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.
306 Frequently Asked Questions
311 Frequently Asked Questions with Answers
316 This is the new Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list. If you have a
317 Web browser, the official hypertext version is at http://
318 my.gnus.org/FAQ/ [http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/], the Docbook source is
319 available from http://sourceforge.net [http://sourceforge.net/
322 Please submit features and suggestions to the FAQ discussion list
323 [mailto:faq-discuss@my.gnus.org]. The list is protected against
324 junk mail with qconfirm [http://smarden.org/qconfirm/index.html].
325 As a subscriber, your submissions will automatically pass. You can
326 also subscribe to the list by sending a blank email to
327 faq-discuss-subscribe@my.gnus.org
328 [mailto:faq-discuss-subscribe@my.gnus.org] and browse the archive.
332 This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.
334 Gnus is a Usenet Newsreader and Electronic Mail User Agent
335 implemented as a part of Emacs. It's been around in some form for
336 almost a decade now, and has been distributed as a standard part of
337 Emacs for much of that time. Gnus 5 is the latest (and greatest)
338 incarnation. The original version was called GNUS, and was written
339 by Masanobu UMEDA. When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne
340 Ingebrigtsen grew bored and decided to rewrite Gnus.
342 Its biggest strength is the fact that it is extremely customizable.
343 It is somewhat intimidating at first glance, but most of the
344 complexity can be ignored until you're ready to take advantage of
345 it. If you receive a reasonable volume of e-mail (you're on various
346 mailing lists), or you would like to read high-volume mailing lists
347 but cannot keep up with them, or read high volume newsgroups or are
348 just bored, then Gnus is what you want.
350 This FAQ was maintained by Justin Sheehy until March 2002. He would
351 like to thank Steve Baur and Per Abrahamsen for doing a wonderful
352 job with this FAQ before him. We would like to do the same -
355 If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at:
356 http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/ [http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/]. This version is
357 much nicer than the unofficial hypertext versions that are archived
358 at Utrecht, Oxford, Smart Pages, Ohio State, and other FAQ
359 archives. See the resources question below if you want information
360 on obtaining it in another format.
362 The information contained here was compiled with the assistance of
363 the Gnus development mailing list, and any errors or misprints are
364 the my.gnus.org team's fault, sorry.
366 Frequently Asked Questions with Answers
370 1.1. What is the latest version of Gnus?
371 1.2. Where and how to get Gnus?
372 1.3. What to do with the tarball now?
373 1.4. Which version of Emacs do I need?
374 1.5. 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.
484 7.1. How to find information and help inside Emacs?
485 7.2. I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g.
486 attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
487 7.3. Which websites should I know?
488 7.4. Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
489 7.5. Where to report bugs?
490 7.6. I need real-time help, where to find it?
494 8.1. Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
495 8.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
496 8.3. Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
500 1.1. What is the latest version of Gnus?
502 As of this posting, the latest Gnus version is 5.8.8(which is
503 basically the same as Gnus 5.9 which is shipped with GNU Emacs).
504 This version is very stable and should be the choice for all
505 beginners. However 5.8.8 is quite old, so many people today use the
506 BETA version from CVS called Oort Gnus, which contains a huge
507 amount of new features. If you want to do this too, be aware that
508 it's beta and might have bugs and at worst case might eat your
511 1.2. Where and how to get Gnus?
513 The latest released version of Gnus is included in Emacs 21 and
514 available through the package system of XEmacs 21.4, so the easiest
515 way is getting one of those. If you don't want or can't do this,
516 get the Gnus tarball from http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz
517 [http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz] or via anonymous FTP from
518 ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz [ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/
521 1.3. What to do with the tarball now?
523 Untar it via tar xvzf gnus.tar.gz and do the common ./configure;
524 make; make install circle. (under MS-Windows either get the Cygwin
525 environment from http://www.cygwin.com [http://www.cygwin.com]
526 which allows you to do what's described above or unpack the tarball
527 with some packer (e.g. Winace from http://www.winace.com [http://
528 www.winace.com]) and use the batch-file make.bat included in the
529 tarball to install Gnus. If you don't want to (or aren't allowed
530 to) install Gnus system-wide, you can install it in your home
531 directory and add the following lines to your ~/.xemacs/init.el or
534 (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/gnus/lisp")
535 (if (featurep 'xemacs)
536 (add-to-list 'Info-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/")
537 (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/"))
540 Make sure that you don't have any gnus related stuff before this
541 line, on MS Windows use something like "C:/path/to/lisp" (yes, "/
544 1.4. Which version of Emacs do I need?
546 Gnus 5.8.8 requires an emacs version that is greater than or equal
547 to Emacs 20.3 or XEmacs 20.1.
549 1.5. How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
551 You can't use the same copy of Gnus in both as the Lisp files are
552 byte-compiled to a format which is different depending on which
553 Emacs did the compilation. Get one copy of Gnus for Emacs and one
556 2. Startup / Group buffer
558 2.1. Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save file
559 exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean and how to
562 This message means that the last time you used Gnus, it wasn't
563 properly exited and therefor couldn't write its informations to
564 disk (e.g. which messages you read), you are now asked if you want
565 to restore those informations from the auto-save file.
567 To prevent this message make sure you exit Gnus via q in group
568 buffer instead of just killing Emacs.
570 2.2. Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to, what's this?
572 You get the message described in the q/a pair above while starting
573 Gnus, right? It's an other symptom for the same problem, so read
576 2.3. How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
578 You've got to tweak the value of the variable
579 gnus-group-line-format. See the manual node "Group Line
580 Specification" for information on how to do this. An example for
581 this (guess from whose .gnus :-)):
583 (setq gnus-group-line-format "%P%M%S[%5t]%5y : %(%g%)\n")
586 2.4. My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to sort my
587 groups into categories so I can easier browse through them?
589 Gnus offers the topic mode, it allows you to sort your groups in,
590 well, topics, e.g. all groups dealing with Linux under the topic
591 linux, all dealing with music under the topic music and all dealing
592 with scottish music under the topic scottish which is a subtopic of
595 To enter topic mode, just hit t while in Group buffer. Now you can
596 use T n to create a topic at point and T m to move a group to a
597 specific topic. For more commands see the manual or the menu. You
598 might want to include the %P specifier at the beginning of your
599 gnus-group-line-format variable to have the groups nicely indented.
601 2.5. How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to sort the
604 Move point over the group you want to move and hit C-k, now move
605 point to the place where you want the group to be and hit C-y.
609 3.1. I just installed Gnus, started it via M-x gnus but it only says
610 "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
612 You've got to tell Gnus where to fetch the news from. Read the
613 documentation for information on how to do this. As a first start,
614 put those lines in ~/.gnus:
616 (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.yourprovider.net"))
617 (setq user-mail-address "you@yourprovider.net")
618 (setq user-full-name "Your Name")
621 3.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.
623 The ~/ means the home directory where Gnus and Emacs look for the
624 configuration files. However, you don't really need to know what
625 this means, it suffices that Emacs knows what it means :-) You can
626 type C-x C-f ~/.gnus RET (yes, with the forward slash, even on
627 Windows), and Emacs will open the right file for you. (It will most
628 likely be new, and thus empty.) However, I'd discourage you from
629 doing so, since the directory Emacs chooses will most certainly not
630 be what you want, so let's do it the correct way. The first thing
631 you've got to do is to create a suitable directory (no blanks in
632 directory name please) e.g. c:\myhome. Then you must set the
633 environment variable HOME to this directory. To do this under Win9x
634 or Me include the line
639 in your autoexec.bat and reboot. Under NT, 2000 and XP, hit
640 Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system options (if it doesn't work, go
641 to Control Panel -> System). There you'll find the possibility to
642 set environment variables, create a new one with name HOME and
643 value C:\myhome, a reboot is not necessary.
645 Now to create ~/.gnus, say C-x C-f ~/.gnus RET C-x C-s. in Emacs.
647 3.3. My news server requires authentication, how to store user name and
650 Create a file ~/.authinfo which includes for each server a line
653 machine news.yourprovider.net login YourUserName password YourPassword
655 . Make sure that the file isn't readable to others if you work on a
656 OS which is capable of doing so. (Under Unix say
658 chmod 600 ~/.authinfo
662 3.4. Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to subscribe to
665 If you know the name of the group say U name.of.group RET in group
666 buffer (use the tab-completion Luke). Otherwise hit ^ in group
667 buffer, this brings you to the server buffer. Now place point (the
668 cursor) over the server which carries the group you want, hit RET,
669 move point to the group you want to subscribe to and say u to
672 3.5. Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed to post on
673 this server as well as I am, what's that?
675 Some providers allow restricted anonymous access and full access
676 only after authorization. To make Gnus send authinfo to those
681 to the line for those servers in ~/.authinfo.
683 3.6. I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible?
685 Of course. You can specify more sources for articles in the
686 variable gnus-secondary-select-methods. Add something like this in
689 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourSecondProvider.net"))
690 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourThirdProvider.net"))
693 3.7. And how about local spool files?
695 No problem, this is just one more select method called nnspool, so
698 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnspool ""))
701 Or this if you don't want an NNTP Server as primary news source:
703 (setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
706 Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you want
707 something different, change the line above to something like this:
709 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
710 '(nnspool "" (nnspool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")))
713 This sets the spool directory for this server only. You might have
714 to specify more stuff like the program used to post articles, see
715 the Gnus manual on how to do this.
717 3.8. OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail
718 with Gnus, too. How to do it?
720 That's a bit harder since there are many possible sources for mail,
721 many possible ways for storing mail and many different ways for
722 sending mail. The most common cases are these: 1: You want to read
723 your mail from a pop3 server and send them directly to a SMTP
724 Server 2: Some program like fetchmail retrieves your mail and
725 stores it on disk from where Gnus shall read it. Outgoing mail is
726 sent by Sendmail, Postfix or some other MTA. Sometimes, you even
727 need a combination of the above cases.
729 However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way it
730 should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which back end to use.
731 Gnus supports many different back ends, the most commonly used one
732 is nnml. It stores every mail in one file and is therefor quite
733 fast. However you might prefer a one file per group approach if
734 your file system has problems with many small files, the nnfolder
735 back end is then probably the choice for you. To use nnml add the
736 following to ~/.gnus:
738 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml ""))
741 As you might have guessed, if you want nnfolder, it's
743 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnfolder ""))
746 Now we need to tell Gnus, where to get it's mail from. If it's a
747 POP3 server, then you need something like this:
749 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
750 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net"
752 :password "yourPassword"))
755 Make sure ~/.gnus isn't readable to others if you store your
756 password there. If you want to read your mail from a traditional
757 spool file on your local machine, it's
759 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
760 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(file :path "/path/to/spool/file"))
763 If it's a Maildir, with one file per message as used by postfix,
764 Qmail and (optionally) fetchmail it's
766 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
767 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(maildir :path "/path/to/Maildir/"
768 :subdirs ("cur" "new")))
771 And finally if you want to read your mail from several files in one
772 directory, for example because procmail already split your mail,
775 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
776 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(directory :path "/path/to/procmail-dir/"
780 Where :suffix ".prcml" tells Gnus only to use files with the suffix
783 OK, now you only need to tell Gnus how to send mail. If you want to
784 send mail via sendmail (or whichever MTA is playing the role of
785 sendmail on your system), you don't need to do anything. However,
786 if you want to send your mail to an SMTP Server you need the
787 following in your ~/.gnus
789 (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
790 (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
791 (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.yourProvider.net")
794 3.9. And what about IMAP?
796 There are two ways of using IMAP with Gnus. The first one is to use
797 IMAP like POP3, that means Gnus fetches the mail from the IMAP
798 server and stores it on disk. If you want to do this (you don't
799 really want to do this) add the following to ~/.gnus
801 (add-to-list 'mail-sources '(imap :server "mail.mycorp.com"
805 :authentication login
807 :fetchflag "\\Seen"))
810 You might have to tweak the values for stream and/or
811 authentification, see the Gnus manual node "Mail Source Specifiers"
814 If you want to use IMAP the way it's intended, you've got to follow
815 a different approach. You've got to add the nnimap back end to your
816 select method and give the information about the server there.
818 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
819 '(nnimap "Give the baby a name"
820 (nnimap-address "imap.yourProvider.net")
822 (nnimap-list-pattern "archive.*")))
825 Again, you might have to specify how to authenticate to the server
826 if Gnus can't guess the correct way, see the Manual Node "IMAP" for
827 detailed information.
829 3.10. At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
830 Gnus to read my mail from it?
832 Offer your administrator a pair of new running shoes for activating
833 IMAP on the server and follow the instructions above.
835 3.11. Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it retrieves
838 First of all, that's not the way POP3 is intended to work, if you
839 have the possibility, you should use the IMAP Protocol if you want
840 your messages to stay on the server. Nevertheless there might be
841 situations where you need the feature, but sadly Gnus itself has no
842 predefined functionality to do so.
844 However this is Gnus county so there are possibilities to achieve
845 what you want. The easiest way is to get an external program which
846 retrieves copies of the mail and stores them on disk, so Gnus can
847 read it from there. On Unix systems you could use e.g. fetchmail
848 for this, on MS Windows you can use Hamster, an excellent local
849 news and mail server.
851 The other solution would be, to replace the method Gnus uses to get
852 mail from POP3 servers by one which is capable of leaving the mail
853 on the server. If you use XEmacs, get the package mail-lib, it
854 includes an enhanced pop3.el, look in the file, there's
855 documentation on how to tell Gnus to use it and not to delete the
856 retrieved mail. For GNU Emacs look for the file epop3.el which can
857 do the same (If you know the home of this file, please send me an
858 e-mail). You can also tell Gnus to use an external program (e.g.
859 fetchmail) to fetch your mail, see the info node "Mail Source
860 Specifiers" in the Gnus manual on how to do it.
864 4.1. When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them
867 If you enter the group by saying RET in summary buffer with point
868 over the group, only unread and ticked messages are loaded. Say C-u
869 RET instead to load all available messages. If you want only the
870 e.g. 300 newest say C-u 300 RET
872 Loading only unread messages can be annoying if you have threaded
875 (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 'some)
878 in ~/.gnus to load enough old articles to prevent teared threads,
879 replace 'some with t to load all articles (Warning: Both settings
880 enlarge the amount of data which is fetched when you enter a group
881 and slow down the process of entering a group).
883 If you use Oort Gnus, you can say /o N In summary buffer to load
884 the last N messages, this feature is not available in 5.8.8
886 If you don't want all old messages, but the parent of the message
887 you're just reading, you can say ^, if you want to retrieve the
888 whole thread the message you're just reading belongs to, A T is
891 4.2. How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I enter a
892 group, even when it's read?
894 You can tick important messages. To do this hit u while point is in
895 summary buffer over the message. When you want to remove the mark,
896 hit either d (this deletes the tick mark and set's unread mark) or
897 M c (which deletes all marks for the message).
899 4.3. How to view the headers of a message?
901 Say t to show all headers, one more t hides them again.
903 4.4. How to view the raw unformatted message?
905 Say C-u g to show the raw message g returns to normal view.
907 4.5. How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at the top of
910 The variable gnus-visible-headers controls which headers are shown,
911 its value is a regular expression, header lines which match it are
912 shown. So if you want author, subject, date, and if the header
913 exists, Followup-To and MUA / NUA say this in ~/.gnus:
915 (setq gnus-visible-headers
916 "^\\(From:\\|Subject:\\|Date:\\|Followup-To:\\|X-Newsreader:\\|User-Agent:\\|X-Mailer:\\)")
919 4.6. I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if
920 it's available. How to do it?
924 (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
926 (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
927 (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext")))
930 in ~/.gnus. If you don't want HTML rendered, even if there's no
933 (setq mm-automatic-display (remove "text/html" mm-automatic-display))
938 4.7. Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails?
940 Only if you use Oort Gnus. In this case you've got the choice
941 between w3, w3m, links, lynx and html2text, which one is used can
942 be specified in the variable mm-text-html-renderer, so if you want
943 links to render your mail say
945 (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'links)
948 4.8. Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails more
951 Gnus offers you several functions to "wash" incoming mail, you can
952 find them if you browse through the menu, item Article->Washing.
953 The most interesting ones are probably "Wrap long lines" ( W w ),
954 "Decode ROT13" ( W r ) and "Outlook Deuglify" which repairs the
955 dumb quoting used by many users of Microsoft products ( W k ) sadly
956 the last one is only available in Oort Gnus.
958 4.9. Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific authors or
959 with specific words in the subject? And can I highlight more
960 interesting ones in some way?
962 You want Scoring. Scoring means, that you define rules which assign
963 each message an integer value. Depending on the value the message
964 is highlighted in summary buffer (if it's high, say +2000) or
965 automatically marked read (if the value is low, say -800) or some
966 other action happens.
968 There are basically three ways of setting up rules which assign the
969 scoring-value to messages. The first and easiest way is to set up
970 rules based on the article you are just reading. Say you're reading
971 a message by a guy who always writes nonsense and you want to
972 ignore his messages in the future. Hit L, to set up a rule which
973 lowers the score. Now Gnus asks you which the criteria for lowering
974 the Score shall be. Hit ? twice to see all possibilities, we want a
975 which means the author (the from header). Now Gnus wants to know
976 which kind of matching we want. Hit either e for an exact match or
977 s for substring-match and delete afterwards everything but the name
978 to score down all authors with the given name no matter which email
979 address is used. Now you need to tell Gnus when to apply the rule
980 and how long it should last, hit e.g. p to apply the rule now and
981 let it last forever. If you want to raise the score instead of
982 lowering it say I instead of L.
984 You can also set up rules by hand. To do this say V f in summary
985 buffer. Then you are asked for the name of the score file, it's
986 name.of.group.SCORE for rules valid in only one group or all.Score
987 for rules valid in all groups. See the Gnus manual for the exact
988 syntax, basically it's one big list whose elements are lists again.
989 the first element of those lists is the header to score on, then
990 one more list with what to match, which score to assign, when to
991 expire the rule and how to do the matching. If you find me very
992 interesting, you could e.g. add the following to your all.Score:
994 (("references" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 500 nil s))
995 ("message-id" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 999 nil s)))
998 This would add 999 to the score of messages written by me and 500
999 to the score of messages which are a (possibly indirect) answer to
1000 a message written by me. Of course nobody with a sane mind would do
1003 The third alternative is adaptive scoring. This means Gnus watches
1004 you and tries to find out what you find interesting and what
1005 annoying and sets up rules which reflect this. Adaptive scoring can
1006 be a huge help when reading high traffic groups. If you want to
1007 activate adaptive scoring say
1009 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t)
1014 4.10. How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set
1015 other variables specific for some groups?
1017 While in group buffer move point over the group and hit G c, this
1018 opens a buffer where you can set options for the group. At the
1019 bottom of the buffer you'll find an item that allows you to set
1020 variables locally for the group. To disable threading enter
1021 gnus-show-threads as name of variable and nil as value. Hit button
1022 done at the top of the buffer when you're ready.
1024 4.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those?
1026 Stop those "Can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes in Gnus
1027 Country :-). It's a three step process: First we make faces
1028 (specifications of how summary-line shall look like) for those
1029 postings, then we'll give them some special score and finally we'll
1030 tell Gnus to use the new faces. You can find detailed instructions
1031 on how to do it on my.gnus.org [http://my.gnus.org/Members/dzimmerm
1032 /HowTo%2C2002-07-25%2C1027619165012198456/view]
1034 4.12. The number of total messages in a group which Gnus displays in
1035 group buffer is by far to high, especially in mail groups. Is this
1038 No, that's a matter of design of Gnus, fixing this would mean
1039 reimplementation of major parts of Gnus' back ends. Gnus thinks
1040 "highest-article-number - lowest-article-number =
1041 total-number-of-articles". This works OK for Usenet groups, but if
1042 you delete and move many messages in mail groups, this fails. To
1043 cure the symptom, enter the group via C-u RET (this makes Gnus get
1044 all messages), then hit M P b to mark all messages and then say B m
1045 name.of.group to move all messages to the group they have been in
1046 before, they get new message numbers in this process and the count
1047 is right again (until you delete and move your mail to other groups
1050 4.13. I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how to
1051 change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
1053 You can control the windows configuration by calling the function
1054 gnus-add-configuration. The syntax is a bit complicated but
1055 explained very well in the manual node "Window Layout". Some
1058 Instead 25% summary 75% article buffer 35% summary and 65% article
1059 (the 1.0 for article means "take the remaining space"):
1061 (gnus-add-configuration '(article (vertical 1.0 (summary .35 point) (article 1.0))))
1064 A three pane layout, Group buffer on the left, summary buffer
1065 top-right, article buffer bottom-right:
1067 (gnus-add-configuration
1073 (summary 0.25 point)
1075 (gnus-add-configuration
1081 (summary 1.0 point)))))
1084 4.14. I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it?
1086 You've got to play around with the variable
1087 gnus-summary-line-format. It's value is a string of symbols which
1088 stand for things like author, date, subject etc. A list of the
1089 available specifiers can be found in the manual node "Summary
1090 Buffer Lines" and the often forgotten node "Formatting Variables"
1091 and it's sub-nodes. There you'll find useful things like
1092 positioning the cursor and tabulators which allow you a summary in
1093 table form, but sadly hard tabulators are broken in 5.8.8.
1095 Oort Gnus offers you some very nice new specifiers, e.g. %B which
1096 draws a thread-tree and %&user-date which gives you a date where
1097 the details are dependent of the articles age. Here's an example
1098 which uses both, DON'T TRY TO USE IT WITH 5.8.8!
1100 (setq gnus-summary-line-format ":%U%R %B %s %-60=|%4L |%-20,20f |%&user-date; \n")
1105 :O Re: [Richard Stallman] rfc2047.el | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:06
1106 :O Re: Revival of the ding-patches list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:12
1107 :R > Re: Find correct list of articles for a gro| 25 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:16
1108 :O \-> ... | 21 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:01
1109 :R > Re: Cry for help: deuglify.el - moving stuf| 28 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:34
1110 :O \-> ... | 115 |Raymond Scholz | 1:24
1111 :O \-> ... | 19 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |15:33
1112 :O Slow mailing list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:49
1113 :O Re: `@' mark not documented | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:50
1114 :R > Re: Gnus still doesn't count messages prope| 23 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:57
1115 :O \-> ... | 18 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:35
1116 :O \-> ... | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt | 0:56
1119 4.15. How to split incoming mails in several groups?
1121 Gnus offers two possibilities for splitting mail, the easy
1122 nnmail-split-methods and the more powerful Fancy Mail Splitting.
1123 I'll only talk about the first one, refer to the manual, node
1124 "Fancy Mail Splitting" for the latter.
1126 The value of nnmail-split-methods is a list, each element is a list
1127 which stands for a splitting rule. Each rule has the form "group
1128 where matching articles should go to", "regular expression which
1129 has to be matched", the first rule which matches wins. The last
1130 rule must always be a general rule (regular expression .*) which
1131 denotes where articles should go which don't match any other rule.
1132 If the folder doesn't exist yet, it will be created as soon as an
1133 article lands there. By default the mail will be send to all groups
1134 whose rules match. If you don't want that (you probably don't
1137 (setq nnmail-crosspost nil)
1142 An example might be better than thousand words, so here's my
1143 nnmail-split-methods. Note that I send duplicates in a special
1144 group and that the default group is spam, since I filter all mails
1145 out which are from some list I'm subscribed to or which are
1146 addressed directly to me before. Those rules kill about 80% of the
1147 Spam which reaches me (Email addresses are changed to prevent
1148 spammers from using them):
1150 (setq nnmail-split-methods
1151 '(("duplicates" "^Gnus-Warning:.*duplicate")
1152 ("XEmacs-NT" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@xemacs.bla.*")
1153 ("Gnus-Tut" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@socha.bla.*")
1154 ("tcsh" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@mx.gw.bla.*")
1155 ("BAfH" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@.*uni-muenchen.bla.*")
1156 ("Hamster-src" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*hamster-sourcen@yahoogroups.\\(de\\|com\\).*")
1157 ("Tagesschau" "^From: tagesschau <localpart@www.tagesschau.bla>$")
1158 ("Replies" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@Frank-Schmitt.bla.*")
1159 ("EK" "^From:.*\\(localpart@privateprovider.bla\\|localpart@workplace.bla\\).*")
1160 ("Spam" "^Content-Type:.*\\(ks_c_5601-1987\\|EUC-KR\\|big5\\|iso-2022-jp\\).*")
1161 ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(This really work\\|XINGA\\|ADV:\\|XXX\\|adult\\|sex\\).*")
1162 ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(\=\?ks_c_5601-1987\?\\|\=\?euc-kr\?\\|\=\?big5\?\\).*")
1163 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*BulkMailer.*\\|.*MIME::Lite.*\\|\\)")
1164 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*CyberCreek Avalanche\\|.*http\:\/\/GetResponse\.com\\)")
1165 ("Spam" "^From:.*\\(verizon\.net\\|prontomail\.com\\|money\\|ConsumerDirect\\).*")
1166 ("Spam" "^Delivered-To: GMX delivery to spamtrap@gmx.bla$")
1167 ("Spam" "^Received: from link2buy.com")
1168 ("Spam" "^CC: .*azzrael@t-online.bla")
1169 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer-Version: 1.50 BETA")
1170 ("Uni" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@uni-koblenz.bla.*")
1171 ("Inbox" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*\\(my\ name\\|address@one.bla\\|adress@two.bla\\)")
1175 5. Composing messages
1177 5.1. What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and
1180 To start composing a new mail hit m either in Group or Summary
1181 buffer, for a posting, it's either a in Group buffer and filling
1182 the Newsgroups header manually or a in the Summary buffer of the
1183 group where the posting shall be send to. Replying by mail is r if
1184 you don't want to cite the author, or import the cited text
1185 manually and R to cite the text of the original message. For a
1186 follow up to a newsgroup, it's f and F (analog to r and R.
1188 Enter new headers above the line saying "--text follows this
1189 line--", enter the text below the line. When ready hit C-c C-c, to
1190 send the message, if you want to finish it later hit C-c C-d to
1191 save it in the drafts group, where you can start editing it again
1194 5.2. How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
1198 (add-hook 'message-mode-hook
1200 (setq fill-column 72)
1201 (turn-on-auto-fill)))
1204 in ~/.gnus. You can reformat a paragraph by hitting M-q (as usual)
1206 5.3. How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...?
1208 There are other ways, but you should use posting styles for this.
1209 (See below why). This example should make the syntax clear:
1211 (setq gnus-posting-styles
1213 (name "Frank Schmitt")
1214 (address "me@there.bla")
1215 (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
1216 (signature-file "~/.signature")
1217 ("X-SampleHeader" "foobar")
1218 (eval (setq some-variable "Foo bar")))))
1221 The ".*" means that this settings are the default ones (see below),
1222 valid values for the first element of the following lists are
1223 signature, signature-file, organization, address, name or body. The
1224 attribute name can also be a string. In that case, this will be
1225 used as a header name, and the value will be inserted in the
1226 headers of the article; if the value is `nil', the header name will
1227 be removed. You can also say (eval (foo bar)), then the function
1228 foo will be evaluated with argument bar and the result will be
1231 5.4. Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group
1234 That's the strength of posting styles. Before, we used ".*" to set
1235 the default for all groups. You can use a regexp like "^gmane" and
1236 the following settings are only applied to postings you send to the
1237 gmane hierarchy, use ".*binaries" instead and they will be applied
1238 to postings send to groups containing the string binaries in their
1241 You can instead of specifying a regexp specify a function which is
1242 evaluated, only if it returns true, the corresponding settings take
1243 effect. Two interesting candidates for this are message-news-p
1244 which returns t if the current Group is a newsgroup and the
1245 corresponding message-mail-p.
1247 Note that all forms that match are applied, that means in the
1248 example below, when I post to gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general,
1249 the settings under ".*" are applied and the settings under
1250 message-news-p and those under "^gmane" and those under "^gmane\
1251 \.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$". Because of this put
1252 general settings at the top and specific ones at the bottom.
1254 (setq gnus-posting-styles
1256 (name "Frank Schmitt")
1257 (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
1258 (signature-file "~/.signature") )
1259 ((message-news-p) ;;Usenet news?
1260 (address "mySpamTrap@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
1261 ("Reply-To" "hereRealRepliesOnlyPlease@Frank-Schmitt.bla") )
1262 ((message-mail-p) ;;mail?
1263 (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.bla") )
1264 ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact
1265 (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.net")
1267 ("^gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general$"
1268 (eval (setq mail-envelope-from "Azzrael@rz-online.de"))
1269 (address "Azzrael@rz-online.de")) ))
1272 5.5. Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking?
1274 You can use ispell.el to spell-check stuff in Emacs. So the first
1275 thing to do is to make sure that you've got either ispell [http://
1276 fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html] or aspell [http:
1277 //aspell.sourceforge.net/] installed and in your Path. Then you
1278 need ispell.el [http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html]
1279 and for on-the-fly spell-checking flyspell.el [http://
1280 www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/personnel/Manuel.Serrano/flyspell/
1281 flyspell.html]. Ispell.el is shipped with Gnus Emacs and available
1282 through the Emacs package system, flyspell.el is shipped with Emacs
1283 and part of XEmacs text-modes package which is available through
1284 the package system, so there should be no need to install them
1287 Ispell.el assumes you use ispell, if you choose aspell say
1289 (setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
1291 in your Emacs configuration file.
1293 If you want your outgoing messages to be spell-checked, say
1295 (add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)
1297 In your ~/.gnus, if you prefer on-the-fly spell-checking say
1299 (add-hook 'message-mode-hook (lambda () (flyspell-mode 1)))
1301 5.6. Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to?
1303 Yes, say something like
1305 (add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook
1309 "^de\\." (gnus-group-real-name gnus-newsgroup-name))
1310 (ispell-change-dictionary "deutsch8"))
1312 (ispell-change-dictionary "english")))))
1315 in ~/.gnus. Change "^de\\." and "deutsch8" to something that suits
1318 5.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all those
1321 There's an very basic solution for this, mail aliases. You can
1322 store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple alias
1325 alias al "Al <al@english-heritage.bla>"
1328 Then typing your alias (followed by a space or punctuation
1329 character) on a To: or Cc: line in the message buffer will cause
1330 gnus to insert the full address for you. See the node "Mail
1331 Aliases" in Message (not Gnus) manual for details.
1333 However, what you really want is the Insidious Big Brother Database
1334 bbdb. Get it through the XEmacs package system or from bbdb's
1335 homepage [http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/]. Now place the following in
1336 ~/.gnus, to activate bbdb for Gnus:
1339 (bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message)
1342 Now you probably want some general bbdb configuration, place them
1346 ;;If you don't live in Northern America, you should disable the
1347 ;;syntax check for telephone numbers by saying
1348 (setq bbdb-north-american-phone-numbers-p nil)
1349 ;;Tell bbdb about your email address:
1350 (setq bbdb-user-mail-names
1351 (regexp-opt '("Your.Email@here.bla"
1352 "Your.other@mail.there.bla")))
1353 ;;cycling while completing email addresses
1354 (setq bbdb-complete-name-allow-cycling t)
1356 (setq bbdb-use-pop-up nil)
1359 Now you should be ready to go. Say M-x bbdb RET RET to open a bbdb
1360 buffer showing all entries. Say c to create a new entry, b to
1361 search your BBDB and C-o to add a new field to an entry. If you
1362 want to add a sender to the BBDB you can also just hit `:' on the
1363 posting in the summary buffer and you are done. When you now
1364 compose a new mail, hit TAB to cycle through know recipients.
1366 5.8. Sometimes I see little images at the top of article buffer. What's
1367 that and how can I send one with my postings, too?
1369 Those images are called X-Faces. They are 48*48 pixel b/w pictures,
1370 encoded in a header line. If you want to include one in your posts,
1371 you've got to convert some image to a X-Face. So fire up some image
1372 manipulation program (say Gimp), open the image you want to
1373 include, cut out the relevant part, reduce color depth to 1 bit,
1374 resize to 48*48 and save as bitmap. Now you should get the compface
1375 package from this site [ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/]. and
1376 create the actual X-face by saying
1378 cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon |compface > file.face
1379 cat ./file.face | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g' | sed 's/\"/\\\"/g' > ./file.face.quoted
1382 if you can't use compface, there's an online X-face converter at
1383 http://www.dairiki.org/xface/ [http://www.dairiki.org/xface/]. If
1384 you use MS Windows, you could also use the WinFace program from
1385 http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/ [http://www.xs4all.nl/
1386 ~walterln/winface/]. Now you only have to tell Gnus to include the
1387 X-face in your postings by saying
1389 (setq message-default-headers
1392 (insert-file-contents "~/.xemacs/xface")
1398 5.9. Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups. Can Gnus
1399 warn me, when I'm replying by mail in newsgroups?
1401 Put this in ~/.gnus:
1403 (defadvice gnus-summary-reply (around reply-in-news activate)
1405 (when (or (not (gnus-news-group-p gnus-newsgroup-name))
1406 (y-or-n-p "Really reply? "))
1412 (setq gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news t)
1415 instead to achieve the same result.
1417 5.10. How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
1421 (eval-after-load "message"
1422 '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
1425 in ~/.gnus. (This is the default behaviour in Oort Gnus.)
1427 5.11. I want gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and news, how
1430 You must set the variable gnus-message-archive-group to do this.
1431 You can set it to a string giving the name of the group where the
1432 copies shall go or like in the example below use a function which
1433 is evaluated and which returns the group to use.
1435 (setq gnus-message-archive-group
1436 '((if (message-news-p)
1441 5.12. People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why aren't they and
1444 The message-ID is an unique identifier for messages you send. To
1445 make it unique, Gnus need to know which machine name to put after
1446 the "@". If the name of the machine where Gnus is running isn't
1447 suitable (it probably isn't at most private machines) you can tell
1448 Gnus what to use by saying:
1450 (defun message-make-message-id()
1451 (concat "<"(message-unique-id)"@yourmachine.yourdomain.tld>"))
1454 in ~/.gnus. If you have no idea what to insert for
1455 "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld", you've got several choices. You can
1456 either ask your provider if he allows you to use something like
1457 yourUserName.userfqdn.provider.net, or you can use
1458 somethingUnique.yourdomain.tld if you own the domain
1459 yourdomain.tld, or you can register at a service which gives
1460 private users a FQDN for free, e.g. http://www.stura.tu-freiberg.de
1461 /~dlx/addfqdn.html [http://www.stura.tu-freiberg.de/~dlx/
1462 addfqdn.html]. (Sorry but this website is in German, if you know of
1463 an English one offering the same, drop me a note).
1465 Finally you can tell Gnus not to generate a Message-ID for News at
1466 all (and letting the server do the job) by saying
1468 (setq message-required-news-headers
1469 (remove' Message-ID message-required-news-headers))
1472 you can also tell Gnus not to generate Message-IDs for mail by
1475 (setq message-required-mail-headers
1476 (remove' Message-ID message-required-mail-headers))
1479 , however some mail servers don't generate proper Message-IDs, too,
1480 so test if your Mail Server behaves correctly by sending yourself a
1481 Mail and looking at the Message-ID.
1485 6.1. How to import my old mail into Gnus?
1487 The easiest way is to tell your old mail program to export the
1488 messages in mbox format. Most Unix mailers are able to do this, if
1489 you come from the MS Windows world, you may find tools at http://
1490 mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/ [http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/].
1492 Now you've got to import this mbox file into Gnus. To do this,
1493 create a nndoc group based on the mbox file by saying G f /path/
1494 file.mbox RET in Group buffer. You now have read-only access to
1495 your mail. If you want to import the messages to your normal Gnus
1496 mail groups hierarchy, enter the nndoc group you've just created by
1497 saying C-u RET (thus making sure all messages are retrieved), mark
1498 all messages by saying M P b and either copy them to the desired
1499 group by saying B c name.of.group RET or send them through
1500 nnmail-split-methods (respool them) by saying B r.
1502 6.2. How to archive interesting messages?
1504 If you stumble across an interesting message, say in gnu.emacs.gnus
1505 and want to archive it there are several solutions. The first and
1506 easiest is to save it to a file by saying O f. However, wouldn't it
1507 be much more convenient to have more direct access to the archived
1508 message from Gnus? If you say yes, put this snippet by Frank Haun
1509 <pille3003@fhaun.de> in ~/.gnus:
1511 (defun my-archive-article (&optional n)
1512 "Copies one or more article(s) to a corresponding `nnml:' group, e.g.
1513 `gnus.ding' goes to `nnml:1.gnus.ding'. And `nnml:List-gnus.ding' goes
1514 to `nnml:1.List-gnus-ding'.
1516 Use process marks or mark a region in the summary buffer to archive
1517 more then one article."
1522 (if (featurep 'xemacs)
1523 (replace-in-string gnus-newsgroup-name "^.*:" "")
1524 (replace-regexp-in-string "^.*:" "" gnus-newsgroup-name)))))
1525 (gnus-summary-copy-article n archive-name)))
1528 You can now say M-x my-archive-article in summary buffer to archive
1529 the article under the cursor in a nnml group. (Change nnml to your
1532 Of course you can also make sure the cache is enabled by saying
1534 (setq gnus-use-cache t)
1537 then you only have to set either the tick or the dormant mark for
1538 articles you want to keep, setting the read mark will remove them
1541 6.3. How to search for a specific message?
1543 There are several ways for this, too. For a posting from a Usenet
1544 group the easiest solution is probably to ask groups.google.com
1545 [http://groups.google.com] (in Oort Gnus you can search
1546 groups.google.com with G W), if you found the posting there, tell
1547 Google to display the raw message, look for the message-id, and say
1548 M-^ the@message.id RET in a summary buffer.
1550 Another idea which works for both mail and news groups is to enter
1551 the group where the message you are searching is and use the
1552 standard Emacs search C-s, it's smart enough to look at articles in
1553 collapsed threads, too. If you want to search bodies, too try M-s
1554 instead. Further on there are the gnus-summary-limit-to-foo
1555 functions, which can help you, too.
1557 Of course you can also use grep to search through your local mail,
1558 but this is both slow for big archives and inconvenient since you
1559 are not displaying the found mail in Gnus. Here comes nnir into
1560 action. Nnir is a front end to search engines like swish-e or
1561 swish++ and others. You index your mail with one of those search
1562 engines and with the help of nnir you can search trough the indexed
1563 mail and generate a temporary group with all messages which met
1564 your search criteria. If this sound cool to you get nnir.el from
1565 ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/ [ftp://
1566 ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/] or ftp://
1567 ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/ [ftp://
1568 ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/]. Instructions on
1569 how to use it are at the top of the file.
1571 6.4. How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
1573 You can of course just mark the mail you don't need anymore by
1574 saying # with point over the mail and then say B DEL to get rid of
1575 them forever. You could also instead of actually deleting them,
1576 send them to a junk-group by saying B m nnml:trash-bin which you
1577 clear from time to time, but both are not the intended way in Gnus.
1579 In Gnus, we let mail expire like news expires on a news server.
1580 That means you tell Gnus the message is expirable (you tell Gnus "I
1581 don't need this mail anymore") by saying E with point over the mail
1582 in summary buffer. Now when you leave the group, Gnus looks at all
1583 messages which you marked as expirable before and if they are old
1584 enough (default is older than a week) they are deleted.
1586 6.5. I want that all read messages are expired (at least in some
1587 groups). How to do it?
1589 If you want all read messages to be expired (e.g. in mailing lists
1590 where there's an online archive), you've got two choices:
1591 auto-expire and total-expire. Auto-expire means, that every article
1592 which has no marks set and is selected for reading is marked as
1593 expirable, Gnus hits E for you every time you read a message.
1594 Total-expire follows a slightly different approach, here all
1595 article where the read mark is set are expirable.
1597 To activate auto-expire, include auto-expire in the Group
1598 parameters for the group. (Hit G c in summary buffer with point
1599 over the group to change group parameters). For total-expire add
1600 total-expire to the group-parameters.
1602 Which method you choose is merely a matter of taste: Auto-expire is
1603 faster, but it doesn't play together with Adaptive Scoring, so if
1604 you want to use this feature, you should use total-expire.
1606 If you want a message to be excluded from expiration in a group
1607 where total or auto expire is active, set either tick (hit u) or
1608 dormant mark (hit u), when you use auto-expire, you can also set
1609 the read mark (hit d).
1611 6.6. I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them to
1614 Say something like this in ~/.gnus:
1616 (setq nnmail-expiry-target "nnml:expired")
1619 (If you want to change the value of nnmail-expiry-target on a per
1620 group basis see the question "How can I disable threading in some
1621 (e.g. mail-) groups, or set other variables specific for some
1626 7.1. How to find information and help inside Emacs?
1628 The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say C-h i d m Gnus RET to
1629 start the Gnus manual, then walk through the menus or do a
1630 full-text search with s). Then there are the general Emacs help
1631 commands starting with C-h, type C-h ? ? to get a list of all
1632 available help commands and their meaning. Finally M-x
1633 apropos-command lets you search through all available functions and
1634 M-x apropos searches the bound variables.
1636 7.2. I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g. attachments,
1637 PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
1639 There's not only the Gnus manual but also the manuals for message,
1640 emacs-mime, sieve and (only in Oort Gnus) pgg. Those packages are
1641 distributed with Gnus and used by Gnus but aren't really part of
1642 core Gnus, so they are documented in different info files, you
1643 should have a look in those manuals, too.
1645 7.3. Which websites should I know?
1647 The two most important ones are the official Gnus website [http://
1648 www.gnus.org]. and it's sister site my.gnus.org (MGO) [http://
1649 my.gnus.org], hosting an archive of lisp snippets, howtos, a (not
1650 really finished) tutorial and this FAQ.
1652 Tell me about other sites which are interesting.
1654 7.4. Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
1656 There's the newsgroup gnu.emacs.gnus (pull it from e.g.
1657 news.gnus.org) which deals with general questions and the ding
1658 mailing list (ding@gnus.org) dealing with development of Gnus. You
1659 can read the ding list via NNTP, too under the name gnus.ding from
1662 If you want to stay in the big8, news.software.newssreaders is also
1663 read by some Gnus users (but chances for qualified help are much
1664 better in the above groups) and if you speak German, there's
1665 de.comm.software.gnus.
1667 7.5. Where to report bugs?
1669 Say M-x gnus-bug, this will start a message to the gnus bug mailing
1670 list [mailto:bugs@gnus.org] including information about your
1671 environment which make it easier to help you.
1673 7.6. I need real-time help, where to find it?
1675 Point your IRC client to irc.my.gnus.org channel #mygnus. Don't be
1676 afraid if people there speak German, they are willing and capable
1677 of switching to English when people from outside Germany enter.
1681 8.1. Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
1683 The reason for this could be the way Gnus reads it's active file,
1684 see the node "The Active File" in the Gnus manual for things you
1685 might try to speed the process up. An other idea would be to byte
1686 compile your ~/.gnus (say M-x byte-compile-file RET ~/.gnus RET to
1687 do it). Finally, if you have require statements in your .gnus, you
1688 could replace them with eval-after-load, which loads the stuff not
1689 at startup time, but when it's needed. Say you've got this in your
1693 (add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled))
1696 then as soon as you start Gnus, message.el is loaded. If you
1699 (eval-after-load "message"
1700 '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
1703 it's loaded when it's needed.
1705 8.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
1707 A speed killer is setting the variable gnus-fetch-old-headers to
1708 anything different from nil, so don't do this if speed is an issue.
1709 To speed up building of summary say
1714 at the bottom of your ~/.gnus, this will make gnus byte-compile
1715 things like gnus-summary-line-format. then you could increase the
1716 value of gc-cons-threshold by saying something like
1718 (setq gc-cons-threshold 3500000)
1721 in ~/.emacs. If you don't care about width of CJK characters or use
1722 Oort Gnus together with a recent GNU Emacs, you should say
1724 (setq gnus-use-correct-string-widths nil)
1727 in ~/.gnus (thanks to Jesper harder for the last two suggestions).
1728 Finally if this also doesn't help, you might want to jump in the
1729 cold water and try Oort Gnus, there some work has been done to
1730 speed up summary generation. Read and remember the warnings about
1731 Oort at the top of this FAQ.
1733 8.3. Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
1735 The reason could be that you told Gnus to archive the messages you
1736 wrote by setting gnus-message-archive-group. Try to use a nnml
1737 group instead of an archive group, this should bring you back to
1744 When the term ~/.gnus is used it just means your Gnus
1745 configuration file. You might as well call it ~/.gnus.el or
1746 specify another name.
1750 In Gnus terminology a back end is a virtual server, a layer
1751 between core Gnus and the real NNTP-, POP3-, IMAP- or
1752 whatever-server which offers Gnus a standardized interface to
1753 functions like "get message", "get Headers" etc.
1757 When the term Emacs is used in this FAQ, it means either GNU
1762 In this FAQ message means a either a mail or a posting to a
1763 Usenet Newsgroup or to some other fancy back end, no matter of
1768 MUA is an acronym for Mail User Agent, it's the program you use
1769 to read and write e-mails.
1773 NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you use
1774 to read and write Usenet news.
projects / gnus / blob