This package contains an alpha version of Gnus.  The lisp directory
contains the source lisp files, and the texi directory contains a
draft of the Gnus info pages.

To use Gnus you first have to unpack the files, which you've obviously
done, because you are reading this.

You should definitely byte-compile the source files. To do that, you
can simply say "make" in this directory.  If you are using XEmacs, you
*must* say "make EMACS=xemacs".  If you use XEmacs 19.13 (or earlier)
you should rename "lisp/x-easymenu.el" to "lisp/easymenu.el".  Ignore
all error messages you get when byte-compiling under XEmacs.

Then you have to tell Emacs where Gnus is. You might put something
like

   (setq load-path (cons (expand-file-name "~/gnus-5.0/lisp") load-path))

in your .emacs file, or wherever you keep such things.  (Note that
"~/gnus-5.0/lisp" won't be right if you have pulled down version 5.1)

Note that Gnus and GNUS can't coexist in a single Emacs. They both use
the same function and variable names. If you have been running GNUS in
your Emacs, you should probably exit that Emacs and start a new one to
fire up Gnus.

Gnus does absolutely not work with Emacs 18, and only shakily with
Emacs 19s before 19.26. So you definitely need a newish Emacs.

Then you do a `M-x gnus', and everything should... uhm... it should
work, but it might not. Set `debug-on-error' to t, and mail me the
backtraces, or, better yet, find out why Gnus does something wrong,
fix it, and send me the diffs. :-)

There are three main things I want your help and input on:

1) Startup. Does eveything go smoothly, and why not?

2) Any errors while you read news normally?

3) Any errors if you do anything abnormal?

4) Features you do not like, or do like, but would like to tweak a
   bit, and features you would like to see.

Send any comments and all your bug fixes/complaints to
`gnus-bug@ifi.uio.no'.