1 @c \input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*-
2 @c Uncomment 1st line before texing this file alone.
4 @c Copyright (C) 1995, 2001-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
6 @c @setfilename gnus-faq.info
7 @c @settitle Frequently Asked Questions
11 @node Frequently Asked Questions
12 @section Frequently Asked Questions
16 * FAQ - Introduction:: About Gnus and this FAQ.
17 * FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ:: Installation of Gnus.
18 * FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer:: Start up questions and the
19 first buffer Gnus shows you.
20 * FAQ 3 - Getting Messages:: Making Gnus read your mail
22 * FAQ 4 - Reading messages:: How to efficiently read
24 * FAQ 5 - Composing messages:: Composing mails or Usenet
26 * FAQ 6 - Old messages:: Importing, archiving,
27 searching and deleting messages.
28 * FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment:: Reading mail and news while
30 * FAQ 8 - Getting help:: When this FAQ isn't enough.
31 * FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus:: How to make Gnus faster.
32 * FAQ - Glossary:: Terms used in the FAQ
38 This is the new Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.
40 Please submit features and suggestions to the
41 @email{ding@@gnus.org, ding list}.
51 2008-06-15: Adjust for message-fill-column. Add x-face-file.
52 Clarify difference between ding and gnu.emacs.gnus. Remove
53 reference to discontinued service.
56 2006-04-15: Added tip on how to delete sent buffer on exit.
59 @node FAQ - Introduction
60 @subsection Introduction
62 This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.
64 Gnus is a Usenet Newsreader and Electronic Mail User Agent implemented
65 as a part of Emacs. It's been around in some form for almost a decade
66 now, and has been distributed as a standard part of Emacs for much of
67 that time. Gnus 5 is the latest (and greatest) incarnation. The
68 original version was called GNUS, and was written by Masanobu UMEDA@.
69 When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen grew bored and
70 decided to rewrite Gnus.
72 Its biggest strength is the fact that it is extremely
73 customizable. It is somewhat intimidating at first glance, but
74 most of the complexity can be ignored until you're ready to take
75 advantage of it. If you receive a reasonable volume of e-mail
76 (you're on various mailing lists), or you would like to read
77 high-volume mailing lists but cannot keep up with them, or read
78 high volume newsgroups or are just bored, then Gnus is what you
81 This FAQ was maintained by Justin Sheehy until March 2002. He
82 would like to thank Steve Baur and Per Abrahamsen for doing a wonderful
83 job with this FAQ before him. We would like to do the same: thanks,
86 This version is much nicer than the unofficial hypertext
87 versions that are archived at Utrecht, Oxford, Smart Pages, Ohio
88 State, and other FAQ archives. See the resources question below
89 if you want information on obtaining it in another format.
91 The information contained here was compiled with the assistance
92 of the Gnus development mailing list, and any errors or
93 misprints are the Gnus team's fault, sorry.
95 @node FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ
96 @subsection Installation FAQ
99 * FAQ 1-1:: What is the latest version of Gnus?
100 * FAQ 1-2:: What's new in 5.10?
101 * FAQ 1-3:: Where and how to get Gnus?
102 * FAQ 1-4:: What to do with the tarball now?
103 * FAQ 1-5:: I sometimes read references to No Gnus and Oort Gnus,
105 * FAQ 1-6:: Which version of Emacs do I need?
106 * FAQ 1-7:: How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
110 @subsubheading Question 1.1
112 What is the latest version of Gnus?
114 @subsubheading Answer
116 Jingle please: Gnus 5.10 is released, get it while it's
117 hot! As well as the step in version number is rather
118 small, Gnus 5.10 has tons of new features which you
119 shouldn't miss. The current release (5.13) should be at
120 least as stable as the latest release of the 5.8 series.
123 @subsubheading Question 1.2
127 @subsubheading Answer
129 First of all, you should have a look into the file
130 GNUS-NEWS in the toplevel directory of the Gnus tarball,
131 there the most important changes are listed. Here's a
132 short list of the changes I find especially
133 important/interesting:
138 Major rewrite of the Gnus agent, Gnus agent is now
142 Many new article washing functions for dealing with
143 ugly formatted articles.
149 Message-utils now included in Gnus.
152 New format specifiers for summary lines, e.g., %B for
153 a complex trn-style thread tree.
157 @subsubheading Question 1.3
159 Where and how to get Gnus?
161 @subsubheading Answer
163 Gnus is released independent from releases of Emacs and XEmacs.
164 Therefore, the version bundled with Emacs or the version in XEmacs's
165 package system might not be up to date (e.g., Gnus 5.9 bundled with Emacs
167 You can get the latest released version of Gnus from
168 @uref{http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz}
169 or via anonymous FTP from
170 @uref{ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz}.
173 @subsubheading Question 1.4
175 What to do with the tarball now?
177 @subsubheading Answer
179 Untar it via @samp{tar xvzf gnus.tar.gz} and do the common
180 @samp{./configure; make; make install} circle.
181 (under MS-Windows either get the Cygwin environment from
182 @uref{http://www.cygwin.com}
183 which allows you to do what's described above or unpack the
184 tarball with some packer (e.g., Winace from
185 @uref{http://www.winace.com})
186 and use the batch-file make.bat included in the tarball to install
187 Gnus.) If you don't want to (or aren't allowed to) install Gnus
188 system-wide, you can install it in your home directory and add the
189 following lines to your ~/.xemacs/init.el or ~/.emacs:
192 (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/gnus/lisp")
193 (if (featurep 'xemacs)
194 (add-to-list 'Info-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/")
195 (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/"))
199 Make sure that you don't have any Gnus related stuff
200 before this line, on MS Windows use something like
201 "C:/path/to/lisp" (yes, "/").
204 @subsubheading Question 1.5
206 I sometimes read references to No Gnus and Oort Gnus,
209 @subsubheading Answer
211 Oort Gnus was the name of the development version of
212 Gnus, which became Gnus 5.10 in autumn 2003. No Gnus is
213 the name of the current development version which will
214 once become Gnus 5.12 or Gnus 6. (If you're wondering why
215 not 5.11, the odd version numbers are normally used for
216 the Gnus versions bundled with Emacs)
219 @subsubheading Question 1.6
221 Which version of Emacs do I need?
223 @subsubheading Answer
225 Gnus 5.10 requires an Emacs version that is greater than or equal
226 to Emacs 20.7 or XEmacs 21.1.
227 The development versions of Gnus (aka No Gnus) requires Emacs 21
231 @subsubheading Question 1.7
233 How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
235 @subsubheading Answer
237 You can't use the same copy of Gnus in both as the Lisp
238 files are byte-compiled to a format which is different
239 depending on which Emacs did the compilation. Get one copy
240 of Gnus for Emacs and one for XEmacs.
242 @node FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer
243 @subsection Startup / Group buffer
246 * FAQ 2-1:: Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save
247 file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean and
249 * FAQ 2-2:: Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to,
251 * FAQ 2-3:: How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
252 * FAQ 2-4:: My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to
253 sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse through
255 * FAQ 2-5:: How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to
256 sort the groups in a topic?
260 @subsubheading Question 2.1
262 Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save
263 file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean
264 and how to prevent it?
266 @subsubheading Answer
268 This message means that the last time you used Gnus, it
269 wasn't properly exited and therefore couldn't write its
270 information to disk (e.g., which messages you read), you
271 are now asked if you want to restore that information
272 from the auto-save file.
274 To prevent this message make sure you exit Gnus
275 via @samp{q} in group buffer instead of
279 @subsubheading Question 2.2
281 Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to,
284 @subsubheading Answer
286 You get the message described in the q/a pair above while
287 starting Gnus, right? It's an other symptom for the same
288 problem, so read the answer above.
291 @subsubheading Question 2.3
293 How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
295 @subsubheading Answer
297 You've got to tweak the value of the variable
298 gnus-group-line-format. See the manual node "Group Line
299 Specification" for information on how to do this. An
300 example for this (guess from whose .gnus :-)):
303 (setq gnus-group-line-format "%P%M%S[%5t]%5y : %(%g%)\n")
308 @subsubheading Question 2.4
310 My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to
311 sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse
314 @subsubheading Answer
316 Gnus offers the topic mode, it allows you to sort your
317 groups in, well, topics, e.g., all groups dealing with
318 Linux under the topic linux, all dealing with music under
319 the topic music and all dealing with scottish music under
320 the topic scottish which is a subtopic of music.
322 To enter topic mode, just hit t while in Group buffer. Now
323 you can use @samp{T n} to create a topic
324 at point and @samp{T m} to move a group to
325 a specific topic. For more commands see the manual or the
326 menu. You might want to include the %P specifier at the
327 beginning of your gnus-group-line-format variable to have
328 the groups nicely indented.
331 @subsubheading Question 2.5
333 How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to
334 sort the groups in a topic?
336 @subsubheading Answer
338 Move point over the group you want to move and
339 hit @samp{C-k}, now move point to the
340 place where you want the group to be and
343 @node FAQ 3 - Getting Messages
344 @subsection Getting Messages
347 * FAQ 3-1:: I just installed Gnus, started it via @samp{M-x gnus}
348 but it only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
349 * FAQ 3-2:: I'm working under Windows and have no idea what
351 * FAQ 3-3:: My news server requires authentication, how to store
352 user name and password on disk?
353 * FAQ 3-4:: Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to
354 subscribe to a group.
355 * FAQ 3-5:: Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed
356 to post on this server as well as I am, what's that?
357 * FAQ 3-6:: I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this
359 * FAQ 3-7:: And how about local spool files?
360 * FAQ 3-8:: OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to
361 read my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it?
362 * FAQ 3-9:: And what about IMAP?
363 * FAQ 3-10:: At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers,
364 can I use Gnus to read my mail from it?
365 * FAQ 3-11:: Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it
370 @subsubheading Question 3.1
372 I just installed Gnus, started it via
374 but it only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
376 @subsubheading Answer
378 You've got to tell Gnus where to fetch the news from. Read
379 the documentation for information on how to do this. As a
380 first start, put those lines in ~/.gnus.el:
383 (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.yourprovider.net"))
384 (setq user-mail-address "you@@yourprovider.net")
385 (setq user-full-name "Your Name")
390 @subsubheading Question 3.2
392 I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus.el means.
394 @subsubheading Answer
396 The ~/ means the home directory where Gnus and Emacs look
397 for the configuration files. However, you don't really
398 need to know what this means, it suffices that Emacs knows
399 what it means :-) You can type
400 @samp{C-x C-f ~/.gnus.el RET }
401 (yes, with the forward slash, even on Windows), and
402 Emacs will open the right file for you. (It will most
403 likely be new, and thus empty.)
404 However, I'd discourage you from doing so, since the
405 directory Emacs chooses will most certainly not be what
406 you want, so let's do it the correct way.
407 The first thing you've got to do is to
408 create a suitable directory (no blanks in directory name
409 please), e.g., c:\myhome. Then you must set the environment
410 variable HOME to this directory. To do this under Windows 9x
411 or Me include the line
418 in your autoexec.bat and reboot. Under NT, 2000 and XP, hit
419 Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system options (if it doesn't work, go
420 to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced). There you'll find the
421 possibility to set environment variables. Create a new one with
422 name HOME and value C:\myhome. Rebooting is not necessary.
424 Now to create ~/.gnus.el, say
425 @samp{C-x C-f ~/.gnus.el RET C-x C-s}.
429 @subsubheading Question 3.3
431 My news server requires authentication, how to store
432 user name and password on disk?
434 @subsubheading Answer
436 Create a file ~/.authinfo which includes for each server a line like this
439 machine news.yourprovider.net login YourUserName password YourPassword
443 Make sure that the file isn't readable to others if you
444 work on a OS which is capable of doing so. (Under Unix
447 chmod 600 ~/.authinfo
454 @subsubheading Question 3.4
456 Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to
457 subscribe to a group.
459 @subsubheading Answer
461 If you know the name of the group say @samp{U
462 name.of.group RET} in group buffer (use the
463 tab-completion Luke). Otherwise hit ^ in group buffer,
464 this brings you to the server buffer. Now place point (the
465 cursor) over the server which carries the group you want,
466 hit @samp{RET}, move point to the group
467 you want to subscribe to and say @samp{u}
471 @subsubheading Question 3.5
473 Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed to
474 post on this server as well as I am, what's that?
476 @subsubheading Answer
478 Some providers allow restricted anonymous access and full
479 access only after authorization. To make Gnus send authinfo
480 to those servers append
487 to the line for those servers in ~/.authinfo.
490 @subsubheading Question 3.6
492 I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible?
494 @subsubheading Answer
496 Of course. You can specify more sources for articles in the
497 variable gnus-secondary-select-methods. Add something like
501 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
502 '(nntp "news.yourSecondProvider.net"))
503 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
504 '(nntp "news.yourThirdProvider.net"))
509 @subsubheading Question 3.7
511 And how about local spool files?
513 @subsubheading Answer
515 No problem, this is just one more select method called
516 nnspool, so you want this:
519 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnspool ""))
523 Or this if you don't want an NNTP Server as primary news source:
526 (setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
530 Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you
531 want something different, change the line above to something like this:
534 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
536 (nnspool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")))
540 This sets the spool directory for this server only.
541 You might have to specify more stuff like the program used
542 to post articles, see the Gnus manual on how to do this.
545 @subsubheading Question 3.8
547 OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail
548 with Gnus, too. How to do it?
550 @subsubheading Answer
552 That's a bit harder since there are many possible sources
553 for mail, many possible ways for storing mail and many
554 different ways for sending mail. The most common cases are
555 these: 1: You want to read your mail from a pop3 server and
556 send them directly to a SMTP Server 2: Some program like
557 fetchmail retrieves your mail and stores it on disk from
558 where Gnus shall read it. Outgoing mail is sent by
559 Sendmail, Postfix or some other MTA@. Sometimes, you even
560 need a combination of the above cases.
562 However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way
563 it should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which back end
564 to use. Gnus supports many different back ends, the most
565 commonly used one is nnml. It stores every mail in one file
566 and is therefore quite fast. However you might prefer a one
567 file per group approach if your file system has problems with
568 many small files, the nnfolder back end is then probably the
569 choice for you. To use nnml add the following to ~/.gnus.el:
572 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml ""))
576 As you might have guessed, if you want nnfolder, it's
579 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnfolder ""))
583 Now we need to tell Gnus, where to get its mail from. If
584 it's a POP3 server, then you need something like this:
587 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
588 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net"
590 :password "yourPassword")))
594 Make sure ~/.gnus.el isn't readable to others if you store
595 your password there. If you want to read your mail from a
596 traditional spool file on your local machine, it's
599 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
600 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(file :path "/path/to/spool/file"))
604 If it's a Maildir, with one file per message as used by
605 postfix, Qmail and (optionally) fetchmail it's
608 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
609 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(maildir :path "/path/to/Maildir/"
610 :subdirs ("cur" "new")))
614 And finally if you want to read your mail from several files
615 in one directory, for example because procmail already split your
619 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
620 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources
621 '(directory :path "/path/to/procmail-dir/"
626 Where :suffix ".prcml" tells Gnus only to use files with the
629 OK, now you only need to tell Gnus how to send mail. If you
630 want to send mail via sendmail (or whichever MTA is playing
631 the role of sendmail on your system), you don't need to do
632 anything. However, if you want to send your mail to an
633 SMTP Server you need the following in your ~/.gnus.el
636 (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
637 (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
638 (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.yourProvider.net")
643 @subsubheading Question 3.9
647 @subsubheading Answer
649 There are two ways of using IMAP with Gnus. The first one is
650 to use IMAP like POP3, that means Gnus fetches the mail from
651 the IMAP server and stores it on disk. If you want to do
652 this (you don't really want to do this) add the following to
656 (add-to-list 'mail-sources '(imap :server "mail.mycorp.com"
660 :authentication login
662 :fetchflag "\\Seen"))
666 You might have to tweak the values for stream and/or
667 authentication, see the Gnus manual node "Mail Source
668 Specifiers" for possible values.
670 If you want to use IMAP the way it's intended, you've got to
671 follow a different approach. You've got to add the nnimap
672 back end to your select method and give the information
673 about the server there.
676 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
677 '(nnimap "Give the baby a name"
678 (nnimap-address "imap.yourProvider.net")
680 (nnimap-list-pattern "archive.*")))
684 Again, you might have to specify how to authenticate to the
685 server if Gnus can't guess the correct way, see the Manual
686 Node "IMAP" for detailed information.
689 @subsubheading Question 3.10
691 At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
692 Gnus to read my mail from it?
694 @subsubheading Answer
696 Offer your administrator a pair of new running shoes for
697 activating IMAP on the server and follow the instructions
701 @subsubheading Question 3.11
703 Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it
706 @subsubheading Answer
708 Yes, if the POP3 server supports the UIDL control (maybe almost servers
709 do it nowadays). To do that, add a @code{:leave VALUE} pair to each
710 POP3 mail source. See @pxref{Mail Source Specifiers} for VALUE.
712 @node FAQ 4 - Reading messages
713 @subsection Reading messages
716 * FAQ 4-1:: When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to
718 * FAQ 4-2:: How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time
719 I enter a group, even when it's read?
720 * FAQ 4-3:: How to view the headers of a message?
721 * FAQ 4-4:: How to view the raw unformatted message?
722 * FAQ 4-5:: How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at
723 the top of the article buffer?
724 * FAQ 4-6:: I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the
725 text part if it's available. How to do it?
726 * FAQ 4-7:: Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my
728 * FAQ 4-8:: Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted
730 * FAQ 4-9:: Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific
731 authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I
732 highlight more interesting ones in some way?
733 * FAQ 4-10:: How can I disable threading in some (e.g., mail-) groups,
734 or set other variables specific for some groups?
735 * FAQ 4-11:: Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to
737 * FAQ 4-12:: The number of total messages in a group which Gnus
738 displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in mail
739 groups. Is this a bug?
740 * FAQ 4-13:: I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer,
741 how to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
742 * FAQ 4-14:: I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to
744 * FAQ 4-15:: How to split incoming mails in several groups?
748 @subsubheading Question 4.1
750 When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them again?
752 @subsubheading Answer
754 If you enter the group by saying
756 in group buffer with point over the group, only unread and ticked messages are loaded. Say
758 instead to load all available messages. If you want only the 300 newest say
761 Loading only unread messages can be annoying if you have threaded view enabled, say
764 (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 'some)
768 in ~/.gnus.el to load enough old articles to prevent teared threads, replace 'some with t to load
769 all articles (Warning: Both settings enlarge the amount of data which is
770 fetched when you enter a group and slow down the process of entering a group).
772 If you already use Gnus 5.10, you can say
774 In summary buffer to load the last N messages, this feature is not available in 5.8.8
776 If you don't want all old messages, but the parent of the message you're just reading,
777 you can say @samp{^}, if you want to retrieve the whole thread
778 the message you're just reading belongs to, @samp{A T} is your friend.
781 @subsubheading Question 4.2
783 How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I
784 enter a group, even when it's read?
786 @subsubheading Answer
788 You can tick important messages. To do this hit
789 @samp{u} while point is in summary buffer
790 over the message. When you want to remove the mark, hit
791 either @samp{d} (this deletes the tick
792 mark and set's unread mark) or @samp{M c}
793 (which deletes all marks for the message).
796 @subsubheading Question 4.3
798 How to view the headers of a message?
800 @subsubheading Answer
803 to show all headers, one more
808 @subsubheading Question 4.4
810 How to view the raw unformatted message?
812 @subsubheading Answer
816 to show the raw message
818 returns to normal view.
821 @subsubheading Question 4.5
823 How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at
824 the top of the article buffer?
826 @subsubheading Answer
828 The variable gnus-visible-headers controls which headers
829 are shown, its value is a regular expression, header lines
830 which match it are shown. So if you want author, subject,
831 date, and if the header exists, Followup-To and MUA / NUA
832 say this in ~/.gnus.el:
835 (setq gnus-visible-headers
836 '("^From" "^Subject" "^Date" "^Newsgroups" "^Followup-To"
837 "^User-Agent" "^X-Newsreader" "^X-Mailer"))
842 @subsubheading Question 4.6
844 I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the
845 text part if it's available. How to do it?
847 @subsubheading Answer
852 (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
854 (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
855 (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext")))
859 in ~/.gnus.el. If you don't want HTML rendered, even if there's no text alternative add
862 (setq mm-automatic-display (remove "text/html" mm-automatic-display))
869 @subsubheading Question 4.7
871 Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails?
873 @subsubheading Answer
875 Only if you use Gnus 5.10 or younger. In this case you've got the
876 choice between w3, w3m, links, lynx and html2text, which
877 one is used can be specified in the variable
878 mm-text-html-renderer, so if you want links to render your
882 (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'links)
887 @subsubheading Question 4.8
889 Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails
892 @subsubheading Answer
894 Gnus offers you several functions to "wash" incoming mail, you can
895 find them if you browse through the menu, item
896 Article->Washing. The most interesting ones are probably "Wrap
897 long lines" (@samp{W w}), "Decode ROT13"
898 (@samp{W r}) and "Outlook Deuglify" which repairs
899 the dumb quoting used by many users of Microsoft products
900 (@samp{W Y f} gives you full deuglify.
901 See @samp{W Y C-h} or have a look at the menus for
902 other deuglifications). Outlook deuglify is only available since
906 @subsubheading Question 4.9
908 Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific
909 authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I
910 highlight more interesting ones in some way?
912 @subsubheading Answer
914 You want Scoring. Scoring means, that you define rules
915 which assign each message an integer value. Depending on
916 the value the message is highlighted in summary buffer (if
917 it's high, say +2000) or automatically marked read (if the
918 value is low, say -800) or some other action happens.
920 There are basically three ways of setting up rules which assign
921 the scoring-value to messages. The first and easiest way is to set
922 up rules based on the article you are just reading. Say you're
923 reading a message by a guy who always writes nonsense and you want
924 to ignore his messages in the future. Hit
925 @samp{L}, to set up a rule which lowers the score.
926 Now Gnus asks you which the criteria for lowering the Score shall
927 be. Hit @samp{?} twice to see all possibilities,
928 we want @samp{a} which means the author (the from
929 header). Now Gnus wants to know which kind of matching we want.
930 Hit either @samp{e} for an exact match or
931 @samp{s} for substring-match and delete afterwards
932 everything but the name to score down all authors with the given
933 name no matter which email address is used. Now you need to tell
934 Gnus when to apply the rule and how long it should last, hit
935 @samp{p} to apply the rule now and let it last
936 forever. If you want to raise the score instead of lowering it say
937 @samp{I} instead of @samp{L}.
939 You can also set up rules by hand. To do this say @samp{V
940 f} in summary buffer. Then you are asked for the name
941 of the score file, it's name.of.group.SCORE for rules valid in
942 only one group or all.Score for rules valid in all groups. See the
943 Gnus manual for the exact syntax, basically it's one big list
944 whose elements are lists again. the first element of those lists
945 is the header to score on, then one more list with what to match,
946 which score to assign, when to expire the rule and how to do the
947 matching. If you find me very interesting, you could add the
948 following to your all.Score:
951 (("references" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 500 nil s))
952 ("message-id" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 999 nil s)))
956 This would add 999 to the score of messages written by me
957 and 500 to the score of messages which are a (possibly
958 indirect) answer to a message written by me. Of course
959 nobody with a sane mind would do this :-)
961 The third alternative is adaptive scoring. This means Gnus
962 watches you and tries to find out what you find
963 interesting and what annoying and sets up rules
964 which reflect this. Adaptive scoring can be a huge help
965 when reading high traffic groups. If you want to activate
969 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t)
976 @subsubheading Question 4.10
978 How can I disable threading in some (e.g., mail-) groups, or
979 set other variables specific for some groups?
981 @subsubheading Answer
983 While in group buffer move point over the group and hit
984 @samp{G c}, this opens a buffer where you
985 can set options for the group. At the bottom of the buffer
986 you'll find an item that allows you to set variables
987 locally for the group. To disable threading enter
988 gnus-show-threads as name of variable and nil as
989 value. Hit button done at the top of the buffer when
993 @subsubheading Question 4.11
995 Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to
998 @subsubheading Answer
1000 Stop those "Can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes
1001 in Gnus Country :-). It's a three step process: First we
1002 make faces (specifications of how summary-line shall look
1003 like) for those postings, then we'll give them some
1004 special score and finally we'll tell Gnus to use the new
1008 @subsubheading Question 4.12
1010 The number of total messages in a group which Gnus
1011 displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in
1012 mail groups. Is this a bug?
1014 @subsubheading Answer
1016 No, that's a matter of design of Gnus, fixing this would
1017 mean reimplementation of major parts of Gnus'
1018 back ends. Gnus thinks "highest-article-number @minus{}
1019 lowest-article-number = total-number-of-articles". This
1020 works OK for Usenet groups, but if you delete and move
1021 many messages in mail groups, this fails. To cure the
1022 symptom, enter the group via @samp{C-u RET}
1023 (this makes Gnus get all messages), then
1024 hit @samp{M P b} to mark all messages and
1025 then say @samp{B m name.of.group} to move
1026 all messages to the group they have been in before, they
1027 get new message numbers in this process and the count is
1028 right again (until you delete and move your mail to other
1032 @subsubheading Question 4.13
1034 I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how
1035 to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
1037 @subsubheading Answer
1039 You can control the windows configuration by calling the
1040 function gnus-add-configuration. The syntax is a bit
1041 complicated but explained very well in the manual node
1042 "Window Layout". Some popular examples:
1044 Instead 25% summary 75% article buffer 35% summary and 65%
1045 article (the 1.0 for article means "take the remaining
1049 (gnus-add-configuration
1050 '(article (vertical 1.0 (summary .35 point) (article 1.0))))
1054 A three pane layout, Group buffer on the left, summary
1055 buffer top-right, article buffer bottom-right:
1058 (gnus-add-configuration
1064 (summary 0.25 point)
1066 (gnus-add-configuration
1072 (summary 1.0 point)))))
1077 @subsubheading Question 4.14
1079 I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it?
1081 @subsubheading Answer
1083 You've got to play around with the variable
1084 gnus-summary-line-format. Its value is a string of
1085 symbols which stand for things like author, date, subject
1086 etc. A list of the available specifiers can be found in the
1087 manual node "Summary Buffer Lines" and the often forgotten
1088 node "Formatting Variables" and its sub-nodes. There
1089 you'll find useful things like positioning the cursor and
1090 tabulators which allow you a summary in table form, but
1091 sadly hard tabulators are broken in 5.8.8.
1093 Since 5.10, Gnus offers you some very nice new specifiers,
1094 e.g., %B which draws a thread-tree and %&user-date which
1095 gives you a date where the details are dependent of the
1096 articles age. Here's an example which uses both:
1099 (setq gnus-summary-line-format ":%U%R %B %s %-60=|%4L |%-20,20f |%&user-date; \n")
1106 :O Re: [Richard Stallman] rfc2047.el | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:06
1107 :O Re: Revival of the ding-patches list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:12
1108 :R > Re: Find correct list of articles for a gro| 25 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:16
1109 :O \-> ... | 21 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:01
1110 :R > Re: Cry for help: deuglify.el - moving stuf| 28 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:34
1111 :O \-> ... | 115 |Raymond Scholz | 1:24
1112 :O \-> ... | 19 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |15:33
1113 :O Slow mailing list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:49
1114 :O Re: `@@' mark not documented | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:50
1115 :R > Re: Gnus still doesn't count messages prope| 23 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:57
1116 :O \-> ... | 18 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:35
1117 :O \-> ... | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt | 0:56
1122 @subsubheading Question 4.15
1124 How to split incoming mails in several groups?
1126 @subsubheading Answer
1128 Gnus offers two possibilities for splitting mail, the easy
1129 nnmail-split-methods and the more powerful Fancy Mail
1130 Splitting. I'll only talk about the first one, refer to
1131 the manual, node "Fancy Mail Splitting" for the latter.
1133 The value of nnmail-split-methods is a list, each element
1134 is a list which stands for a splitting rule. Each rule has
1135 the form "group where matching articles should go to",
1136 "regular expression which has to be matched", the first
1137 rule which matches wins. The last rule must always be a
1138 general rule (regular expression .*) which denotes where
1139 articles should go which don't match any other rule. If
1140 the folder doesn't exist yet, it will be created as soon
1141 as an article lands there. By default the mail will be
1142 send to all groups whose rules match. If you
1143 don't want that (you probably don't want), say
1146 (setq nnmail-crosspost nil)
1152 An example might be better than thousand words, so here's
1153 my nnmail-split-methods. Note that I send duplicates in a
1154 special group and that the default group is spam, since I
1155 filter all mails out which are from some list I'm
1156 subscribed to or which are addressed directly to me
1157 before. Those rules kill about 80% of the Spam which
1158 reaches me (Email addresses are changed to prevent spammers
1162 (setq nnmail-split-methods
1163 '(("duplicates" "^Gnus-Warning:.*duplicate")
1164 ("XEmacs-NT" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@xemacs.invalid.*")
1165 ("Gnus-Tut" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@socha.invalid.*")
1166 ("tcsh" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@mx.gw.invalid.*")
1167 ("BAfH" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@.*uni-muenchen.invalid.*")
1168 ("Hamster-src" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*hamster-sourcen@@yahoogroups.\\(de\\|com\\).*")
1169 ("Tagesschau" "^From: tagesschau <localpart@@www.tagesschau.invalid>$")
1170 ("Replies" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@@Frank-Schmitt.invalid.*")
1171 ("EK" "^From:.*\\(localpart@@privateprovider.invalid\\|localpart@@workplace.invalid\\).*")
1172 ("Spam" "^Content-Type:.*\\(ks_c_5601-1987\\|EUC-KR\\|big5\\|iso-2022-jp\\).*")
1173 ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(This really work\\|XINGA\\|ADV:\\|XXX\\|adult\\|sex\\).*")
1174 ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(\=\?ks_c_5601-1987\?\\|\=\?euc-kr\?\\|\=\?big5\?\\).*")
1175 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*BulkMailer.*\\|.*MIME::Lite.*\\|\\)")
1176 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*CyberCreek Avalanche\\|.*http\:\/\/GetResponse\.com\\)")
1177 ("Spam" "^From:.*\\(verizon\.net\\|prontomail\.com\\|money\\|ConsumerDirect\\).*")
1178 ("Spam" "^Delivered-To: GMX delivery to spamtrap@@gmx.invalid$")
1179 ("Spam" "^Received: from link2buy.com")
1180 ("Spam" "^CC: .*azzrael@@t-online.invalid")
1181 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer-Version: 1.50 BETA")
1182 ("Uni" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@@uni-koblenz.invalid.*")
1183 ("Inbox" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*\\(my\ name\\|address@@one.invalid\\|address@@two.invalid\\)")
1188 @node FAQ 5 - Composing messages
1189 @subsection Composing messages
1192 * FAQ 5-1:: What are the basic commands I need to know for sending
1194 * FAQ 5-2:: How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing
1196 * FAQ 5-3:: How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To,
1198 * FAQ 5-4:: Can I set things like From, Signature etc. group based on
1199 the group I post too?
1200 * FAQ 5-5:: Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly
1202 * FAQ 5-6:: Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting
1204 * FAQ 5-7:: Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't
1205 remember all those email addresses?
1206 * FAQ 5-8:: Sometimes I see little images at the top of article
1207 buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my postings,
1209 * FAQ 5-9:: Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in
1210 newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in
1212 * FAQ 5-10:: How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
1213 * FAQ 5-11:: I want Gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and
1215 * FAQ 5-12:: I want Gnus to kill the buffer after successful sending
1216 instead of keeping it alive as "Sent mail to...", how to do it?
1217 * FAQ 5-13:: People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why
1218 aren't they and how to fix it?
1222 @subsubheading Question 5.1
1224 What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and postings?
1226 @subsubheading Answer
1228 To start composing a new mail hit @samp{m}
1229 either in Group or Summary buffer, for a posting, it's
1230 either @samp{a} in Group buffer and
1231 filling the Newsgroups header manually
1232 or @samp{a} in the Summary buffer of the
1233 group where the posting shall be send to. Replying by mail
1235 @samp{r} if you don't want to cite the
1236 author, or import the cited text manually and
1237 @samp{R} to cite the text of the original
1238 message. For a follow up to a newsgroup, it's
1239 @samp{f} and @samp{F}
1240 (analogously to @samp{r} and
1243 Enter new headers above the line saying "--text follows
1244 this line--", enter the text below the line. When ready
1245 hit @samp{C-c C-c}, to send the message,
1246 if you want to finish it later hit @samp{C-c
1247 C-d} to save it in the drafts group, where you
1248 can start editing it again by saying @samp{D
1252 @subsubheading Question 5.2
1254 How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
1256 @subsubheading Answer
1258 Starting from No Gnus, automatic word-wrap is already enabled by
1259 default, see the variable message-fill-column.
1261 For other versions of Gnus, say
1264 (unless (boundp 'message-fill-column)
1265 (add-hook 'message-mode-hook
1267 (setq fill-column 72)
1268 (turn-on-auto-fill))))
1274 You can reformat a paragraph by hitting @samp{M-q}
1278 @subsubheading Question 5.3
1280 How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...?
1282 @subsubheading Answer
1284 There are other ways, but you should use posting styles
1285 for this. (See below why).
1286 This example should make the syntax clear:
1289 (setq gnus-posting-styles
1291 (name "Frank Schmitt")
1292 (address "me@@there.invalid")
1293 (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
1294 (signature-file "~/.signature")
1295 ("X-SampleHeader" "foobar")
1296 (eval (setq some-variable "Foo bar")))))
1300 The ".*" means that this settings are the default ones
1301 (see below), valid values for the first element of the
1302 following lists are signature, signature-file,
1303 organization, address, name or body. The attribute name
1304 can also be a string. In that case, this will be used as
1305 a header name, and the value will be inserted in the
1306 headers of the article; if the value is `nil', the header
1307 name will be removed. You can also say (eval (foo bar)),
1308 then the function foo will be evaluated with argument bar
1309 and the result will be thrown away.
1312 @subsubheading Question 5.4
1314 Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group I post too?
1316 @subsubheading Answer
1318 That's the strength of posting styles. Before, we used ".*"
1319 to set the default for all groups. You can use a regexp
1320 like "^gmane" and the following settings are only applied
1321 to postings you send to the gmane hierarchy, use
1322 ".*binaries" instead and they will be applied to postings
1323 send to groups containing the string binaries in their
1326 You can instead of specifying a regexp specify a function
1327 which is evaluated, only if it returns true, the
1328 corresponding settings take effect. Two interesting
1329 candidates for this are message-news-p which returns t if
1330 the current Group is a newsgroup and the corresponding
1333 Note that all forms that match are applied, that means in
1334 the example below, when I post to
1335 gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general, the settings under
1336 ".*" are applied and the settings under message-news-p and
1337 those under "^gmane" and those under
1338 "^gmane\\.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$". Because
1339 of this put general settings at the top and specific ones
1343 (setq gnus-posting-styles
1345 (name "Frank Schmitt")
1346 (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
1347 (signature-file "~/.signature"))
1348 ((message-news-p) ;;Usenet news?
1349 (address "mySpamTrap@@Frank-Schmitt.invalid")
1350 (reply-to "hereRealRepliesOnlyPlease@@Frank-Schmitt.invalid"))
1351 ((message-mail-p) ;;mail?
1352 (address "usedForMails@@Frank-Schmitt.invalid"))
1353 ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact
1354 (address "usedForMails@@Frank-Schmitt.invalid")
1356 ("^gmane\\.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$"
1357 (eval (set (make-local-variable 'message-sendmail-envelope-from)
1358 "Azzrael@@rz-online.de")))))
1363 @subsubheading Question 5.5
1365 Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking?
1367 @subsubheading Answer
1369 You can use ispell.el to spell-check stuff in Emacs. So the
1370 first thing to do is to make sure that you've got either
1371 @uref{http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html, ispell}
1372 or @uref{http://aspell.sourceforge.net/, aspell}
1373 installed and in your Path. Then you need
1374 @uref{http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html, ispell.el}
1375 and for on-the-fly spell-checking
1376 @uref{http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Manuel.Serrano/flyspell/flyspell.html, flyspell.el}.
1377 Ispell.el is shipped with Emacs and available through the XEmacs package system,
1378 flyspell.el is shipped with Emacs and part of XEmacs text-modes package which is
1379 available through the package system, so there should be no need to install them
1382 Ispell.el assumes you use ispell, if you choose aspell say
1385 (setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
1389 in your Emacs configuration file.
1391 If you want your outgoing messages to be spell-checked, say
1394 (add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)
1398 In your ~/.gnus.el, if you prefer on-the-fly spell-checking say
1401 (add-hook 'message-mode-hook (lambda () (flyspell-mode 1)))
1406 @subsubheading Question 5.6
1408 Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to?
1410 @subsubheading Answer
1412 Yes, say something like
1415 (add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook
1419 "^de\\." (gnus-group-real-name gnus-newsgroup-name))
1420 (ispell-change-dictionary "deutsch8"))
1422 (ispell-change-dictionary "english")))))
1426 in ~/.gnus.el. Change "^de\\." and "deutsch8" to something
1427 that suits your needs.
1430 @subsubheading Question 5.7
1432 Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember
1433 all those email addresses?
1435 @subsubheading Answer
1437 There's an very basic solution for this, mail aliases.
1438 You can store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple
1442 alias al "Al <al@@english-heritage.invalid>"
1446 Then typing your alias (followed by a space or punctuation
1447 character) on a To: or Cc: line in the message buffer will
1448 cause Gnus to insert the full address for you. See the
1449 node "Mail Aliases" in Message (not Gnus) manual for
1452 However, what you really want is the Insidious Big Brother
1453 Database bbdb. Get it through the XEmacs package system or from
1454 @uref{http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/, bbdb's homepage}.
1455 Now place the following in ~/.gnus.el, to activate bbdb for Gnus:
1459 (bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message)
1463 Now you probably want some general bbdb configuration,
1464 place them in ~/.emacs:
1468 ;;If you don't live in Northern America, you should disable the
1469 ;;syntax check for telephone numbers by saying
1470 (setq bbdb-north-american-phone-numbers-p nil)
1471 ;;Tell bbdb about your email address:
1472 (setq bbdb-user-mail-names
1473 (regexp-opt '("Your.Email@@here.invalid"
1474 "Your.other@@mail.there.invalid")))
1475 ;;cycling while completing email addresses
1476 (setq bbdb-complete-name-allow-cycling t)
1478 (setq bbdb-use-pop-up nil)
1482 Now you should be ready to go. Say @samp{M-x bbdb RET
1483 RET} to open a bbdb buffer showing all
1484 entries. Say @samp{c} to create a new
1485 entry, @samp{b} to search your BBDB and
1486 @samp{C-o} to add a new field to an
1487 entry. If you want to add a sender to the BBDB you can
1488 also just hit `:' on the posting in the summary buffer and
1489 you are done. When you now compose a new mail,
1490 hit @samp{TAB} to cycle through know
1494 @subsubheading Question 5.8
1496 Sometimes I see little images at the top of article
1497 buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my
1500 @subsubheading Answer
1502 Those images are called X-Faces. They are 48*48 pixel b/w
1503 pictures, encoded in a header line. If you want to include
1504 one in your posts, you've got to convert some image to a
1505 X-Face. So fire up some image manipulation program (say
1506 Gimp), open the image you want to include, cut out the
1507 relevant part, reduce color depth to 1 bit, resize to
1508 48*48 and save as bitmap. Now you should get the compface
1510 @uref{ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/, this site}.
1511 and create the actual X-face by saying
1514 cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon | compface > file.face
1515 cat file.face | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g;s/\"/\\\"/g;' > file.face.quoted
1519 If you can't use compface, there's an online X-face converter at
1520 @uref{http://www.dairiki.org/xface/}.
1521 If you use MS Windows, you could also use the WinFace program from
1522 @uref{http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/}.
1523 Now you only have to tell Gnus to include the X-face in your postings by saying
1526 (setq message-default-headers
1529 (insert-file-contents "~/.xface")
1534 in ~/.gnus.el. If you use Gnus 5.10, you can simply add an entry
1537 (x-face-file "~/.xface")
1541 to gnus-posting-styles.
1544 @subsubheading Question 5.9
1546 Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in
1547 newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in
1550 @subsubheading Answer
1552 Put this in ~/.gnus.el:
1555 (setq gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news t)
1559 if you already use Gnus 5.10, if you still use 5.8.8 or
1560 5.9 try this instead:
1563 (eval-after-load "gnus-msg"
1564 '(unless (boundp 'gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news)
1565 (defadvice gnus-summary-reply (around reply-in-news activate)
1566 "Request confirmation when replying to news."
1568 (when (or (not (gnus-news-group-p gnus-newsgroup-name))
1569 (y-or-n-p "Really reply by mail to article author? "))
1575 @subsubheading Question 5.10
1577 How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
1579 @subsubheading Answer
1581 Since 5.10 Gnus doesn't generate a sender header by
1582 default. For older Gnus' try this in ~/.gnus.el:
1585 (eval-after-load "message"
1586 '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
1591 @subsubheading Question 5.11
1593 I want Gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and
1596 @subsubheading Answer
1598 You must set the variable gnus-message-archive-group to do
1599 this. You can set it to a string giving the name of the
1600 group where the copies shall go or like in the example
1601 below use a function which is evaluated and which returns
1605 (setq gnus-message-archive-group
1606 '((if (message-news-p)
1613 @subsubheading Question 5.12
1615 I want Gnus to kill the buffer after successful sending instead of keeping
1616 it alive as "Sent mail to...", how to do it?
1618 @subsubheading Answer
1620 Add this to your ~/.gnus:
1623 (setq message-kill-buffer-on-exit t)
1628 @subsubheading Question 5.13
1630 People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why
1631 aren't they and how to fix it?
1633 @subsubheading Answer
1635 The message-ID is an unique identifier for messages you
1636 send. To make it unique, Gnus need to know which machine
1637 name to put after the "@@". If the name of the machine
1638 where Gnus is running isn't suitable (it probably isn't
1639 at most private machines) you can tell Gnus what to use
1643 (setq message-user-fqdn "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld")
1647 in ~/.gnus.el. If you use Gnus 5.9 or earlier, you can use this
1648 instead (works for newer versions as well):
1651 (eval-after-load "message"
1652 '(let ((fqdn "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld"));; <-- Edit this!
1653 (if (boundp 'message-user-fqdn)
1654 (setq message-user-fqdn fqdn)
1655 (gnus-message 1 "Redefining `message-make-fqdn'.")
1656 (defun message-make-fqdn ()
1657 "Return user's fully qualified domain name."
1662 If you have no idea what to insert for
1663 "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld", you've got several
1664 choices. You can either ask your provider if he allows
1665 you to use something like
1666 yourUserName.userfqdn.provider.net, or you can use
1667 somethingUnique.yourdomain.tld if you own the domain
1668 yourdomain.tld, or you can register at a service which
1669 gives private users a FQDN for free.
1671 Finally you can tell Gnus not to generate a Message-ID
1672 for News at all (and letting the server do the job) by saying
1675 (setq message-required-news-headers
1676 (remove' Message-ID message-required-news-headers))
1680 you can also tell Gnus not to generate Message-IDs for mail by saying
1683 (setq message-required-mail-headers
1684 (remove' Message-ID message-required-mail-headers))
1688 , however some mail servers don't generate proper
1689 Message-IDs, too, so test if your Mail Server behaves
1690 correctly by sending yourself a Mail and looking at the Message-ID.
1692 @node FAQ 6 - Old messages
1693 @subsection Old messages
1696 * FAQ 6-1:: How to import my old mail into Gnus?
1697 * FAQ 6-2:: How to archive interesting messages?
1698 * FAQ 6-3:: How to search for a specific message?
1699 * FAQ 6-4:: How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
1700 * FAQ 6-5:: I want that all read messages are expired (at least in
1701 some groups). How to do it?
1702 * FAQ 6-6:: I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move
1703 them to another group.
1707 @subsubheading Question 6.1
1709 How to import my old mail into Gnus?
1711 @subsubheading Answer
1713 The easiest way is to tell your old mail program to
1714 export the messages in mbox format. Most Unix mailers
1715 are able to do this, if you come from the MS Windows
1716 world, you may find tools at
1717 @uref{http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/}.
1719 Now you've got to import this mbox file into Gnus. To do
1720 this, create a nndoc group based on the mbox file by
1721 saying @samp{G f /path/file.mbox RET} in
1722 Group buffer. You now have read-only access to your
1723 mail. If you want to import the messages to your normal
1724 Gnus mail groups hierarchy, enter the nndoc group you've
1725 just created by saying @samp{C-u RET}
1726 (thus making sure all messages are retrieved), mark all
1727 messages by saying @samp{M P b} and
1728 either copy them to the desired group by saying
1729 @samp{B c name.of.group RET} or send them
1730 through nnmail-split-methods (respool them) by saying
1734 @subsubheading Question 6.2
1736 How to archive interesting messages?
1738 @subsubheading Answer
1740 If you stumble across an interesting message, say in
1741 gnu.emacs.gnus and want to archive it there are several
1742 solutions. The first and easiest is to save it to a file
1743 by saying @samp{O f}. However, wouldn't
1744 it be much more convenient to have more direct access to
1745 the archived message from Gnus? If you say yes, put this
1746 snippet by Frank Haun <pille3003@@fhaun.de> in
1750 (defun my-archive-article (&optional n)
1751 "Copies one or more article(s) to a corresponding `nnml:' group, e.g.,
1752 `gnus.ding' goes to `nnml:1.gnus.ding'. And `nnml:List-gnus.ding' goes
1753 to `nnml:1.List-gnus-ding'.
1755 Use process marks or mark a region in the summary buffer to archive
1756 more then one article."
1761 (if (featurep 'xemacs)
1762 (replace-in-string gnus-newsgroup-name "^.*:" "")
1763 (replace-regexp-in-string "^.*:" "" gnus-newsgroup-name)))))
1764 (gnus-summary-copy-article n archive-name)))
1768 You can now say @samp{M-x
1769 my-archive-article} in summary buffer to
1770 archive the article under the cursor in a nnml
1771 group. (Change nnml to your preferred back end)
1773 Of course you can also make sure the cache is enabled by saying
1776 (setq gnus-use-cache t)
1780 then you only have to set either the tick or the dormant
1781 mark for articles you want to keep, setting the read
1782 mark will remove them from cache.
1785 @subsubheading Question 6.3
1787 How to search for a specific message?
1789 @subsubheading Answer
1791 There are several ways for this, too. For a posting from
1792 a Usenet group the easiest solution is probably to ask
1793 @uref{http://groups.google.com, groups.google.com},
1794 if you found the posting there, tell Google to display
1795 the raw message, look for the message-id, and say
1796 @samp{M-^ the@@message.id RET} in a
1798 Since Gnus 5.10 there's also a Gnus interface for
1799 groups.google.com which you can call with
1800 @samp{G W}) in group buffer.
1802 Another idea which works for both mail and news groups
1803 is to enter the group where the message you are
1804 searching is and use the standard Emacs search
1805 @samp{C-s}, it's smart enough to look at
1806 articles in collapsed threads, too. If you want to
1807 search bodies, too try @samp{M-s}
1808 instead. Further on there are the
1809 gnus-summary-limit-to-foo functions, which can help you,
1812 Of course you can also use grep to search through your
1813 local mail, but this is both slow for big archives and
1814 inconvenient since you are not displaying the found mail
1815 in Gnus. Here comes nnir into action. Nnir is a front end
1816 to search engines like swish-e or swish++ and
1817 others. You index your mail with one of those search
1818 engines and with the help of nnir you can search through
1819 the indexed mail and generate a temporary group with all
1820 messages which met your search criteria. If this sound
1821 cool to you get nnir.el from
1822 @uref{ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/}
1823 or @uref{ftp://ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/}.
1824 Instructions on how to use it are at the top of the file.
1827 @subsubheading Question 6.4
1829 How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
1831 @subsubheading Answer
1833 You can of course just mark the mail you don't need
1834 anymore by saying @samp{#} with point
1835 over the mail and then say @samp{B DEL}
1836 to get rid of them forever. You could also instead of
1837 actually deleting them, send them to a junk-group by
1838 saying @samp{B m nnml:trash-bin} which
1839 you clear from time to time, but both are not the intended
1842 In Gnus, we let mail expire like news expires on a news
1843 server. That means you tell Gnus the message is
1844 expirable (you tell Gnus "I don't need this mail
1845 anymore") by saying @samp{E} with point
1846 over the mail in summary buffer. Now when you leave the
1847 group, Gnus looks at all messages which you marked as
1848 expirable before and if they are old enough (default is
1849 older than a week) they are deleted.
1852 @subsubheading Question 6.5
1854 I want that all read messages are expired (at least in
1855 some groups). How to do it?
1857 @subsubheading Answer
1859 If you want all read messages to be expired (e.g., in
1860 mailing lists where there's an online archive), you've
1861 got two choices: auto-expire and
1862 total-expire. Auto-expire means, that every article
1863 which has no marks set and is selected for reading is
1864 marked as expirable, Gnus hits @samp{E}
1865 for you every time you read a message. Total-expire
1866 follows a slightly different approach, here all article
1867 where the read mark is set are expirable.
1869 To activate auto-expire, include auto-expire in the
1870 Group parameters for the group. (Hit @samp{G
1871 c} in summary buffer with point over the
1872 group to change group parameters). For total-expire add
1873 total-expire to the group-parameters.
1875 Which method you choose is merely a matter of taste:
1876 Auto-expire is faster, but it doesn't play together with
1877 Adaptive Scoring, so if you want to use this feature,
1878 you should use total-expire.
1880 If you want a message to be excluded from expiration in
1881 a group where total or auto expire is active, set either
1882 tick (hit @samp{u}) or dormant mark (hit
1883 @samp{u}), when you use auto-expire, you
1884 can also set the read mark (hit
1888 @subsubheading Question 6.6
1890 I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them
1893 @subsubheading Answer
1895 Say something like this in ~/.gnus.el:
1898 (setq nnmail-expiry-target "nnml:expired")
1902 (If you want to change the value of nnmail-expiry-target
1903 on a per group basis see the question "How can I disable
1904 threading in some (e.g., mail-) groups, or set other
1905 variables specific for some groups?")
1907 @node FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment
1908 @subsection Gnus in a dial-up environment
1911 * FAQ 7-1:: I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I
1912 minimize the time I've got to be connected?
1913 * FAQ 7-2:: So what was this thing about the Agent?
1914 * FAQ 7-3:: I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do
1916 * FAQ 7-4:: How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings
1921 @subsubheading Question 7.1
1923 I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can
1924 I minimize the time I've got to be connected?
1926 @subsubheading Answer
1928 You've got basically two options: Either you use the
1929 Gnus Agent (see below) for this, or you can install
1930 programs which fetch your news and mail to your local
1931 disk and Gnus reads the stuff from your local
1934 If you want to follow the second approach, you need a
1935 program which fetches news and offers them to Gnus, a
1936 program which does the same for mail and a program which
1937 receives the mail you write from Gnus and sends them
1940 Let's talk about Unix systems first: For the news part,
1941 the easiest solution is a small nntp server like
1942 @uref{http://www.leafnode.org/, Leafnode} or
1943 @uref{http://infa.abo.fi/~patrik/sn/, sn},
1944 of course you can also install a full featured news
1946 @uref{http://www.isc.org/products/INN/, inn}.
1947 Then you want to fetch your Mail, popular choices
1948 are @uref{http://www.catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/, fetchmail}
1949 and @uref{http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/, getmail}.
1950 You should tell those to write the mail to your disk and
1951 Gnus to read it from there. Last but not least the mail
1952 sending part: This can be done with every MTA like
1953 @uref{http://www.sendmail.org/, sendmail},
1954 @uref{http://www.qmail.org/, postfix},
1955 @uref{http://www.exim.org/, exim} or
1956 @uref{http://www.qmail.org/, qmail}.
1958 On windows boxes I'd vote for
1959 @uref{http://www.tglsoft.de/, Hamster},
1960 it's a small freeware, open-source program which fetches
1961 your mail and news from remote servers and offers them
1962 to Gnus (or any other mail and/or news reader) via nntp
1963 respectively POP3 or IMAP@. It also includes a smtp
1964 server for receiving mails from Gnus.
1967 @subsubheading Question 7.2
1969 So what was this thing about the Agent?
1971 @subsubheading Answer
1973 The Gnus agent is part of Gnus, it allows you to fetch
1974 mail and news and store them on disk for reading them
1975 later when you're offline. It kind of mimics offline
1976 newsreaders like Forte Agent. If you want to use
1977 the Agent place the following in ~/.gnus.el if you are
1978 still using 5.8.8 or 5.9 (it's the default since 5.10):
1985 Now you've got to select the servers whose groups can be
1986 stored locally. To do this, open the server buffer
1987 (that is press @samp{^} while in the
1988 group buffer). Now select a server by moving point to
1989 the line naming that server. Finally, agentize the
1990 server by typing @samp{J a}. If you
1991 make a mistake, or change your mind, you can undo this
1992 action by typing @samp{J r}. When
1993 you're done, type 'q' to return to the group buffer.
1994 Now the next time you enter a group on a agentized
1995 server, the headers will be stored on disk and read from
1996 there the next time you enter the group.
1999 @subsubheading Question 7.3
2001 I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it?
2003 @subsubheading Answer
2005 You can tell the agent to automatically fetch the bodies
2006 of articles which fulfill certain predicates, this is
2007 done in a special buffer which can be reached by
2008 saying @samp{J c} in group
2009 buffer. Please refer to the documentation for
2010 information which predicates are possible and how
2013 Further on you can tell the agent manually which
2014 articles to store on disk. There are two ways to do
2015 this: Number one: In the summary buffer, process mark a
2016 set of articles that shall be stored in the agent by
2017 saying @samp{#} with point over the
2018 article and then type @samp{J s}. The
2019 other possibility is to set, again in the summary
2020 buffer, downloadable (%) marks for the articles you
2021 want by typing @samp{@@} with point over
2022 the article and then typing @samp{J u}.
2023 What's the difference? Well, process marks are erased as
2024 soon as you exit the summary buffer while downloadable
2025 marks are permanent. You can actually set downloadable
2026 marks in several groups then use fetch session ('J s' in
2027 the GROUP buffer) to fetch all of those articles. The
2028 only downside is that fetch session also fetches all of
2029 the headers for every selected group on an agentized
2030 server. Depending on the volume of headers, the initial
2031 fetch session could take hours.
2034 @subsubheading Question 7.4
2036 How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings
2039 @subsubheading Answer
2041 All you've got to do is to tell Gnus when you are online
2042 (plugged) and when you are offline (unplugged), the rest
2043 works automatically. You can toggle plugged/unplugged
2044 state by saying @samp{J j} in group
2045 buffer. To start Gnus unplugged say @samp{M-x
2046 gnus-unplugged} instead of
2047 @samp{M-x gnus}. Note that for this to
2048 work, the agent must be active.
2050 @node FAQ 8 - Getting help
2051 @subsection Getting help
2054 * FAQ 8-1:: How to find information and help inside Emacs?
2055 * FAQ 8-2:: I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g.,
2056 attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
2057 * FAQ 8-3:: Which websites should I know?
2058 * FAQ 8-4:: Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
2059 * FAQ 8-5:: Where to report bugs?
2060 * FAQ 8-6:: I need real-time help, where to find it?
2064 @subsubheading Question 8.1
2066 How to find information and help inside Emacs?
2068 @subsubheading Answer
2070 The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say
2071 @samp{C-h i d m Gnus RET} to start the
2072 Gnus manual, then walk through the menus or do a
2073 full-text search with @samp{s}). Then
2074 there are the general Emacs help commands starting with
2075 C-h, type @samp{C-h ? ?} to get a list
2076 of all available help commands and their meaning. Finally
2077 @samp{M-x apropos-command} lets you
2078 search through all available functions and @samp{M-x
2079 apropos} searches the bound variables.
2082 @subsubheading Question 8.2
2084 I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X
2085 (e.g., attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
2087 @subsubheading Answer
2089 There's not only the Gnus manual but also the manuals for message,
2090 emacs-mime, sieve, EasyPG Assistant, and pgg. Those packages are
2091 distributed with Gnus and used by Gnus but aren't really part of core
2092 Gnus, so they are documented in different info files, you should have
2093 a look in those manuals, too.
2096 @subsubheading Question 8.3
2098 Which websites should I know?
2100 @subsubheading Answer
2102 The most important one is the
2103 @uref{http://www.gnus.org, official Gnus website}.
2105 Tell me about other sites which are interesting.
2108 @subsubheading Question 8.4
2110 Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
2112 @subsubheading Answer
2114 There's the newsgroup gnu.emacs.gnus (also available as
2115 @uref{http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.user,
2116 gmane.emacs.gnus.user}) which deals with general Gnus
2117 questions. If you have questions about development versions of
2118 Gnus, you should better ask on the ding mailing list, see below.
2120 If you want to stay in the big8,
2121 news.software.readers is also read by some Gnus
2122 users (but chances for qualified help are much better in
2123 the above groups). If you speak German, there's
2124 de.comm.software.gnus.
2126 The ding mailing list (ding@@gnus.org) deals with development of
2127 Gnus. You can read the ding list via NNTP, too under the name
2128 @uref{http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general,
2129 gmane.emacs.gnus.general} from news.gmane.org.
2132 @subsubheading Question 8.5
2134 Where to report bugs?
2136 @subsubheading Answer
2138 Say @samp{M-x gnus-bug}, this will start
2140 @email{bugs@@gnus.org, gnus bug mailing list}
2141 including information about your environment which make
2142 it easier to help you.
2145 @subsubheading Question 8.6
2147 I need real-time help, where to find it?
2149 @subsubheading Answer
2151 Point your IRC client to irc.freenode.net, channel #gnus.
2153 @node FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus
2154 @subsection Tuning Gnus
2157 * FAQ 9-1:: Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
2158 * FAQ 9-2:: How to speed up the process of entering a group?
2159 * FAQ 9-3:: Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
2163 @subsubheading Question 9.1
2165 Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
2167 @subsubheading Answer
2169 The reason for this could be the way Gnus reads its
2170 active file, see the node "The Active File" in the Gnus
2171 manual for things you might try to speed the process up.
2172 An other idea would be to byte compile your ~/.gnus.el (say
2173 @samp{M-x byte-compile-file RET ~/.gnus.el
2174 RET} to do it). Finally, if you have require
2175 statements in your .gnus, you could replace them with
2176 eval-after-load, which loads the stuff not at startup
2177 time, but when it's needed. Say you've got this in your
2182 (add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled))
2186 then as soon as you start Gnus, message.el is loaded. If
2190 (eval-after-load "message"
2191 '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
2195 it's loaded when it's needed.
2198 @subsubheading Question 9.2
2200 How to speed up the process of entering a group?
2202 @subsubheading Answer
2204 A speed killer is setting the variable
2205 gnus-fetch-old-headers to anything different from nil,
2206 so don't do this if speed is an issue. To speed up
2207 building of summary say
2214 at the bottom of your ~/.gnus.el, this will make gnus
2215 byte-compile things like
2216 gnus-summary-line-format.
2217 then you could increase the value of gc-cons-threshold
2218 by saying something like
2221 (setq gc-cons-threshold 3500000)
2225 in ~/.emacs. If you don't care about width of CJK
2226 characters or use Gnus 5.10 or younger together with a
2227 recent GNU Emacs, you should say
2230 (setq gnus-use-correct-string-widths nil)
2234 in ~/.gnus.el (thanks to Jesper harder for the last
2235 two suggestions). Finally if you are still using 5.8.8
2236 or 5.9 and experience speed problems with summary
2237 buffer generation, you definitely should update to
2238 5.10 since there quite some work on improving it has
2242 @subsubheading Question 9.3
2244 Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
2246 @subsubheading Answer
2248 The reason could be that you told Gnus to archive the
2249 messages you wrote by setting
2250 gnus-message-archive-group. Try to use a nnml group
2251 instead of an archive group, this should bring you back
2254 @node FAQ - Glossary
2255 @subsection Glossary
2260 When the term ~/.gnus.el is used it just means your Gnus
2261 configuration file. You might as well call it ~/.gnus or
2262 specify another name.
2265 In Gnus terminology a back end is a virtual server, a layer
2266 between core Gnus and the real NNTP-, POP3-, IMAP- or
2267 whatever-server which offers Gnus a standardized interface
2268 to functions like "get message", "get Headers" etc.
2271 When the term Emacs is used in this FAQ, it means either GNU
2275 In this FAQ message means a either a mail or a posting to a
2276 Usenet Newsgroup or to some other fancy back end, no matter
2277 of which kind it is.
2280 MUA is an acronym for Mail User Agent, it's the program you
2281 use to read and write e-mails.
2284 NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you
2285 use to read and write Usenet news.