-insert-date). This is really the day number, if
you were wondering.
gnus-score-pretty-print) does that for
you.
Type M-x gnus-score-mode to use this mode.
gnus-score-menu-hook is run in score mode buffers.
In the summary buffer you can use commands like V f and V e to begin editing score files.
If all this scoring is getting you down, Gnus has a way of making it all happen automatically--as if by magic. Or rather, as if by artificial stupidity, to be precise.
When you read an article, or mark an article as read, or kill an
article, you leave marks behind. On exit from the group, Gnus can sniff
these marks and add score elements depending on what marks it finds.
You turn on this ability by setting gnus-use-adaptive-scoring to
t or (line). If you want score adaptively on separate
words appearing in the subjects, you should set this variable to
(word). If you want to use both adaptive methods, set this
variable to (word line).
To give you complete control over the scoring process, you can customize
the gnus-default-adaptive-score-alist variable. For instance, it
might look something like this:
(defvar gnus-default-adaptive-score-alist
'((gnus-unread-mark)
(gnus-ticked-mark (from 4))
(gnus-dormant-mark (from 5))
(gnus-del-mark (from -4) (subject -1))
(gnus-read-mark (from 4) (subject 2))
(gnus-expirable-mark (from -1) (subject -1))
(gnus-killed-mark (from -1) (subject -3))
(gnus-kill-file-mark)
(gnus-ancient-mark)
(gnus-low-score-mark)
(gnus-catchup-mark (from -1) (subject -1))))
As you see, each element in this alist has a mark as a key (either a
variable name or a "real" mark--a character). Following this key is
a arbitrary number of header/score pairs. If there are no header/score
pairs following the key, no adaptive scoring will be done on articles
that have that key as the article mark. For instance, articles with
gnus-unread-mark in the example above will not get adaptive score
entries.
Each article can have only one mark, so just a single of these rules will be applied to each article.
To take gnus-del-mark as an example--this alist says that all
articles that have that mark (i.e., are marked with `D') will have a
score entry added to lower based on the From header by -4, and
lowered by Subject by -1. Change this to fit your prejudices.
If you have marked 10 articles with the same subject with
gnus-del-mark, the rule for that mark will be applied ten times.
That means that that subject will get a score of ten times -1, which
should be, unless I'm much mistaken, -10.
If you have auto-expirable (mail) groups (see section Expiring Mail), all the read articles will be marked with the `E' mark. This'll probably make adaptive scoring slightly impossible, so auto-expiring and adaptive scoring doesn't really mix very well.
The headers you can score on are from, subject,
message-id, references, xref, lines,
chars and date. In addition, you can score on
followup, which will create an adaptive score entry that matches
on the References header using the Message-ID of the
current article, thereby matching the following thread.
You can also score on thread, which will try to score all
articles that appear in a thread. thread matches uses a
Message-ID to match on the References header of the
article. If the match is made, the Message-ID of the article is
added to the thread rule. (Think about it. I'd recommend two
aspirins afterwards.)
If you use this scheme, you should set the score file atom mark
to something small--like -300, perhaps, to avoid having small random
changes result in articles getting marked as read.
After using adaptive scoring for a week or so, Gnus should start to become properly trained and enhance the authors you like best, and kill the authors you like least, without you having to say so explicitly.
You can control what groups the adaptive scoring is to be performed on by using the score files (see section Score File Format). This will also let you use different rules in different groups.
The adaptive score entries will be put into a file where the name is the
group name with gnus-adaptive-file-suffix appended. The default
is `ADAPT'.
When doing adaptive scoring, substring or fuzzy matching would probably
give you the best results in most cases. However, if the header one
matches is short, the possibility for false positives is great, so if
the length of the match is less than
gnus-score-exact-adapt-limit, exact matching will be used. If
this variable is nil, exact matching will always be used to avoid
this problem.
As mentioned above, you can adapt either on individual words or entire
headers. If you adapt on words, the
gnus-default-adaptive-word-score-alist variable says what score
each instance of a word should add given a mark.
(setq gnus-default-adaptive-word-score-alist
`((,gnus-read-mark . 30)
(,gnus-catchup-mark . -10)
(,gnus-killed-mark . -20)
(,gnus-del-mark . -15)))
This is the default value. If you have adaption on words enabled, every
word that appears in subjects of articles marked with
gnus-read-mark will result in a score rule that increase the
score with 30 points.
Words that appear in the gnus-default-ignored-adaptive-words list
will be ignored. If you wish to add more words to be ignored, use the
gnus-ignored-adaptive-words list instead.
When the scoring is done, gnus-adaptive-word-syntax-table is the
syntax table in effect. It is similar to the standard syntax table, but
it considers numbers to be non-word-constituent characters.
If gnus-adaptive-word-minimum is set to a number, the adaptive
word scoring process will never bring down the score of an article to
below this number. The default is nil.
After using this scheme for a while, it might be nice to write a
gnus-psychoanalyze-user command to go through the rules and see
what words you like and what words you don't like. Or perhaps not.
Note that the adaptive word scoring thing is highly experimental and is likely to change in the future. Initial impressions seem to indicate that it's totally useless as it stands. Some more work (involving more rigorous statistical methods) will have to be done to make this useful.
The score file where new score file entries will go is called the home score file. This is normally (and by default) the score file for the group itself. For instance, the home score file for `gnu.emacs.gnus' is `gnu.emacs.gnus.SCORE'.
However, this may not be what you want. It is often convenient to share a common home score file among many groups--all `emacs' groups could perhaps use the same home score file.
The variable that controls this is gnus-home-score-file. It can
be:
(regexp file-name). If the regexp matches the
group name, the file-name will will be used as the home score file.
So, if you want to use just a single score file, you could say:
(setq gnus-home-score-file
"my-total-score-file.SCORE")
If you want to use `gnu.SCORE' for all `gnu' groups and `rec.SCORE' for all `rec' groups (and so on), you can say:
(setq gnus-home-score-file
'gnus-hierarchial-home-score-file)
This is a ready-made function provided for your convenience. Other functions include
gnus-current-home-score-file
If you want to have one score file for the `emacs' groups and another for the `comp' groups, while letting all other groups use their own home score files:
(setq gnus-home-score-file
;; All groups that match the regexp "\\.emacs"
'(("\\.emacs" "emacs.SCORE")
;; All the comp groups in one score file
("^comp" "comp.SCORE")))
gnus-home-adapt-file works exactly the same way as
gnus-home-score-file, but says what the home adaptive score file
is instead. All new adaptive file entries will go into the file
specified by this variable, and the same syntax is allowed.
In addition to using gnus-home-score-file and
gnus-home-adapt-file, you can also use group parameters
(see section Group Parameters) and topic parameters (see section Topic Parameters) to achieve much the same. Group and topic parameters take
precedence over this variable.
Gnus offers two commands for picking out the Message-ID header in
the current buffer. Gnus will then add a score rule that scores using
this Message-ID on the References header of other
articles. This will, in effect, increase the score of all articles that
respond to the article in the current buffer. Quite useful if you want
to easily note when people answer what you've said.
gnus-score-followup-article
gnus-score-followup-thread
These two functions are both primarily meant to be used in hooks like
message-sent-hook.
If you look closely at your own Message-ID, you'll notice that
the first two or three characters are always the same. Here's two of
mine:
<x6u3u47icf.fsf@eyesore.no> <x6sp9o7ibw.fsf@eyesore.no>
So "my" ident on this machine is `x6'. This can be exploited--the following rule will raise the score on all followups to myself:
("references"
("<x6[0-9a-z]+\\.fsf\\(_-_\\)?@.*eyesore.no>"
1000 nil r))
Whether it's the first two or first three characters that are "yours" is system-dependent.
Xref header.
("xref" (" talk.politics.misc:" -1000))
("xref" ("[^:\n]+:[0-9]+ +[^:\n]+:[0-9]+ +[^:\n]+:[0-9]+" -1000 nil r))
Head, Body and All), you should choose one
and stick with it in each score file. If you use any two, each article
will be fetched twice. If you want to match a bit on the
Head and a bit on the Body, just use All for all
the matches.
((mark -100))You may also consider doing something similar with
expunge.
[^abcd]*, you may get unexpected results.
That will match newlines, which might lead to, well, The Unknown. Say
[^abcd\n]* instead.
If you want to keep just articles that have `Sex with Emacs' in the subject header, and expunge all other articles, you could put something like this in your score file:
(("subject"
("Sex with Emacs" 2))
(mark 1)
(expunge 1))
So, you raise all articles that match `Sex with Emacs' and mark the rest as read, and expunge them to boot.
Sure, other newsreaders have "global kill files". These are usually nothing more than a single kill file that applies to all groups, stored in the user's home directory. Bah! Puny, weak newsreaders!
What I'm talking about here are Global Score Files. Score files from all over the world, from users everywhere, uniting all nations in one big, happy score file union! Ange-score! New and untested!
All you have to do to use other people's score files is to set the
gnus-global-score-files variable. One entry for each score file,
or each score file directory. Gnus will decide by itself what score
files are applicable to which group.
Say you want to use the score file `/ftp@ftp.gnus.org:/pub/larsi/ding/score/soc.motss.SCORE' and all score files in the `/ftp@ftp.some-where:/pub/score' directory:
(setq gnus-global-score-files
'("/ftp@ftp.gnus.org:/pub/larsi/ding/score/soc.motss.SCORE"
"/ftp@ftp.some-where:/pub/score/"))
Simple, eh? Directory names must end with a `/'. These
directories are typically scanned only once during each Gnus session.
If you feel the need to manually re-scan the remote directories, you can
use the gnus-score-search-global-directories command.
Note that, at present, using this option will slow down group entry somewhat. (That is--a lot.)
If you want to start maintaining score files for other people to use, just put your score file up for anonymous ftp and announce it to the world. Become a retro-moderator! Participate in the retro-moderator wars sure to ensue, where retro-moderators battle it out for the sympathy of the people, luring them to use their score files on false premises! Yay! The net is saved!
Here are some tips for the would-be retro-moderator, off the top of my head:
Message-ID.
mark and expunge atoms to obliterate the nastiest
articles completely.
... I wonder whether other newsreaders will support global score files in the future. Snicker. Yup, any day now, newsreaders like Blue Wave, xrn and 1stReader are bound to implement scoring. Should we start holding our breath yet?
Gnus still supports those pesky old kill files. In fact, the kill file entries can now be expiring, which is something I wrote before Daniel Quinlan thought of doing score files, so I've left the code in there.
In short, kill processing is a lot slower (and I do mean a lot) than score processing, so it might be a good idea to rewrite your kill files into score files.
Anyway, a kill file is a normal emacs-lisp file. You can put any
forms into this file, which means that you can use kill files as some
sort of primitive hook function to be run on group entry, even though
that isn't a very good idea.
Normal kill files look like this:
(gnus-kill "From" "Lars Ingebrigtsen") (gnus-kill "Subject" "ding") (gnus-expunge "X")
This will mark every article written by me as read, and remove the marked articles from the summary buffer. Very useful, you'll agree.
Other programs use a totally different kill file syntax. If Gnus
encounters what looks like a rn kill file, it will take a stab at
interpreting it.
Two summary functions for editing a GNUS kill file:
gnus-summary-edit-local-kill).
gnus-summary-edit-global-kill).
Two group mode functions for editing the kill files:
gnus-group-edit-local-kill).
gnus-group-edit-global-kill).
Kill file variables:
gnus-kill-file-name
gnus-kill-file-name variable.
The "global" kill file (not in the score file sense of "global", of
course) is just called `KILL'.
gnus-kill-save-kill-file
nil, Gnus will save the
kill file after processing, which is necessary if you use expiring
kills.
gnus-apply-kill-hook
(gnus-apply-kill-file) by default. If you want to ignore the
kill file if you have a score file for the same group, you can set this
hook to (gnus-apply-kill-file-unless-scored). If you don't want
kill files to be processed, you should set this variable to nil.
gnus-kill-file-mode-hook
If you have loads of old kill files, you may want to convert them into score files. If they are "regular", you can use the `gnus-kill-to-score.el' package; if not, you'll have to do it by hand.
The kill to score conversion package isn't included in Gnus by default. You can fetch it from `http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/ding-other/gnus-kill-to-score'.
If your old kill files are very complex--if they contain more
non-gnus-kill forms than not, you'll have to convert them by
hand. Or just let them be as they are. Gnus will still use them as
before.
GroupLens is a collaborative filtering system that helps you work together with other people to find the quality news articles out of the huge volume of news articles generated every day.
To accomplish this the GroupLens system combines your opinions about articles you have already read with the opinions of others who have done likewise and gives you a personalized prediction for each unread news article. Think of GroupLens as a matchmaker. GroupLens watches how you rate articles, and finds other people that rate articles the same way. Once it has found some people you agree with it tells you, in the form of a prediction, what they thought of the article. You can use this prediction to help you decide whether or not you want to read the article.
To use GroupLens you must register a pseudonym with your local Better Bit Bureau (BBB). `http://www.cs.umn.edu/Research/GroupLens/bbb.html' is the only better bit in town at the moment.
Once you have registered you'll need to set a couple of variables.
gnus-use-grouplens
nil value will make Gnus hook into
all the relevant GroupLens functions.
grouplens-pseudonym
grouplens-newsgroups
That's the minimum of what you need to get up and running with GroupLens. Once you've registered, GroupLens will start giving you scores for articles based on the average of what other people think. But, to get the real benefit of GroupLens you need to start rating articles yourself. Then the scores GroupLens gives you will be personalized for you, based on how the people you usually agree with have already rated.
In GroupLens, an article is rated on a scale from 1 to 5, inclusive. Where 1 means something like this article is a waste of bandwidth and 5 means that the article was really good. The basic question to ask yourself is, "on a scale from 1 to 5 would I like to see more articles like this one?"
There are four ways to enter a rating for an article in GroupLens.
The next two commands, n and , take a numerical prefix to be the score of the article you're reading.
If you want to give the current article a score of 4 and then go to the next article, just type 4 n.
GroupLens makes a prediction for you about how much you will like a
news article. The predictions from GroupLens are on a scale from 1 to
5, where 1 is the worst and 5 is the best. You can use the predictions
from GroupLens in one of three ways controlled by the variable
gnus-grouplens-override-scoring.
There are three ways to display predictions in grouplens. You may
choose to have the GroupLens scores contribute to, or override the
regular gnus scoring mechanism. override is the default; however, some
people prefer to see the Gnus scores plus the grouplens scores. To get
the separate scoring behavior you need to set
gnus-grouplens-override-scoring to 'separate. To have the
GroupLens predictions combined with the grouplens scores set it to
'override and to combine the scores set
gnus-grouplens-override-scoring to 'combine. When you use
the combine option you will also want to set the values for
grouplens-prediction-offset and
grouplens-score-scale-factor.
In either case, GroupLens gives you a few choices for how you would like
to see your predictions displayed. The display of predictions is
controlled by the grouplens-prediction-display variable.
The following are valid values for that variable.
prediction-spot
confidence-interval
prediction-bar
confidence-bar
confidence-spot
prediction-num
confidence-plus-minus
gnus-summary-grouplens-line-format
grouplens-bbb-host
grouplens-bbb-port
grouplens-score-offset
grouplens-score-scale-factor
Scoring on Subjects and From headers is nice enough, but what if you're really interested in what a person has to say only when she's talking about a particular subject? Or what if you really don't want to read what person A has to say when she's following up to person B, but want to read what she says when she's following up to person C?
By using advanced scoring rules you may create arbitrarily complex scoring patterns.
Ordinary scoring rules have a string as the first element in the rule.
Advanced scoring rules have a list as the first element. The second
element is the score to be applied if the first element evaluated to a
non-nil value.
These lists may consist of three logical operators, one redirection operator, and various match operators.
Logical operators:
&
and
false, and then it'll stop. If all arguments
evaluate to true values, then this operator will return
true.
|
or
true. If no arguments are true,
then this operator will return false.
!
not
¬
There is an indirection operator that will make its arguments
apply to the ancestors of the current article being scored. For
instance, 1- will make score rules apply to the parent of the
current article. 2- will make score rules apply to the
grandparent of the current article. Alternatively, you can write
^^, where the number of ^s (carets) says how far back into
the ancestry you want to go.
Finally, we have the match operators. These are the ones that do the real work. Match operators are header name strings followed by a match and a match type. A typical match operator looks like `("from" "Lars Ingebrigtsen" s)'. The header names are the same as when using simple scoring, and the match types are also the same.
Let's say you want to increase the score of articles written by Lars when he's talking about Gnus:
((&
("from" "Lars Ingebrigtsen")
("subject" "Gnus"))
1000)
Quite simple, huh?
When he writes long articles, he sometimes has something nice to say:
((&
("from" "Lars Ingebrigtsen")
(|
("subject" "Gnus")
("lines" 100 >)))
1000)
However, when he responds to things written by Reig Eigil Logge, you really don't want to read what he's written:
((&
("from" "Lars Ingebrigtsen")
(1- ("from" "Reig Eigir Logge")))
-100000)
Everybody that follows up Redmondo when he writes about disappearing socks should have their scores raised, but only when they talk about white socks. However, when Lars talks about socks, it's usually not very interesting:
((&
(1-
(&
("from" "redmondo@.*no" r)
("body" "disappearing.*socks" t)))
(! ("from" "Lars Ingebrigtsen"))
("body" "white.*socks"))
1000)
The possibilities are endless.
The & and | logical operators do short-circuit logic.
That is, they stop processing their arguments when it's clear what the
result of the operation will be. For instance, if one of the arguments
of an & evaluates to false, there's no point in evaluating
the rest of the arguments. This means that you should put slow matches
(`body', `header') last and quick matches (`from',
`subject') first.
The indirection arguments (1- and so on) will make their
arguments work on previous generations of the thread. If you say
something like:
...
(1-
(1-
("from" "lars")))
...
Then that means "score on the from header of the grandparent of the current article". An indirection is quite fast, but it's better to say:
(1-
(&
("from" "Lars")
("subject" "Gnus")))
than it is to say:
(&
(1- ("from" "Lars"))
(1- ("subject" "Gnus")))
You may find that your scores have a tendency to grow without bounds, especially if you're using adaptive scoring. If scores get too big, they lose all meaning--they simply max out and it's difficult to use them in any sensible way.
Gnus provides a mechanism for decaying scores to help with this problem.
When score files are loaded and gnus-decay-scores is
non-nil, Gnus will run the score files through the decaying
mechanism thereby lowering the scores of all non-permanent score rules.
The decay itself if performed by the gnus-decay-score-function
function, which is gnus-decay-score by default. Here's the
definition of that function:
(defun gnus-decay-score (score)
"Decay SCORE.
This is done according to `gnus-score-decay-constant'
and `gnus-score-decay-scale'."
(floor
(- score
(* (if (< score 0) 1 -1)
(min (abs score)
(max gnus-score-decay-constant
(* (abs score)
gnus-score-decay-scale)))))))
gnus-score-decay-constant is 3 by default and
gnus-score-decay-scale is 0.05. This should cause the following:
If you don't like this decay function, write your own. It is called with the score to be decayed as its only parameter, and it should return the new score, which should be an integer.
Gnus will try to decay scores once a day. If you haven't run Gnus for four days, Gnus will decay the scores four times, for instance.
Many functions, among them functions for moving, decoding and saving articles, use what is known as the Process/Prefix convention.
This is a method for figuring out what articles the user wants the command to be performed on.
It goes like this:
If the numeric prefix is N, perform the operation on the next N articles, starting with the current one. If the numeric prefix is negative, perform the operation on the previous N articles, starting with the current one.
If transient-mark-mode in non-nil and the region is
active, all articles in the region will be worked upon.
If there is no numeric prefix, but some articles are marked with the process mark, perform the operation on the articles marked with the process mark.
If there is neither a numeric prefix nor any articles marked with the process mark, just perform the operation on the current article.
Quite simple, really, but it needs to be made clear so that surprises are avoided.
Commands that react to the process mark will push the current list of process marked articles onto a stack and will then clear all process marked articles. You can restore the previous configuration with the M P y command (see section Setting Process Marks).
One thing that seems to shock & horrify lots of people is that, for
instance, 3 d does exactly the same as d d d.
Since each d (which marks the current article as read) by default
goes to the next unread article after marking, this means that 3 d
will mark the next three unread articles as read, no matter what the
summary buffer looks like. Set gnus-summary-goto-unread to
nil for a more straightforward action.
gnus-novice-user
nil, you are either a newcomer to the
World of Usenet, or you are very cautious, which is a nice thing to be,
really. You will be given questions of the type "Are you sure you want
to do this?" before doing anything dangerous. This is t by
default.
gnus-expert-user
nil, you will seldom be asked any
questions by Gnus. It will simply assume you know what you're doing, no
matter how strange.
gnus-interactive-catchup
nil. It
is t by default.
gnus-interactive-exit
t by
default.
Quite a lot of Emacs commands react to the (numeric) prefix. For
instance, C-u 4 C-f moves point four characters forward, and
C-u 9 0 0 I s s p adds a permanent Subject substring score
rule of 900 to the current article.
This is all nice and well, but what if you want to give a command some additional information? Well, what most commands do is interpret the "raw" prefix in some special way. C-u 0 C-x C-s means that one doesn't want a backup file to be created when saving the current buffer, for instance. But what if you want to save without making a backup file, and you want Emacs to flash lights and play a nice tune at the same time? You can't, and you're probably perfectly happy that way.
I'm not, so I've added a second prefix--the symbolic prefix. The
prefix key is M-i (gnus-symbolic-argument), and the next
character typed in is the value. You can stack as many M-i
prefixes as you want. M-i a M-C-u means "feed the M-C-u
command the symbolic prefix a". M-i a M-i b M-C-u means
"feed the M-C-u command the symbolic prefixes a and
b". You get the drift.
Typing in symbolic prefixes to commands that don't accept them doesn't hurt, but it doesn't do any good either. Currently not many Gnus functions make use of the symbolic prefix.
If you're interested in how Gnus implements this, see section Extended Interactive.
Throughout this manual you've probably noticed lots of variables called
things like gnus-group-line-format and
gnus-summary-mode-line-format. These control how Gnus is to
output lines in the various buffers. There's quite a lot of them.
Fortunately, they all use the same syntax, so there's not that much to
be annoyed by.
Here's an example format spec (from the group buffer): `%M%S%5y: %(%g%)\n'. We see that it is indeed extremely ugly, and that there are lots of percentages everywhere.
Currently Gnus uses the following formatting variables:
gnus-group-line-format, gnus-summary-line-format,
gnus-server-line-format, gnus-topic-line-format,
gnus-group-mode-line-format,
gnus-summary-mode-line-format,
gnus-article-mode-line-format,
gnus-server-mode-line-format, and
gnus-summary-pick-line-format.
All these format variables can also be arbitrary elisp forms. In that
case, they will be evaled to insert the required lines.
Gnus includes a command to help you while creating your own format
specs. M-x gnus-update-format will eval the current form,
update the spec in question and pop you to a buffer where you can
examine the resulting lisp code to be run to generate the line.
Each `%' element will be replaced by some string or other when the buffer in question is generated. `%5y' means "insert the `y' spec, and pad with spaces to get a 5-character field".
As with normal C and Emacs Lisp formatting strings, the numerical modifier between the `%' and the formatting type character will pad the output so that it is always at least that long. `%5y' will make the field always (at least) five characters wide by padding with spaces to the left. If you say `%-5y', it will pad to the right instead.
You may also wish to limit the length of the field to protect against particularly wide values. For that you can say `%4,6y', which means that the field will never be more than 6 characters wide and never less than 4 characters wide.
Mode line formatting variables (e.g.,
gnus-summary-mode-line-format) follow the same rules as other,
buffer line oriented formatting variables (see section Formatting Basics)
with the following two differences:
mode-line-format variable.
It is frequently useful to post-process the fields in some way. Padding, limiting, cutting off parts and suppressing certain values can be achieved by using tilde modifiers. A typical tilde spec might look like `%~(cut 3)~(ignore "0")y'.
These are the valid modifiers:
pad
pad-left
pad-right
max
max-left
max-right
cut
cut-left
cut-right
ignore
form
Let's take an example. The `%o' spec in the summary mode lines will return a date in compact ISO8601 format---`19960809T230410'. This is quite a mouthful, so we want to shave off the century number and the time, leaving us with a six-character date. That would be `%~(cut-left 2)~(max-right 6)~(pad 6)o'. (Cutting is done before maxing, and we need the padding to ensure that the date is never less than 6 characters to make it look nice in columns.)
Ignoring is done first; then cutting; then maxing; and then as the very last operation, padding.
If you use lots of these advanced thingies, you'll find that Gnus gets quite slow. This can be helped enormously by running M-x gnus-compile when you are satisfied with the look of your lines. See section Compilation.
All the specs allow for inserting user defined specifiers---`u'.
The next character in the format string should be a letter. Gnus
will call the function gnus-user-format-function-`X', where
`X' is the letter following `%u'. The function will be passed
a single parameter--what the parameter means depends on what buffer
it's being called from. The function should return a string, which will
be inserted into the buffer just like information from any other
specifier. This function may also be called with dummy values, so it
should protect against that.
You can also use tilde modifiers (see section Advanced Formatting to achieve much the same without defining new functions. Here's an example: `%~(form (count-lines (point-min) (point)))@'. The form given here will be evaluated to yield the current line number, and then inserted.
There are specs for highlighting, and these are shared by all the format
variables. Text inside the `%(' and `%)' specifiers will get
the special mouse-face property set, which means that it will be
highlighted (with gnus-mouse-face) when you put the mouse pointer
over it.
Text inside the `%{' and `%}' specifiers will have their
normal faces set using gnus-face-0, which is bold by
default. If you say `%1{', you'll get gnus-face-1 instead,
and so on. Create as many faces as you wish. The same goes for the
mouse-face specs--you can say `%3(hello%)' to have
`hello' mouse-highlighted with gnus-mouse-face-3.
Here's an alternative recipe for the group buffer:
;; Create three face types.
(setq gnus-face-1 'bold)
(setq gnus-face-3 'italic)
;; We want the article count to be in
;; a bold and green face. So we create
;; a new face called `my-green-bold'.
(copy-face 'bold 'my-green-bold)
;; Set the color.
(set-face-foreground 'my-green-bold "ForestGreen")
(setq gnus-face-2 'my-green-bold)
;; Set the new & fancy format.
(setq gnus-group-line-format
"%M%S%3{%5y%}%2[:%] %(%1{%g%}%)\n")
I'm sure you'll be able to use this scheme to create totally unreadable and extremely vulgar displays. Have fun!
Note that the `%(' specs (and friends) do not make any sense on the mode-line variables.
No, there's nothing here about X, so be quiet.
If gnus-use-full-window non-nil, Gnus will delete all
other windows and occupy the entire Emacs screen by itself. It is
t by default.
gnus-buffer-configuration describes how much space each Gnus
buffer should be given. Here's an excerpt of this variable:
((group (vertical 1.0 (group 1.0 point)
(if gnus-carpal (group-carpal 4))))
(article (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point)
(article 1.0))))
This is an alist. The key is a symbol that names some action or
other. For instance, when displaying the group buffer, the window
configuration function will use group as the key. A full list of
possible names is listed below.
The value (i.e., the split) says how much space each buffer
should occupy. To take the article split as an example -
(article (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point)
(article 1.0)))
This split says that the summary buffer should occupy 25% of upper
half of the screen, and that it is placed over the article buffer. As
you may have noticed, 100% + 25% is actually 125% (yup, I saw y'all
reaching for that calculator there). However, the special number
1.0 is used to signal that this buffer should soak up all the
rest of the space available after the rest of the buffers have taken
whatever they need. There should be only one buffer with the 1.0
size spec per split.
Point will be put in the buffer that has the optional third element
point. In a frame split, the last subsplit having a leaf
split where the tag frame-focus is a member (i.e. is the third or
fourth element in the list, depending on whether the point tag is
present) gets focus.
Here's a more complicated example:
(article (vertical 1.0 (group 4)
(summary 0.25 point)
(if gnus-carpal (summary-carpal 4))
(article 1.0)))
If the size spec is an integer instead of a floating point number, then that number will be used to say how many lines a buffer should occupy, not a percentage.
If the split looks like something that can be evaled (to be
precise--if the car of the split is a function or a subr), this
split will be evaled. If the result is non-nil, it will
be used as a split. This means that there will be three buffers if
gnus-carpal is nil, and four buffers if gnus-carpal
is non-nil.
Not complicated enough for you? Well, try this on for size:
(article (horizontal 1.0
(vertical 0.5
(group 1.0)
(gnus-carpal 4))
(vertical 1.0
(summary 0.25 point)
(summary-carpal 4)
(article 1.0))))
Whoops. Two buffers with the mystery 100% tag. And what's that
horizontal thingie?
If the first element in one of the split is horizontal, Gnus will
split the window horizontally, giving you two windows side-by-side.
Inside each of these strips you may carry on all you like in the normal
fashion. The number following horizontal says what percentage of
the screen is to be given to this strip.
For each split, there must be one element that has the 100% tag. The splitting is never accurate, and this buffer will eat any leftover lines from the splits.
To be slightly more formal, here's a definition of what a valid split may look like:
split = frame | horizontal | vertical | buffer | form
frame = "(frame " size *split ")"
horizontal = "(horizontal " size *split ")"
vertical = "(vertical " size *split ")"
buffer = "(" buffer-name " " size *[ "point" ] *[ "frame-focus"] ")"
size = number | frame-params
buffer-name = group | article | summary ...
The limitations are that the frame split can only appear as the
top-level split. form should be an Emacs Lisp form that should
return a valid split. We see that each split is fully recursive, and
may contain any number of vertical and horizontal splits.
Finding the right sizes can be a bit complicated. No window may be less
than gnus-window-min-height (default 1) characters high, and all
windows must be at least gnus-window-min-width (default 1)
characters wide. Gnus will try to enforce this before applying the
splits. If you want to use the normal Emacs window width/height limit,
you can just set these two variables to nil.
If you're not familiar with Emacs terminology, horizontal and
vertical splits may work the opposite way of what you'd expect.
Windows inside a horizontal split are shown side-by-side, and
windows within a vertical split are shown above each other.
If you want to experiment with window placement, a good tip is to call
gnus-configure-frame directly with a split. This is the function
that does all the real work when splitting buffers. Below is a pretty
nonsensical configuration with 5 windows; two for the group buffer and
three for the article buffer. (I said it was nonsensical.) If you
eval the statement below, you can get an idea of how that would
look straight away, without going through the normal Gnus channels.
Play with it until you're satisfied, and then use
gnus-add-configuration to add your new creation to the buffer
configuration list.
(gnus-configure-frame
'(horizontal 1.0
(vertical 10
(group 1.0)
(article 0.3 point))
(vertical 1.0
(article 1.0)
(horizontal 4
(group 1.0)
(article 10)))))
You might want to have several frames as well. No prob--just use the
frame split:
(gnus-configure-frame
'(frame 1.0
(vertical 1.0
(summary 0.25 point frame-focus)
(article 1.0))
(vertical ((height . 5) (width . 15)
(user-position . t)
(left . -1) (top . 1))
(picon 1.0))))
This split will result in the familiar summary/article window
configuration in the first (or "main") frame, while a small additional
frame will be created where picons will be shown. As you can see,
instead of the normal 1.0 top-level spec, each additional split
should have a frame parameter alist as the size spec.
See section `Frame Parameters' in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. Under XEmacs, a frame property list will be
accepted, too--for instance, (height 5 width 15 left -1 top 1)
is such a plist.
Here's a list of all possible keys for
gnus-buffer-configuration:
group, summary, article, server,
browse, message, pick, info,
summary-faq, edit-group, edit-server,
edit-score, post, reply, forward,
reply-yank, mail-bounce, draft, pipe,
bug, compose-bounce, and score-trace.
Note that the message key is used for both
gnus-group-mail and gnus-summary-mail-other-window. If
it is desirable to distinguish between the two, something like this
might be used:
(message (horizontal 1.0
(vertical 1.0 (message 1.0 point))
(vertical 0.24
(if (buffer-live-p gnus-summary-buffer)
'(summary 0.5))
(group 1.0)))))
Since the gnus-buffer-configuration variable is so long and
complicated, there's a function you can use to ease changing the config
of a single setting: gnus-add-configuration. If, for instance,
you want to change the article setting, you could say:
(gnus-add-configuration
'(article (vertical 1.0
(group 4)
(summary .25 point)
(article 1.0))))
You'd typically stick these gnus-add-configuration calls in your
`.gnus.el' file or in some startup hook--they should be run after
Gnus has been loaded.
If all windows mentioned in the configuration are already visible, Gnus
won't change the window configuration. If you always want to force the
"right" window configuration, you can set
gnus-always-force-window-configuration to non-nil.
Fiddling with fonts and faces used to be very difficult, but these days it is very simple. You simply say M-x customize-face, pick out the face you want to alter, and alter it via the standard Customize interface.
Remember all those line format specification variables?
gnus-summary-line-format, gnus-group-line-format, and so
on. Now, Gnus will of course heed whatever these variables are, but,
unfortunately, changing them will mean a quite significant slow-down.
(The default values of these variables have byte-compiled functions
associated with them, while the user-generated versions do not, of
course.)
To help with this, you can run M-x gnus-compile after you've
fiddled around with the variables and feel that you're (kind of)
satisfied. This will result in the new specs being byte-compiled, and
you'll get top speed again. Gnus will save these compiled specs in the
`.newsrc.eld' file. (User-defined functions aren't compiled by
this function, though--you should compile them yourself by sticking
them into the .gnus.el file and byte-compiling that file.)
gnus-updated-mode-lines says what buffers should keep their mode
lines updated. It is a list of symbols. Supported symbols include
group, article, summary, server,
browse, and tree. If the corresponding symbol is present,
Gnus will keep that mode line updated with information that may be
pertinent. If this variable is nil, screen refresh may be
quicker.
By default, Gnus displays information on the current article in the mode
lines of the summary and article buffers. The information Gnus wishes
to display (e.g. the subject of the article) is often longer than the
mode lines, and therefore have to be cut off at some point. The
gnus-mode-non-string-length variable says how long the other
elements on the line is (i.e., the non-info part). If you put
additional elements on the mode line (e.g. a clock), you should modify
this variable:
(add-hook 'display-time-hook
(lambda () (setq gnus-mode-non-string-length
(+ 21
(if line-number-mode 5 0)
(if column-number-mode 4 0)
(length display-time-string)))))
If this variable is nil (which is the default), the mode line
strings won't be chopped off, and they won't be padded either. Note
that the default is unlikely to be desirable, as even the percentage
complete in the buffer may be crowded off the mode line; the user should
configure this variable appropriately for her configuration.
The gnus-visual variable controls most of the Gnus-prettifying
aspects. If nil, Gnus won't attempt to create menus or use fancy
colors or fonts. This will also inhibit loading the `gnus-vis.el'
file.
This variable can be a list of visual properties that are enabled. The following elements are valid, and are all included by default:
group-highlight
summary-highlight
article-highlight
highlight
group-menu
summary-menu
article-menu
browse-menu
server-menu
score-menu
menu
So if you only want highlighting in the article buffer and menus in all buffers, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-visual '(article-highlight menu))
If you want highlighting only and no menus whatsoever, you'd say:
(setq gnus-visual '(highlight))
If gnus-visual is t, highlighting and menus will be used
in all Gnus buffers.
Other general variables that influence the look of all buffers include:
gnus-mouse-face
gnus-visual is nil.
There are hooks associated with the creation of all the different menus:
gnus-article-menu-hook
gnus-group-menu-hook
gnus-summary-menu-hook
gnus-server-menu-hook
gnus-browse-menu-hook
gnus-score-menu-hook
Those new-fangled mouse contraptions is very popular with the young, hep kids who don't want to learn the proper way to do things these days. Why, I remember way back in the summer of '89, when I was using Emacs on a Tops 20 system. Three hundred users on one single machine, and every user was running Simula compilers. Bah!
Right.
Well, you can make Gnus display bufferfuls of buttons you can click to
do anything by setting gnus-carpal to t. Pretty simple,
really. Tell the chiropractor I sent you.
gnus-carpal-mode-hook
gnus-carpal-button-face
gnus-carpal-header-face
gnus-carpal-group-buffer-buttons
gnus-carpal-summary-buffer-buttons
gnus-carpal-server-buffer-buttons
gnus-carpal-browse-buffer-buttons
All the buttons variables are lists. The elements in these list
are either cons cells where the car contains a text to be displayed and
the cdr contains a function symbol, or a simple string.
Gnus, being larger than any program ever written (allegedly), does lots of strange stuff that you may wish to have done while you're not present. For instance, you may want it to check for new mail once in a while. Or you may want it to close down all connections to all servers when you leave Emacs idle. And stuff like that.
Gnus will let you do stuff like that by defining various handlers. Each handler consists of three elements: A function, a time, and an idle parameter.
Here's an example of a handler that closes connections when Emacs has been idle for thirty minutes:
(gnus-demon-close-connections nil 30)
Here's a handler that scans for PGP headers every hour when Emacs is idle:
(gnus-demon-scan-pgp 60 t)
This time parameter and than idle parameter work together
in a strange, but wonderful fashion. Basically, if idle is
nil, then the function will be called every time minutes.
If idle is t, then the function will be called after
time minutes only if Emacs is idle. So if Emacs is never idle,
the function will never be called. But once Emacs goes idle, the
function will be called every time minutes.
If idle is a number and time is a number, the function will be called every time minutes only when Emacs has been idle for idle minutes.
If idle is a number and time is nil, the function
will be called once every time Emacs has been idle for idle
minutes.
And if time is a string, it should look like `07:31', and the function will then be called once every day somewhere near that time. Modified by the idle parameter, of course.
(When I say "minute" here, I really mean gnus-demon-timestep
seconds. This is 60 by default. If you change that variable,
all the timings in the handlers will be affected.)
To set the whole thing in motion, though, you have to set
gnus-use-demon to t.
So, if you want to add a handler, you could put something like this in your `.gnus' file:
(gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-close-connections 30 t)
Some ready-made functions to do this have been created:
gnus-demon-add-nocem, gnus-demon-add-disconnection,
gnus-demon-add-nntp-close-connection,
gnus-demon-add-scan-timestamps, gnus-demon-add-rescan, and
gnus-demon-add-scanmail. Just put those functions in your
`.gnus' if you want those abilities.
If you add handlers to gnus-demon-handlers directly, you should
run gnus-demon-init to make the changes take hold. To cancel all
daemons, you can use the gnus-demon-cancel function.
Note that adding daemons can be pretty naughty if you over do it. Adding functions that scan all news and mail from all servers every two seconds is a sure-fire way of getting booted off any respectable system. So behave.
Spamming is posting the same article lots and lots of times. Spamming is bad. Spamming is evil.
Spamming is usually canceled within a day or so by various anti-spamming agencies. These agencies usually also send out NoCeM messages. NoCeM is pronounced "no see-'em", and means what the name implies--these are messages that make the offending articles, like, go away.
What use are these NoCeM messages if the articles are canceled anyway? Some sites do not honor cancel messages and some sites just honor cancels from a select few people. Then you may wish to make use of the NoCeM messages, which are distributed in the `alt.nocem.misc' newsgroup.
Gnus can read and parse the messages in this group automatically, and this will make spam disappear.
There are some variables to customize, of course:
gnus-use-nocem
t to set the ball rolling. It is nil
by default.
gnus-nocem-groups
("news.lists.filters" "news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins"
"alt.nocem.misc" "news.admin.net-abuse.announce").
gnus-nocem-issuers
("Automoose-1"
"rbraver@ohww.norman.ok.us" "clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca"
"jem@xpat.com" "snowhare@xmission.com" "red@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us
(Richard E. Depew)"); fine, upstanding citizens all of them.
Known despammers that you can put in this list include:
(issuer conditions ...) elements in the list.
Each condition is either a string (which is a regexp that matches types
you want to use) or a list on the form (not string), where
string is a regexp that matches types you don't want to use.
For instance, if you want all NoCeM messages from Chris Lewis except his
`troll' messages, you'd say:
("clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca" ".*" (not "troll"))
On the other hand, if you just want nothing but his `spam' and
`spew' messages, you'd say:
("clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca" (not ".*") "spew" "spam")
The specs are applied left-to-right.
gnus-nocem-verifyer
mc-verify, which is a Mailcrypt
function. If this is too slow and you don't care for verification
(which may be dangerous), you can set this variable to nil.
If you want signed NoCeM messages to be verified and unsigned messages
not to be verified (but used anyway), you could do something like:
(setq gnus-nocem-verifyer 'my-gnus-mc-verify)
(defun my-gnus-mc-verify ()
(not (eq 'forged
(ignore-errors
(if (mc-verify)
t
'forged)))))
This might be dangerous, though.
gnus-nocem-directory
gnus-nocem-expiry-wait
Using NoCeM could potentially be a memory hog. If you have many living (i. e., subscribed or unsubscribed groups), your Emacs process will grow big. If this is a problem, you should kill off all (or most) of your unsubscribed groups (see section Subscription Commands).
It is very useful to be able to undo actions one has done. In normal
Emacs buffers, it's easy enough--you just push the undo button.
In Gnus buffers, however, it isn't that simple.
The things Gnus displays in its buffer is of no value whatsoever to
Gnus--it's all just data designed to look nice to the user.
Killing a group in the group buffer with C-k makes the line
disappear, but that's just a side-effect of the real action--the
removal of the group in question from the internal Gnus structures.
Undoing something like that can't be done by the normal Emacs
undo function.
Gnus tries to remedy this somewhat by keeping track of what the user
does and coming up with actions that would reverse the actions the user
takes. When the user then presses the undo key, Gnus will run
the code to reverse the previous action, or the previous actions.
However, not all actions are easily reversible, so Gnus currently offers
a few key functions to be undoable. These include killing groups,
yanking groups, and changing the list of read articles of groups.
That's it, really. More functions may be added in the future, but each
added function means an increase in data to be stored, so Gnus will
never be totally undoable.
The undoability is provided by the gnus-undo-mode minor mode. It
is used if gnus-use-undo is non-nil, which is the
default. The M-C-_ key performs the gnus-undo command
command, which should feel kinda like the normal Emacs undo
command.
If you are a moderator, you can use the `gnus-mdrtn.el' package. It is not included in the standard Gnus package. Write a mail to `larsi@gnus.org' and state what group you moderate, and you'll get a copy.
The moderation package is implemented as a minor mode for summary buffers. Put
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-moderate)
in your `.gnus.el' file.
If you are the moderator of `rec.zoofle', this is how it's supposed to work:
To use moderation mode in these two groups, say:
(setq gnus-moderated-list
"^nnml:rec.zoofle$\\|^rec.zoofle$")
XEmacs is able to display pictures and stuff, so Gnus has taken advantage of that.
So... You want to slow down your news reader even more! This is a good way to do so. Its also a great way to impress people staring over your shoulder as you read news.
What are Picons? To quote directly from the Picons Web site:
Picons is short for "personal icons". They're small, constrained images used to represent users and domains on the net, organized into databases so that the appropriate image for a given e-mail address can be found. Besides users and domains, there are picon databases for Usenet newsgroups and weather forecasts. The picons are in either monochrome
XBMformat or colorXPMandGIFformats.
If you have a permanent connection to the Internet you can use Steve
Kinzler's Picons Search engine by setting
gnus-picons-piconsearch-url to the string
`http://www.cs.indiana.edu/picons/search.html'.
Otherwise you need a local copy of his database. For instructions on
obtaining and installing the picons databases, point your Web browser at
`http://www.cs.indiana.edu/picons/ftp/index.html'. Gnus expects
picons to be installed into a location pointed to by
gnus-picons-database.
To have Gnus display Picons for you, you must be running XEmacs 19.13 or greater since all other versions of Emacs aren't yet able to display images.
Additionally, you must have x support compiled into XEmacs. To
display color picons which are much nicer than the black & white one,
you also need one of xpm or gif compiled into XEmacs.
If you want to display faces from X-Face headers, you should have
the xface support compiled into XEmacs. Otherwise you must have
the netpbm utilities installed, or munge the
gnus-picons-convert-x-face variable to use something else.
To enable displaying picons, simply put the following line in your `~/.gnus' file and start Gnus.
(setq gnus-use-picons t)
(add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook
'gnus-article-display-picons t)
(add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook
'gnus-picons-article-display-x-face)
and make sure gnus-picons-database points to the directory
containing the Picons databases.
Alternatively if you want to use the web piconsearch engine add this:
(setq gnus-picons-piconsearch-url
"http://www.cs.indiana.edu:800/piconsearch")
Gnus can display picons for you as you enter and leave groups and articles. It knows how to interact with three sections of the picons database. Namely, it can display the picons newsgroup pictures, author's face picture(s), and the authors domain. To enable this feature, you need to select where to get the picons from, and where to display them.
gnus-picons-database
gnus-picons-piconsearch-url is nil. Defaults to
`/usr/local/faces/'.
gnus-picons-piconsearch-url
nil 'the default), then picons are fetched from local
database indicated by gnus-picons-database.
gnus-picons-display-where
picons by
default (which by default maps to the buffer `*Picons*'). Other
valid places could be article, summary, or
`*scratch*' for all I care. Just make sure that you've made the
buffer visible using the standard Gnus window configuration
routines---see section Windows Configuration.
gnus-picons-group-excluded-groups
Note: If you set gnus-use-picons to t, it will set up your
window configuration for you to include the picons buffer.
Now that you've made those decision, you need to add the following functions to the appropriate hooks so these pictures will get displayed at the right time.
gnus-article-display-picons
gnus-picons-display-where buffer. Should be added to the
gnus-article-display-hook.
gnus-picons-article-display-x-face
gnus-article-display-hook.
Note: You must append them to the hook, so make sure to specify 't'
for the append flag of add-hook:
(add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-display-picons t)
The following variables offer further control over how things are done, where things are located, and other useless stuff you really don't need to worry about.
gnus-picons-news-directories
gnus-picons-database for
newsgroups faces. ("news") is the default.
gnus-picons-user-directories
gnus-picons-database for user
faces. ("local" "users" "usenix" "misc") is the default.
gnus-picons-domain-directories
gnus-picons-database for
domain name faces. Defaults to ("domains"). Some people may
want to add `"unknown"' to this list.
gnus-picons-convert-x-face
xface support builtin XEmacs, this is the
command to use to convert the X-Face header to an X bitmap
(xbm). Defaults to (format "{ echo '/* Width=48,
Height=48 */'; uncompface; } | icontopbm | pbmtoxbm > %s"
gnus-picons-x-face-file-name)
gnus-picons-x-face-file-name
X-Face bitmap in. Defaults
to (format "/tmp/picon-xface.%s.xbm" (user-login-name)).
gnus-picons-has-modeline-p
gnus-picons-display-where to picons, your
XEmacs frame will become really cluttered. To alleviate this a bit you
can set gnus-picons-has-modeline-p to nil; this will
remove the mode line from the Picons buffer. This is only useful if
gnus-picons-display-where is picons.
gnus-picons-refresh-before-display
nil.
gnus-picons-display-as-address
t display textual email addresses along with pictures.
Defaults to t.
gnus-picons-file-suffixes
("xpm" "gif" "xbm") minus those not builtin your XEmacs.
gnus-picons-display-article-move-p
gnus-picons-clear-cache-on-shutdown
nil,
Gnus will never clear the cache itself; you will have to manually call
gnus-picons-clear-cache to clear it. Otherwise the cache will be
cleared every time you exit Gnus. Defaults to t.
Smiley is a package separate from Gnus, but since Gnus is currently the only package that uses Smiley, it is documented here.
In short--to use Smiley in Gnus, put the following in your `.gnus.el' file:
(add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-smiley-display t)
Smiley maps text smiley faces---`:-)', `:-=', `:-(' and the like--to pictures and displays those instead of the text smiley faces. The conversion is controlled by a list of regexps that matches text and maps that to file names.
Smiley supplies two example conversion alists by default:
smiley-deformed-regexp-alist (which matches `:)', `:('
and so on), and smiley-nosey-regexp-alist (which matches
`:-)', `:-(' and so on).
The alist used is specified by the smiley-regexp-alist variable,
which defaults to the value of smiley-deformed-regexp-alist.
The first item in each element is the regexp to be matched; the second element is the regexp match group that is to be replaced by the picture; and the third element is the name of the file to be displayed.
The following variables customize where Smiley will look for these files, as well as the color to be used and stuff:
smiley-data-directory
smiley-flesh-color
smiley-features-color
smiley-tongue-color
smiley-circle-color
smiley-mouse-face
gnus-use-toolbar
nil, don't display toolbars. If non-nil, it should be
one of default-toolbar, top-toolbar, bottom-toolbar,
right-toolbar, or left-toolbar.
gnus-group-toolbar
gnus-summary-toolbar
gnus-summary-mail-toolbar
gnus-xmas-glyph-directory
gnus-xmas-logo-color-alist
gnus-xmas-logo-color-style
flame, pine, moss,
irish, sky, tin, velvet, grape,
labia, berry, neutral, and september.
gnus-xmas-modeline-glyph
Gnus provides fuzzy matching of Subject lines when doing
things like scoring, thread gathering and thread comparison.
As opposed to regular expression matching, fuzzy matching is very fuzzy. It's so fuzzy that there's not even a definition of what fuzziness means, and the implementation has changed over time.
Basically, it tries to remove all noise from lines before comparing. `Re: ', parenthetical remarks, white space, and so on, are filtered out of the strings before comparing the results. This often leads to adequate results--even when faced with strings generated by text manglers masquerading as newsreaders.
In these last days of the Usenet, commercial vultures are hanging about
and grepping through news like crazy to find email addresses they can
foist off their scams and products to. As a reaction to this, many
people have started putting nonsense addresses into their From
lines. I think this is counterproductive--it makes it difficult for
people to send you legitimate mail in response to things you write, as
well as making it difficult to see who wrote what. This rewriting may
perhaps be a bigger menace than the unsolicited commercial email itself
in the end.
The biggest problem I have with email spam is that it comes in under false pretenses. I press g and Gnus merrily informs me that I have 10 new emails. I say "Golly gee! Happy is me!" and select the mail group, only to find two pyramid schemes, seven advertisements ("New! Miracle tonic for growing full, lustrous hair on your toes!") and one mail asking me to repent and find some god.
This is annoying.
The way to deal with this is having Gnus split out all spam into a `spam' mail group (see section Splitting Mail).
First, pick one (1) valid mail address that you can be reached at, and
put it in your From header of all your news articles. (I've
chosen `larsi@trym.ifi.uio.no', but for many addresses on the form
`larsi+usenet@ifi.uio.no' will be a better choice. Ask your
sysadm whether your sendmail installation accepts keywords in the local
part of the mail address.)
(setq message-default-news-headers
"From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@trym.ifi.uio.no>\n")
Then put the following split rule in nnmail-split-fancy
(see section Fancy Mail Splitting):
(
...
(to "larsi@trym.ifi.uio.no"
(| ("subject" "re:.*" "misc")
("references" ".*@.*" "misc")
"spam"))
...
)
This says that all mail to this address is suspect, but if it has a
Subject that starts with a `Re:' or has a References
header, it's probably ok. All the rest goes to the `spam' group.
(This idea probably comes from Tim Pierce.)
In addition, many mail spammers talk directly to your smtp server
and do not include your email address explicitly in the To
header. Why they do this is unknown--perhaps it's to thwart this
thwarting scheme? In any case, this is trivial to deal with--you just
put anything not addressed to you in the `spam' group by ending
your fancy split rule in this way:
( ... (to "larsi" "misc") "spam")
In my experience, this will sort virtually everything into the right group. You still have to check the `spam' group from time to time to check for legitimate mail, though. If you feel like being a good net citizen, you can even send off complaints to the proper authorities on each unsolicited commercial email--at your leisure.
If you are also a lazy net citizen, you will probably prefer complaining
automatically with the `gnus-junk.el' package, available FOR FREE
at
`<URL:http://stud2.tuwien.ac.at/~e9426626/gnus-junk.html>'.
Since most e-mail spam is sent automatically, this may reconcile the
cosmic balance somewhat.
This works for me. It allows people an easy way to contact me (they can
just press r in the usual way), and I'm not bothered at all with
spam. It's a win-win situation. Forging From headers to point
to non-existent domains is yucky, in my opinion.
gnus-home-directory
gnus-directory
gnus-default-directory
nil (which is the
default), the default directory will be the default directory of the
buffer you were in when you started Gnus.
gnus-verbose
gnus-verbose-backends
gnus-verbose, but it applies
to the Gnus backends instead of Gnus proper.
nnheader-max-head-length
nil, there is no upper read bound. If it is
t, the backends won't try to read the articles piece by piece,
but read the entire articles. This makes sense with some versions of
ange-ftp or efs.
nnheader-head-chop-length
nnheader-file-name-translation-alist
(setq nnheader-file-name-translation-alist
'((?: . ?_)))
In fact, this is the default value for this variable on OS/2 and MS
Windows (phooey) systems.
gnus-hidden-properties
(invisible t intangible t) by default on most systems, which
makes invisible text invisible and intangible.
gnus-parse-headers-hook
gnus-shell-command-separator
Well, that's the manual--you can get on with your life now. Keep in touch. Say hello to your cats from me.
My ghod---I just can't stand goodbyes. Sniffle.
Ol' Charles Reznikoff said it pretty well, so I leave the floor to him:
Te Deum
Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.Not for victory
but for the day's work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.
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://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/'. 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.
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. If was released as "Gnus 5.6 on March 8th 1998.
If you happen upon a version of Gnus that has a prefixed name -- "(ding) Gnus", "September Gnus", "Red Gnus", "Quassia 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.
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 backends, Gnus now offers a simple interface for anybody who wants to write new backends 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.
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. See section 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.
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.
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.
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.
Gnus should work on :
Gnus will absolutely not work on any Emacsen older than that. Not reliably, at least.
There are some vague differences between Gnus on the various platforms--XEmacs features more graphics (a logo and a toolbar)---but other than that, things should look pretty much the same under all Emacsen.
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 <type type>, yup, I'll release it right away <ship off> no wait, that doesn't work at all <type type>, yup, I'll ship that one off right away <ship off> 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.
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, David Kågedal, Richard Pieri, Fabrice Popineau, Daniel Quinlan, Jason L. Tibbitts, III, and Jack Vinson.
Also thanks to the following for patches and stuff:
Jari Aalto, Adrian Aichner, Vladimir Alexiev, Russ Allbery, Peter Arius, Matt Armstrong, Marc Auslander, Frank Bennett, Robert Bihlmeyer, Chris Bone, Mark Borges, Mark Boyns, Lance A. Brown, Kees de Bruin, Martin Buchholz, Joe Buehler, Kevin Buhr, Alastair Burt, Joao Cachopo, Zlatko Calusic, Massimo Campostrini, Castor, David Charlap, Dan Christensen, Kevin Christian, Michael R. Cook, Glenn Coombs, Frank D. Cringle, Geoffrey T. Dairiki, Andre Deparade, Ulrik Dickow, Dave Disser, Rui-Tao Dong, Joev Dubach, Michael Welsh Duggan, Dave Edmondson, Paul Eggert, Enami Tsugutomo, Michael Ernst, Luc Van Eycken, Sam Falkner, Nelson Jose dos Santos Ferreira, Sigbjorn Finne, Decklin Foster, Gary D. Foster, Paul Franklin, Guy Geens, Arne Georg Gleditsch, David S. Goldberg, Michelangelo Grigni, D. Hall, Magnus Hammerin, Kenichi Handa, Raja R. Harinath, Yoshiki Hayashi, P. E. Jareth Hein, Hisashige Kenji, Marc Horowitz, Gunnar Horrigmo, Richard Hoskins, Brad Howes, François Felix Ingrand, Ishikawa Ichiro, Lee Iverson, Iwamuro Motonori, Rajappa Iyer, Andreas Jaeger, Randell Jesup, Fred Johansen, Gareth Jones, Simon Josefsson, Greg Klanderman, Karl Kleinpaste, Peter Skov Knudsen, Shuhei Kobayashi, Koseki Yoshinori, Thor Kristoffersen, Jens Lautenbacher, Martin Larose, Seokchan Lee, 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, William Perry, Stephen Peters, Jens-Ulrik Holger Petersen, Ulrich Pfeifer, Matt Pharr, 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, Jason Rumney, Wolfgang Rupprecht, Jay Sachs, Dewey M. Sasser, Loren Schall, Dan Schmidt, Ralph Schleicher, Philippe Schnoebelen, Andreas Schwab, Randal L. Schwartz, Justin Sheehy, Danny Siu, Matt Simmons, Paul D. Smith, Jeff Sparkes, Toby Speight, Michael Sperber, Darren Stalder, Richard Stallman, Greg Stark, Sam Steingold, Paul Stodghill, Kurt Swanson, Samuel Tardieu, Teddy, Chuck Thompson, Philippe Troin, James Troup, Trung Tran-Duc, Aaron M. Ucko, Aki Vehtari, Didier Verna, Jan Vroonhof, Stefan Waldherr, Pete Ware, Barry A. Warsaw, Christoph Wedler, Joe Wells, Katsumi Yamaoka, and Shenghuo Zhu.
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!
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.
New features in Gnus 5.0/5.1:
New features in Gnus 5.2/5.3:
mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are
now obsolete.
(setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
trn-like tree buffer can be displayed (see section Tree Display).
(setq gnus-use-trees t)
nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
buffers (see section Pick and Read).
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
(add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews
news batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything
else (see section Document Groups).
nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets
(see section SOUP).
(add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook
'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
Message-ID.
gnus-buffer-configuration (see section Windows Configuration).
(setq gnus-use-nocem t)
(setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
Mail-Copies-To header.
References header
(see section Customizing Threading).
(setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
(setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
(setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
articles (see section Other Decode Variables).
(setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
(setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
(add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook
'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers t)
New features in Gnus 5.4/5.5:
and,
or, not, and parent redirection (see section Advanced Scoring).
(setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
nndoc was rewritten to be easily extendable (see section Document Server Internals).
nn-like. Line
numbers are displayed and the . command can be used to pick
articles (Pick and Read).
w
(see section Score File Format).
(setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
(setq gnus-decay-scores t)
nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added---M-C-d
(see section Really Various Summary Commands).
Sorting
Groups).
(add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook
'gnus-article-emphasize)
New features in Gnus 5.6:
nndraft backend 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.
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.
gnus-boring-article-headers---long-to.
gnus-simplify-subject-functions variable to allow greater
control over simplification.
nnmail-split-methods.
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.
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.
article-date-iso8601.
gnus-score-thread-simplify.
message-cite-original-without-signature.
article-strip-all-blank-lines---new article command.
gnus-adaptive-word-minimum variable.
gnus-start-date-timer command.
nnlistserv backend.
nnweb.
Also known as the todo list. Sure to be implemented before the next millennium.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
(That a feature appears in this list doesn't necessarily mean that I've decided to actually implement it. It just means that I think it sounds interesting.)
(Yes, this is the actual, up-to-the-second todo list.)
Hypermail: <URL:http://www.falch.no/people/pepper/DSSSL-Lite/archives/> <URL:http://www.eit.com/software/hypermail/hypermail.html> <URL:http://homer.ncm.com/> <URL:http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/HTML_Converters/> http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9610/index.html <URL:http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/www/html/converters.html> http://www.miranova.com/gnus-list/
push active file and NOV file parsing down into C code. `(canonize-message-id id)' `(mail-parent-message-id references n)' `(parse-news-nov-line &optional dependency-hashtb)' `(parse-news-nov-region beg end &optional dependency-hashtb fullp)' `(parse-news-active-region beg end hashtb)'
From: Jason L Tibbitts III <tibbs@hpc.uh.edu>
(add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook
(lambda ()
(gnus-group-add-parameter group
(cons 'gnus-group-date-last-entered (list (current-time-string))))))
(defun gnus-user-format-function-d (headers)
"Return the date the group was last read."
(cond ((car (gnus-group-get-parameter gnus-tmp-group 'gnus-group-date-last-entered)))
(t "")))
`M l <name> RET' add label <name> to current message. `M u <name> RET' remove label <name> from current message. `/ l <expr> RET' limit summary buffer according to <expr>. <expr> would be a boolean expression on the labels, e.g. `/ l bug & !fixed RET'would show all the messages which are labeled `bug' but not labeled `fixed'. One could also imagine the labels being used for highlighting, or affect the summary line format.
Group-mode
show-list-of-articles-in-group
if (key-pressed == SPACE)
if (no-more-articles-in-group-to-select)
if (articles-selected)
start-reading-selected-articles;
junk-unread-articles;
next-group;
else
show-next-page;
else if (key-pressed = '.')
if (consolidated-menus) # same as hide-thread in Gnus
select-thread-under-cursor;
else
select-article-under-cursor;
Article-mode
if (key-pressed == SPACE)
if (more-pages-in-article)
next-page;
else if (more-selected-articles-to-read)
next-article;
else
next-group;
(defun article-fix-m$word ()
"Fix M$Word smartquotes in an article."
(interactive)
(save-excursion
(let ((buffer-read-only nil))
(goto-char (point-min))
(while (search-forward "\221" nil t)
(replace-match "`" t t))
(goto-char (point-min))
(while (search-forward "\222" nil t)
(replace-match "'" t t))
(goto-char (point-min))
(while (search-forward "\223" nil t)
(replace-match "\"" t t))
(goto-char (point-min))
(while (search-forward "\224" nil t)
(replace-match "\"" t t)))))
(add-hook 'gnus-exit-query-functions
'(lambda ()
(if (and (file-exists-p nnmail-spool-file)
(> (nnheader-file-size nnmail-spool-file) 0))
(yes-or-no-p "New mail has arrived. Quit Gnus anyways? ")
(y-or-n-p "Are you sure you want to quit Gnus? "))))
> > > If so, I've got one gripe: It seems that when I fire up gnus 5.2.25 > > > under xemacs-19.14, it's creating a new frame, but is erasing the > > > buffer in the frame that it was called from =:-O > > > Hm. How do you start up Gnus? From the toolbar or with > > `M-x gnus-other-frame'? > > I normally start it up from the toolbar; at > least that's the way I've caught it doing the > deed before.
"\\(This\s+\\)?[^ ]+ has been automatically signed by"og det er maks hundre tegn mellom match-end og ----linja. Men -det- er min type heuristikk og langt fra alles.
This manual was generated from a TeXinfo file and then run through
either texi2dvi
to get what you hold in your hands now.
The following conventions have been used:
symbol
So if I were to say "set flargnoze to `yes'", that would
mean:
(setq flargnoze "yes")
If I say "set flumphel to yes", that would mean:
(setq flumphel 'yes)
`yes' and yes are two very different things--don't
ever get them confused.
gnus-build-sparse-threads has been switched on.
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.
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 NNTP server.
gnus-read-active-file
nil, which will inhibit Gnus from requesting the
entire active file from the server. This file is often v. 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
nil. If not, grabbing article headers from
the NNTP server will not be very fast. Not all NNTP servers
support XOVER; Gnus will detect this by itself.
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
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
gnus-article-display-hook
(setq gnus-article-display-hook
'(gnus-article-hide-headers
gnus-article-hide-signature
gnus-article-hide-citation))
gnus-use-full-window
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
nil, all threads in the summary buffer will be
hidden initially.
gnus-updated-mode-lines
nil, Gnus will not put information in the buffer mode
lines, which might save some time.
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
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-save-killed-list
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.
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.
Set gnus-article-display-hook to nil to make article
processing a bit faster.
Gnus works so well straight out of the box--I can't imagine any problems, really.
Ahem.
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 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---`ding@gnus.org'. Write to `ding-request@gnus.org' to subscribe.
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 backends (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.
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
gnus-find-method-for-group
gnus-group-real-name
gnus-group-prefixed-name
gnus-get-info
gnus-group-unread
t if that is
unknown.
gnus-active
gnus-set-active
gnus-add-current-to-buffer-list
gnus-continuum-version
gnus-group-read-only-p
gnus-news-group-p
gnus-ephemeral-group-p
gnus-server-to-method
gnus-server-equal
gnus-group-native-p
gnus-group-secondary-p
gnus-group-foreign-p
group-group-find-parameter
gnus-group-set-parameter
gnus-narrow-to-body
gnus-check-backend-function
nil.
(gnus-check-backend-function "request-scan" "nnml:misc") => t
gnus-read-method
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 backend and some backend 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 backend--say nntp---on
something, it will normally include a virtual server name in the
function parameters. (If not, the backend 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 backends should be able to switch between several virtual servers. The standard backends 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 backends could be said to be server-forming backends, and some might be said not to be. The latter are backends 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.
In the examples and definitions I will refer to the imaginary backend
nnchoke.
(nnchoke-retrieve-headers ARTICLES &optional GROUP SERVER FETCH-OLD)
Message-IDs. Current backends do not fully support either--only
sequences (lists) of article numbers, and most backends do not support
retrieval of Message-IDs. 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 backend 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 " " <error message> eol valid-head = valid-message *header "." eol valid-message = "221 " <number> " Article retrieved." eol header = <text> eolIf 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 = 8*9 [ field <TAB> ] eol field = <text except TAB>For a closer look at what should be in those fields, see section Headers.
(nnchoke-open-server SERVER &optional DEFINITIONS)
(VARIABLE VALUE) pairs that define this virtual server.
If the server can't be opened, no error should be signaled. The backend
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)
nil if the server couldn't be closed for some
reason.
There should be no data returned.
(nnchoke-request-close)
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)
nil vlue. 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)
(nnchoke-request-article ARTICLE &optional GROUP SERVER TO-BUFFER)
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)
211 56 1000 1059 ifi.discussionThe 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.
group-status = [ error / info ] eol error = [ "4" / "5" ] 2<number> " " <Error message> info = "211 " 3* [ <number> " " ] <string>
(nnchoke-close-group GROUP &optional SERVER)
(nnchoke-request-list &optional SERVER)
ifi.test 0000002200 0000002000 y ifi.discussion 3324 3300 nOn each line we have a group name, then the highest article number in that group, the lowest article number, and finally a flag.
active-file = *active-line active-line = name " " <number> " " <number> " " flags eol name = <string> flags = "n" / "y" / "m" / "x" / "j" / "=" nameThe 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)
(nnchoke-retrieve-groups GROUPS &optional SERVER)
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)
(nnchoke-request-type GROUP &optional ARTICLE)
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-update-mark GROUP ARTICLE MARK)
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)
(nnchoke-request-group-description GROUP &optional SERVER)
description-line = name <TAB> description eol name = <string> description = <text>
(nnchoke-request-list-newsgroups &optional SERVER)
description-buffer = *description-line
(nnchoke-request-newgroups DATE &optional SERVER)
(nnchoke-request-create-group GROUP &optional SERVER)
(nnchoke-request-expire-articles ARTICLES &optional GROUP SERVER FORCE)
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
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)
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.
There should be no data returned.
(nnchoke-request-replace-article ARTICLE GROUP BUFFER)
(nnchoke-request-delete-group GROUP FORCE &optional SERVER)
(nnchoke-request-rename-group GROUP NEW-NAME &optional SERVER)
The backends 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 backend
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 backend in question. This function
takes one argument--the server symbol.
Internally, these functions access backend-status-string,
so the nnchoke backend will have its error message stored in
nnchoke-status-string.
Many backends 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 backends when writing new backends. 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 backends declare their public variables and functions by using a
package called nnoo.
To inherit functions from other backends (and allow other backends to inherit functions from the current backend), you should use the following macros:
nnoo-declare
(nnoo-declare nndir nnml nnmh)
nndir has declared here that it intends to inherit functions from
both nnml and nnmh.
defvoo
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 backends to map the variable to when executing
a function in those backends.
(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
(nnoo-define-basics nndir)
deffoo
defun and takes the same parameters. In
addition to doing the normal defun things, it registers the
function as being public so that other backends can inherit it.
nnoo-map-functions
(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
(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 backend.
;;; nndir.el --- single directory newsgroup access for Gnus
;; Copyright (C) 1995,96 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)
Having Gnus start using your new backend is rather easy--you just
declare it with the gnus-declare-backend functions. This will
enter the backend into the gnus-valid-select-methods variable.
gnus-declare-backend takes two parameters--the backend name and
an arbitrary number of abilities.
Here's an example:
(gnus-declare-backend "nnchoke" 'mail 'respool 'address)
The abilities can be:
mail
post
post-mail
none
respool
address
prompt-address
nntp, but not nnmbox, for instance.
One of the things that separate the mail backends from the rest of the
backends is the heavy dependence by the mail backends 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.
nnmail-get-new-mail will call backend-save-mail to
save each article. backend-active-number will be called to
find the article number assigned to this article.
The function also uses the following variables:
backend-get-new-mail (to see whether to get new mail for
this backend); and backend-group-alist and
backend-active-file to generate the new active file.
backend-group-alist should be a group-active alist, like
this:
(("a-group" (1 . 10))
("some-group" (34 . 39)))
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 = <ascii 34>
string-header = "subject" / "from" / "references" / "message-id" /
"xref" / "body" / "head" / "all" / "followup"
number-header = "lines" / "chars"
date-header = "date"
string-match = "(" quote <string> quote [ "" / [ space score [ "" /
space date [ "" / [ space string-match-t ] ] ] ] ] ")"
score = "nil" / <integer>
date = "nil" / <natural number>
string-match-t = "nil" / "s" / "substring" / "S" / "Substring" /
"r" / "regex" / "R" / "Regex" /
"e" / "exact" / "E" / "Exact" /
"f" / "fuzzy" / "F" / "Fuzzy"
number-match = "(" <integer> [ "" / [ space score [ "" /
space date [ "" / [ space number-match-t ] ] ] ] ] ")"
number-match-t = "nil" / "=" / "<" / ">" / ">=" / "<="
date-match = "(" quote <string> 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" / <integer>
expunge = "expunge" space nil-or-number
mark-and-expunge = "mark-and-expunge" space nil-or-number
files = "files" *[ space <string> ]
exclude-files = "exclude-files" *[ space <string> ]
read-only = "read-only" [ space "nil" / space "t" ]
adapt = "adapt" [ space "ignore" / space "t" / space adapt-rule ]
adapt-rule = "(" *[ <string> *[ "(" <string> <integer> ")" ] ")"
local = "local" *[ space "(" <string> space <form> ")" ]
eval = "eval" space <form>
space = *[ " " / <TAB> / <NEWLINE> ]
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 (see section Score File Format).
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
RFC1036 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. There are macros for accessing and setting these
slots--they all have predictable names beginning with
mail-header- and mail-header-set-, respectively.
The xref slot is really a misc slot. Any extra info will
be put in there.
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.)
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 <string> quote
ralevel = rank / level
level = <integer in the range of 1 to inf>
rank = "(" level "." score ")"
score = <integer in the range of 1 to inf>
read = range
marks-lists = nil / "(" *marks ")"
marks = "(" <string> range ")"
method = "(" <string> *elisp-forms ")"
parameters = "(" *elisp-forms ")"
Actually that `marks' rule is a fib. A `marks' is a `<string>' 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
gnus-info-rank
gnus-info-set-rank
gnus-info-level
gnus-info-set-level
gnus-info-score
gnus-info-set-score
gnus-info-read
gnus-info-set-read
gnus-info-marks
gnus-info-set-marks
gnus-info-method
gnus-info-set-method
gnus-info-params
gnus-info-set-params
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.
Gnus extends the standard Emacs interactive specification
slightly to allow easy use of the symbolic prefix (see section 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.
gnus-current-prefix-symbol
variable.
gnus-current-prefix-symbol variable.
gnus-summary-article-number
function.
gnus-summary-article-header
function.
gnus-group-group-name
function.
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.
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 space high-number space low-number space flag <NEWLINE> group = <non-white-space string> space = " " high-number = <non-negative integer> low-number = <positive integer> flag = "y" / "n" / "m" / "j" / "x" / "=" group
For a full description of this file, see the manual pages for `innd', in particular `active(5)'.
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 <NEWLINE> group = <non-white-space string> tab = <TAB> description = <string>
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 "M-C-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.
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 vile 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 M-C-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 M-C-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.
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 `.emacs' file to customize Gnus.
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 .emacs file with lots of these to change
how Gnus works.
If you have put that thing in your .emacs file, it will be read
and evaled (which is lisp-ese for "run") the next time you
start Emacs. 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 evaled.
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.
\input texinfo
This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list. If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at `http://www.miranova.com/~steve/gnus-faq.html>', and has probably been updated since you got this manual.
Compiled with: | Can be used with: ----------------+-------------------------------------- 19.28 | 19.28 19.29 19.29 | 19.29 XEmacs XEmacs | 19.29 XEmacsIf you have Gnu Emacs 19.28 or earlier, or XEmacs 19.12 or earlier, get a recent version of auc-menu.el from `ftp://ftp.iesd.auc.dk/pub/emacs-lisp/auc-menu.el', and install it under the name easymenu.el somewhere early in your load path.
gnus-eval-in-buffer-window, which is a macro.
It seems as if you have
compiled mailcrypt with plain old GNUS in load path, and the XEmacs byte
compiler has inserted that macro definition into
`mc-toplev.elc'.
The solution is to recompile `mc-toplev.el' with Gnus 5 in
load-path, and it works fine.
Steve Baur <steve@miranova.com> adds :(load "tm-setup") (load "gnus") (load "mime-compose")NOTE: Loading the package disables citation highlighting by default. To get the old behavior back, use the M-t command.
ail-indentation-spaces spaces or mail-yank-prefix if that is
non-nil, unless you have set your own mail-citation-hook, which will
be called to to do the job.
You might also consider the Supercite package, which allows for pretty
arbitrarily complex quoting styles. Some people love it, some people
hate it.
(("Subject"
("^\\(Re: \\)?[^a-z]*$" -200 nil R)))
(("xref"
("alt.fan.oj-simpson" -1000 nil s))
("subject"
("\\<\\(make\\|fast\\|big\\)\\s-*\\(money\\|cash\\|bucks?\\)\\>" -1000 nil r)
("$$$$" -1000 nil s)))
(("subject"
;; CAPS OF THE WORLD, UNITE
("^..[^a-z]+$" -1 nil R)
;; $$$ Make Money $$$ (Try work)
("$" -1 nil s)
;; I'm important! And I have exclamation marks to prove it!
("!" -1 nil s)))
(
(read-only t)
("subject"
;; ALL CAPS SUBJECTS
("^\\([Rr][Ee]: +\\)?[^a-z]+$" -1 nil R)
;; $$$ Make Money $$$
("$$" -10 nil s)
;; Empty subjects are worthless!
("^ *\\([(<]none[>)]\\|(no subject\\( given\\)?)\\)? *$" -10 nil r)
;; Sometimes interesting announces occur!
("ANN?OU?NC\\(E\\|ING\\)" +10 nil r)
;; Some people think they're on mailing lists
("\\(un\\)?sub?scribe" -100 nil r)
;; Stop Micro$oft NOW!!
("\\(m\\(icro\\)?[s$]\\(oft\\|lot\\)?-?\\)?wind?\\(ows\\|aube\\|oze\\)?[- ]*\\('?95\\|NT\\|3[.]1\\|32\\)" -1001 nil r)
;; I've nothing to buy
("\\(for\\|4\\)[- ]*sale" -100 nil r)
;; SELF-DISCIPLINED people
("\\[[^a-z0-9 \t\n][^a-z0-9 \t\n]\\]" +100 nil r)
)
("from"
;; To keep track of posters from my site
(".dgac.fr" +1000 nil s))
("followup"
;; Keep track of answers to my posts
("boubaker" +1000 nil s))
("lines"
;; Some people have really nothing to say!!
(1 -10 nil <=))
(mark -100)
(expunge -1000)
)
(("subject"
;; No junk mail please!
("please ignore" -500 nil s)
("test" -500 nil e))
)
("xref"
;; the more cross posting, the exponentially worse the article
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -1 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -2 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -4 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -8 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -16 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -32 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -64 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -128 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -256 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -512 nil r))
(defconst mail-yank-ignored-headers "^.*:" "Delete these headers from old message when it's inserted in a reply.")
(setq gnus-button-url 'gnus-netscape-open-url)
(setq gnus-save-killed-list t)
and the second with
(setq gnus-read-active-file t)
If both are disabled, Gnus will not know what newsgroups exists. There
is no option to get the list by casting a spell.
define-key or something like that in one of the
summary mode hooks? This would force Emacs to recalculate the keyboard
shortcuts. Removing the call should speed up M-x gnus-summary-mode
RET by a couple of orders of magnitude. You can use
(define-key gnus-summary-mode-map KEY COMMAND)in your `.gnus' instead.
(add-hook 'nntp-server-opened-hook 'nntp-send-authinfo)
(setq gnus-auto-select first nil)
;;; Don't auto-select first article if reading sources, or archives or ;;; jobs postings, etc. and just display the summary buffer (add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook (function (lambda () (cond ((string-match "sources" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) ((string-match "jobs" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) ((string-match "comp\\.archives" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) ((string-match "reviews" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) ((string-match "announce" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) ((string-match "binaries" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) (t (setq gnus-auto-select-first t))))))
((local (gnus-auto-select-first nil)))and insert
(setq gnus-auto-select-first t)in your `.gnus'.
gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups to automagically expire articles
in some groups (Gnus being one of them). Sometimes there are
interesting articles in these groups that I want to keep. Is there any
way of explicitly marking an article as un-expirable - that is mark it
as read but not expirable?
Use u, !, d or M-u in the summary buffer. You
just remove the E mark by setting some other mark. It's not
necessary to tick the articles.
gnus-group-check-bogus-groups does not
recognize them.
Removing mail groups is tricky at the moment. (It's on the to-do list,
though.) You basically have to kill the groups in Gnus, shut down Gnus,
edit the active file to exclude these groups, and probably remove the
nnml directories that contained these groups as well. Then start Gnus
back up again.
((adapt ignore) (local (gnus-use-scoring nil)) (exclude-files "all.SCORE"))
Jump to: % - ( - * - . - 1 - < - > - a - b - c - d - e - f - g - h - i - j - k - l - m - n - o - p - r - s - t - u - v - w - x - z
nnchoke
Jump to: ! - # - & - * - , - . - / - < - = - > - ? - @ - ^ - a - b - c - d - e - f - g - h - j - k - l - m - n - o - p - q - r - s - t - u - v - w - x - y - z
This document was generated on 6 November 2000 using texi2html 1.56k.