1 @c \input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*-
2 @c Uncomment 1st line before texing this file alone.
4 @c Copyright (C) 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5 @setfilename gnus-faq.info
6 @settitle Frequently Asked Questions
9 @node Frequently Asked Questions
10 @section Frequently Asked Questions
14 * FAQ - Introduction:: About Gnus and this FAQ.
15 * FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ:: Installation of Gnus.
16 * FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer:: Start up questions and the
17 first buffer Gnus shows you.
18 * FAQ 3 - Getting Messages:: Making Gnus read your mail
20 * FAQ 4 - Reading messages:: How to efficiently read
22 * FAQ 5 - Composing messages:: Composing mails or Usenet
24 * FAQ 6 - Old messages:: Importing, archiving,
25 searching and deleting messages.
26 * FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment:: Reading mail and news while
28 * FAQ 8 - Getting help:: When this FAQ isn't enough.
29 * FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus:: How to make Gnus faster.
30 * FAQ - Glossary:: Terms used in the FAQ
36 This is the new Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.
37 If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at
38 @uref{http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/},
39 the Docbook source is available from
40 @uref{http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnus/, http://sourceforge.net}.
42 Please submit features and suggestions to the
43 @email{faq-discuss@@my.gnus.org, FAQ discussion list}.
44 The list is protected against junk mail with
45 @uref{http://smarden.org/qconfirm/index.html, qconfirm}. As
46 a subscriber, your submissions will automatically pass. You can
47 also subscribe to the list by sending a blank email to
48 @email{faq-discuss-subscribe@@my.gnus.org, faq-discuss-subscribe@@my.gnus.org}
49 and @uref{http://mail1.kens.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-browse?command=monthbythread%26list=faq-discuss, browse
60 Updated FAQ to reflect release of Gnus 5.10 and start of
64 @node FAQ - Introduction
65 @subheading Introduction
67 This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.
69 Gnus is a Usenet Newsreader and Electronic Mail User Agent implemented
70 as a part of Emacs. It's been around in some form for almost a decade
71 now, and has been distributed as a standard part of Emacs for much of
72 that time. Gnus 5 is the latest (and greatest) incarnation. The
73 original version was called GNUS, and was written by Masanobu UMEDA.
74 When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen grew bored and
75 decided to rewrite Gnus.
77 Its biggest strength is the fact that it is extremely
78 customizable. It is somewhat intimidating at first glance, but
79 most of the complexity can be ignored until you're ready to take
80 advantage of it. If you receive a reasonable volume of e-mail
81 (you're on various mailing lists), or you would like to read
82 high-volume mailing lists but cannot keep up with them, or read
83 high volume newsgroups or are just bored, then Gnus is what you
86 This FAQ was maintained by Justin Sheehy until March 2002. He
87 would like to thank Steve Baur and Per Abrahamsen for doing a wonderful
88 job with this FAQ before him. We would like to do the same - thanks,
91 If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at:
92 @uref{http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/}.
93 This version is much nicer than the unofficial hypertext
94 versions that are archived at Utrecht, Oxford, Smart Pages, Ohio
95 State, and other FAQ archives. See the resources question below
96 if you want information on obtaining it in another format.
98 The information contained here was compiled with the assistance
99 of the Gnus development mailing list, and any errors or
100 misprints are the my.gnus.org team's fault, sorry.
102 @node FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ
103 @subsection Installation FAQ
106 * [1.1]:: What is the latest version of Gnus?
107 * [1.2]:: What's new in 5.10?
108 * [1.3]:: Where and how to get Gnus?
109 * [1.4]:: What to do with the tarball now?
110 * [1.5]:: I sometimes read references to No Gnus and Oort Gnus, what
112 * [1.6]:: Which version of Emacs do I need?
113 * [1.7]:: How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
117 @subsubheading Question 1.1
119 What is the latest version of Gnus?
121 @subsubheading Answer
123 Jingle please: Gnus 5.10 is released, get it while it's
124 hot! As well as the step in version number is rather
125 small, Gnus 5.10 has tons of new features which you
126 shouldn't miss. The current release (5.10.6) should be at
127 least as stable as the latest release of the 5.8 series.
130 @subsubheading Question 1.2
134 @subsubheading Answer
136 First of all, you should have a look into the file
137 GNUS-NEWS in the toplevel directory of the Gnus tarball,
138 there the most important changes are listed. Here's a
139 short list of the changes I find especially
140 important/interesting:
145 Major rewrite of the Gnus agent, Gnus agent is now
149 Many new article washing functions for dealing with
150 ugly formatted articles.
156 Message-utils now included in Gnus.
159 New format specifiers for summary lines, e.g. %B for
160 a complex trn-style thread tree.
164 @subsubheading Question 1.3
166 Where and how to get Gnus?
168 @subsubheading Answer
170 The latest released version of Gnus isn't included in
171 Emacs 21, therefor you should get the Gnus tarball from
172 @uref{http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz}
173 or via anonymous FTP from
174 @uref{ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz}.
175 If you use XEmacs instead of Emacs you can use XEmacs'
176 package system instead.
179 @subsubheading Question 1.4
181 What to do with the tarball now?
183 @subsubheading Answer
185 Untar it via @samp{tar xvzf gnus.tar.gz} and do the common
186 @samp{./configure; make; make install} circle.
187 (under MS-Windows either get the Cygwin environment from
188 @uref{http://www.cygwin.com}
189 which allows you to do what's described above or unpack the
190 tarball with some packer (e.g. Winace from
191 @uref{http://www.winace.com})
192 and use the batch-file make.bat included in the tarball to install
193 Gnus.) If you don't want to (or aren't allowed to) install Gnus
194 system-wide, you can install it in your home directory and add the
195 following lines to your ~/.xemacs/init.el or ~/.emacs:
198 (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/gnus/lisp")
199 (if (featurep 'xemacs)
200 (add-to-list 'Info-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/")
201 (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/"))
205 Make sure that you don't have any Gnus related stuff
206 before this line, on MS Windows use something like
207 "C:/path/to/lisp" (yes, "/").
210 @subsubheading Question 1.5
212 I sometimes read references to No Gnus and Oort Gnus,
215 @subsubheading Answer
217 Oort Gnus was the name of the development version of
218 Gnus, which became Gnus 5.10 in autumn 2003. No Gnus is
219 the name of the current development version which will
220 once become Gnus 5.12 or Gnus 6. (If you're wondering why
221 not 5.11, the odd version numbers are normally used for
222 the Gnus versions bundled with Emacs)
225 @subsubheading Question 1.6
227 Which version of Emacs do I need?
229 @subsubheading Answer
231 Gnus 5.10 requires an Emacs version that is greater
232 than or equal to Emacs 20.7 or XEmacs 21.1. The
233 development versions of Gnus (aka No Gnus) require Emacs
237 @subsubheading Question 1.7
239 How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
241 @subsubheading Answer
243 You can't use the same copy of Gnus in both as the Lisp
244 files are byte-compiled to a format which is different
245 depending on which Emacs did the compilation. Get one copy
246 of Gnus for Emacs and one for XEmacs.
248 @node FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer
249 @subsection Startup / Group buffer
252 * [2.1]:: Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save
253 file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean and
255 * [2.2]:: Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to,
257 * [2.3]:: How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
258 * [2.4]:: My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to
259 sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse through
261 * [2.5]:: How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to
262 sort the groups in a topic?
266 @subsubheading Question 2.1
268 Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save
269 file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean
270 and how to prevent it?
272 @subsubheading Answer
274 This message means that the last time you used Gnus, it
275 wasn't properly exited and therefor couldn't write its
276 informations to disk (e.g. which messages you read), you
277 are now asked if you want to restore those informations
278 from the auto-save file.
280 To prevent this message make sure you exit Gnus
281 via @samp{q} in group buffer instead of
285 @subsubheading Question 2.2
287 Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to,
290 @subsubheading Answer
292 You get the message described in the q/a pair above while
293 starting Gnus, right? It's an other symptom for the same
294 problem, so read the answer above.
297 @subsubheading Question 2.3
299 How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
301 @subsubheading Answer
303 You've got to tweak the value of the variable
304 gnus-group-line-format. See the manual node "Group Line
305 Specification" for information on how to do this. An
306 example for this (guess from whose .gnus :-)):
309 (setq gnus-group-line-format "%P%M%S[%5t]%5y : %(%g%)\n")
314 @subsubheading Question 2.4
316 My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to
317 sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse
320 @subsubheading Answer
322 Gnus offers the topic mode, it allows you to sort your
323 groups in, well, topics, e.g. all groups dealing with
324 Linux under the topic linux, all dealing with music under
325 the topic music and all dealing with scottish music under
326 the topic scottish which is a subtopic of music.
328 To enter topic mode, just hit t while in Group buffer. Now
329 you can use @samp{T n} to create a topic
330 at point and @samp{T m} to move a group to
331 a specific topic. For more commands see the manual or the
332 menu. You might want to include the %P specifier at the
333 beginning of your gnus-group-line-format variable to have
334 the groups nicely indented.
337 @subsubheading Question 2.5
339 How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to
340 sort the groups in a topic?
342 @subsubheading Answer
344 Move point over the group you want to move and
345 hit @samp{C-k}, now move point to the
346 place where you want the group to be and
349 @node FAQ 3 - Getting Messages
350 @subsection Getting Messages
353 * [3.1]:: I just installed Gnus, started it via @samp{M-x gnus}
354 but it only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
355 * [3.2]:: I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus.el
357 * [3.3]:: My news server requires authentication, how to store user
358 name and password on disk?
359 * [3.4]:: Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to
360 subscribe to a group.
361 * [3.5]:: Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed
362 to post on this server as well as I am, what's that?
363 * [3.6]:: I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this
365 * [3.7]:: And how about local spool files?
366 * [3.8]:: OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read
367 my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it?
368 * [3.9]:: And what about IMAP?
369 * [3.10]:: At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can
370 I use Gnus to read my mail from it?
371 * [3.11]:: Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it
376 @subsubheading Question 3.1
378 I just installed Gnus, started it via
380 but it only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
382 @subsubheading Answer
384 You've got to tell Gnus where to fetch the news from. Read
385 the documentation for information on how to do this. As a
386 first start, put those lines in ~/.gnus.el:
389 (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.yourprovider.net"))
390 (setq user-mail-address "you@@yourprovider.net")
391 (setq user-full-name "Your Name")
396 @subsubheading Question 3.2
398 I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus.el means.
400 @subsubheading Answer
402 The ~/ means the home directory where Gnus and Emacs look
403 for the configuration files. However, you don't really
404 need to know what this means, it suffices that Emacs knows
405 what it means :-) You can type
406 @samp{C-x C-f ~/.gnus.el RET }
407 (yes, with the forward slash, even on Windows), and
408 Emacs will open the right file for you. (It will most
409 likely be new, and thus empty.)
410 However, I'd discourage you from doing so, since the
411 directory Emacs chooses will most certainly not be what
412 you want, so let's do it the correct way.
413 The first thing you've got to do is to
414 create a suitable directory (no blanks in directory name
415 please) e.g. c:\myhome. Then you must set the environment
416 variable HOME to this directory. To do this under Win9x
417 or Me include the line
424 in your autoexec.bat and reboot. Under NT, 2000 and XP,
425 hit Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system options (if it
426 doesn't work, go to Control Panel -> System). There you'll
427 find the possibility to set environment variables, create
428 a new one with name HOME and value C:\myhome, a reboot is
431 Now to create ~/.gnus.el, say
432 @samp{C-x C-f ~/.gnus.el RET C-x C-s}.
436 @subsubheading Question 3.3
438 My news server requires authentication, how to store
439 user name and password on disk?
441 @subsubheading Answer
443 Create a file ~/.authinfo which includes for each server a line like this
446 machine news.yourprovider.net login YourUserName password YourPassword
450 Make sure that the file isn't readable to others if you
451 work on a OS which is capable of doing so. (Under Unix
454 chmod 600 ~/.authinfo
461 @subsubheading Question 3.4
463 Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to
464 subscribe to a group.
466 @subsubheading Answer
468 If you know the name of the group say @samp{U
469 name.of.group RET} in group buffer (use the
470 tab-completion Luke). Otherwise hit ^ in group buffer,
471 this brings you to the server buffer. Now place point (the
472 cursor) over the server which carries the group you want,
473 hit @samp{RET}, move point to the group
474 you want to subscribe to and say @samp{u}
478 @subsubheading Question 3.5
480 Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed to
481 post on this server as well as I am, what's that?
483 @subsubheading Answer
485 Some providers allow restricted anonymous access and full
486 access only after authorization. To make Gnus send authinfo
487 to those servers append
494 to the line for those servers in ~/.authinfo.
497 @subsubheading Question 3.6
499 I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible?
501 @subsubheading Answer
503 Of course. You can specify more sources for articles in the
504 variable gnus-secondary-select-methods. Add something like
508 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
509 '(nntp "news.yourSecondProvider.net"))
510 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
511 '(nntp "news.yourThirdProvider.net"))
516 @subsubheading Question 3.7
518 And how about local spool files?
520 @subsubheading Answer
522 No problem, this is just one more select method called
523 nnspool, so you want this:
526 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnspool ""))
530 Or this if you don't want an NNTP Server as primary news source:
533 (setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
537 Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you
538 want something different, change the line above to something like this:
541 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
543 (nnspool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")))
547 This sets the spool directory for this server only.
548 You might have to specify more stuff like the program used
549 to post articles, see the Gnus manual on how to do this.
552 @subsubheading Question 3.8
554 OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail
555 with Gnus, too. How to do it?
557 @subsubheading Answer
559 That's a bit harder since there are many possible sources
560 for mail, many possible ways for storing mail and many
561 different ways for sending mail. The most common cases are
562 these: 1: You want to read your mail from a pop3 server and
563 send them directly to a SMTP Server 2: Some program like
564 fetchmail retrieves your mail and stores it on disk from
565 where Gnus shall read it. Outgoing mail is sent by
566 Sendmail, Postfix or some other MTA. Sometimes, you even
567 need a combination of the above cases.
569 However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way
570 it should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which back end
571 to use. Gnus supports many different back ends, the most
572 commonly used one is nnml. It stores every mail in one file
573 and is therefor quite fast. However you might prefer a one
574 file per group approach if your file system has problems with
575 many small files, the nnfolder back end is then probably the
576 choice for you. To use nnml add the following to ~/.gnus.el:
579 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml ""))
583 As you might have guessed, if you want nnfolder, it's
586 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnfolder ""))
590 Now we need to tell Gnus, where to get it's mail from. If
591 it's a POP3 server, then you need something like this:
594 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
595 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net"
597 :password "yourPassword")))
601 Make sure ~/.gnus.el isn't readable to others if you store
602 your password there. If you want to read your mail from a
603 traditional spool file on your local machine, it's
606 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
607 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(file :path "/path/to/spool/file"))
611 If it's a Maildir, with one file per message as used by
612 postfix, Qmail and (optionally) fetchmail it's
615 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
616 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(maildir :path "/path/to/Maildir/"
617 :subdirs ("cur" "new")))
621 And finally if you want to read your mail from several files
622 in one directory, for example because procmail already split your
626 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
627 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources
628 '(directory :path "/path/to/procmail-dir/"
633 Where :suffix ".prcml" tells Gnus only to use files with the
636 OK, now you only need to tell Gnus how to send mail. If you
637 want to send mail via sendmail (or whichever MTA is playing
638 the role of sendmail on your system), you don't need to do
639 anything. However, if you want to send your mail to an
640 SMTP Server you need the following in your ~/.gnus.el
643 (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
644 (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
645 (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.yourProvider.net")
650 @subsubheading Question 3.9
654 @subsubheading Answer
656 There are two ways of using IMAP with Gnus. The first one is
657 to use IMAP like POP3, that means Gnus fetches the mail from
658 the IMAP server and stores it on disk. If you want to do
659 this (you don't really want to do this) add the following to
663 (add-to-list 'mail-sources '(imap :server "mail.mycorp.com"
667 :authentication login
669 :fetchflag "\\Seen"))
673 You might have to tweak the values for stream and/or
674 authentification, see the Gnus manual node "Mail Source
675 Specifiers" for possible values.
677 If you want to use IMAP the way it's intended, you've got to
678 follow a different approach. You've got to add the nnimap
679 back end to your select method and give the information
680 about the server there.
683 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
684 '(nnimap "Give the baby a name"
685 (nnimap-address "imap.yourProvider.net")
687 (nnimap-list-pattern "archive.*")))
691 Again, you might have to specify how to authenticate to the
692 server if Gnus can't guess the correct way, see the Manual
693 Node "IMAP" for detailed information.
696 @subsubheading Question 3.10
698 At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
699 Gnus to read my mail from it?
701 @subsubheading Answer
703 Offer your administrator a pair of new running shoes for
704 activating IMAP on the server and follow the instructions
708 @subsubheading Question 3.11
710 Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it
713 @subsubheading Answer
715 First of all, that's not the way POP3 is intended to work,
716 if you have the possibility, you should use the IMAP
717 Protocol if you want your messages to stay on the
718 server. Nevertheless there might be situations where you
719 need the feature, but sadly Gnus itself has no predefined
720 functionality to do so.
722 However this is Gnus county so there are possibilities to
723 achieve what you want. The easiest way is to get an external
724 program which retrieves copies of the mail and stores them
725 on disk, so Gnus can read it from there. On Unix systems you
726 could use e.g. fetchmail for this, on MS Windows you can use
727 Hamster, an excellent local news and mail server.
729 The other solution would be, to replace the method Gnus
730 uses to get mail from POP3 servers by one which is capable
731 of leaving the mail on the server. If you use XEmacs, get
732 the package mail-lib, it includes an enhanced pop3.el,
733 look in the file, there's documentation on how to tell
734 Gnus to use it and not to delete the retrieved mail. For
735 GNU Emacs look for the file epop3.el which can do the same
736 (If you know the home of this file, please send me an
737 e-mail). You can also tell Gnus to use an external program
738 (e.g. fetchmail) to fetch your mail, see the info node
739 "Mail Source Specifiers" in the Gnus manual on how to do
742 @node FAQ 4 - Reading messages
743 @subsection Reading messages
746 * [4.1]:: When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to
748 * [4.2]:: How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I
749 enter a group, even when it's read?
750 * [4.3]:: How to view the headers of a message?
751 * [4.4]:: How to view the raw unformatted message?
752 * [4.5]:: How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at
753 the top of the article buffer?
754 * [4.6]:: I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the
755 text part if it's available. How to do it?
756 * [4.7]:: Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my
758 * [4.8]:: Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails
760 * [4.9]:: Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific
761 authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I highlight
762 more interesting ones in some way?
763 * [4.10]:: How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups,
764 or set other variables specific for some groups?
765 * [4.11]:: Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to
767 * [4.12]:: The number of total messages in a group which Gnus
768 displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in mail
769 groups. Is this a bug?
770 * [4.13]:: I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how
771 to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
772 * [4.14]:: I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to
774 * [4.15]:: How to split incoming mails in several groups?
778 @subsubheading Question 4.1
780 When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them again?
782 @subsubheading Answer
784 If you enter the group by saying
786 in group buffer with point over the group, only unread and ticked messages are loaded. Say
788 instead to load all available messages. If you want only the e.g. 300 newest say
791 Loading only unread messages can be annoying if you have threaded view enabled, say
794 (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 'some)
798 in ~/.gnus.el to load enough old articles to prevent teared threads, replace 'some with t to load
799 all articles (Warning: Both settings enlarge the amount of data which is
800 fetched when you enter a group and slow down the process of entering a group).
802 If you already use Gnus 5.10, you can say
804 In summary buffer to load the last N messages, this feature is not available in 5.8.8
806 If you don't want all old messages, but the parent of the message you're just reading,
807 you can say @samp{^}, if you want to retrieve the whole thread
808 the message you're just reading belongs to, @samp{A T} is your friend.
811 @subsubheading Question 4.2
813 How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I
814 enter a group, even when it's read?
816 @subsubheading Answer
818 You can tick important messages. To do this hit
819 @samp{u} while point is in summary buffer
820 over the message. When you want to remove the mark, hit
821 either @samp{d} (this deletes the tick
822 mark and set's unread mark) or @samp{M c}
823 (which deletes all marks for the message).
826 @subsubheading Question 4.3
828 How to view the headers of a message?
830 @subsubheading Answer
833 to show all headers, one more
838 @subsubheading Question 4.4
840 How to view the raw unformatted message?
842 @subsubheading Answer
846 to show the raw message
848 returns to normal view.
851 @subsubheading Question 4.5
853 How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at
854 the top of the article buffer?
856 @subsubheading Answer
858 The variable gnus-visible-headers controls which headers
859 are shown, its value is a regular expression, header lines
860 which match it are shown. So if you want author, subject,
861 date, and if the header exists, Followup-To and MUA / NUA
862 say this in ~/.gnus.el:
865 (setq gnus-visible-headers
866 '("^From" "^Subject" "^Date" "^Newsgroups" "^Followup-To"
867 "^User-Agent" "^X-Newsreader" "^X-Mailer"))
872 @subsubheading Question 4.6
874 I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the
875 text part if it's available. How to do it?
877 @subsubheading Answer
882 (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
884 (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
885 (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext")))
889 in ~/.gnus.el. If you don't want HTML rendered, even if there's no text alternative add
892 (setq mm-automatic-display (remove "text/html" mm-automatic-display))
899 @subsubheading Question 4.7
901 Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails?
903 @subsubheading Answer
905 Only if you use Gnus 5.10 or younger. In this case you've got the
906 choice between w3, w3m, links, lynx and html2text, which
907 one is used can be specified in the variable
908 mm-text-html-renderer, so if you want links to render your
912 (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'links)
917 @subsubheading Question 4.8
919 Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails
922 @subsubheading Answer
924 Gnus offers you several functions to "wash" incoming mail, you can
925 find them if you browse through the menu, item
926 Article->Washing. The most interesting ones are probably "Wrap
927 long lines" (@samp{W w}), "Decode ROT13"
928 (@samp{W r}) and "Outlook Deuglify" which repairs
929 the dumb quoting used by many users of Microsoft products
930 (@samp{W Y f} gives you full deuglify.
931 See @samp{W Y C-h} or have a look at the menus for
932 other deuglifications). Outlook deuglify is only available since
936 @subsubheading Question 4.9
938 Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific
939 authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I
940 highlight more interesting ones in some way?
942 @subsubheading Answer
944 You want Scoring. Scoring means, that you define rules
945 which assign each message an integer value. Depending on
946 the value the message is highlighted in summary buffer (if
947 it's high, say +2000) or automatically marked read (if the
948 value is low, say -800) or some other action happens.
950 There are basically three ways of setting up rules which assign
951 the scoring-value to messages. The first and easiest way is to set
952 up rules based on the article you are just reading. Say you're
953 reading a message by a guy who always writes nonsense and you want
954 to ignore his messages in the future. Hit
955 @samp{L}, to set up a rule which lowers the score.
956 Now Gnus asks you which the criteria for lowering the Score shall
957 be. Hit @samp{?} twice to see all possibilities,
958 we want @samp{a} which means the author (the from
959 header). Now Gnus wants to know which kind of matching we want.
960 Hit either @samp{e} for an exact match or
961 @samp{s} for substring-match and delete afterwards
962 everything but the name to score down all authors with the given
963 name no matter which email address is used. Now you need to tell
964 Gnus when to apply the rule and how long it should last, hit e.g.
965 @samp{p} to apply the rule now and let it last
966 forever. If you want to raise the score instead of lowering it say
967 @samp{I} instead of @samp{L}.
969 You can also set up rules by hand. To do this say @samp{V
970 f} in summary buffer. Then you are asked for the name
971 of the score file, it's name.of.group.SCORE for rules valid in
972 only one group or all.Score for rules valid in all groups. See the
973 Gnus manual for the exact syntax, basically it's one big list
974 whose elements are lists again. the first element of those lists
975 is the header to score on, then one more list with what to match,
976 which score to assign, when to expire the rule and how to do the
977 matching. If you find me very interesting, you could e.g. add the
978 following to your all.Score:
981 (("references" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 500 nil s))
982 ("message-id" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 999 nil s)))
986 This would add 999 to the score of messages written by me
987 and 500 to the score of messages which are a (possibly
988 indirect) answer to a message written by me. Of course
989 nobody with a sane mind would do this :-)
991 The third alternative is adaptive scoring. This means Gnus
992 watches you and tries to find out what you find
993 interesting and what annoying and sets up rules
994 which reflect this. Adaptive scoring can be a huge help
995 when reading high traffic groups. If you want to activate
999 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t)
1006 @subsubheading Question 4.10
1008 How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or
1009 set other variables specific for some groups?
1011 @subsubheading Answer
1013 While in group buffer move point over the group and hit
1014 @samp{G c}, this opens a buffer where you
1015 can set options for the group. At the bottom of the buffer
1016 you'll find an item that allows you to set variables
1017 locally for the group. To disable threading enter
1018 gnus-show-threads as name of variable and nil as
1019 value. Hit button done at the top of the buffer when
1023 @subsubheading Question 4.11
1025 Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to
1028 @subsubheading Answer
1030 Stop those "Can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes
1031 in Gnus Country :-). It's a three step process: First we
1032 make faces (specifications of how summary-line shall look
1033 like) for those postings, then we'll give them some
1034 special score and finally we'll tell Gnus to use the new
1035 faces. You can find detailed instructions on how to do it on
1036 @uref{http://my.gnus.org/node/view/224, my.gnus.org}
1039 @subsubheading Question 4.12
1041 The number of total messages in a group which Gnus
1042 displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in
1043 mail groups. Is this a bug?
1045 @subsubheading Answer
1047 No, that's a matter of design of Gnus, fixing this would
1048 mean reimplementation of major parts of Gnus'
1049 back ends. Gnus thinks "highest-article-number -
1050 lowest-article-number = total-number-of-articles". This
1051 works OK for Usenet groups, but if you delete and move
1052 many messages in mail groups, this fails. To cure the
1053 symptom, enter the group via @samp{C-u RET}
1054 (this makes Gnus get all messages), then
1055 hit @samp{M P b} to mark all messages and
1056 then say @samp{B m name.of.group} to move
1057 all messages to the group they have been in before, they
1058 get new message numbers in this process and the count is
1059 right again (until you delete and move your mail to other
1063 @subsubheading Question 4.13
1065 I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how
1066 to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
1068 @subsubheading Answer
1070 You can control the windows configuration by calling the
1071 function gnus-add-configuration. The syntax is a bit
1072 complicated but explained very well in the manual node
1073 "Window Layout". Some popular examples:
1075 Instead 25% summary 75% article buffer 35% summary and 65%
1076 article (the 1.0 for article means "take the remaining
1080 (gnus-add-configuration
1081 '(article (vertical 1.0 (summary .35 point) (article 1.0))))
1085 A three pane layout, Group buffer on the left, summary
1086 buffer top-right, article buffer bottom-right:
1089 (gnus-add-configuration
1095 (summary 0.25 point)
1097 (gnus-add-configuration
1103 (summary 1.0 point)))))
1108 @subsubheading Question 4.14
1110 I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it?
1112 @subsubheading Answer
1114 You've got to play around with the variable
1115 gnus-summary-line-format. It's value is a string of
1116 symbols which stand for things like author, date, subject
1117 etc. A list of the available specifiers can be found in the
1118 manual node "Summary Buffer Lines" and the often forgotten
1119 node "Formatting Variables" and it's sub-nodes. There
1120 you'll find useful things like positioning the cursor and
1121 tabulators which allow you a summary in table form, but
1122 sadly hard tabulators are broken in 5.8.8.
1124 Since 5.10, Gnus offers you some very nice new specifiers,
1125 e.g. %B which draws a thread-tree and %&user-date which
1126 gives you a date where the details are dependent of the
1127 articles age. Here's an example which uses both:
1130 (setq gnus-summary-line-format ":%U%R %B %s %-60=|%4L |%-20,20f |%&user-date; \n")
1137 :O Re: [Richard Stallman] rfc2047.el | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:06
1138 :O Re: Revival of the ding-patches list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:12
1139 :R > Re: Find correct list of articles for a gro| 25 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:16
1140 :O \-> ... | 21 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:01
1141 :R > Re: Cry for help: deuglify.el - moving stuf| 28 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:34
1142 :O \-> ... | 115 |Raymond Scholz | 1:24
1143 :O \-> ... | 19 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |15:33
1144 :O Slow mailing list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:49
1145 :O Re: `@@' mark not documented | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:50
1146 :R > Re: Gnus still doesn't count messages prope| 23 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:57
1147 :O \-> ... | 18 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:35
1148 :O \-> ... | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt | 0:56
1153 @subsubheading Question 4.15
1155 How to split incoming mails in several groups?
1157 @subsubheading Answer
1159 Gnus offers two possibilities for splitting mail, the easy
1160 nnmail-split-methods and the more powerful Fancy Mail
1161 Splitting. I'll only talk about the first one, refer to
1162 the manual, node "Fancy Mail Splitting" for the latter.
1164 The value of nnmail-split-methods is a list, each element
1165 is a list which stands for a splitting rule. Each rule has
1166 the form "group where matching articles should go to",
1167 "regular expression which has to be matched", the first
1168 rule which matches wins. The last rule must always be a
1169 general rule (regular expression .*) which denotes where
1170 articles should go which don't match any other rule. If
1171 the folder doesn't exist yet, it will be created as soon
1172 as an article lands there. By default the mail will be
1173 send to all groups whose rules match. If you
1174 don't want that (you probably don't want), say
1177 (setq nnmail-crosspost nil)
1183 An example might be better than thousand words, so here's
1184 my nnmail-split-methods. Note that I send duplicates in a
1185 special group and that the default group is spam, since I
1186 filter all mails out which are from some list I'm
1187 subscribed to or which are addressed directly to me
1188 before. Those rules kill about 80% of the Spam which
1189 reaches me (Email addresses are changed to prevent spammers
1193 (setq nnmail-split-methods
1194 '(("duplicates" "^Gnus-Warning:.*duplicate")
1195 ("XEmacs-NT" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@xemacs.bla.*")
1196 ("Gnus-Tut" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@socha.bla.*")
1197 ("tcsh" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@mx.gw.bla.*")
1198 ("BAfH" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@.*uni-muenchen.bla.*")
1199 ("Hamster-src" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*hamster-sourcen@@yahoogroups.\\(de\\|com\\).*")
1200 ("Tagesschau" "^From: tagesschau <localpart@@www.tagesschau.bla>$")
1201 ("Replies" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@@Frank-Schmitt.bla.*")
1202 ("EK" "^From:.*\\(localpart@@privateprovider.bla\\|localpart@@workplace.bla\\).*")
1203 ("Spam" "^Content-Type:.*\\(ks_c_5601-1987\\|EUC-KR\\|big5\\|iso-2022-jp\\).*")
1204 ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(This really work\\|XINGA\\|ADV:\\|XXX\\|adult\\|sex\\).*")
1205 ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(\=\?ks_c_5601-1987\?\\|\=\?euc-kr\?\\|\=\?big5\?\\).*")
1206 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*BulkMailer.*\\|.*MIME::Lite.*\\|\\)")
1207 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*CyberCreek Avalanche\\|.*http\:\/\/GetResponse\.com\\)")
1208 ("Spam" "^From:.*\\(verizon\.net\\|prontomail\.com\\|money\\|ConsumerDirect\\).*")
1209 ("Spam" "^Delivered-To: GMX delivery to spamtrap@@gmx.bla$")
1210 ("Spam" "^Received: from link2buy.com")
1211 ("Spam" "^CC: .*azzrael@@t-online.bla")
1212 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer-Version: 1.50 BETA")
1213 ("Uni" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@@uni-koblenz.bla.*")
1214 ("Inbox" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*\\(my\ name\\|address@@one.bla\\|adress@@two.bla\\)")
1219 @node FAQ 5 - Composing messages
1220 @subsection Composing messages
1223 * [5.1]:: What are the basic commands I need to know for sending
1225 * [5.2]:: How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
1226 * [5.3]:: How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To,
1228 * [5.4]:: Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on
1229 the group I post too?
1230 * [5.5]:: Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly
1232 * [5.6]:: Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting
1234 * [5.7]:: Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember
1235 all those email addresses?
1236 * [5.8]:: Sometimes I see little images at the top of article
1237 buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my postings, too?
1238 * [5.9]:: Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups.
1239 Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in newsgroups?
1240 * [5.10]:: How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
1241 * [5.11]:: I want Gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and
1243 * [5.12]:: People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why aren't
1244 they and how to fix it?
1248 @subsubheading Question 5.1
1250 What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and postings?
1252 @subsubheading Answer
1254 To start composing a new mail hit @samp{m}
1255 either in Group or Summary buffer, for a posting, it's
1256 either @samp{a} in Group buffer and
1257 filling the Newsgroups header manually
1258 or @samp{a} in the Summary buffer of the
1259 group where the posting shall be send to. Replying by mail
1261 @samp{r} if you don't want to cite the
1262 author, or import the cited text manually and
1263 @samp{R} to cite the text of the original
1264 message. For a follow up to a newsgroup, it's
1265 @samp{f} and @samp{F}
1266 (analogously to @samp{r} and
1269 Enter new headers above the line saying "--text follows
1270 this line--", enter the text below the line. When ready
1271 hit @samp{C-c C-c}, to send the message,
1272 if you want to finish it later hit @samp{C-c
1273 C-d} to save it in the drafts group, where you
1274 can start editing it again by saying @samp{D
1278 @subsubheading Question 5.2
1280 How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
1282 @subsubheading Answer
1287 (add-hook 'message-mode-hook
1289 (setq fill-column 72)
1290 (turn-on-auto-fill)))
1294 in ~/.gnus.el. You can reformat a paragraph by hitting
1295 @samp{M-q} (as usual)
1298 @subsubheading Question 5.3
1300 How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...?
1302 @subsubheading Answer
1304 There are other ways, but you should use posting styles
1305 for this. (See below why).
1306 This example should make the syntax clear:
1309 (setq gnus-posting-styles
1311 (name "Frank Schmitt")
1312 (address "me@@there.bla")
1313 (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
1314 (signature-file "~/.signature")
1315 ("X-SampleHeader" "foobar")
1316 (eval (setq some-variable "Foo bar")))))
1320 The ".*" means that this settings are the default ones
1321 (see below), valid values for the first element of the
1322 following lists are signature, signature-file,
1323 organization, address, name or body. The attribute name
1324 can also be a string. In that case, this will be used as
1325 a header name, and the value will be inserted in the
1326 headers of the article; if the value is `nil', the header
1327 name will be removed. You can also say (eval (foo bar)),
1328 then the function foo will be evaluated with argument bar
1329 and the result will be thrown away.
1332 @subsubheading Question 5.4
1334 Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group I post too?
1336 @subsubheading Answer
1338 That's the strength of posting styles. Before, we used ".*"
1339 to set the default for all groups. You can use a regexp
1340 like "^gmane" and the following settings are only applied
1341 to postings you send to the gmane hierarchy, use
1342 ".*binaries" instead and they will be applied to postings
1343 send to groups containing the string binaries in their
1346 You can instead of specifying a regexp specify a function
1347 which is evaluated, only if it returns true, the
1348 corresponding settings take effect. Two interesting
1349 candidates for this are message-news-p which returns t if
1350 the current Group is a newsgroup and the corresponding
1353 Note that all forms that match are applied, that means in
1354 the example below, when I post to
1355 gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general, the settings under
1356 ".*" are applied and the settings under message-news-p and
1357 those under "^gmane" and those under
1358 "^gmane\\.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$". Because
1359 of this put general settings at the top and specific ones
1363 (setq gnus-posting-styles
1365 (name "Frank Schmitt")
1366 (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
1367 (signature-file "~/.signature") )
1368 ((message-news-p) ;;Usenet news?
1369 (address "mySpamTrap@@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
1370 ("Reply-To" "hereRealRepliesOnlyPlease@@Frank-Schmitt.bla") )
1371 ((message-mail-p) ;;mail?
1372 (address "usedForMails@@Frank-Schmitt.bla") )
1373 ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact
1374 (address "usedForMails@@Frank-Schmitt.net")
1376 ("^gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general$"
1377 (eval (setq mail-envelope-from "Azzrael@@rz-online.de"))
1378 (address "Azzrael@@rz-online.de")) ))
1383 @subsubheading Question 5.5
1385 Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking?
1387 @subsubheading Answer
1389 You can use ispell.el to spell-check stuff in Emacs. So the
1390 first thing to do is to make sure that you've got either
1391 @uref{http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html, ispell}
1392 or @uref{http://aspell.sourceforge.net/, aspell}
1393 installed and in your Path. Then you need
1394 @uref{http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html, ispell.el}
1395 and for on-the-fly spell-checking
1396 @uref{http://www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/personnel/Manuel.Serrano/flyspell/flyspell.html, flyspell.el}.
1397 Ispell.el is shipped with Emacs and available through the XEmacs package system,
1398 flyspell.el is shipped with Emacs and part of XEmacs text-modes package which is
1399 available through the package system, so there should be no need to install them
1402 Ispell.el assumes you use ispell, if you choose aspell say
1405 (setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
1409 in your Emacs configuration file.
1411 If you want your outgoing messages to be spell-checked, say
1414 (add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)
1418 In your ~/.gnus.el, if you prefer on-the-fly spell-checking say
1421 (add-hook 'message-mode-hook (lambda () (flyspell-mode 1)))
1426 @subsubheading Question 5.6
1428 Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to?
1430 @subsubheading Answer
1432 Yes, say something like
1435 (add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook
1439 "^de\\." (gnus-group-real-name gnus-newsgroup-name))
1440 (ispell-change-dictionary "deutsch8"))
1442 (ispell-change-dictionary "english")))))
1446 in ~/.gnus.el. Change "^de\\." and "deutsch8" to something
1447 that suits your needs.
1450 @subsubheading Question 5.7
1452 Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember
1453 all those email addresses?
1455 @subsubheading Answer
1457 There's an very basic solution for this, mail aliases.
1458 You can store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple
1462 alias al "Al <al@@english-heritage.bla>"
1466 Then typing your alias (followed by a space or punctuation
1467 character) on a To: or Cc: line in the message buffer will
1468 cause Gnus to insert the full address for you. See the
1469 node "Mail Aliases" in Message (not Gnus) manual for
1472 However, what you really want is the Insidious Big Brother
1473 Database bbdb. Get it through the XEmacs package system or from
1474 @uref{http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/, bbdb's homepage}.
1475 Now place the following in ~/.gnus.el, to activate bbdb for Gnus:
1479 (bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message)
1483 Now you probably want some general bbdb configuration,
1484 place them in ~/.emacs:
1488 ;;If you don't live in Northern America, you should disable the
1489 ;;syntax check for telephone numbers by saying
1490 (setq bbdb-north-american-phone-numbers-p nil)
1491 ;;Tell bbdb about your email address:
1492 (setq bbdb-user-mail-names
1493 (regexp-opt '("Your.Email@@here.bla"
1494 "Your.other@@mail.there.bla")))
1495 ;;cycling while completing email addresses
1496 (setq bbdb-complete-name-allow-cycling t)
1498 (setq bbdb-use-pop-up nil)
1502 Now you should be ready to go. Say @samp{M-x bbdb RET
1503 RET} to open a bbdb buffer showing all
1504 entries. Say @samp{c} to create a new
1505 entry, @samp{b} to search your BBDB and
1506 @samp{C-o} to add a new field to an
1507 entry. If you want to add a sender to the BBDB you can
1508 also just hit `:' on the posting in the summary buffer and
1509 you are done. When you now compose a new mail,
1510 hit @samp{TAB} to cycle through know
1514 @subsubheading Question 5.8
1516 Sometimes I see little images at the top of article
1517 buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my
1520 @subsubheading Answer
1522 Those images are called X-Faces. They are 48*48 pixel b/w
1523 pictures, encoded in a header line. If you want to include
1524 one in your posts, you've got to convert some image to a
1525 X-Face. So fire up some image manipulation program (say
1526 Gimp), open the image you want to include, cut out the
1527 relevant part, reduce color depth to 1 bit, resize to
1528 48*48 and save as bitmap. Now you should get the compface
1530 @uref{ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/, this site}.
1531 and create the actual X-face by saying
1534 cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon | compface > file.face
1535 cat file.face | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g;s/\"/\\\"/g;' > file.face.quoted
1539 If you can't use compface, there's an online X-face converter at
1540 @uref{http://www.dairiki.org/xface/}.
1541 If you use MS Windows, you could also use the WinFace program from
1542 @uref{http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/}.
1543 Now you only have to tell Gnus to include the X-face in your postings by saying
1546 (setq message-default-headers
1549 (insert-file-contents "~/.xemacs/xface")
1557 @subsubheading Question 5.9
1559 Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in
1560 newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in
1563 @subsubheading Answer
1565 Put this in ~/.gnus.el:
1568 (setq gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news t)
1572 if you already use Gnus 5.10, if you still use 5.8.8 or
1573 5.9 try this instead:
1576 (eval-after-load "gnus-msg"
1577 '(unless (boundp 'gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news)
1578 (defadvice gnus-summary-reply (around reply-in-news activate)
1579 "Request confirmation when replying to news."
1581 (when (or (not (gnus-news-group-p gnus-newsgroup-name))
1582 (y-or-n-p "Really reply by mail to article author? "))
1588 @subsubheading Question 5.10
1590 How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
1592 @subsubheading Answer
1594 Since 5.10 Gnus doesn't generate a sender header by
1595 default. For older Gnus' try this in ~/.gnus.el:
1598 (eval-after-load "message"
1599 '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
1604 @subsubheading Question 5.11
1606 I want Gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and
1609 @subsubheading Answer
1611 You must set the variable gnus-message-archive-group to do
1612 this. You can set it to a string giving the name of the
1613 group where the copies shall go or like in the example
1614 below use a function which is evaluated and which returns
1618 (setq gnus-message-archive-group
1619 '((if (message-news-p)
1626 @subsubheading Question 5.12
1628 People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why
1629 aren't they and how to fix it?
1631 @subsubheading Answer
1633 The message-ID is an unique identifier for messages you
1634 send. To make it unique, Gnus need to know which machine
1635 name to put after the "@@". If the name of the machine
1636 where Gnus is running isn't suitable (it probably isn't
1637 at most private machines) you can tell Gnus what to use
1641 (setq message-user-fqdn "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld")
1645 in ~/.gnus.el. If you use Gnus 5.9 or ealier, you can use this
1646 instead (works for newer versions a well):
1649 (eval-after-load "message"
1650 '(let ((fqdn "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld"));; <-- Edit this!
1651 (if (boundp 'message-user-fqdn)
1652 (setq message-user-fqdn fqdn)
1653 (gnus-message 1 "Redefining `message-make-fqdn'.")
1654 (defun message-make-fqdn ()
1655 "Return user's fully qualified domain name."
1660 If you have no idea what to insert for
1661 "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld", you've got several
1662 choices. You can either ask your provider if he allows
1663 you to use something like
1664 yourUserName.userfqdn.provider.net, or you can use
1665 somethingUnique.yourdomain.tld if you own the domain
1666 yourdomain.tld, or you can register at a service which
1667 gives private users a FQDN for free, e.g.
1668 @uref{http://www.stura.tu-freiberg.de/~dlx/addfqdn.html}.
1669 (Sorry but this website is in German, if you know of an
1670 English one offering the same, drop me a note).
1672 Finally you can tell Gnus not to generate a Message-ID
1673 for News at all (and letting the server do the job) by saying
1676 (setq message-required-news-headers
1677 (remove' Message-ID message-required-news-headers))
1681 you can also tell Gnus not to generate Message-IDs for mail by saying
1684 (setq message-required-mail-headers
1685 (remove' Message-ID message-required-mail-headers))
1689 , however some mail servers don't generate proper
1690 Message-IDs, too, so test if your Mail Server behaves
1691 correctly by sending yourself a Mail and looking at the Message-ID.
1693 @node FAQ 6 - Old messages
1694 @subsection Old messages
1697 * [6.1]:: How to import my old mail into Gnus?
1698 * [6.2]:: How to archive interesting messages?
1699 * [6.3]:: How to search for a specific message?
1700 * [6.4]:: How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
1701 * [6.5]:: I want that all read messages are expired (at least in some
1702 groups). How to do it?
1703 * [6.6]:: I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them
1708 @subsubheading Question 6.1
1710 How to import my old mail into Gnus?
1712 @subsubheading Answer
1714 The easiest way is to tell your old mail program to
1715 export the messages in mbox format. Most Unix mailers
1716 are able to do this, if you come from the MS Windows
1717 world, you may find tools at
1718 @uref{http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/}.
1720 Now you've got to import this mbox file into Gnus. To do
1721 this, create a nndoc group based on the mbox file by
1722 saying @samp{G f /path/file.mbox RET} in
1723 Group buffer. You now have read-only access to your
1724 mail. If you want to import the messages to your normal
1725 Gnus mail groups hierarchy, enter the nndoc group you've
1726 just created by saying @samp{C-u RET}
1727 (thus making sure all messages are retrieved), mark all
1728 messages by saying @samp{M P b} and
1729 either copy them to the desired group by saying
1730 @samp{B c name.of.group RET} or send them
1731 through nnmail-split-methods (respool them) by saying
1735 @subsubheading Question 6.2
1737 How to archive interesting messages?
1739 @subsubheading Answer
1741 If you stumble across an interesting message, say in
1742 gnu.emacs.gnus and want to archive it there are several
1743 solutions. The first and easiest is to save it to a file
1744 by saying @samp{O f}. However, wouldn't
1745 it be much more convenient to have more direct access to
1746 the archived message from Gnus? If you say yes, put this
1747 snippet by Frank Haun <pille3003@@fhaun.de> in
1751 (defun my-archive-article (&optional n)
1752 "Copies one or more article(s) to a corresponding `nnml:' group, e.g.
1753 `gnus.ding' goes to `nnml:1.gnus.ding'. And `nnml:List-gnus.ding' goes
1754 to `nnml:1.List-gnus-ding'.
1756 Use process marks or mark a region in the summary buffer to archive
1757 more then one article."
1762 (if (featurep 'xemacs)
1763 (replace-in-string gnus-newsgroup-name "^.*:" "")
1764 (replace-regexp-in-string "^.*:" "" gnus-newsgroup-name)))))
1765 (gnus-summary-copy-article n archive-name)))
1769 You can now say @samp{M-x
1770 my-archive-article} in summary buffer to
1771 archive the article under the cursor in a nnml
1772 group. (Change nnml to your preferred back end)
1774 Of course you can also make sure the cache is enabled by saying
1777 (setq gnus-use-cache t)
1781 then you only have to set either the tick or the dormant
1782 mark for articles you want to keep, setting the read
1783 mark will remove them from cache.
1786 @subsubheading Question 6.3
1788 How to search for a specific message?
1790 @subsubheading Answer
1792 There are several ways for this, too. For a posting from
1793 a Usenet group the easiest solution is probably to ask
1794 @uref{http://groups.google.com, groups.google.com},
1795 if you found the posting there, tell Google to display
1796 the raw message, look for the message-id, and say
1797 @samp{M-^ the@@message.id RET} in a
1799 Since Gnus 5.10 there's also a Gnus interface for
1800 groups.google.com which you can call with
1801 @samp{G W}) in group buffer.
1803 Another idea which works for both mail and news groups
1804 is to enter the group where the message you are
1805 searching is and use the standard Emacs search
1806 @samp{C-s}, it's smart enough to look at
1807 articles in collapsed threads, too. If you want to
1808 search bodies, too try @samp{M-s}
1809 instead. Further on there are the
1810 gnus-summary-limit-to-foo functions, which can help you,
1813 Of course you can also use grep to search through your
1814 local mail, but this is both slow for big archives and
1815 inconvenient since you are not displaying the found mail
1816 in Gnus. Here comes nnir into action. Nnir is a front end
1817 to search engines like swish-e or swish++ and
1818 others. You index your mail with one of those search
1819 engines and with the help of nnir you can search trough
1820 the indexed mail and generate a temporary group with all
1821 messages which met your search criteria. If this sound
1822 cool to you get nnir.el from
1823 @uref{ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/}
1824 or @uref{ftp://ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/}.
1825 Instructions on how to use it are at the top of the file.
1828 @subsubheading Question 6.4
1830 How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
1832 @subsubheading Answer
1834 You can of course just mark the mail you don't need
1835 anymore by saying @samp{#} with point
1836 over the mail and then say @samp{B DEL}
1837 to get rid of them forever. You could also instead of
1838 actually deleting them, send them to a junk-group by
1839 saying @samp{B m nnml:trash-bin} which
1840 you clear from time to time, but both are not the intended
1843 In Gnus, we let mail expire like news expires on a news
1844 server. That means you tell Gnus the message is
1845 expirable (you tell Gnus "I don't need this mail
1846 anymore") by saying @samp{E} with point
1847 over the mail in summary buffer. Now when you leave the
1848 group, Gnus looks at all messages which you marked as
1849 expirable before and if they are old enough (default is
1850 older than a week) they are deleted.
1853 @subsubheading Question 6.5
1855 I want that all read messages are expired (at least in
1856 some groups). How to do it?
1858 @subsubheading Answer
1860 If you want all read messages to be expired (e.g. in
1861 mailing lists where there's an online archive), you've
1862 got two choices: auto-expire and
1863 total-expire. Auto-expire means, that every article
1864 which has no marks set and is selected for reading is
1865 marked as expirable, Gnus hits @samp{E}
1866 for you every time you read a message. Total-expire
1867 follows a slightly different approach, here all article
1868 where the read mark is set are expirable.
1870 To activate auto-expire, include auto-expire in the
1871 Group parameters for the group. (Hit @samp{G
1872 c} in summary buffer with point over the
1873 group to change group parameters). For total-expire add
1874 total-expire to the group-parameters.
1876 Which method you choose is merely a matter of taste:
1877 Auto-expire is faster, but it doesn't play together with
1878 Adaptive Scoring, so if you want to use this feature,
1879 you should use total-expire.
1881 If you want a message to be excluded from expiration in
1882 a group where total or auto expire is active, set either
1883 tick (hit @samp{u}) or dormant mark (hit
1884 @samp{u}), when you use auto-expire, you
1885 can also set the read mark (hit
1889 @subsubheading Question 6.6
1891 I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them
1894 @subsubheading Answer
1896 Say something like this in ~/.gnus.el:
1899 (setq nnmail-expiry-target "nnml:expired")
1903 (If you want to change the value of nnmail-expiry-target
1904 on a per group basis see the question "How can I disable
1905 threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set other
1906 variables specific for some groups?")
1908 @node FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment
1909 @subsection Gnus in a dial-up environment
1912 * [7.1]:: I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I
1913 minimize the time I've got to be connected?
1914 * [7.2]:: So what was this thing about the Agent?
1915 * [7.3]:: I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it?
1916 * [7.4]:: How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings while
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://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/software/getmail-3.0/, 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 e.g. 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 * [8.1]:: How to find information and help inside Emacs?
2055 * [8.2]:: I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g.
2056 attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
2057 * [8.3]:: Which websites should I know?
2058 * [8.4]:: Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
2059 * [8.5]:: Where to report bugs?
2060 * [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
2090 for message, emacs-mime, sieve and pgg. Those packages
2091 are distributed with Gnus and used by Gnus but aren't
2092 really part of core Gnus, so they are documented in
2093 different info files, you should have a look in those
2097 @subsubheading Question 8.3
2099 Which websites should I know?
2101 @subsubheading Answer
2103 The two most important ones are the
2104 @uref{http://www.gnus.org, official Gnus website}.
2105 and it's sister site
2106 @uref{http://my.gnus.org, my.gnus.org (MGO)},
2107 hosting an archive of lisp snippets, howtos, a (not
2108 really finished) tutorial and this FAQ.
2110 Tell me about other sites which are interesting.
2113 @subsubheading Question 8.4
2115 Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
2117 @subsubheading Answer
2119 There's the newsgroup gnu.emacs.gnus (pull it from
2120 e.g. news.gnus.org) which deals with general questions and the
2121 ding mailing list (ding@@gnus.org) dealing with development of
2122 Gnus. You can read the ding list via NNTP, too under the name
2123 gmane.emacs.gnus.general from news.gmane.org.
2125 If you want to stay in the big8,
2126 news.software.newssreaders is also read by some Gnus
2127 users (but chances for qualified help are much better in
2128 the above groups) and if you speak German, there's
2129 de.comm.software.gnus.
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.my.gnus.org channel
2152 #mygnus. Don't be afraid if people there speak German,
2153 they are willing and capable of switching to
2154 English when people from outside Germany enter.
2156 @node FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus
2157 @subsection Tuning Gnus
2160 * [9.1]:: Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
2161 * [9.2]:: How to speed up the process of entering a group?
2162 * [9.3]:: Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
2166 @subsubheading Question 9.1
2168 Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
2170 @subsubheading Answer
2172 The reason for this could be the way Gnus reads it's
2173 active file, see the node "The Active File" in the Gnus
2174 manual for things you might try to speed the process up.
2175 An other idea would be to byte compile your ~/.gnus.el (say
2176 @samp{M-x byte-compile-file RET ~/.gnus.el
2177 RET} to do it). Finally, if you have require
2178 statements in your .gnus, you could replace them with
2179 eval-after-load, which loads the stuff not at startup
2180 time, but when it's needed. Say you've got this in your
2185 (add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled))
2189 then as soon as you start Gnus, message.el is loaded. If
2193 (eval-after-load "message"
2194 '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
2198 it's loaded when it's needed.
2201 @subsubheading Question 9.2
2203 How to speed up the process of entering a group?
2205 @subsubheading Answer
2207 A speed killer is setting the variable
2208 gnus-fetch-old-headers to anything different from nil,
2209 so don't do this if speed is an issue. To speed up
2210 building of summary say
2217 at the bottom of your ~/.gnus.el, this will make gnus
2218 byte-compile things like
2219 gnus-summary-line-format.
2220 then you could increase the value of gc-cons-threshold
2221 by saying something like
2224 (setq gc-cons-threshold 3500000)
2228 in ~/.emacs. If you don't care about width of CJK
2229 characters or use Gnus 5.10 or younger together with a
2230 recent GNU Emacs, you should say
2233 (setq gnus-use-correct-string-widths nil)
2237 in ~/.gnus.el (thanks to Jesper harder for the last
2238 two suggestions). Finally if you are still using 5.8.8
2239 or 5.9 and experience speed problems with summary
2240 buffer generation, you definitely should update to
2241 5.10 since there quite some work on improving it has
2245 @subsubheading Question 9.3
2247 Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
2249 @subsubheading Answer
2251 The reason could be that you told Gnus to archive the
2252 messages you wrote by setting
2253 gnus-message-archive-group. Try to use a nnml group
2254 instead of an archive group, this should bring you back
2257 @node FAQ - Glossary
2258 @subsection Glossary
2263 When the term ~/.gnus.el is used it just means your Gnus
2264 configuration file. You might as well call it ~/.gnus or
2265 specify another name.
2268 In Gnus terminology a back end is a virtual server, a layer
2269 between core Gnus and the real NNTP-, POP3-, IMAP- or
2270 whatever-server which offers Gnus a standardized interface
2271 to functions like "get message", "get Headers" etc.
2274 When the term Emacs is used in this FAQ, it means either GNU
2278 In this FAQ message means a either a mail or a posting to a
2279 Usenet Newsgroup or to some other fancy back end, no matter
2280 of which kind it is.
2283 MUA is an acronym for Mail User Agent, it's the program you
2284 use to read and write e-mails.
2287 NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you
2288 use to read and write Usenet news.
2293 arch-tag: 64dc5692-edb4-4848-a965-7aa0181acbb8