1 From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
2 From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
3 Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
4 Subject: So you want to use the new Gnus
5 Message-ID: <lars-doc1@eyesore.no>
7 Actually, since you are reading this, chances are you are already
8 using the new Gnus. Congratulations.
10 This entire newsgroup you are reading is, in fact, no real newsgroup
11 at all, in the traditional sense. It is an example of one of the
12 "foreign" select methods that Gnus may use.
14 The text you are now reading is stored in the "etc" directory with the
15 rest of the Emacs sources. You are using the "nndoc" backend for
16 accessing it. Scary, isn't it?
18 This isn't the real documentation. `M-x info', `m gnus <RET>' to read
19 that. This "newsgroup" is intended as a kinder, gentler way of getting
22 Gnus is a rewrite of GNUS 4.1, written by Masanobu Umeda. The rewrite
23 was done by moi, yours truly, your humble servant, Lars Magne
24 Ingebrigtsen. If you have a WWW browser, you can investigate to your
25 heart's delight at <URL:http://www.gnus.org/> and
26 <URL:http://quimby.gnus.org/lmi/>.
28 ;; Copyright (C) 1995 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
30 ;; Author: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>
33 ;; This file is part of GNU Emacs.
35 ;; GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
36 ;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
37 ;; the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
40 ;; GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
41 ;; but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
42 ;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
43 ;; GNU General Public License for more details.
45 ;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
46 ;; along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the
47 ;; Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
48 ;; Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
50 From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
51 From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
52 Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
54 Message-ID: <lars-doc2@eyesore.no>
56 If you are having problems with Gnus not finding your server, you have
57 to set `gnus-select-method'. A "method" is a way of specifying *how*
58 the news is to be found, and from *where*.
60 Say you want to read news from you local, friendly nntp server
61 "news.my.local.server".
63 (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.my.local.server"))
69 (setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
73 (setq gnus-select-method '(nnmh ""))
75 There's a whole bunch of other methods for reading mail and news, see
76 the "Foreign groups" article for that.
79 From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
80 From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
81 Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
82 Subject: Where are all the groups, then?
83 Message-ID: <lars-doc3@eyesore.no>
85 If this is the first time you have used a newsreader, you won't have a
86 .newsrc file. This means that Gnus will think that all the newsgroups
87 on the server are "new", and kill them all.
89 If you have a .newsrc file, the new groups will be processed with the
90 function in the `gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method' variable, which is
91 `gnus-subscribe-zombies' by default.
93 This means that all the groups have been made into "zombies" - not
94 quite dead, but not exactly alive, either.
96 Jump back to the *Group* buffer, and type `A z' to list all the zombie
97 groups. Look though the list, and subscribe to the groups you want to
98 read by pressing `u' on the one you think look interesting.
100 If all the groups have been killed, type `A k' to list all the killed
101 groups. Subscribe to them the same way.
103 When you are satisfied, press `S z' to kill all the zombie groups.
105 Now you should have a nice list of all groups you are interested in.
107 (If you later want to subscribe to more groups, press `A k' to
108 list all the kill groups, and repeat. You can also type `U' and be
109 prompted for groups to subscribe to.)
112 From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
113 From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
114 Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
115 Subject: I want to read my mail!
116 Message-ID: <lars-doc4@eyesore.no>
118 Yes, Virginia, you can read mail with Gnus.
120 First you have to decide which mail backend you want to use. You have
121 nnml, which is a one-file-one-mail backend, which is quite nice, but
122 apt to make your systems administrator go crazy and come after you
125 nnmbox uses a Unix mail box to store mail. Nice, but slow.
127 nnmh uses mh-e folders, which is also a one-file-one-mail thingie, but
128 slower than nnml. (It doesn't support NOV files.)
130 So if you want to go with nnmbox, you can simply say:
132 (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnmbox "")))
134 (The same for the other methods, kind of.)
136 You should also set `nnmail-split-methods' to something sensible:
138 (setq nnmail-split-methods
139 '(("mail.junk" "From:.*Lars")
142 This will put all mail from me in you junk mail group, and the rest in
145 These groups will be subscribe the same way as the normal groups, so
146 you will probably find them among the zombie groups after you set
147 these variables and re-start Gnus.
150 From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
151 From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
152 Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
153 Subject: Foreign newsgroups
154 Message-ID: <lars-doc5@eyesore.no>
156 These are groups that do not come from `gnus-select-method'.
158 Say you want to read "alt.furniture.couches" from "news.funet.fi". You
159 can then either type `B news.funet.fi <RET>' to browse that server and
160 subscribe to that group, or you can type
161 `G m alt.furniture.couches<RET>nntp<RET>news.funet.fi<RET>', if you
164 If you want to read a directory as a newsgroup, you can create an
165 nndir group, much the same way. There's a shorthand for that,
166 though. If, for instance, you want to read the (ding) list archives,
167 you could type `G d /ftp <RET>'.
169 There's lots more to know about foreign groups, but you have to read
170 the info pages to find out more.
173 From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
174 From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
175 Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
176 Subject: Low level changes in GNUS, or, Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
177 Message-ID: <lars-doc6@eyesore.no>
179 Gnus really isn't GNUS, even though it looks like it. If you scrape
180 the surface, you'll find that most things have changed.
182 This means that old code that relies on GNUS internals will fail.
184 In particular, `gnus-newsrc-hashtb', `gnus-newsrc-assoc',
185 `gnus-killed-list', the `nntp-header-' macros and the display formats
186 have all changed. If you have some code lying around that depend on
187 these, or change these, you'll have to re-write your code.
189 Old hilit19 code does not work at all. In fact, you should probably
190 remove all hilit code from all the Gnus hooks
191 (`gnus-group-prepare-hook', `gnus-summary-prepare-hook' and
192 `gnus-summary-article-hook'). (Well, at the very least the first
193 two.) Gnus provides various integrated functions for highlighting,
194 which are both faster and more accurated.
196 There is absolutely no chance, whatsoever, of getting Gnus to work
197 with Emacs 18. It won't even work on Emacsen older than Emacs
198 20.3/XEmacs 20.4. Upgrade your Emacs or die.
201 From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
202 From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
203 Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
204 Subject: How do I re-scan my mail groups?
205 Message-ID: <lars-doc8@eyesore.no>
207 Reading the active file from the nntp server is a drag.
209 Just press `M-g' on the mail groups, and they will be re-scanned.
211 You can also re-scan all the mail groups by putting them on level 1
212 (`S l 1'), and saying `1 g' to re-scan all level 1 groups.
215 From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
216 From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
217 Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
218 Subject: How do I set up virtual newsgroups?
219 Message-ID: <lars-doc9@eyesore.no>
221 Virtual newsgroups are collections of other newsgroups. Why people
222 want this is beyond me, but here goes:
224 Create the group by saying
226 `G V my.virtual.newsgroup<RET>nnvirtual<RET>^rec\.aquaria\.*<RET>'
228 This will create the group "nnvirtual:my.virtual.newsgroup", which
229 will collect all articles from all the groups in the "rec.aquaria"
232 If you want to edit the regular expression, just type `M-e' on the
235 Note that all the groups that are part of the virtual group have to be
236 alive. This means that the cannot, absolutely not, be zombie or
237 killed. They can be unsubscribed; that's no problem.
239 You can combine groups from different servers in the same virtual
240 newsgroup, something that may actually be useful. Say you have the
241 group "comp.headers" on the server "news.server.no" and the same group
242 on "news.server.edu". If people have posted articles with Distribution
243 headers that stop propagation of their articles, combining these two
244 newsgroups into one virtual newsgroup should give you a better view of
247 One caveat, though: The virtual group article numbers from the first
248 source group (group A) will always be lower than the article numbers
249 from the second (group B). This means that Gnus will believe that
250 articles from group A are older than articles from group B. Threading
251 will lessen these problems, but it might be a good idea to sort the
252 threads over the date of the articles to get a correct feel for the
255 (setq gnus-thread-sort-functions '(gnus-thread-sort-by-date))
257 If you only want this in virtual groups, you could say something along
260 (setq gnus-select-group-hook
262 (if (eq 'nnvirtual (car (gnus-find-method-for-group
263 gnus-newsgroup-name)))
265 (make-local-variable 'gnus-thread-sort-functions)
266 (setq gnus-thread-sort-functions '(gnus-thread-sort-by-date))))))
269 From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
270 From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
271 Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
272 Subject: Bugs & stuff
273 Message-ID: <lars-doc7@eyesore.no>
275 If you want to report a bug, please type `M-x gnus-bug'. This will
276 give me a precise overview of your Gnus and Emacs version numbers,
277 along with a look at all Gnus variables you have changed.
279 Du not expect a reply back, but your bug should be fixed in the next
280 version. If the bug persists, please re-submit your bug report.
282 When a bug occurs, I need a recipe for how to trigger the bug. You
283 have to tell me exactly what you do to uncover the bug, and you should
284 (setq debug-on-error t) and send me the backtrace along with the bug
287 If I am not able to reproduce the bug, I won't be able to fix it.
289 I would, of course, prefer that you locate the bug, fix it, and mail
290 me the patches, but one can't have everything.
292 If you have any questions on usage, the "ding@gnus.org" mailing list
293 is where to post the questions.
296 From fschmitt Sat Mar 22 18:13:00 2003
297 From: faq@my.gnus.org (Gnus FAQ team)
298 Date: Sat Mar 22 18:13:00 2003
300 Message-ID: <lars-doc8@eyesore.no>
302 This is the text version of the Gnus FAQ, see http://my.gnus.org for
303 the up to date version of this document, there you can also find a
304 html version and various other formats. There's also a texinfo version
305 of the FAQ distributed with Gnus.
310 Frequently Asked Questions with Answers
315 This is the new Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list. If you have a
316 Web browser, the official hypertext version is at http://
317 my.gnus.org/FAQ/ [http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/], the Docbook source is
318 available from http://sourceforge.net [http://sourceforge.net/
321 Please submit features and suggestions to the FAQ discussion list
322 [mailto:faq-discuss@my.gnus.org]. The list is protected against
323 junk mail with qconfirm [http://smarden.org/qconfirm/index.html].
324 As a subscriber, your submissions will automatically pass. You can
325 also subscribe to the list by sending a blank email to
326 faq-discuss-subscribe@my.gnus.org
327 [mailto:faq-discuss-subscribe@my.gnus.org] and browse the archive.
331 This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.
333 Gnus is a Usenet Newsreader and Electronic Mail User Agent
334 implemented as a part of Emacs. It's been around in some form for
335 almost a decade now, and has been distributed as a standard part of
336 Emacs for much of that time. Gnus 5 is the latest (and greatest)
337 incarnation. The original version was called GNUS, and was written
338 by Masanobu UMEDA. When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne
339 Ingebrigtsen grew bored and decided to rewrite Gnus.
341 Its biggest strength is the fact that it is extremely customizable.
342 It is somewhat intimidating at first glance, but most of the
343 complexity can be ignored until you're ready to take advantage of
344 it. If you receive a reasonable volume of e-mail (you're on various
345 mailing lists), or you would like to read high-volume mailing lists
346 but cannot keep up with them, or read high volume newsgroups or are
347 just bored, then Gnus is what you want.
349 This FAQ was maintained by Justin Sheehy until March 2002. He would
350 like to thank Steve Baur and Per Abrahamsen for doing a wonderful
351 job with this FAQ before him. We would like to do the same -
354 If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at:
355 http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/ [http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/]. This version is
356 much nicer than the unofficial hypertext versions that are archived
357 at Utrecht, Oxford, Smart Pages, Ohio State, and other FAQ
358 archives. See the resources question below if you want information
359 on obtaining it in another format.
361 The information contained here was compiled with the assistance of
362 the Gnus development mailing list, and any errors or misprints are
363 the my.gnus.org team's fault, sorry.
365 Frequently Asked Questions with Answers
369 1.1. What is the latest version of Gnus?
370 1.2. What's new in 5.10.0?
371 1.3. Where and how to get Gnus?
372 1.4. What to do with the tarball now?
373 1.5. Which version of Emacs do I need?
374 1.6. How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
376 2. Startup / Group buffer
378 2.1. Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save
379 file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean
380 and how to prevent it?
381 2.2. Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to,
383 2.3. How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
384 2.4. My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to
385 sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse
387 2.5. How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to
388 sort the groups in a topic?
392 3.1. I just installed Gnus, started it via M-x gnus but it only
393 says "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
394 3.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus
396 3.3. My news server requires authentication, how to store user
397 name and password on disk?
398 3.4. Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to
399 subscribe to a group.
400 3.5. Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed
401 to post on this server as well as I am, what's that?
402 3.6. I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this
404 3.7. And how about local spool files?
405 3.8. OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read
406 my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it?
407 3.9. And what about IMAP?
408 3.10. At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers,
409 can I use Gnus to read my mail from it?
410 3.11. Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it
415 4.1. When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to
417 4.2. How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I
418 enter a group, even when it's read?
419 4.3. How to view the headers of a message?
420 4.4. How to view the raw unformatted message?
421 4.5. How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at
422 the top of the article buffer?
423 4.6. I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the
424 text part if it's available. How to do it?
425 4.7. Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my
427 4.8. Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails
429 4.9. Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific
430 authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I
431 highlight more interesting ones in some way?
432 4.10. How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups,
433 or set other variables specific for some groups?
434 4.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to
436 4.12. The number of total messages in a group which Gnus
437 displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in
438 mail groups. Is this a bug?
439 4.13. I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer,
440 how to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
441 4.14. I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to
443 4.15. How to split incoming mails in several groups?
445 5. Composing messages
447 5.1. What are the basic commands I need to know for sending
449 5.2. How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
450 5.3. How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To,
452 5.4. Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on
453 the group I post too?
454 5.5. Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly
456 5.6. Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting
458 5.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember
459 all those email addresses?
460 5.8. Sometimes I see little images at the top of article
461 buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my
463 5.9. Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups.
464 Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in newsgroups?
465 5.10. How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
466 5.11. I want gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and
468 5.12. People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why aren't
469 they and how to fix it?
473 6.1. How to import my old mail into Gnus?
474 6.2. How to archive interesting messages?
475 6.3. How to search for a specific message?
476 6.4. How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
477 6.5. I want that all read messages are expired (at least in
478 some groups). How to do it?
479 6.6. I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move
480 them to another group.
482 7. Gnus in a dial-up environment
484 7.1. I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I
485 minimize the time I've got to be connected?
486 7.2. So what was this thing about the Agent?
487 7.3. I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it?
488 7.4. How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings while
493 8.1. How to find information and help inside Emacs?
494 8.2. I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g.
495 attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
496 8.3. Which websites should I know?
497 8.4. Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
498 8.5. Where to report bugs?
499 8.6. I need real-time help, where to find it?
503 9.1. Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
504 9.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
505 9.3. Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
509 1.1. What is the latest version of Gnus?
511 Jingle please: Gnus 5.10.0 is released, get it while it's hot! As
512 well as the step in version number is rather small, Gnus 5.10 has
513 tons of new features which you shouldn't miss, however if you are
514 cautious, you might prefer to stay with 5.8.8 respectively 5.9
515 (they are basically the same) until some bugfix releases are out.
517 1.2. What's new in 5.10.0?
519 First of all, you should have a look into the file GNUS-NEWS in the
520 toplevel directory of the Gnus tarball, there the most important
521 changes are listed. Here's a short list of the changes I find
522 especially important/interesting:
524 * Major rewrite of the Gnus agent, Gnus agent is now active by
527 Many new article washing functions for dealing with ugly
532 message-utils now included in Gnus.
534 New format specifiers for summary lines, e.g. %B for a complex
535 trn-style thread tree.
537 1.3. Where and how to get Gnus?
539 The latest released version of Gnus isn't included in Emacs 21 and
540 until now it also isn't available through the package system of
541 XEmacs 21.4, therefor you should get the Gnus tarball from http://
542 www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz [http://www.gnus.org/dist/
543 gnus.tar.gz] or via anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/
544 gnus.tar.gz [ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz].
546 1.4. What to do with the tarball now?
548 Untar it via tar xvzf gnus.tar.gz and do the common ./configure;
549 make; make install circle. (under MS-Windows either get the Cygwin
550 environment from http://www.cygwin.com [http://www.cygwin.com]
551 which allows you to do what's described above or unpack the tarball
552 with some packer (e.g. Winace from http://www.winace.com [http://
553 www.winace.com]) and use the batch-file make.bat included in the
554 tarball to install Gnus. If you don't want to (or aren't allowed
555 to) install Gnus system-wide, you can install it in your home
556 directory and add the following lines to your ~/.xemacs/init.el or
559 (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/gnus/lisp")
560 (if (featurep 'xemacs)
561 (add-to-list 'Info-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/")
562 (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/"))
565 Make sure that you don't have any gnus related stuff before this
566 line, on MS Windows use something like "C:/path/to/lisp" (yes, "/
569 1.5. Which version of Emacs do I need?
571 Gnus 5.10.0 requires an Emacs version that is greater than or equal
572 to Emacs 20.3 or XEmacs 20.1.
574 1.6. How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
576 You can't use the same copy of Gnus in both as the Lisp files are
577 byte-compiled to a format which is different depending on which
578 Emacs did the compilation. Get one copy of Gnus for Emacs and one
581 2. Startup / Group buffer
583 2.1. Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save file
584 exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean and how to
587 This message means that the last time you used Gnus, it wasn't
588 properly exited and therefor couldn't write its informations to
589 disk (e.g. which messages you read), you are now asked if you want
590 to restore those informations from the auto-save file.
592 To prevent this message make sure you exit Gnus via q in group
593 buffer instead of just killing Emacs.
595 2.2. Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to, what's this?
597 You get the message described in the q/a pair above while starting
598 Gnus, right? It's an other symptom for the same problem, so read
601 2.3. How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
603 You've got to tweak the value of the variable
604 gnus-group-line-format. See the manual node "Group Line
605 Specification" for information on how to do this. An example for
606 this (guess from whose .gnus :-)):
608 (setq gnus-group-line-format "%P%M%S[%5t]%5y : %(%g%)\n")
611 2.4. My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to sort my
612 groups into categories so I can easier browse through them?
614 Gnus offers the topic mode, it allows you to sort your groups in,
615 well, topics, e.g. all groups dealing with Linux under the topic
616 linux, all dealing with music under the topic music and all dealing
617 with scottish music under the topic scottish which is a subtopic of
620 To enter topic mode, just hit t while in Group buffer. Now you can
621 use T n to create a topic at point and T m to move a group to a
622 specific topic. For more commands see the manual or the menu. You
623 might want to include the %P specifier at the beginning of your
624 gnus-group-line-format variable to have the groups nicely indented.
626 2.5. How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to sort the
629 Move point over the group you want to move and hit C-k, now move
630 point to the place where you want the group to be and hit C-y.
634 3.1. I just installed Gnus, started it via M-x gnus but it only says
635 "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
637 You've got to tell Gnus where to fetch the news from. Read the
638 documentation for information on how to do this. As a first start,
639 put those lines in ~/.gnus:
641 (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.yourprovider.net"))
642 (setq user-mail-address "you@yourprovider.net")
643 (setq user-full-name "Your Name")
646 3.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.
648 The ~/ means the home directory where Gnus and Emacs look for the
649 configuration files. However, you don't really need to know what
650 this means, it suffices that Emacs knows what it means :-) You can
651 type C-x C-f ~/.gnus RET (yes, with the forward slash, even on
652 Windows), and Emacs will open the right file for you. (It will most
653 likely be new, and thus empty.) However, I'd discourage you from
654 doing so, since the directory Emacs chooses will most certainly not
655 be what you want, so let's do it the correct way. The first thing
656 you've got to do is to create a suitable directory (no blanks in
657 directory name please) e.g. c:\myhome. Then you must set the
658 environment variable HOME to this directory. To do this under Win9x
659 or Me include the line
664 in your autoexec.bat and reboot. Under NT, 2000 and XP, hit
665 Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system options (if it doesn't work, go
666 to Control Panel -> System). There you'll find the possibility to
667 set environment variables, create a new one with name HOME and
668 value C:\myhome, a reboot is not necessary.
670 Now to create ~/.gnus, say C-x C-f ~/.gnus RET C-x C-s. in Emacs.
672 3.3. My news server requires authentication, how to store user name and
675 Create a file ~/.authinfo which includes for each server a line
678 machine news.yourprovider.net login YourUserName password YourPassword
680 . Make sure that the file isn't readable to others if you work on a
681 OS which is capable of doing so. (Under Unix say
683 chmod 600 ~/.authinfo
687 3.4. Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to subscribe to
690 If you know the name of the group say U name.of.group RET in group
691 buffer (use the tab-completion Luke). Otherwise hit ^ in group
692 buffer, this brings you to the server buffer. Now place point (the
693 cursor) over the server which carries the group you want, hit RET,
694 move point to the group you want to subscribe to and say u to
697 3.5. Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed to post on
698 this server as well as I am, what's that?
700 Some providers allow restricted anonymous access and full access
701 only after authorization. To make Gnus send authinfo to those
706 to the line for those servers in ~/.authinfo.
708 3.6. I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible?
710 Of course. You can specify more sources for articles in the
711 variable gnus-secondary-select-methods. Add something like this in
714 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourSecondProvider.net"))
715 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourThirdProvider.net"))
718 3.7. And how about local spool files?
720 No problem, this is just one more select method called nnspool, so
723 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnspool ""))
726 Or this if you don't want an NNTP Server as primary news source:
728 (setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
731 Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you want
732 something different, change the line above to something like this:
734 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
735 '(nnspool "" (nnspool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")))
738 This sets the spool directory for this server only. You might have
739 to specify more stuff like the program used to post articles, see
740 the Gnus manual on how to do this.
742 3.8. OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail
743 with Gnus, too. How to do it?
745 That's a bit harder since there are many possible sources for mail,
746 many possible ways for storing mail and many different ways for
747 sending mail. The most common cases are these: 1: You want to read
748 your mail from a pop3 server and send them directly to a SMTP
749 Server 2: Some program like fetchmail retrieves your mail and
750 stores it on disk from where Gnus shall read it. Outgoing mail is
751 sent by Sendmail, Postfix or some other MTA. Sometimes, you even
752 need a combination of the above cases.
754 However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way it
755 should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which back end to use.
756 Gnus supports many different back ends, the most commonly used one
757 is nnml. It stores every mail in one file and is therefor quite
758 fast. However you might prefer a one file per group approach if
759 your file system has problems with many small files, the nnfolder
760 back end is then probably the choice for you. To use nnml add the
761 following to ~/.gnus:
763 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml ""))
766 As you might have guessed, if you want nnfolder, it's
768 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnfolder ""))
771 Now we need to tell Gnus, where to get it's mail from. If it's a
772 POP3 server, then you need something like this:
774 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
775 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net"
777 :password "yourPassword"))
780 Make sure ~/.gnus isn't readable to others if you store your
781 password there. If you want to read your mail from a traditional
782 spool file on your local machine, it's
784 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
785 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(file :path "/path/to/spool/file"))
788 If it's a Maildir, with one file per message as used by postfix,
789 Qmail and (optionally) fetchmail it's
791 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
792 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(maildir :path "/path/to/Maildir/"
793 :subdirs ("cur" "new")))
796 And finally if you want to read your mail from several files in one
797 directory, for example because procmail already split your mail,
800 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
801 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(directory :path "/path/to/procmail-dir/"
805 Where :suffix ".prcml" tells Gnus only to use files with the suffix
808 OK, now you only need to tell Gnus how to send mail. If you want to
809 send mail via sendmail (or whichever MTA is playing the role of
810 sendmail on your system), you don't need to do anything. However,
811 if you want to send your mail to an SMTP Server you need the
812 following in your ~/.gnus
814 (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
815 (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
816 (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.yourProvider.net")
819 3.9. And what about IMAP?
821 There are two ways of using IMAP with Gnus. The first one is to use
822 IMAP like POP3, that means Gnus fetches the mail from the IMAP
823 server and stores it on disk. If you want to do this (you don't
824 really want to do this) add the following to ~/.gnus
826 (add-to-list 'mail-sources '(imap :server "mail.mycorp.com"
830 :authentication login
832 :fetchflag "\\Seen"))
835 You might have to tweak the values for stream and/or
836 authentification, see the Gnus manual node "Mail Source Specifiers"
839 If you want to use IMAP the way it's intended, you've got to follow
840 a different approach. You've got to add the nnimap back end to your
841 select method and give the information about the server there.
843 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
844 '(nnimap "Give the baby a name"
845 (nnimap-address "imap.yourProvider.net")
847 (nnimap-list-pattern "archive.*")))
850 Again, you might have to specify how to authenticate to the server
851 if Gnus can't guess the correct way, see the Manual Node "IMAP" for
852 detailed information.
854 3.10. At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
855 Gnus to read my mail from it?
857 Offer your administrator a pair of new running shoes for activating
858 IMAP on the server and follow the instructions above.
860 3.11. Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it retrieves
863 First of all, that's not the way POP3 is intended to work, if you
864 have the possibility, you should use the IMAP Protocol if you want
865 your messages to stay on the server. Nevertheless there might be
866 situations where you need the feature, but sadly Gnus itself has no
867 predefined functionality to do so.
869 However this is Gnus county so there are possibilities to achieve
870 what you want. The easiest way is to get an external program which
871 retrieves copies of the mail and stores them on disk, so Gnus can
872 read it from there. On Unix systems you could use e.g. fetchmail
873 for this, on MS Windows you can use Hamster, an excellent local
874 news and mail server.
876 The other solution would be, to replace the method Gnus uses to get
877 mail from POP3 servers by one which is capable of leaving the mail
878 on the server. If you use XEmacs, get the package mail-lib, it
879 includes an enhanced pop3.el, look in the file, there's
880 documentation on how to tell Gnus to use it and not to delete the
881 retrieved mail. For GNU Emacs look for the file epop3.el which can
882 do the same (If you know the home of this file, please send me an
883 e-mail). You can also tell Gnus to use an external program (e.g.
884 fetchmail) to fetch your mail, see the info node "Mail Source
885 Specifiers" in the Gnus manual on how to do it.
889 4.1. When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them
892 If you enter the group by saying RET in summary buffer with point
893 over the group, only unread and ticked messages are loaded. Say C-u
894 RET instead to load all available messages. If you want only the
895 e.g. 300 newest say C-u 300 RET
897 Loading only unread messages can be annoying if you have threaded
900 (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 'some)
903 in ~/.gnus to load enough old articles to prevent teared threads,
904 replace 'some with t to load all articles (Warning: Both settings
905 enlarge the amount of data which is fetched when you enter a group
906 and slow down the process of entering a group).
908 If you already use Gnus 5.10.0, you can say /o N In summary buffer
909 to load the last N messages, this feature is not available in 5.8.8
911 If you don't want all old messages, but the parent of the message
912 you're just reading, you can say ^, if you want to retrieve the
913 whole thread the message you're just reading belongs to, A T is
916 4.2. How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I enter a
917 group, even when it's read?
919 You can tick important messages. To do this hit u while point is in
920 summary buffer over the message. When you want to remove the mark,
921 hit either d (this deletes the tick mark and set's unread mark) or
922 M c (which deletes all marks for the message).
924 4.3. How to view the headers of a message?
926 Say t to show all headers, one more t hides them again.
928 4.4. How to view the raw unformatted message?
930 Say C-u g to show the raw message g returns to normal view.
932 4.5. How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at the top of
935 The variable gnus-visible-headers controls which headers are shown,
936 its value is a regular expression, header lines which match it are
937 shown. So if you want author, subject, date, and if the header
938 exists, Followup-To and MUA / NUA say this in ~/.gnus:
940 (setq gnus-visible-headers
941 "^\\(From:\\|Subject:\\|Date:\\|Followup-To:\\|X-Newsreader:\\|User-Agent:\\|X-Mailer:\\)")
944 4.6. I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if
945 it's available. How to do it?
949 (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
951 (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
952 (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext")))
955 in ~/.gnus. If you don't want HTML rendered, even if there's no
958 (setq mm-automatic-display (remove "text/html" mm-automatic-display))
963 4.7. Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails?
965 Only if you use Gnus 5.10.0 or younger. In this case you've got the
966 choice between w3, w3m, links, lynx and html2text, which one is
967 used can be specified in the variable mm-text-html-renderer, so if
968 you want links to render your mail say
970 (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'links)
973 4.8. Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails more
976 Gnus offers you several functions to "wash" incoming mail, you can
977 find them if you browse through the menu, item Article->Washing.
978 The most interesting ones are probably "Wrap long lines" ( W w ),
979 "Decode ROT13" ( W r ) and "Outlook Deuglify" which repairs the
980 dumb quoting used by many users of Microsoft products ( W Y f gives
981 you full deuglify. See W Y C-h or have a look at the menus for
982 other deuglifications). Outlook deuglify is only available since
985 4.9. Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific authors or
986 with specific words in the subject? And can I highlight more
987 interesting ones in some way?
989 You want Scoring. Scoring means, that you define rules which assign
990 each message an integer value. Depending on the value the message
991 is highlighted in summary buffer (if it's high, say +2000) or
992 automatically marked read (if the value is low, say -800) or some
993 other action happens.
995 There are basically three ways of setting up rules which assign the
996 scoring-value to messages. The first and easiest way is to set up
997 rules based on the article you are just reading. Say you're reading
998 a message by a guy who always writes nonsense and you want to
999 ignore his messages in the future. Hit L, to set up a rule which
1000 lowers the score. Now Gnus asks you which the criteria for lowering
1001 the Score shall be. Hit ? twice to see all possibilities, we want a
1002 which means the author (the from header). Now Gnus wants to know
1003 which kind of matching we want. Hit either e for an exact match or
1004 s for substring-match and delete afterwards everything but the name
1005 to score down all authors with the given name no matter which email
1006 address is used. Now you need to tell Gnus when to apply the rule
1007 and how long it should last, hit e.g. p to apply the rule now and
1008 let it last forever. If you want to raise the score instead of
1009 lowering it say I instead of L.
1011 You can also set up rules by hand. To do this say V f in summary
1012 buffer. Then you are asked for the name of the score file, it's
1013 name.of.group.SCORE for rules valid in only one group or all.Score
1014 for rules valid in all groups. See the Gnus manual for the exact
1015 syntax, basically it's one big list whose elements are lists again.
1016 the first element of those lists is the header to score on, then
1017 one more list with what to match, which score to assign, when to
1018 expire the rule and how to do the matching. If you find me very
1019 interesting, you could e.g. add the following to your all.Score:
1021 (("references" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 500 nil s))
1022 ("message-id" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 999 nil s)))
1025 This would add 999 to the score of messages written by me and 500
1026 to the score of messages which are a (possibly indirect) answer to
1027 a message written by me. Of course nobody with a sane mind would do
1030 The third alternative is adaptive scoring. This means Gnus watches
1031 you and tries to find out what you find interesting and what
1032 annoying and sets up rules which reflect this. Adaptive scoring can
1033 be a huge help when reading high traffic groups. If you want to
1034 activate adaptive scoring say
1036 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t)
1041 4.10. How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set
1042 other variables specific for some groups?
1044 While in group buffer move point over the group and hit G c, this
1045 opens a buffer where you can set options for the group. At the
1046 bottom of the buffer you'll find an item that allows you to set
1047 variables locally for the group. To disable threading enter
1048 gnus-show-threads as name of variable and nil as value. Hit button
1049 done at the top of the buffer when you're ready.
1051 4.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those?
1053 Stop those "Can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes in Gnus
1054 Country :-). It's a three step process: First we make faces
1055 (specifications of how summary-line shall look like) for those
1056 postings, then we'll give them some special score and finally we'll
1057 tell Gnus to use the new faces. You can find detailed instructions
1058 on how to do it on my.gnus.org [http://my.gnus.org/Members/dzimmerm
1059 /HowTo%2C2002-07-25%2C1027619165012198456/view]
1061 4.12. The number of total messages in a group which Gnus displays in
1062 group buffer is by far to high, especially in mail groups. Is this
1065 No, that's a matter of design of Gnus, fixing this would mean
1066 reimplementation of major parts of Gnus' back ends. Gnus thinks
1067 "highest-article-number - lowest-article-number =
1068 total-number-of-articles". This works OK for Usenet groups, but if
1069 you delete and move many messages in mail groups, this fails. To
1070 cure the symptom, enter the group via C-u RET (this makes Gnus get
1071 all messages), then hit M P b to mark all messages and then say B m
1072 name.of.group to move all messages to the group they have been in
1073 before, they get new message numbers in this process and the count
1074 is right again (until you delete and move your mail to other groups
1077 4.13. I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how to
1078 change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
1080 You can control the windows configuration by calling the function
1081 gnus-add-configuration. The syntax is a bit complicated but
1082 explained very well in the manual node "Window Layout". Some
1085 Instead 25% summary 75% article buffer 35% summary and 65% article
1086 (the 1.0 for article means "take the remaining space"):
1088 (gnus-add-configuration '(article (vertical 1.0 (summary .35 point) (article 1.0))))
1091 A three pane layout, Group buffer on the left, summary buffer
1092 top-right, article buffer bottom-right:
1094 (gnus-add-configuration
1100 (summary 0.25 point)
1102 (gnus-add-configuration
1108 (summary 1.0 point)))))
1111 4.14. I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it?
1113 You've got to play around with the variable
1114 gnus-summary-line-format. It's value is a string of symbols which
1115 stand for things like author, date, subject etc. A list of the
1116 available specifiers can be found in the manual node "Summary
1117 Buffer Lines" and the often forgotten node "Formatting Variables"
1118 and it's sub-nodes. There you'll find useful things like
1119 positioning the cursor and tabulators which allow you a summary in
1120 table form, but sadly hard tabulators are broken in 5.8.8.
1122 Since 5.10.0, Gnus offers you some very nice new specifiers, e.g.
1123 %B which draws a thread-tree and %&user-date which gives you a date
1124 where the details are dependent of the articles age. Here's an
1125 example which uses both:
1127 (setq gnus-summary-line-format ":%U%R %B %s %-60=|%4L |%-20,20f |%&user-date; \n")
1132 :O Re: [Richard Stallman] rfc2047.el | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:06
1133 :O Re: Revival of the ding-patches list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:12
1134 :R > Re: Find correct list of articles for a gro| 25 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:16
1135 :O \-> ... | 21 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:01
1136 :R > Re: Cry for help: deuglify.el - moving stuf| 28 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:34
1137 :O \-> ... | 115 |Raymond Scholz | 1:24
1138 :O \-> ... | 19 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |15:33
1139 :O Slow mailing list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:49
1140 :O Re: `@' mark not documented | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:50
1141 :R > Re: Gnus still doesn't count messages prope| 23 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:57
1142 :O \-> ... | 18 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:35
1143 :O \-> ... | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt | 0:56
1146 4.15. How to split incoming mails in several groups?
1148 Gnus offers two possibilities for splitting mail, the easy
1149 nnmail-split-methods and the more powerful Fancy Mail Splitting.
1150 I'll only talk about the first one, refer to the manual, node
1151 "Fancy Mail Splitting" for the latter.
1153 The value of nnmail-split-methods is a list, each element is a list
1154 which stands for a splitting rule. Each rule has the form "group
1155 where matching articles should go to", "regular expression which
1156 has to be matched", the first rule which matches wins. The last
1157 rule must always be a general rule (regular expression .*) which
1158 denotes where articles should go which don't match any other rule.
1159 If the folder doesn't exist yet, it will be created as soon as an
1160 article lands there. By default the mail will be send to all groups
1161 whose rules match. If you don't want that (you probably don't
1164 (setq nnmail-crosspost nil)
1169 An example might be better than thousand words, so here's my
1170 nnmail-split-methods. Note that I send duplicates in a special
1171 group and that the default group is spam, since I filter all mails
1172 out which are from some list I'm subscribed to or which are
1173 addressed directly to me before. Those rules kill about 80% of the
1174 Spam which reaches me (Email addresses are changed to prevent
1175 spammers from using them):
1177 (setq nnmail-split-methods
1178 '(("duplicates" "^Gnus-Warning:.*duplicate")
1179 ("XEmacs-NT" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@xemacs.bla.*")
1180 ("Gnus-Tut" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@socha.bla.*")
1181 ("tcsh" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@mx.gw.bla.*")
1182 ("BAfH" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@.*uni-muenchen.bla.*")
1183 ("Hamster-src" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*hamster-sourcen@yahoogroups.\\(de\\|com\\).*")
1184 ("Tagesschau" "^From: tagesschau <localpart@www.tagesschau.bla>$")
1185 ("Replies" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@Frank-Schmitt.bla.*")
1186 ("EK" "^From:.*\\(localpart@privateprovider.bla\\|localpart@workplace.bla\\).*")
1187 ("Spam" "^Content-Type:.*\\(ks_c_5601-1987\\|EUC-KR\\|big5\\|iso-2022-jp\\).*")
1188 ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(This really work\\|XINGA\\|ADV:\\|XXX\\|adult\\|sex\\).*")
1189 ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(\=\?ks_c_5601-1987\?\\|\=\?euc-kr\?\\|\=\?big5\?\\).*")
1190 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*BulkMailer.*\\|.*MIME::Lite.*\\|\\)")
1191 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*CyberCreek Avalanche\\|.*http\:\/\/GetResponse\.com\\)")
1192 ("Spam" "^From:.*\\(verizon\.net\\|prontomail\.com\\|money\\|ConsumerDirect\\).*")
1193 ("Spam" "^Delivered-To: GMX delivery to spamtrap@gmx.bla$")
1194 ("Spam" "^Received: from link2buy.com")
1195 ("Spam" "^CC: .*azzrael@t-online.bla")
1196 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer-Version: 1.50 BETA")
1197 ("Uni" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@uni-koblenz.bla.*")
1198 ("Inbox" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*\\(my\ name\\|address@one.bla\\|adress@two.bla\\)")
1202 5. Composing messages
1204 5.1. What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and
1207 To start composing a new mail hit m either in Group or Summary
1208 buffer, for a posting, it's either a in Group buffer and filling
1209 the Newsgroups header manually or a in the Summary buffer of the
1210 group where the posting shall be send to. Replying by mail is r if
1211 you don't want to cite the author, or import the cited text
1212 manually and R to cite the text of the original message. For a
1213 follow up to a newsgroup, it's f and F (analog to r and R.
1215 Enter new headers above the line saying "--text follows this
1216 line--", enter the text below the line. When ready hit C-c C-c, to
1217 send the message, if you want to finish it later hit C-c C-d to
1218 save it in the drafts group, where you can start editing it again
1221 5.2. How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
1225 (add-hook 'message-mode-hook
1227 (setq fill-column 72)
1228 (turn-on-auto-fill)))
1231 in ~/.gnus. You can reformat a paragraph by hitting M-q (as usual)
1233 5.3. How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...?
1235 There are other ways, but you should use posting styles for this.
1236 (See below why). This example should make the syntax clear:
1238 (setq gnus-posting-styles
1240 (name "Frank Schmitt")
1241 (address "me@there.bla")
1242 (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
1243 (signature-file "~/.signature")
1244 ("X-SampleHeader" "foobar")
1245 (eval (setq some-variable "Foo bar")))))
1248 The ".*" means that this settings are the default ones (see below),
1249 valid values for the first element of the following lists are
1250 signature, signature-file, organization, address, name or body. The
1251 attribute name can also be a string. In that case, this will be
1252 used as a header name, and the value will be inserted in the
1253 headers of the article; if the value is `nil', the header name will
1254 be removed. You can also say (eval (foo bar)), then the function
1255 foo will be evaluated with argument bar and the result will be
1258 5.4. Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group
1261 That's the strength of posting styles. Before, we used ".*" to set
1262 the default for all groups. You can use a regexp like "^gmane" and
1263 the following settings are only applied to postings you send to the
1264 gmane hierarchy, use ".*binaries" instead and they will be applied
1265 to postings send to groups containing the string binaries in their
1268 You can instead of specifying a regexp specify a function which is
1269 evaluated, only if it returns true, the corresponding settings take
1270 effect. Two interesting candidates for this are message-news-p
1271 which returns t if the current Group is a newsgroup and the
1272 corresponding message-mail-p.
1274 Note that all forms that match are applied, that means in the
1275 example below, when I post to gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general,
1276 the settings under ".*" are applied and the settings under
1277 message-news-p and those under "^gmane" and those under "^gmane\
1278 \.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$". Because of this put
1279 general settings at the top and specific ones at the bottom.
1281 (setq gnus-posting-styles
1283 (name "Frank Schmitt")
1284 (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
1285 (signature-file "~/.signature") )
1286 ((message-news-p) ;;Usenet news?
1287 (address "mySpamTrap@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
1288 ("Reply-To" "hereRealRepliesOnlyPlease@Frank-Schmitt.bla") )
1289 ((message-mail-p) ;;mail?
1290 (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.bla") )
1291 ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact
1292 (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.net")
1294 ("^gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general$"
1295 (eval (setq mail-envelope-from "Azzrael@rz-online.de"))
1296 (address "Azzrael@rz-online.de")) ))
1299 5.5. Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking?
1301 You can use ispell.el to spell-check stuff in Emacs. So the first
1302 thing to do is to make sure that you've got either ispell [http://
1303 fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html] or aspell [http:
1304 //aspell.sourceforge.net/] installed and in your Path. Then you
1305 need ispell.el [http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html]
1306 and for on-the-fly spell-checking flyspell.el [http://
1307 www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/personnel/Manuel.Serrano/flyspell/
1308 flyspell.html]. Ispell.el is shipped with Gnus Emacs and available
1309 through the Emacs package system, flyspell.el is shipped with Emacs
1310 and part of XEmacs text-modes package which is available through
1311 the package system, so there should be no need to install them
1314 Ispell.el assumes you use ispell, if you choose aspell say
1316 (setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
1318 in your Emacs configuration file.
1320 If you want your outgoing messages to be spell-checked, say
1322 (add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)
1324 In your ~/.gnus, if you prefer on-the-fly spell-checking say
1326 (add-hook 'message-mode-hook (lambda () (flyspell-mode 1)))
1328 5.6. Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to?
1330 Yes, say something like
1332 (add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook
1336 "^de\\." (gnus-group-real-name gnus-newsgroup-name))
1337 (ispell-change-dictionary "deutsch8"))
1339 (ispell-change-dictionary "english")))))
1342 in ~/.gnus. Change "^de\\." and "deutsch8" to something that suits
1345 5.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all those
1348 There's an very basic solution for this, mail aliases. You can
1349 store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple alias
1352 alias al "Al <al@english-heritage.bla>"
1355 Then typing your alias (followed by a space or punctuation
1356 character) on a To: or Cc: line in the message buffer will cause
1357 gnus to insert the full address for you. See the node "Mail
1358 Aliases" in Message (not Gnus) manual for details.
1360 However, what you really want is the Insidious Big Brother Database
1361 bbdb. Get it through the XEmacs package system or from bbdb's
1362 homepage [http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/]. Now place the following in
1363 ~/.gnus, to activate bbdb for Gnus:
1366 (bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message)
1369 Now you probably want some general bbdb configuration, place them
1373 ;;If you don't live in Northern America, you should disable the
1374 ;;syntax check for telephone numbers by saying
1375 (setq bbdb-north-american-phone-numbers-p nil)
1376 ;;Tell bbdb about your email address:
1377 (setq bbdb-user-mail-names
1378 (regexp-opt '("Your.Email@here.bla"
1379 "Your.other@mail.there.bla")))
1380 ;;cycling while completing email addresses
1381 (setq bbdb-complete-name-allow-cycling t)
1383 (setq bbdb-use-pop-up nil)
1386 Now you should be ready to go. Say M-x bbdb RET RET to open a bbdb
1387 buffer showing all entries. Say c to create a new entry, b to
1388 search your BBDB and C-o to add a new field to an entry. If you
1389 want to add a sender to the BBDB you can also just hit `:' on the
1390 posting in the summary buffer and you are done. When you now
1391 compose a new mail, hit TAB to cycle through know recipients.
1393 5.8. Sometimes I see little images at the top of article buffer. What's
1394 that and how can I send one with my postings, too?
1396 Those images are called X-Faces. They are 48*48 pixel b/w pictures,
1397 encoded in a header line. If you want to include one in your posts,
1398 you've got to convert some image to a X-Face. So fire up some image
1399 manipulation program (say Gimp), open the image you want to
1400 include, cut out the relevant part, reduce color depth to 1 bit,
1401 resize to 48*48 and save as bitmap. Now you should get the compface
1402 package from this site [ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/]. and
1403 create the actual X-face by saying
1405 cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon |compface > file.face
1406 cat ./file.face | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g' | sed 's/\"/\\\"/g' > ./file.face.quoted
1409 if you can't use compface, there's an online X-face converter at
1410 http://www.dairiki.org/xface/ [http://www.dairiki.org/xface/]. If
1411 you use MS Windows, you could also use the WinFace program from
1412 http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/ [http://www.xs4all.nl/
1413 ~walterln/winface/]. Now you only have to tell Gnus to include the
1414 X-face in your postings by saying
1416 (setq message-default-headers
1419 (insert-file-contents "~/.xemacs/xface")
1425 5.9. Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups. Can Gnus
1426 warn me, when I'm replying by mail in newsgroups?
1428 Put this in ~/.gnus:
1430 (setq gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news t)
1433 if you already use Gnus 5.10.0, if you still use 5.8.8 or 5.9 try
1436 (defadvice gnus-summary-reply (around reply-in-news activate)
1438 (when (or (not (gnus-news-group-p gnus-newsgroup-name))
1439 (y-or-n-p "Really reply? "))
1443 5.10. How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
1445 Since 5.10.0 Gnus doesn't generate a sender header by default. For
1446 older Gnus' try this in ~/.gnus:
1448 (eval-after-load "message"
1449 '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
1452 5.11. I want gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and news, how
1455 You must set the variable gnus-message-archive-group to do this.
1456 You can set it to a string giving the name of the group where the
1457 copies shall go or like in the example below use a function which
1458 is evaluated and which returns the group to use.
1460 (setq gnus-message-archive-group
1461 '((if (message-news-p)
1466 5.12. People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why aren't they and
1469 The message-ID is an unique identifier for messages you send. To
1470 make it unique, Gnus need to know which machine name to put after
1471 the "@". If the name of the machine where Gnus is running isn't
1472 suitable (it probably isn't at most private machines) you can tell
1473 Gnus what to use by saying:
1475 (defun message-make-message-id()
1476 (concat "<"(message-unique-id)"@yourmachine.yourdomain.tld>"))
1479 in ~/.gnus. If you have no idea what to insert for
1480 "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld", you've got several choices. You can
1481 either ask your provider if he allows you to use something like
1482 yourUserName.userfqdn.provider.net, or you can use
1483 somethingUnique.yourdomain.tld if you own the domain
1484 yourdomain.tld, or you can register at a service which gives
1485 private users a FQDN for free, e.g. http://www.stura.tu-freiberg.de
1486 /~dlx/addfqdn.html [http://www.stura.tu-freiberg.de/~dlx/
1487 addfqdn.html]. (Sorry but this website is in German, if you know of
1488 an English one offering the same, drop me a note).
1490 Finally you can tell Gnus not to generate a Message-ID for News at
1491 all (and letting the server do the job) by saying
1493 (setq message-required-news-headers
1494 (remove' Message-ID message-required-news-headers))
1497 you can also tell Gnus not to generate Message-IDs for mail by
1500 (setq message-required-mail-headers
1501 (remove' Message-ID message-required-mail-headers))
1504 , however some mail servers don't generate proper Message-IDs, too,
1505 so test if your Mail Server behaves correctly by sending yourself a
1506 Mail and looking at the Message-ID.
1510 6.1. How to import my old mail into Gnus?
1512 The easiest way is to tell your old mail program to export the
1513 messages in mbox format. Most Unix mailers are able to do this, if
1514 you come from the MS Windows world, you may find tools at http://
1515 mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/ [http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/].
1517 Now you've got to import this mbox file into Gnus. To do this,
1518 create a nndoc group based on the mbox file by saying G f /path/
1519 file.mbox RET in Group buffer. You now have read-only access to
1520 your mail. If you want to import the messages to your normal Gnus
1521 mail groups hierarchy, enter the nndoc group you've just created by
1522 saying C-u RET (thus making sure all messages are retrieved), mark
1523 all messages by saying M P b and either copy them to the desired
1524 group by saying B c name.of.group RET or send them through
1525 nnmail-split-methods (respool them) by saying B r.
1527 6.2. How to archive interesting messages?
1529 If you stumble across an interesting message, say in gnu.emacs.gnus
1530 and want to archive it there are several solutions. The first and
1531 easiest is to save it to a file by saying O f. However, wouldn't it
1532 be much more convenient to have more direct access to the archived
1533 message from Gnus? If you say yes, put this snippet by Frank Haun
1534 <pille3003@fhaun.de> in ~/.gnus:
1536 (defun my-archive-article (&optional n)
1537 "Copies one or more article(s) to a corresponding `nnml:' group, e.g.
1538 `gnus.ding' goes to `nnml:1.gnus.ding'. And `nnml:List-gnus.ding' goes
1539 to `nnml:1.List-gnus-ding'.
1541 Use process marks or mark a region in the summary buffer to archive
1542 more then one article."
1547 (if (featurep 'xemacs)
1548 (replace-in-string gnus-newsgroup-name "^.*:" "")
1549 (replace-regexp-in-string "^.*:" "" gnus-newsgroup-name)))))
1550 (gnus-summary-copy-article n archive-name)))
1553 You can now say M-x my-archive-article in summary buffer to archive
1554 the article under the cursor in a nnml group. (Change nnml to your
1557 Of course you can also make sure the cache is enabled by saying
1559 (setq gnus-use-cache t)
1562 then you only have to set either the tick or the dormant mark for
1563 articles you want to keep, setting the read mark will remove them
1566 6.3. How to search for a specific message?
1568 There are several ways for this, too. For a posting from a Usenet
1569 group the easiest solution is probably to ask groups.google.com
1570 [http://groups.google.com], if you found the posting there, tell
1571 Google to display the raw message, look for the message-id, and say
1572 M-^ the@message.id RET in a summary buffer. Since Gnus 5.10.0
1573 there's also a Gnus interface for groups.google.com which you can
1574 call with G W) in group buffer.
1576 Another idea which works for both mail and news groups is to enter
1577 the group where the message you are searching is and use the
1578 standard Emacs search C-s, it's smart enough to look at articles in
1579 collapsed threads, too. If you want to search bodies, too try M-s
1580 instead. Further on there are the gnus-summary-limit-to-foo
1581 functions, which can help you, too.
1583 Of course you can also use grep to search through your local mail,
1584 but this is both slow for big archives and inconvenient since you
1585 are not displaying the found mail in Gnus. Here comes nnir into
1586 action. Nnir is a front end to search engines like swish-e or
1587 swish++ and others. You index your mail with one of those search
1588 engines and with the help of nnir you can search trough the indexed
1589 mail and generate a temporary group with all messages which met
1590 your search criteria. If this sound cool to you get nnir.el from
1591 ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/ [ftp://
1592 ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/] or ftp://
1593 ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/ [ftp://
1594 ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/]. Instructions on
1595 how to use it are at the top of the file.
1597 6.4. How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
1599 You can of course just mark the mail you don't need anymore by
1600 saying # with point over the mail and then say B DEL to get rid of
1601 them forever. You could also instead of actually deleting them,
1602 send them to a junk-group by saying B m nnml:trash-bin which you
1603 clear from time to time, but both are not the intended way in Gnus.
1605 In Gnus, we let mail expire like news expires on a news server.
1606 That means you tell Gnus the message is expirable (you tell Gnus "I
1607 don't need this mail anymore") by saying E with point over the mail
1608 in summary buffer. Now when you leave the group, Gnus looks at all
1609 messages which you marked as expirable before and if they are old
1610 enough (default is older than a week) they are deleted.
1612 6.5. I want that all read messages are expired (at least in some
1613 groups). How to do it?
1615 If you want all read messages to be expired (e.g. in mailing lists
1616 where there's an online archive), you've got two choices:
1617 auto-expire and total-expire. Auto-expire means, that every article
1618 which has no marks set and is selected for reading is marked as
1619 expirable, Gnus hits E for you every time you read a message.
1620 Total-expire follows a slightly different approach, here all
1621 article where the read mark is set are expirable.
1623 To activate auto-expire, include auto-expire in the Group
1624 parameters for the group. (Hit G c in summary buffer with point
1625 over the group to change group parameters). For total-expire add
1626 total-expire to the group-parameters.
1628 Which method you choose is merely a matter of taste: Auto-expire is
1629 faster, but it doesn't play together with Adaptive Scoring, so if
1630 you want to use this feature, you should use total-expire.
1632 If you want a message to be excluded from expiration in a group
1633 where total or auto expire is active, set either tick (hit u) or
1634 dormant mark (hit u), when you use auto-expire, you can also set
1635 the read mark (hit d).
1637 6.6. I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them to
1640 Say something like this in ~/.gnus:
1642 (setq nnmail-expiry-target "nnml:expired")
1645 (If you want to change the value of nnmail-expiry-target on a per
1646 group basis see the question "How can I disable threading in some
1647 (e.g. mail-) groups, or set other variables specific for some
1650 7. Gnus in a dial-up environment
1652 7.1. I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I minimize
1653 the time I've got to be connected?
1655 You've got basically two options: Either you use the Gnus Agent
1656 (see below) for this, or you can install programs which fetch your
1657 news and mail to your local disk and Gnus reads the stuff from your
1660 If you want to follow the second approach, you need a program which
1661 fetches news and offers them to Gnus, a program which does the same
1662 for mail and a program which receives the mail you write from Gnus
1663 and sends them when you're online.
1665 Let's talk about Unix systems first: For the news part, the easiest
1666 solution is a small nntp server like Leafnode [http://
1667 www.leafnode.org/] or sn [http://infa.abo.fi/~patrik/sn/], of
1668 course you can also install a full featured news server like inn
1669 [http://www.isc.org/products/INN/]. Then you want to fetch your
1670 Mail, popular choices are fetchmail [http://www.catb.org/~esr/
1671 fetchmail/] and getmail [http://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/software/
1672 getmail-3.0/]. You should tell those to write the mail to your disk
1673 and Gnus to read it from there. Last but not least the mail sending
1674 part: This can be done with every MTA like sendmail [http://
1675 www.sendmail.org/], postfix [http://www.qmail.org/], exim [http://
1676 www.exim.org/] or qmail [http://www.qmail.org/].
1678 On windows boxes I'd vote for Hamster [http://www.tglsoft.de/],
1679 it's a small freeware, open-source program which fetches your mail
1680 and news from remote servers and offers them to Gnus (or any other
1681 mail and/or news reader) via nntp respectively POP3 or IMAP. It
1682 also includes a smtp server for receiving mails from Gnus.
1684 7.2. So what was this thing about the Agent?
1686 The Gnus agent is part of Gnus, it allows you to fetch mail and
1687 news and store them on disk for reading them later when you're
1688 offline. It kind of mimics offline newsreaders like e.g. Forte
1689 Agent. If you want to use the Agent place the following in ~/.gnus
1690 if you are still using 5.8.8 or 5.9 (it's the default since
1696 Now you've got to select the servers whose groups can be stored
1697 locally. To do this, open the server buffer (that is press ^ while
1698 in the group buffer). Now select a server by moving point to the
1699 line naming that server. Finally, agentize the server by typing J a
1700 . If you make a mistake, or change your mind, you can undo this
1701 action by typing J r. When you're done, type 'q' to return to the
1702 group buffer. Now the next time you enter a group on a agentized
1703 server, the headers will be stored on disk and read from there the
1704 next time you enter the group.
1706 7.3. I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it?
1708 You can tell the agent to automatically fetch the bodies of
1709 articles which fulfill certain predicates, this is done in a
1710 special buffer which can be reached by saying J c in group buffer.
1711 Please refer to the documentation for information which predicates
1712 are possible and how exactly to do it.
1714 Further on you can tell the agent manually which articles to store
1715 on disk. There are two ways to do this: Number one: In the summary
1716 buffer, process mark a set of articles that shall be stored in the
1717 agent by saying # with point over the article and then type J s.
1718 The other possibility is to set, again in the summary buffer,
1719 downloadable (%) marks for the articles you want by typing @ with
1720 point over the article and then typing J u. What's the difference?
1721 Well, process marks are erased as soon as you exit the summary
1722 buffer while downloadable marks are permanent. You can actually set
1723 downloadable marks in several groups then use fetch session ('J s'
1724 in the GROUP buffer) to fetch all of those articles. The only
1725 downside is that fetch session also fetches all of the headers for
1726 every selected group on an agentized server. Depending on the
1727 volume of headers, the initial fetch session could take hours.
1729 7.4. How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings while I'm
1732 All you've got to do is to tell Gnus when you are online (plugged)
1733 and when you are offline (unplugged), the rest works automatically.
1734 You can toggle plugged/unplugged state by saying J j in group
1735 buffer. To start Gnus unplugged say M-x gnus-unplugged instead of
1736 M-x gnus. Note that for this to work, the agent must be active.
1740 8.1. How to find information and help inside Emacs?
1742 The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say C-h i d m Gnus RET to
1743 start the Gnus manual, then walk through the menus or do a
1744 full-text search with s). Then there are the general Emacs help
1745 commands starting with C-h, type C-h ? ? to get a list of all
1746 available help commands and their meaning. Finally M-x
1747 apropos-command lets you search through all available functions and
1748 M-x apropos searches the bound variables.
1750 8.2. I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g. attachments,
1751 PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
1753 There's not only the Gnus manual but also the manuals for message,
1754 emacs-mime, sieve and pgg. Those packages are distributed with Gnus
1755 and used by Gnus but aren't really part of core Gnus, so they are
1756 documented in different info files, you should have a look in those
1759 8.3. Which websites should I know?
1761 The two most important ones are the official Gnus website [http://
1762 www.gnus.org]. and it's sister site my.gnus.org (MGO) [http://
1763 my.gnus.org], hosting an archive of lisp snippets, howtos, a (not
1764 really finished) tutorial and this FAQ.
1766 Tell me about other sites which are interesting.
1768 8.4. Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
1770 There's the newsgroup gnu.emacs.gnus (pull it from e.g.
1771 news.gnus.org) which deals with general questions and the ding
1772 mailing list (ding@gnus.org) dealing with development of Gnus. You
1773 can read the ding list via NNTP, too under the name gnus.ding from
1776 If you want to stay in the big8, news.software.newssreaders is also
1777 read by some Gnus users (but chances for qualified help are much
1778 better in the above groups) and if you speak German, there's
1779 de.comm.software.gnus.
1781 8.5. Where to report bugs?
1783 Say M-x gnus-bug, this will start a message to the gnus bug mailing
1784 list [mailto:bugs@gnus.org] including information about your
1785 environment which make it easier to help you.
1787 8.6. I need real-time help, where to find it?
1789 Point your IRC client to irc.my.gnus.org channel #mygnus. Don't be
1790 afraid if people there speak German, they are willing and capable
1791 of switching to English when people from outside Germany enter.
1795 9.1. Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
1797 The reason for this could be the way Gnus reads it's active file,
1798 see the node "The Active File" in the Gnus manual for things you
1799 might try to speed the process up. An other idea would be to byte
1800 compile your ~/.gnus (say M-x byte-compile-file RET ~/.gnus RET to
1801 do it). Finally, if you have require statements in your .gnus, you
1802 could replace them with eval-after-load, which loads the stuff not
1803 at startup time, but when it's needed. Say you've got this in your
1807 (add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled))
1810 then as soon as you start Gnus, message.el is loaded. If you
1813 (eval-after-load "message"
1814 '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
1817 it's loaded when it's needed.
1819 9.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
1821 A speed killer is setting the variable gnus-fetch-old-headers to
1822 anything different from nil, so don't do this if speed is an issue.
1823 To speed up building of summary say
1828 at the bottom of your ~/.gnus, this will make gnus byte-compile
1829 things like gnus-summary-line-format. then you could increase the
1830 value of gc-cons-threshold by saying something like
1832 (setq gc-cons-threshold 3500000)
1835 in ~/.emacs. If you don't care about width of CJK characters or use
1836 Gnus 5.10.0 or younger together with a recent GNU Emacs, you should
1839 (setq gnus-use-correct-string-widths nil)
1842 in ~/.gnus (thanks to Jesper harder for the last two suggestions).
1843 Finally if you are still using 5.8.8 or 5.9 and experience speed
1844 problems with summary buffer generation, you definitely should
1845 update to 5.10.0 since there quite some work on improving it has
1848 9.3. Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
1850 The reason could be that you told Gnus to archive the messages you
1851 wrote by setting gnus-message-archive-group. Try to use a nnml
1852 group instead of an archive group, this should bring you back to
1859 When the term ~/.gnus is used it just means your Gnus
1860 configuration file. You might as well call it ~/.gnus.el or
1861 specify another name.
1865 In Gnus terminology a back end is a virtual server, a layer
1866 between core Gnus and the real NNTP-, POP3-, IMAP- or
1867 whatever-server which offers Gnus a standardized interface to
1868 functions like "get message", "get Headers" etc.
1872 When the term Emacs is used in this FAQ, it means either GNU
1877 In this FAQ message means a either a mail or a posting to a
1878 Usenet Newsgroup or to some other fancy back end, no matter of
1883 MUA is an acronym for Mail User Agent, it's the program you use
1884 to read and write e-mails.
1888 NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you use
1889 to read and write Usenet news.