New, the Gnus FAQ from http://my.gnus.org/FAQ.

[gnus] / texi / gnus-faq.texi

\input texinfo                  @c -*-texinfo-*-\input texinfo

@setfilename gnus-faq.info
@settitle The Gnus FAQ.
@dircategory Emacs
@direntry
* Frequently Asked Questions: (gnus-faq).   The new FAQ for Gnus.
@end direntry


@node Top, Introduction, , (dir)
@top Frequently Asked Questions
@chapheading Abstract

 This is the new Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.
 If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at
 @uref{http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/,http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/},
 the Docbook source is available from
 @uref{http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnus/,http://sourceforge.net}.
 

 Please submit features and suggestions to the 
 @uref{mailto:faq-discuss@@my.gnus.org,FAQ discussion list}.
 The list is protected against junk mail with
 @uref{http://smarden.org/qconfirm/index.html,qconfirm}. As
 a subscriber, your submissions will automatically pass. You can
 also subscribe to the list by sending a blank email to
 @uref{mailto:faq-discuss-subscribe@@my.gnus.org,faq-discuss-subscribe@@my.gnus.org}
 and @uref{http://mail1.kens.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-browse?command=monthbythread%26list=faq-discuss,browse  the archive}. 
 
 

@menu
* Introduction::                                About Gnus and this FAQ.
* Frequently Asked Questions with Answers::     This is what you are probably after.
* Glossary::                                    Terms used in the FAQ explained.

@detailmenu
 --- The Detailed Node Listing ---

Frequently Asked Questions with Answers

* [1] Installation FAQ::                    Installation of Gnus.
* [2] Startup / Group buffer::              Start up questions and the first buffer Gnus shows you.
* [3] Getting messages::                    Making Gnus read your mail and news.
* [4] Reading messages::                    How to efficiently read messages.
* [5] Composing messages::                  Composing mails or Usenet postings.
* [6] Old messages::                        Importing, archiving, searching and deleting messages.
* [7] Gnus in a dial-up environment::       Reading mail and news while offline.
* [8] Getting help::                        When this FAQ isn't enough.
* [9] Tuning Gnus::                         How to make Gnus faster.

@end detailmenu
@end menu

@node Introduction, Frequently Asked Questions with Answers, Top, Top
@chapter Introduction

This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.

Gnus is a Usenet Newsreader and Electronic Mail User Agent implemented
 as a part of Emacs. It's been around in some form for almost a decade
 now, and has been distributed as a standard part of Emacs for much of
 that time. Gnus 5 is the latest (and greatest) incarnation. The
 original version was called GNUS, and was written by Masanobu UMEDA.
 When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen grew bored and
 decided to rewrite Gnus.

 Its biggest strength is the fact that it is extremely
 customizable. It is somewhat intimidating at first glance, but
 most of the complexity can be ignored until you're ready to take
 advantage of it. If you receive a reasonable volume of e-mail
 (you're on various mailing lists), or you would like to read
 high-volume mailing lists but cannot keep up with them, or read
 high volume newsgroups or are just bored, then Gnus is what you
 want.

 This FAQ was maintained by Justin Sheehy until March 2002. He
 would like to thank Steve Baur and Per Abrahamsen for doing a wonderful
 job with this FAQ before him. We would like to do the same - thanks,
 Justin!
 

 If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at:
 @uref{http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/,http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/}.
 This version is much nicer than the unofficial hypertext
 versions that are archived at Utrecht, Oxford, Smart Pages, Ohio
 State, and other FAQ archives. See the resources question below
 if you want information on obtaining it in another format.
 

 The information contained here was compiled with the assistance
 of the Gnus development mailing list, and any errors or
 misprints are the my.gnus.org team's fault, sorry.
 

@node Frequently Asked Questions with Answers, Glossary, Introduction, Top
@chapter Frequently Asked Questions with Answers

@menu
* [1] Installation FAQ::                    Installation of Gnus.
* [2] Startup / Group buffer::              Start up questions and the first buffer Gnus shows you.
* [3] Getting messages::                    Making Gnus read your mail and news.
* [4] Reading messages::                    How to efficiently read messages.
* [5] Composing messages::                  Composing mails or Usenet postings.
* [6] Old messages::                        Importing, archiving, searching and deleting messages.
* [7] Gnus in a dial-up environment::       Reading mail and news while offline.
* [8] Getting help::                        When this FAQ isn't enough.
* [9] Tuning Gnus::                         How to make Gnus faster.
@end menu

@node [1] Installation FAQ
@section [1] Installation FAQ

@menu
* [1.1]:: What is the latest version of Gnus?
* [1.2]:: What's new in 5.10.0?
* [1.3]:: Where and how to get Gnus?
* [1.4]:: What to do with the tarball now? 
* [1.5]:: Which version of Emacs do I need?
* [1.6]:: How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
@end menu


@node [1.1]
@subsection [1.1]
Question 1.1: 

What is the latest version of Gnus?

Answer: 

 Jingle please: Gnus 5.10.0 is released, get it while it's
 hot! As well as the step in version number is rather
 small, Gnus 5.10 has tons of new features which you
 shouldn't miss, however if you are cautious, you might
 prefer to stay with 5.8.8 respectively 5.9 (they are
 basically the same) until some bugfix releases are out.
 
@node [1.2]
@subsection [1.2]
Question 1.2: 

What's new in 5.10.0?

Answer: 

 First of all, you should have a look into the file
 GNUS-NEWS in the toplevel directory of the Gnus tarball,
 there the most important changes are listed. Here's a
 short list of the changes I find especially
 important/interesting:
 

 

@itemize @bullet{}

@item
 Major rewrite of the Gnus agent, Gnus agent is now
 active by default.
 

 Many new article washing functions for dealing with
 ugly formatted articles.
 

 Anti Spam features.
 

 message-utils now included in Gnus.
 

 New format specifiers for summary lines, e.g. %B for
 a complex trn-style thread tree.
 
@end itemize
 
@node [1.3]
@subsection [1.3]
Question 1.3: 

Where and how to get Gnus?

Answer: 

 The latest released version of Gnus isn't included in
 Emacs 21 and until now it also isn't available through the
 package system of XEmacs 21.4, therefor you should get the
 Gnus tarball from
 @uref{http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz,http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz}
 or via anonymous FTP from 
 @uref{ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz,ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz}.
 
@node [1.4]
@subsection [1.4]
Question 1.4: 

 What to do with the tarball now?
 

Answer: 

 Untar it via @samp{tar xvzf gnus.tar.gz} and do the common 
 @samp{./configure; make; make install} circle.
 (under MS-Windows either get the Cygwin environment from
 @uref{http://www.cygwin.com,http://www.cygwin.com}
 which allows you to do what's described above or unpack the
 tarball with some packer (e.g. Winace from
 @uref{http://www.winace.com,http://www.winace.com})
 and use the batch-file make.bat included in the tarball to install
 Gnus. If you don't want to (or aren't allowed to) install Gnus
 system-wide, you can install it in your home directory and add the
 following lines to your ~/.xemacs/init.el or ~/.emacs:
 

@example

(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/gnus/lisp")
(if (featurep 'xemacs)
    (add-to-list 'Info-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/")
  (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/"))
            
@end example

@noindent
 Make sure that you don't have any gnus related stuff
 before this line, on MS Windows use something like
 "C:/path/to/lisp" (yes, "/").
 
@node [1.5]
@subsection [1.5]
Question 1.5: 

Which version of Emacs do I need?

Answer: 

 Gnus 5.10.0 requires an Emacs version that is greater
 than or equal to Emacs 20.3 or XEmacs 20.1.
 
@node [1.6]
@subsection [1.6]
Question 1.6: 

How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?

Answer: 

 You can't use the same copy of Gnus in both as the Lisp
 files are byte-compiled to a format which is different
 depending on which Emacs did the compilation. Get one copy
 of Gnus for Emacs and one for XEmacs.
 
@node [2] Startup / Group buffer
@section [2] Startup / Group buffer

@menu
* [2.1]:: Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean and how to prevent it? 
* [2.2]:: Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to, what's this? 
* [2.3]:: How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer? 
* [2.4]:: My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse through them? 
* [2.5]:: How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to sort the groups in a topic? 
@end menu

@node [2.1]
@subsection [2.1]
Question 2.1: 

 Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save
 file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean
 and how to prevent it?
 

Answer: 

 This message means that the last time you used Gnus, it
 wasn't properly exited and therefor couldn't write its
 informations to disk (e.g. which messages you read), you
 are now asked if you want to restore those informations
 from the auto-save file.
 

 To prevent this message make sure you exit Gnus
 via @samp{q} in group buffer instead of
 just killing Emacs.
 
@node [2.2]
@subsection [2.2]
Question: 2.2 

 Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to,
 what's this?
 

Answer: 

 You get the message described in the q/a pair above while
 starting Gnus, right? It's an other symptom for the same
 problem, so read the answer above.
 
@node [2.3]
@subsection [2.3]
Question 2.3: 

 How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
 

Answer: 

 You've got to tweak the value of the variable
 gnus-group-line-format. See the manual node "Group Line
 Specification" for information on how to do this. An
 example for this (guess from whose .gnus :-)):
 

@example

(setq gnus-group-line-format "%P%M%S[%5t]%5y : %(%g%)\n")
            
@end example
 
@node [2.4]
@subsection [2.4]
Question 2.4: 

 My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to
 sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse
 through them?
 

Answer: 

 Gnus offers the topic mode, it allows you to sort your
 groups in, well, topics, e.g. all groups dealing with
 Linux under the topic linux, all dealing with music under
 the topic music and all dealing with scottish music under
 the topic scottish which is a subtopic of music.
 

 To enter topic mode, just hit t while in Group buffer. Now
 you can use @samp{T n} to create a topic
 at point and @samp{T m} to move a group to
 a specific topic. For more commands see the manual or the
 menu. You might want to include the %P specifier at the
 beginning of your gnus-group-line-format variable to have
 the groups nicely indented.
 
@node [2.5]
@subsection [2.5]
Question 2.5: 

 How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to
 sort the groups in a topic?
 

Answer: 

 Move point over the group you want to move and
 hit @samp{C-k}, now move point to the
 place where you want the group to be and
 hit @samp{C-y}.
 
@node [3] Getting messages
@section [3] Getting messages

@menu
* [3.1]:: I just installed Gnus, started it via M-x gnus but it only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do? 
* [3.2]:: I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means. 
* [3.3]:: My news server requires authentication, how to store user name and password on disk? 
* [3.4]:: Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to subscribe to a group. 
* [3.5]:: Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed to post on this server as well as I am, what's that?
* [3.6]:: I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible? 
* [3.7]:: And how about local spool files? 
* [3.8]:: OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it? 
* [3.9]:: And what about IMAP? 
* [3.10]:: At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use Gnus to read my mail from it? 
* [3.11]:: Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it retrieves via POP3? 
@end menu

@node [3.1]
@subsection [3.1]
Question 3.1: 

 I just installed Gnus, started it via 
 @samp{M-x gnus} 
 but it only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
 

Answer: 

 You've got to tell Gnus where to fetch the news from. Read
 the documentation for information on how to do this. As a
 first start, put those lines in ~/.gnus:
 

@example

(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.yourprovider.net"))
(setq user-mail-address "you@@yourprovider.net")
(setq user-full-name "Your Name")
            
@end example
 
@node [3.2]
@subsection [3.2]
Question 3.2: 

 I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.
 

Answer: 

 The ~/ means the home directory where Gnus and Emacs look
 for the configuration files. However, you don't really
 need to know what this means, it suffices that Emacs knows
 what it means :-) You can type 
 @samp{C-x C-f ~/.gnus RET } 
 (yes, with the forward slash, even on Windows), and
 Emacs will open the right file for you. (It will most
 likely be new, and thus empty.)
 However, I'd discourage you from doing so, since the
 directory Emacs chooses will most certainly not be what
 you want, so let's do it the correct way. 
 The first thing you've got to do is to
 create a suitable directory (no blanks in directory name
 please) e.g. c:\myhome. Then you must set the environment
 variable HOME to this directory. To do this under Win9x
 or Me include the line
 

@example

SET HOME=C:\myhome
            
@end example

@noindent
 in your autoexec.bat and reboot. Under NT, 2000 and XP,
 hit Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system options (if it
 doesn't work, go to Control Panel -> System). There you'll
 find the possibility to set environment variables, create
 a new one with name HOME and value C:\myhome, a reboot is
 not necessary.
 

 Now to create ~/.gnus, say
 @samp{C-x C-f ~/.gnus RET C-x C-s}.
 in Emacs. 
 
@node [3.3]
@subsection [3.3]
Question 3.3: 

 My news server requires authentication, how to store
 user name and password on disk?
 

Answer: 

 Create a file ~/.authinfo which includes for each server a line like this
 

@example
machine news.yourprovider.net login YourUserName password YourPassword
@end example

@noindent
.
 Make sure that the file isn't readable to others if you
 work on a OS which is capable of doing so. (Under Unix
 say 

@example
chmod 600 ~/.authinfo
@end example

@noindent
 in a shell.)
 
@node [3.4]
@subsection [3.4]
Question 3.4: 

 Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to
 subscribe to a group.
 

Answer: 

 If you know the name of the group say @samp{U
 name.of.group RET} in group buffer (use the
 tab-completion Luke). Otherwise hit ^ in group buffer,
 this brings you to the server buffer. Now place point (the
 cursor) over the server which carries the group you want,
 hit @samp{RET}, move point to the group
 you want to subscribe to and say @samp{u}
 to subscribe to it.
 
@node [3.5]
@subsection [3.5]
Question 3.5: 

 Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed to
 post on this server as well as I am, what's that?
 

Answer: 

 Some providers allow restricted anonymous access and full
 access only after authorization. To make Gnus send authinfo
 to those servers append 
 

@example
force yes
@end example
 

@noindent
 to the line for those servers in ~/.authinfo.
 
@node [3.6]
@subsection [3.6]
Question 3.6: 

 I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible?
 

Answer: 

 Of course. You can specify more sources for articles in the
 variable gnus-secondary-select-methods. Add something like
 this in ~/.gnus:
 

@example

(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourSecondProvider.net"))
(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourThirdProvider.net"))
            
@end example
 
@node [3.7]
@subsection [3.7]
Question 3.7: 

 And how about local spool files?
 

Answer: 

 No problem, this is just one more select method called
 nnspool, so you want this:
 

@example

(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnspool ""))
            
@end example

@noindent
 Or this if you don't want an NNTP Server as primary news source:
 

@example

(setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
            
@end example

@noindent
 Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you
 want something different, change the line above to something like this:
 

@example

(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
             '(nnspool "" (nnspool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")))
            
@end example

@noindent
 This sets the spool directory for this server only.
 You might have to specify more stuff like the program used
 to post articles, see the Gnus manual on how to do this.
 
@node [3.8]
@subsection [3.8]
Question 3.8: 

 OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail
 with Gnus, too. How to do it?
 

Answer: 

 That's a bit harder since there are many possible sources
 for mail, many possible ways for storing mail and many
 different ways for sending mail. The most common cases are
 these: 1: You want to read your mail from a pop3 server and
 send them directly to a SMTP Server 2: Some program like
 fetchmail retrieves your mail and stores it on disk from
 where Gnus shall read it. Outgoing mail is sent by
 Sendmail, Postfix or some other MTA. Sometimes, you even
 need a combination of the above cases.
 

 However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way
 it should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which back end
 to use. Gnus supports many different back ends, the most
 commonly used one is nnml. It stores every mail in one file
 and is therefor quite fast. However you might prefer a one
 file per group approach if your file system has problems with
 many small files, the nnfolder back end is then probably the
 choice for you. To use nnml add the following to ~/.gnus:
 

@example

(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml ""))
            
@end example

@noindent
 As you might have guessed, if you want nnfolder, it's
 

@example

(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnfolder ""))
            
@end example
 

 Now we need to tell Gnus, where to get it's mail from. If
 it's a POP3 server, then you need something like this:
 

@example

(eval-after-load "mail-source"
  '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net"
                                    :user "yourUserName"
                                    :password "yourPassword"))
            
@end example

@noindent
 Make sure ~/.gnus isn't readable to others if you store
 your password there. If you want to read your mail from a
 traditional spool file on your local machine, it's
 

@example

(eval-after-load "mail-source"
  '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(file :path "/path/to/spool/file"))
            
@end example

@noindent
 If it's a Maildir, with one file per message as used by
 postfix, Qmail and (optionally) fetchmail it's
 

@example

(eval-after-load "mail-source"
  '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(maildir :path "/path/to/Maildir/"
                                        :subdirs ("cur" "new")))
            
@end example

@noindent
 And finally if you want to read your mail from several files
 in one directory, for example because procmail already split your
 mail, it's
 

@example

(eval-after-load "mail-source"
  '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(directory :path "/path/to/procmail-dir/"
                                          :suffix ".prcml"))
            
@end example

@noindent
 Where :suffix ".prcml" tells Gnus only to use files with the
 suffix .prcml.
 

 OK, now you only need to tell Gnus how to send mail. If you
 want to send mail via sendmail (or whichever MTA is playing
 the role of sendmail on your system), you don't need to do
 anything. However, if you want to send your mail to an
 SMTP Server you need the following in your ~/.gnus
 

@example

(setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
(setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
(setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.yourProvider.net")
            
@end example
 
@node [3.9]
@subsection [3.9]
Question 3.9: 

 And what about IMAP?
 

Answer: 

 There are two ways of using IMAP with Gnus. The first one is
 to use IMAP like POP3, that means Gnus fetches the mail from
 the IMAP server and stores it on disk. If you want to do
 this (you don't really want to do this) add the following to
 ~/.gnus
 

@example

(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(imap :server "mail.mycorp.com"
                                  :user "username"
                                  :pass "password"
                                  :stream network
                                  :authentication login
                                  :mailbox "INBOX"
                                  :fetchflag "\\Seen"))
            
@end example

@noindent
 You might have to tweak the values for stream and/or
 authentification, see the Gnus manual node "Mail Source
 Specifiers" for possible values.
 

 If you want to use IMAP the way it's intended, you've got to
 follow a different approach. You've got to add the nnimap
 back end to your select method and give the information
 about the server there.
 

@example

(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods 
                         '(nnimap "Give the baby a name"
                                  (nnimap-address "imap.yourProvider.net")
                                  (nnimap-port 143)
                                  (nnimap-list-pattern "archive.*")))
            
@end example

@noindent
 Again, you might have to specify how to authenticate to the
 server if Gnus can't guess the correct way, see the Manual
 Node "IMAP" for detailed information.
 
@node [3.10]
@subsection [3.10]
Question 3.10: 

 At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
 Gnus to read my mail from it?
 

Answer: 

 Offer your administrator a pair of new running shoes for
 activating IMAP on the server and follow the instructions
 above.
 
@node [3.11]
@subsection [3.11]
Question 3.11: 

 Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it
 retrieves via POP3?
 

Answer: 

 First of all, that's not the way POP3 is intended to work,
 if you have the possibility, you should use the IMAP
 Protocol if you want your messages to stay on the
 server. Nevertheless there might be situations where you
 need the feature, but sadly Gnus itself has no predefined
 functionality to do so.
 

 However this is Gnus county so there are possibilities to
 achieve what you want. The easiest way is to get an external
 program which retrieves copies of the mail and stores them
 on disk, so Gnus can read it from there. On Unix systems you
 could use e.g. fetchmail for this, on MS Windows you can use
 Hamster, an excellent local news and mail server.
 

 The other solution would be, to replace the method Gnus
 uses to get mail from POP3 servers by one which is capable
 of leaving the mail on the server. If you use XEmacs, get
 the package mail-lib, it includes an enhanced pop3.el,
 look in the file, there's documentation on how to tell
 Gnus to use it and not to delete the retrieved mail. For
 GNU Emacs look for the file epop3.el which can do the same
 (If you know the home of this file, please send me an
 e-mail). You can also tell Gnus to use an external program
 (e.g. fetchmail) to fetch your mail, see the info node
 "Mail Source Specifiers" in the Gnus manual on how to do
 it.
 

@node [4] Reading messages
@section [4] Reading messages

@menu
* [4.1]:: When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them again? 
* [4.2]:: How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I enter a group, even when it's read? 
* [4.3]:: How to view the headers of a message? 
* [4.4]:: How to view the raw unformatted message? 
* [4.5]:: How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at the top of the article buffer? 
* [4.6]:: I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if it's available. How to do it? 
* [4.7]:: Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails? 
* [4.8]:: Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails more readable? 
* [4.9]:: Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I highlight more interesting ones in some way? 
* [4.10]:: How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set other variables specific for some groups? 
* [4.11]:: Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those? 
* [4.12]:: The number of total messages in a group which Gnus displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in mail groups. Is this a bug? 
* [4.13]:: I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display? 
* [4.14]:: I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it? 
* [4.15]:: How to split incoming mails in several groups? 
@end menu

@node [4.1]
@subsection [4.1]
Question 4.1: 

 When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them again?
 

Answer: 

 If you enter the group by saying 
 @samp{RET}
 in summary buffer with point over the group, only unread and ticked messages are loaded. Say
 @samp{C-u RET}
 instead to load all available messages. If you want only the e.g. 300 newest say
 @samp{C-u 300 RET}
 

 Loading only unread messages can be annoying if you have threaded view enabled, say
 

@example

(setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 'some)
              
@end example
 

@noindent
 in ~/.gnus to load enough old articles to prevent teared threads, replace 'some with t to load
 all articles (Warning: Both settings enlarge the amount of data which is 
 fetched when you enter a group and slow down the process of entering a group).
 

 If you already use Gnus 5.10.0, you can say 
 @samp{/o N} 
 In summary buffer to load the last N messages, this feature is not available in 5.8.8
 

 If you don't want all old messages, but the parent of the message you're just reading,
 you can say @samp{^}, if you want to retrieve the whole thread
 the message you're just reading belongs to, @samp{A T} is your friend.
 
@node [4.2]
@subsection [4.2]
Question 4.2: 

 How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I
 enter a group, even when it's read?
 

Answer: 

 You can tick important messages. To do this hit
 @samp{u} while point is in summary buffer
 over the message. When you want to remove the mark, hit
 either @samp{d} (this deletes the tick
 mark and set's unread mark) or @samp{M c}
 (which deletes all marks for the message).
 
@node [4.3]
@subsection [4.3]
Question 4.3: 

 How to view the headers of a message?
 

Answer: 

 Say @samp{t} 
 to show all headers, one more
 @samp{t} 
 hides them again.
 
@node [4.4]
@subsection [4.4]
Question 4.4: 

 How to view the raw unformatted message?
 

Answer: 

 Say 
 @samp{C-u g} 
 to show the raw message
 @samp{g} 
 returns to normal view.
 
@node [4.5]
@subsection [4.5]
Question 4.5: 

 How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at
 the top of the article buffer?
 

Answer: 

 The variable gnus-visible-headers controls which headers
 are shown, its value is a regular expression, header lines
 which match it are shown. So if you want author, subject,
 date, and if the header exists, Followup-To and MUA / NUA
 say this in ~/.gnus:
 

@example

(setq gnus-visible-headers 
"^\\(From:\\|Subject:\\|Date:\\|Followup-To:\\|X-Newsreader:\\|User-Agent:\\|X-Mailer:\\)")
            
@end example
 
@node [4.6]
@subsection [4.6]
Question 4.6: 

 I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the
 text part if it's available. How to do it?
 

Answer: 

 Say
 

@example

(eval-after-load "mm-decode"
 '(progn 
      (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
      (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext")))
            
@end example

@noindent
 in ~/.gnus. If you don't want HTML rendered, even if there's no text alternative add
 

@example

(setq mm-automatic-display (remove "text/html" mm-automatic-display))
            
@end example

@noindent
 too.
 
@node [4.7]
@subsection [4.7]
Question 4.7: 

 Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails?
 

Answer: 

 Only if you use Gnus 5.10.0 or younger. In this case you've got the
 choice between w3, w3m, links, lynx and html2text, which
 one is used can be specified in the variable
 mm-text-html-renderer, so if you want links to render your
 mail say
 

@example

(setq mm-text-html-renderer 'links)
            
@end example
 
@node [4.8]
@subsection [4.8]
Question 4.8: 

 Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails
 more readable?
 

Answer: 

 Gnus offers you several functions to "wash" incoming mail,
 you can find them if you browse through the menu, item Article->Washing. The most
 interesting ones are probably "Wrap long lines" (
 @samp{W w}
 ), "Decode ROT13" (
 @samp{W r}
 ) and "Outlook Deuglify" which repairs the dumb quoting used
 by many users of Microsoft products (
 @samp{W Y f} gives you full deuglify.
 See @samp{W Y C-h} or
 have a look at the menus for other deuglifications).
 Outlook deuglify is only available since Gnus 5.10.0.
 
@node [4.9]
@subsection [4.9]
Question 4.9: 

 Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific
 authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I
 highlight more interesting ones in some way?
 

Answer: 

 You want Scoring. Scoring means, that you define rules
 which assign each message an integer value. Depending on
 the value the message is highlighted in summary buffer (if
 it's high, say +2000) or automatically marked read (if the
 value is low, say -800) or some other action happens.
 

 There are basically three ways of setting up rules which assign
 the scoring-value to messages. The first and easiest way is to set
 up rules based on the article you are just reading. Say you're
 reading a message by a guy who always writes nonsense and you want
 to ignore his messages in the future. Hit
 @samp{L}, to set up a rule which lowers the score.
 Now Gnus asks you which the criteria for lowering the Score shall
 be. Hit @samp{?} twice to see all possibilities,
 we want @samp{a} which means the author (the from
 header). Now Gnus wants to know which kind of matching we want.
 Hit either @samp{e} for an exact match or
 @samp{s} for substring-match and delete afterwards
 everything but the name to score down all authors with the given
 name no matter which email address is used. Now you need to tell
 Gnus when to apply the rule and how long it should last, hit e.g.
 @samp{p} to apply the rule now and let it last
 forever. If you want to raise the score instead of lowering it say
 @samp{I} instead of @samp{L}.
 

 You can also set up rules by hand. To do this say @samp{V
 f} in summary buffer. Then you are asked for the name
 of the score file, it's name.of.group.SCORE for rules valid in
 only one group or all.Score for rules valid in all groups. See the
 Gnus manual for the exact syntax, basically it's one big list
 whose elements are lists again. the first element of those lists
 is the header to score on, then one more list with what to match,
 which score to assign, when to expire the rule and how to do the
 matching. If you find me very interesting, you could e.g. add the
 following to your all.Score:
 

@example

(("references" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 500 nil s))
 ("message-id" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 999 nil s)))
            
@end example

@noindent
 This would add 999 to the score of messages written by me
 and 500 to the score of messages which are a (possibly
 indirect) answer to a message written by me. Of course
 nobody with a sane mind would do this :-)
 

 The third alternative is adaptive scoring. This means Gnus
 watches you and tries to find out what you find
 interesting and what annoying and sets up rules
 which reflect this. Adaptive scoring can be a huge help
 when reading high traffic groups. If you want to activate
 adaptive scoring say
 

@example

(setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t)
            
@end example

@noindent
 in ~/.gnus.
 
@node [4.10]
@subsection [4.10]
Question 4.10: 

 How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or
 set other variables specific for some groups?
 

Answer: 

 While in group buffer move point over the group and hit
 @samp{G c}, this opens a buffer where you
 can set options for the group. At the bottom of the buffer
 you'll find an item that allows you to set variables
 locally for the group. To disable threading enter
 gnus-show-threads as name of variable and nil as
 value. Hit button done at the top of the buffer when
 you're ready.
 
@node [4.11]
@subsection [4.11]
Question 4.11: 

 Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to
 those?
 

Answer: 

 Stop those "Can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes
 in Gnus Country :-). It's a three step process: First we
 make faces (specifications of how summary-line shall look
 like) for those postings, then we'll give them some
 special score and finally we'll tell Gnus to use the new
 faces. You can find detailed instructions on how to do it on
 @uref{http://my.gnus.org/Members/dzimmerm/HowTo%2C2002-07-25%2C1027619165012198456/view,my.gnus.org}
 
@node [4.12]
@subsection [4.12]
Question 4.12: 

 The number of total messages in a group which Gnus
 displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in
 mail groups. Is this a bug?
 

Answer: 

 No, that's a matter of design of Gnus, fixing this would
 mean reimplementation of major parts of Gnus'
 back ends. Gnus thinks "highest-article-number -
 lowest-article-number = total-number-of-articles". This
 works OK for Usenet groups, but if you delete and move
 many messages in mail groups, this fails. To cure the
 symptom, enter the group via @samp{C-u RET} 
 (this makes Gnus get all messages), then
 hit @samp{M P b} to mark all messages and
 then say @samp{B m name.of.group} to move
 all messages to the group they have been in before, they
 get new message numbers in this process and the count is
 right again (until you delete and move your mail to other
 groups again).
 
@node [4.13]
@subsection [4.13]
Question 4.13: 

 I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how
 to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
 

Answer: 

 You can control the windows configuration by calling the
 function gnus-add-configuration. The syntax is a bit
 complicated but explained very well in the manual node
 "Window Layout". Some popular examples:
 

 Instead 25% summary 75% article buffer 35% summary and 65%
 article (the 1.0 for article means "take the remaining
 space"):
 

@example

(gnus-add-configuration '(article (vertical 1.0 (summary .35 point) (article 1.0))))
            
@end example
 

 A three pane layout, Group buffer on the left, summary
 buffer top-right, article buffer bottom-right:
 

@example

(gnus-add-configuration
 '(article
   (horizontal 1.0
               (vertical 25
                         (group 1.0))
               (vertical 1.0
                         (summary 0.25 point)
                         (article 1.0)))))
(gnus-add-configuration
 '(summary
   (horizontal 1.0
               (vertical 25
                         (group 1.0))
               (vertical 1.0
                         (summary 1.0 point)))))              
            
@end example
 
@node [4.14]
@subsection [4.14]
Question 4.14: 

 I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it?
 

Answer: 

 You've got to play around with the variable
 gnus-summary-line-format. It's value is a string of
 symbols which stand for things like author, date, subject
 etc. A list of the available specifiers can be found in the
 manual node "Summary Buffer Lines" and the often forgotten
 node "Formatting Variables" and it's sub-nodes. There
 you'll find useful things like positioning the cursor and
 tabulators which allow you a summary in table form, but
 sadly hard tabulators are broken in 5.8.8.
 

 Since 5.10.0, Gnus offers you some very nice new specifiers,
 e.g. %B which draws a thread-tree and %&user-date which
 gives you a date where the details are dependent of the
 articles age. Here's an example which uses both:
 

@example

(setq gnus-summary-line-format ":%U%R %B %s %-60=|%4L |%-20,20f |%&user-date; \n")
            
@end example

@noindent
 resulting in:
 

@example

:O     Re: [Richard Stallman] rfc2047.el          |  13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:06
:O     Re: Revival of the ding-patches list       |  13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:12
:R  >  Re: Find correct list of articles for a gro|  25 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:16
:O  \->  ...                                      |  21 |Kai Grossjohann      | 0:01
:R  >  Re: Cry for help: deuglify.el - moving stuf|  28 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:34
:O  \->  ...                                      | 115 |Raymond Scholz       | 1:24
:O    \->  ...                                    |  19 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |15:33
:O     Slow mailing list                          |  13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:49
:O     Re: `@@' mark not documented                |  13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:50
:R  >  Re: Gnus still doesn't count messages prope|  23 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:57
:O  \->  ...                                      |  18 |Kai Grossjohann      | 0:35
:O    \->  ...                                    |  13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt | 0:56
            
@end example
 
@node [4.15]
@subsection [4.15]
Question 4.15: 

 How to split incoming mails in several groups?
 

Answer: 

 Gnus offers two possibilities for splitting mail, the easy
 nnmail-split-methods and the more powerful Fancy Mail
 Splitting. I'll only talk about the first one, refer to
 the manual, node "Fancy Mail Splitting" for the latter.
 

 The value of nnmail-split-methods is a list, each element
 is a list which stands for a splitting rule. Each rule has
 the form "group where matching articles should go to",
 "regular expression which has to be matched", the first
 rule which matches wins. The last rule must always be a
 general rule (regular expression .*) which denotes where
 articles should go which don't match any other rule. If
 the folder doesn't exist yet, it will be created as soon
 as an article lands there. By default the mail will be
 send to all groups whose rules match. If you 
 don't want that (you probably don't want), say
 

@example

(setq nnmail-crosspost nil)
            
@end example

@noindent
 in ~/.gnus.
 

 An example might be better than thousand words, so here's
 my nnmail-split-methods. Note that I send duplicates in a
 special group and that the default group is spam, since I
 filter all mails out which are from some list I'm
 subscribed to or which are addressed directly to me
 before. Those rules kill about 80% of the Spam which
 reaches me (Email addresses are changed to prevent spammers
 from using them):
 

@example

(setq nnmail-split-methods
  '(("duplicates" "^Gnus-Warning:.*duplicate")
    ("XEmacs-NT" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@xemacs.bla.*")
    ("Gnus-Tut" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@socha.bla.*")
    ("tcsh" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@mx.gw.bla.*")
    ("BAfH" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@.*uni-muenchen.bla.*")
    ("Hamster-src" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*hamster-sourcen@@yahoogroups.\\(de\\|com\\).*")
    ("Tagesschau" "^From: tagesschau <localpart@@www.tagesschau.bla>$")
    ("Replies" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@@Frank-Schmitt.bla.*")
    ("EK" "^From:.*\\(localpart@@privateprovider.bla\\|localpart@@workplace.bla\\).*")
    ("Spam" "^Content-Type:.*\\(ks_c_5601-1987\\|EUC-KR\\|big5\\|iso-2022-jp\\).*")
    ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(This really work\\|XINGA\\|ADV:\\|XXX\\|adult\\|sex\\).*")
    ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(\=\?ks_c_5601-1987\?\\|\=\?euc-kr\?\\|\=\?big5\?\\).*")
    ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*BulkMailer.*\\|.*MIME::Lite.*\\|\\)")
    ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*CyberCreek Avalanche\\|.*http\:\/\/GetResponse\.com\\)")
    ("Spam" "^From:.*\\(verizon\.net\\|prontomail\.com\\|money\\|ConsumerDirect\\).*")
    ("Spam" "^Delivered-To: GMX delivery to spamtrap@@gmx.bla$")
    ("Spam" "^Received: from link2buy.com")
    ("Spam" "^CC: .*azzrael@@t-online.bla")
    ("Spam" "^X-Mailer-Version: 1.50 BETA")
    ("Uni" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@@uni-koblenz.bla.*")
    ("Inbox" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*\\(my\ name\\|address@@one.bla\\|adress@@two.bla\\)")
    ("Spam" "")))
              
@end example
 

@node [5] Composing messages
@section [5] Composing messages

@menu
* [5.1]:: What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and postings? 
* [5.2]:: How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages? 
* [5.3]:: How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...? 
* [5.4]:: Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group I post too? 
* [5.5]:: Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking? 
* [5.6]:: Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to? 
* [5.7]:: Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all those email addresses? 
* [5.8]:: Sometimes I see little images at the top of article buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my postings, too? 
* [5.9]:: Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in newsgroups? 
* [5.10]:: How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header? 
* [5.11]:: I want gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and news, how to do it? 
* [5.12]:: People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why aren't they and how to fix it? 
@end menu

@node [5.1]
@subsection [5.1]
Question 5.1: 

 What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and postings?
 

Answer: 

 To start composing a new mail hit @samp{m}
 either in Group or Summary buffer, for a posting, it's
 either @samp{a} in Group buffer and
 filling the Newsgroups header manually
 or @samp{a} in the Summary buffer of the
 group where the posting shall be send to. Replying by mail
 is
 @samp{r} if you don't want to cite the
 author, or import the cited text manually and
 @samp{R} to cite the text of the original
 message. For a follow up to a newsgroup, it's
 @samp{f} and @samp{F}
 (analog to @samp{r} and
 @samp{R}.
 

 Enter new headers above the line saying "--text follows
 this line--", enter the text below the line. When ready
 hit @samp{C-c C-c}, to send the message,
 if you want to finish it later hit @samp{C-c
 C-d} to save it in the drafts group, where you
 can start editing it again by saying @samp{D
 e}.
 
@node [5.2]
@subsection [5.2]
Question 5.2: 

 How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
 

Answer: 

 Say
 

@example

(add-hook 'message-mode-hook
      (lambda ()
           (setq fill-column 72)
           (turn-on-auto-fill)))
            
@end example

@noindent
 in ~/.gnus. You can reformat a paragraph by hitting
 @samp{M-q} (as usual)
 
@node [5.3]
@subsection [5.3]
Question 5.3: 

 How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...?
 

Answer: 

 There are other ways, but you should use posting styles
 for this. (See below why).
 This example should make the syntax clear:
 

@example

(setq gnus-posting-styles
  '((".*"
     (name "Frank Schmitt")
     (address "me@@there.bla")
     (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
     (signature-file "~/.signature")
     ("X-SampleHeader" "foobar")
     (eval (setq some-variable "Foo bar")))))
            
@end example

@noindent
 The ".*" means that this settings are the default ones
 (see below), valid values for the first element of the
 following lists are signature, signature-file,
 organization, address, name or body. The attribute name
 can also be a string. In that case, this will be used as
 a header name, and the value will be inserted in the
 headers of the article; if the value is `nil', the header
 name will be removed. You can also say (eval (foo bar)),
 then the function foo will be evaluated with argument bar
 and the result will be thrown away.
 
@node [5.4]
@subsection [5.4]
Question 5.4: 

 Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group I post too?
 

Answer: 

 That's the strength of posting styles. Before, we used ".*"
 to set the default for all groups. You can use a regexp
 like "^gmane" and the following settings are only applied
 to postings you send to the gmane hierarchy, use
 ".*binaries" instead and they will be applied to postings
 send to groups containing the string binaries in their
 name etc.
 

 You can instead of specifying a regexp specify a function
 which is evaluated, only if it returns true, the
 corresponding settings take effect. Two interesting
 candidates for this are message-news-p which returns t if
 the current Group is a newsgroup and the corresponding
 message-mail-p.
 

 Note that all forms that match are applied, that means in
 the example below, when I post to
 gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general, the settings under
 ".*" are applied and the settings under message-news-p and
 those under "^gmane" and those under
 "^gmane\\.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$". Because
 of this put general settings at the top and specific ones
 at the bottom.
 

@example

(setq gnus-posting-styles
  '((".*"  ;;default
     (name "Frank Schmitt")
     (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
     (signature-file "~/.signature")    )
    ((message-news-p)  ;;Usenet news?
     (address "mySpamTrap@@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
     ("Reply-To" "hereRealRepliesOnlyPlease@@Frank-Schmitt.bla")    )
    ((message-mail-p)  ;;mail?
     (address "usedForMails@@Frank-Schmitt.bla")    )
    ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact
     (address "usedForMails@@Frank-Schmitt.net")
     ("Reply-To" nil)    )
    ("^gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general$"
     (eval (setq mail-envelope-from "Azzrael@@rz-online.de"))
     (address "Azzrael@@rz-online.de")) ))
            
@end example
 
@node [5.5]
@subsection [5.5]
Question 5.5: 

 Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking?
 

Answer: 

 You can use ispell.el to spell-check stuff in Emacs. So the
 first thing to do is to make sure that you've got either
 @uref{http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html,ispell}
 or @uref{http://aspell.sourceforge.net/,aspell}
 installed and in your Path. Then you need 
 @uref{http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html,ispell.el}
 and for on-the-fly spell-checking 
 @uref{http://www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/personnel/Manuel.Serrano/flyspell/flyspell.html,flyspell.el}.
 Ispell.el is shipped with Gnus Emacs and available through the Emacs package system, 
 flyspell.el is shipped with Emacs and part of XEmacs text-modes package which is 
 available through the package system, so there should be no need to install them 
 manually.
 

 Ispell.el assumes you use ispell, if you choose aspell say
 

@example
(setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
@end example
 

@noindent
 in your Emacs configuration file.
 

 If you want your outgoing messages to be spell-checked, say
 

@example
(add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)
@end example

@noindent
 In your ~/.gnus, if you prefer on-the-fly spell-checking say
 

@example
(add-hook 'message-mode-hook (lambda () (flyspell-mode 1)))
@end example
 
@node [5.6]
@subsection [5.6]
Question 5.6: 

 Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to?
 

Answer: 

 Yes, say something like
 

@example

(add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook
          (lambda ()
            (cond
             ((string-match
               "^de\\." (gnus-group-real-name gnus-newsgroup-name))
              (ispell-change-dictionary "deutsch8"))
             (t
              (ispell-change-dictionary "english")))))
            
@end example
 

@noindent
 in ~/.gnus. Change "^de\\." and "deutsch8" to something
 that suits your needs.
 
@node [5.7]
@subsection [5.7]
Question 5.7:

 Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember
 all those email addresses?
 

Answer: 

 There's an very basic solution for this, mail aliases.
 You can store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple
 alias syntax:
 

@example

alias al        "Al <al@@english-heritage.bla>"
            
@end example

@noindent
 Then typing your alias (followed by a space or punctuation
 character) on a To: or Cc: line in the message buffer will
 cause gnus to insert the full address for you. See the
 node "Mail Aliases" in Message (not Gnus) manual for
 details.
 

 However, what you really want is the Insidious Big Brother 
 Database bbdb. Get it through the XEmacs package system or from
 @uref{http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/,bbdb's homepage}.
 Now place the following in ~/.gnus, to activate bbdb for Gnus:
 

@example

(require 'bbdb)
(bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message)
            
@end example

@noindent
 Now you probably want some general bbdb configuration,
 place them in ~/.emacs:
 

@example

(require 'bbdb)
;;If you don't live in Northern America, you should disable the 
;;syntax check for telephone numbers by saying
(setq bbdb-north-american-phone-numbers-p nil)
;;Tell bbdb about your email address:
(setq bbdb-user-mail-names
      (regexp-opt '("Your.Email@@here.bla"
                    "Your.other@@mail.there.bla")))
;;cycling while completing email addresses
(setq bbdb-complete-name-allow-cycling t)
;;No popup-buffers
(setq bbdb-use-pop-up nil)
            
@end example

@noindent
 Now you should be ready to go. Say @samp{M-x bbdb RET
 RET} to open a bbdb buffer showing all
 entries. Say @samp{c} to create a new
 entry, @samp{b} to search your BBDB and
 @samp{C-o} to add a new field to an
 entry. If you want to add a sender to the BBDB you can
 also just hit `:' on the posting in the summary buffer and
 you are done. When you now compose a new mail,
 hit @samp{TAB} to cycle through know
 recipients.
 
@node [5.8]
@subsection [5.8]
Question 5.8: 

 Sometimes I see little images at the top of article
 buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my
 postings, too?
 

Answer: 

 Those images are called X-Faces. They are 48*48 pixel b/w
 pictures, encoded in a header line. If you want to include
 one in your posts, you've got to convert some image to a
 X-Face. So fire up some image manipulation program (say
 Gimp), open the image you want to include, cut out the
 relevant part, reduce color depth to 1 bit, resize to
 48*48 and save as bitmap. Now you should get the compface
 package from 
 @uref{ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/,this site}.
 and create the actual X-face by saying
 

@example

cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon |compface > file.face
cat ./file.face | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g' | sed 's/\"/\\\"/g' > ./file.face.quoted
            
@end example

@noindent
 if you can't use compface, there's an online X-face converter at 
 @uref{http://www.dairiki.org/xface/,http://www.dairiki.org/xface/}.
 If you use MS Windows, you could also use the WinFace program from
 @uref{http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/,http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/}.
 Now you only have to tell Gnus to include the X-face in your postings by saying
 

@example

(setq message-default-headers
        (with-temp-buffer
          (insert "X-Face: ")
          (insert-file-contents "~/.xemacs/xface")
          (buffer-string)))
            
@end example

@noindent
 in ~/.gnus.
 
@node [5.9]
@subsection [5.9]
Question 5.9: 

 Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in
 newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in
 newsgroups?
 

Answer: 

 Put this in ~/.gnus:
 

@example

(setq gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news t)
            
@end example

@noindent
 if you already use Gnus 5.10.0, if you still use 5.8.8 or
 5.9 try this instead:
 

@example

(defadvice gnus-summary-reply (around reply-in-news activate)
       (interactive)
        (when (or (not (gnus-news-group-p gnus-newsgroup-name))
                  (y-or-n-p "Really reply? "))
         ad-do-it))
            
@end example
 
@node [5.10]
@subsection [5.10]
Question 5.10: 

 How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
 

Answer: 

 Since 5.10.0 Gnus doesn't generate a sender header by
 default. For older Gnus' try this in ~/.gnus:
 

@example

(eval-after-load "message"
      '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
            
@end example
 
 
@node [5.11]
@subsection [5.11]
Question 5.11: 

 I want gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and
 news, how to do it?
 

Answer: 

 You must set the variable gnus-message-archive-group to do
 this. You can set it to a string giving the name of the
 group where the copies shall go or like in the example
 below use a function which is evaluated and which returns
 the group to use.
 

@example

(setq gnus-message-archive-group
        '((if (message-news-p)
              "nnml:Send-News"
            "nnml:Send-Mail")))
            
@end example
 
 
@node [5.12]
@subsection [5.12]
Question 5.12: 

 People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why
 aren't they and how to fix it?
 

Answer: 

 The message-ID is an unique identifier for messages you
 send. To make it unique, Gnus need to know which machine
 name to put after the "@@". If the name of the machine
 where Gnus is running isn't suitable (it probably isn't
 at most private machines) you can tell Gnus what to use
 by saying:
 

@example

(defun message-make-message-id()
   (concat "<"(message-unique-id)"@@yourmachine.yourdomain.tld>"))
              
@end example
 

@noindent
 in ~/.gnus. If you have no idea what to insert for
 "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld", you've got several
 choices. You can either ask your provider if he allows
 you to use something like
 yourUserName.userfqdn.provider.net, or you can use
 somethingUnique.yourdomain.tld if you own the domain
 yourdomain.tld, or you can register at a service which
 gives private users a FQDN for free, e.g. 
 @uref{http://www.stura.tu-freiberg.de/~dlx/addfqdn.html,http://www.stura.tu-freiberg.de/~dlx/addfqdn.html}.
 (Sorry but this website is in German, if you know of an
 English one offering the same, drop me a note).
 

 Finally you can tell Gnus not to generate a Message-ID
 for News at all (and letting the server do the job) by saying
 

@example

(setq message-required-news-headers
  (remove' Message-ID message-required-news-headers))
              
@end example

@noindent
 you can also tell Gnus not to generate Message-IDs for mail by saying
 

@example

(setq message-required-mail-headers
  (remove' Message-ID message-required-mail-headers))
              
@end example

@noindent
 , however some mail servers don't generate proper
 Message-IDs, too, so test if your Mail Server behaves
 correctly by sending yourself a Mail and looking at the Message-ID.
 

@node [6] Old messages
@section [6] Old messages

@menu
* [6.1]:: How to import my old mail into Gnus? 
* [6.2]:: How to archive interesting messages? 
* [6.3]:: How to search for a specific message? 
* [6.4]:: How to get rid of old unwanted mail? 
* [6.5]:: I want that all read messages are expired (at least in some groups). How to do it? 
* [6.6]:: I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them to another group. 
@end menu

@node [6.1]
@subsection [6.1]
Question 6.1: 

 How to import my old mail into Gnus?
 

Answer: 

 The easiest way is to tell your old mail program to
 export the messages in mbox format. Most Unix mailers
 are able to do this, if you come from the MS Windows
 world, you may find tools at
 @uref{http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/,http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/}.
 

 Now you've got to import this mbox file into Gnus. To do
 this, create a nndoc group based on the mbox file by
 saying @samp{G f /path/file.mbox RET} in
 Group buffer. You now have read-only access to your
 mail. If you want to import the messages to your normal
 Gnus mail groups hierarchy, enter the nndoc group you've
 just created by saying @samp{C-u RET}
 (thus making sure all messages are retrieved), mark all
 messages by saying @samp{M P b} and
 either copy them to the desired group by saying
 @samp{B c name.of.group RET} or send them
 through nnmail-split-methods (respool them) by saying
 @samp{B r}.
 
@node [6.2]
@subsection [6.2]
Question 6.2: 

 How to archive interesting messages?
 

Answer: 

 If you stumble across an interesting message, say in
 gnu.emacs.gnus and want to archive it there are several
 solutions. The first and easiest is to save it to a file
 by saying @samp{O f}. However, wouldn't
 it be much more convenient to have more direct access to
 the archived message from Gnus? If you say yes, put this
 snippet by Frank Haun <pille3003@@fhaun.de> in
 ~/.gnus:
 

@example

(defun my-archive-article (&optional n)
  "Copies one or more article(s) to a corresponding `nnml:' group, e.g.
`gnus.ding' goes to `nnml:1.gnus.ding'. And `nnml:List-gnus.ding' goes
to `nnml:1.List-gnus-ding'.

Use process marks or mark a region in the summary buffer to archive
more then one article."
  (interactive "P")
  (let ((archive-name
         (format
          "nnml:1.%s"
          (if (featurep 'xemacs)
              (replace-in-string gnus-newsgroup-name "^.*:" "")
            (replace-regexp-in-string "^.*:" "" gnus-newsgroup-name)))))
    (gnus-summary-copy-article n archive-name)))
              
@end example

@noindent
 You can now say @samp{M-x
 my-archive-article} in summary buffer to
 archive the article under the cursor in a nnml
 group. (Change nnml to your preferred back end)
 

 Of course you can also make sure the cache is enabled by saying
 

@example

(setq gnus-use-cache t)
              
@end example

@noindent
 then you only have to set either the tick or the dormant
 mark for articles you want to keep, setting the read
 mark will remove them from cache.
 
@node [6.3]
@subsection [6.3]
Question 6.3: 

 How to search for a specific message?
 

Answer: 

 There are several ways for this, too. For a posting from
 a Usenet group the easiest solution is probably to ask
 @uref{http://groups.google.com,groups.google.com},
 if you found the posting there, tell Google to display
 the raw message, look for the message-id, and say
 @samp{M-^ the@@message.id RET} in a
 summary buffer.
 Since Gnus 5.10.0 there's also a Gnus interface for
 groups.google.com which you can call with
 @samp{G W}) in group buffer.
 

 Another idea which works for both mail and news groups
 is to enter the group where the message you are
 searching is and use the standard Emacs search
 @samp{C-s}, it's smart enough to look at
 articles in collapsed threads, too. If you want to
 search bodies, too try @samp{M-s}
 instead. Further on there are the
 gnus-summary-limit-to-foo functions, which can help you,
 too.
 

 Of course you can also use grep to search through your
 local mail, but this is both slow for big archives and
 inconvenient since you are not displaying the found mail
 in Gnus. Here comes nnir into action. Nnir is a front end
 to search engines like swish-e or swish++ and
 others. You index your mail with one of those search
 engines and with the help of nnir you can search trough
 the indexed mail and generate a temporary group with all
 messages which met your search criteria. If this sound
 cool to you get nnir.el from
 @uref{ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/,ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/}
 or @uref{ftp://ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/,ftp://ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/}.
 Instructions on how to use it are at the top of the file.
 
@node [6.4]
@subsection [6.4]
Question 6.4: 

 How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
 

Answer: 

 You can of course just mark the mail you don't need
 anymore by saying @samp{#} with point
 over the mail and then say @samp{B DEL}
 to get rid of them forever. You could also instead of
 actually deleting them, send them to a junk-group by
 saying @samp{B m nnml:trash-bin} which
 you clear from time to time, but both are not the intended
 way in Gnus.
 

 In Gnus, we let mail expire like news expires on a news
 server. That means you tell Gnus the message is
 expirable (you tell Gnus "I don't need this mail
 anymore") by saying @samp{E} with point
 over the mail in summary buffer. Now when you leave the
 group, Gnus looks at all messages which you marked as
 expirable before and if they are old enough (default is
 older than a week) they are deleted. 
 
@node [6.5]
@subsection [6.5]
Question 6.5: 

 I want that all read messages are expired (at least in
 some groups). How to do it?
 

Answer: 

 If you want all read messages to be expired (e.g. in
 mailing lists where there's an online archive), you've
 got two choices: auto-expire and
 total-expire. Auto-expire means, that every article
 which has no marks set and is selected for reading is
 marked as expirable, Gnus hits @samp{E}
 for you every time you read a message. Total-expire
 follows a slightly different approach, here all article
 where the read mark is set are expirable.
 

 To activate auto-expire, include auto-expire in the
 Group parameters for the group. (Hit @samp{G
 c} in summary buffer with point over the
 group to change group parameters). For total-expire add
 total-expire to the group-parameters.
 

 Which method you choose is merely a matter of taste:
 Auto-expire is faster, but it doesn't play together with
 Adaptive Scoring, so if you want to use this feature,
 you should use total-expire.
 

 If you want a message to be excluded from expiration in
 a group where total or auto expire is active, set either
 tick (hit @samp{u}) or dormant mark (hit
 @samp{u}), when you use auto-expire, you
 can also set the read mark (hit
 @samp{d}).
 
@node [6.6]
@subsection [6.6]
Question 6.6: 

 I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them
 to another group.
 

Answer: 

 Say something like this in ~/.gnus:
 

@example

(setq nnmail-expiry-target "nnml:expired")
              
@end example

@noindent
 (If you want to change the value of nnmail-expiry-target
 on a per group basis see the question "How can I disable
 threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set other
 variables specific for some groups?")
 

@node [7] Gnus in a dial-up environment
@section [7] Gnus in a dial-up environment

@menu
* [7.1]:: I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I minimize the time I've got to be connected? 
* [7.2]:: So what was this thing about the Agent? 
* [7.3]:: I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it? 
* [7.4]:: How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings while I'm offline? 
@end menu

@node [7.1]
@subsection [7.1]
Question 7.1: 

 I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can
 I minimize the time I've got to be connected?
 

Answer: 

 You've got basically two options: Either you use the
 Gnus Agent (see below) for this, or you can install
 programs which fetch your news and mail to your local
 disk and Gnus reads the stuff from your local
 machine.
 

 If you want to follow the second approach, you need a
 program which fetches news and offers them to Gnus, a
 program which does the same for mail and a program which
 receives the mail you write from Gnus and sends them
 when you're online.
 

 Let's talk about Unix systems first: For the news part,
 the easiest solution is a small nntp server like 
 @uref{http://www.leafnode.org/,Leafnode} or
 @uref{http://infa.abo.fi/~patrik/sn/,sn},
 of course you can also install a full featured news
 server like 
 @uref{http://www.isc.org/products/INN/,inn}. 
 Then you want to fetch your Mail, popular choices
 are @uref{http://www.catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/,fetchmail}
 and @uref{http://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/software/getmail-3.0/,getmail}.
 You should tell those to write the mail to your disk and
 Gnus to read it from there. Last but not least the mail
 sending part: This can be done with every MTA like
 @uref{http://www.sendmail.org/,sendmail},
 @uref{http://www.qmail.org/,postfix},
 @uref{http://www.exim.org/,exim} or
 @uref{http://www.qmail.org/,qmail}.
 

 On windows boxes I'd vote for 
 @uref{http://www.tglsoft.de/,Hamster}, 
 it's a small freeware, open-source program which fetches
 your mail and news from remote servers and offers them
 to Gnus (or any other mail and/or news reader) via nntp
 respectively POP3 or IMAP. It also includes a smtp
 server for receiving mails from Gnus.
 
@node [7.2]
@subsection [7.2]
Question 7.2: 

 So what was this thing about the Agent?
 

Answer: 

 The Gnus agent is part of Gnus, it allows you to fetch
 mail and news and store them on disk for reading them
 later when you're offline. It kind of mimics offline
 newsreaders like e.g. Forte Agent. If you want to use
 the Agent place the following in ~/.gnus if you are
 still using 5.8.8 or 5.9 (it's the default since 5.10.0):
 

@example

(setq gnus-agent t)
              
@end example
 

 Now you've got to select the servers whose groups can be
 stored locally. To do this, open the server buffer
 (that is press @samp{^} while in the
 group buffer). Now select a server by moving point to
 the line naming that server. Finally, agentize the
 server by typing @samp{J a}. If you
 make a mistake, or change your mind, you can undo this
 action by typing @samp{J r}. When
 you're done, type 'q' to return to the group buffer.
 Now the next time you enter a group on a agentized
 server, the headers will be stored on disk and read from
 there the next time you enter the group.
 
@node [7.3]
@subsection [7.3]
Question 7.3: 

 I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it?
 

Answer: 

 You can tell the agent to automatically fetch the bodies
 of articles which fulfill certain predicates, this is
 done in a special buffer which can be reached by
 saying @samp{J c} in group
 buffer. Please refer to the documentation for
 information which predicates are possible and how
 exactly to do it. 
 

 Further on you can tell the agent manually which
 articles to store on disk. There are two ways to do
 this: Number one: In the summary buffer, process mark a
 set of articles that shall be stored in the agent by
 saying @samp{#} with point over the
 article and then type @samp{J s}. The
 other possibility is to set, again in the summary
 buffer, downloadable (%) marks for the articles you
 want by typing @samp{@@} with point over
 the article and then typing @samp{J u}.
 What's the difference? Well, process marks are erased as
 soon as you exit the summary buffer while downloadable
 marks are permanent. You can actually set downloadable
 marks in several groups then use fetch session ('J s' in
 the GROUP buffer) to fetch all of those articles. The
 only downside is that fetch session also fetches all of
 the headers for every selected group on an agentized
 server. Depending on the volume of headers, the initial
 fetch session could take hours.
 
@node [7.4]
@subsection [7.4]
Question 7.4: 

 How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings
 while I'm offline?
 

Answer: 

 All you've got to do is to tell Gnus when you are online
 (plugged) and when you are offline (unplugged), the rest
 works automatically. You can toggle plugged/unplugged
 state by saying @samp{J j} in group
 buffer. To start Gnus unplugged say @samp{M-x
 gnus-unplugged} instead of
 @samp{M-x gnus}. Note that for this to
 work, the agent must be active.
 

@node [8] Getting help
@section [8] Getting help

@menu
* [8.1]:: How to find information and help inside Emacs? 
* [8.2]:: I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g. attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented? 
* [8.3]:: Which websites should I know? 
* [8.4]:: Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there? 
* [8.5]:: Where to report bugs? 
* [8.6]:: I need real-time help, where to find it? 
@end menu

@node [8.1]
@subsection [8.1]
Question 8.1: 

 How to find information and help inside Emacs?
 

Answer: 

 The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say
 @samp{C-h i d m Gnus RET} to start the
 Gnus manual, then walk through the menus or do a
 full-text search with @samp{s}). Then
 there are the general Emacs help commands starting with
 C-h, type @samp{C-h ? ?} to get a list
 of all available help commands and their meaning. Finally
 @samp{M-x apropos-command} lets you
 search through all available functions and @samp{M-x
 apropos} searches the bound variables.
 
@node [8.2]
@subsection [8.2]
Question 8.2: 

 I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X
 (e.g. attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
 

Answer: 

 There's not only the Gnus manual but also the manuals
 for message, emacs-mime, sieve and pgg. Those packages
 are distributed with Gnus and used by Gnus but aren't
 really part of core Gnus, so they are documented in
 different info files, you should have a look in those
 manuals, too.
 
@node [8.3]
@subsection [8.3]
Question 8.3: 

 Which websites should I know?
 

Answer: 

 The two most important ones are the
 @uref{http://www.gnus.org,official Gnus website}.
 and it's sister site 
 @uref{http://my.gnus.org,my.gnus.org (MGO)},
 hosting an archive of lisp snippets, howtos, a (not
 really finished) tutorial and this FAQ.
 

 Tell me about other sites which are interesting.
 
@node [8.4]
@subsection [8.4]
Question 8.4: 

 Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
 

Answer: 

 There's the newsgroup gnu.emacs.gnus (pull it from
 e.g. news.gnus.org) which deals with general questions
 and the ding mailing list (ding@@gnus.org) dealing with
 development of Gnus. You can read the ding list via
 NNTP, too under the name gnus.ding from news.gnus.org.
 

 If you want to stay in the big8,
 news.software.newssreaders is also read by some Gnus
 users (but chances for qualified help are much better in
 the above groups) and if you speak German, there's
 de.comm.software.gnus.
 
@node [8.5]
@subsection [8.5]
Question 8.5: 

 Where to report bugs?
 

Answer: 

 Say @samp{M-x gnus-bug}, this will start
 a message to the 
 @uref{mailto:bugs@@gnus.org,gnus bug mailing list}
 including information about your environment which make
 it easier to help you.
 
@node [8.6]
@subsection [8.6]
Question 8.6: 

 I need real-time help, where to find it?
 

Answer: 

 Point your IRC client to irc.my.gnus.org channel
 #mygnus. Don't be afraid if people there speak German,
 they are willing and capable of switching to
 English when people from outside Germany enter.
 

@node [9] Tuning Gnus
@section [9] Tuning Gnus

@menu
* [9.1]:: Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up? 
* [9.2]:: How to speed up the process of entering a group? 
* [9.3]:: Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up? 
@end menu

@node [9.1]
@subsection [9.1]
Question 9.1: 

 Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
 

Answer: 

 The reason for this could be the way Gnus reads it's
 active file, see the node "The Active File" in the Gnus
 manual for things you might try to speed the process up.
 An other idea would be to byte compile your ~/.gnus (say
 @samp{M-x byte-compile-file RET ~/.gnus
 RET} to do it). Finally, if you have require
 statements in your .gnus, you could replace them with
 eval-after-load, which loads the stuff not at startup
 time, but when it's needed. Say you've got this in your
 ~/.gnus:
 

@example

(require 'message)
(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled))
              
@end example

@noindent
 then as soon as you start Gnus, message.el is loaded. If
 you replace it with
 

@example

(eval-after-load "message"
      '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
              
@end example

@noindent
 it's loaded when it's needed.
 
@node [9.2]
@subsection [9.2]
Question 9.2: 

 How to speed up the process of entering a group?
 

Answer: 

 A speed killer is setting the variable
 gnus-fetch-old-headers to anything different from nil,
 so don't do this if speed is an issue. To speed up
 building of summary say
 

@example

(gnus-compile)
              
@end example

@noindent
 at the bottom of your ~/.gnus, this will make gnus
 byte-compile things like
 gnus-summary-line-format. 
 then you could increase the value of gc-cons-threshold
 by saying something like
 

@example

(setq gc-cons-threshold 3500000)
              
@end example

@noindent
 in ~/.emacs. If you don't care about width of CJK
 characters or use Gnus 5.10.0 or younger together with a
 recent GNU Emacs, you should say
 

@example

(setq gnus-use-correct-string-widths nil) 
              
@end example
 

@noindent
 in ~/.gnus (thanks to Jesper harder for the last
 two suggestions). Finally if you are still using 5.8.8
 or 5.9 and experience speed problems with summary
 buffer generation, you definitely should update to
 5.10.0 since there quite some work on improving it has
 been done.
 
@node [9.3]
@subsection [9.3]
Question 9.3: 

 Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
 

Answer: 

 The reason could be that you told Gnus to archive the
 messages you wrote by setting
 gnus-message-archive-group. Try to use a nnml group
 instead of an archive group, this should bring you back
 to normal speed.
 

@node Glossary, , Frequently Asked Questions with Answers, Top
@chapter Glossary

@table @asis

@item ~/.gnus
 When the term ~/.gnus is used it just means your Gnus
 configuration file. You might as well call it ~/.gnus.el or
 specify another name.
 

@item Back End
 In Gnus terminology a back end is a virtual server, a layer
 between core Gnus and the real NNTP-, POP3-, IMAP- or
 whatever-server which offers Gnus a standardized interface
 to functions like "get message", "get Headers" etc.
 

@item Emacs
 When the term Emacs is used in this FAQ, it means either GNU
 Emacs or XEmacs.
 

@item Message
 In this FAQ message means a either a mail or a posting to a
 Usenet Newsgroup or to some other fancy back end, no matter
 of which kind it is.
 

@item MUA
 MUA is an acronym for Mail User Agent, it's the program you
 use to read and write e-mails.
 

@item NUA
 NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you
 use to read and write Usenet news.
 
@end table

@bye