is where to post the questions.
+From fschmitt Sat Mar 22 18:13:00 2003
+From: faq@my.gnus.org (Gnus FAQ team)
+Date: Sat Mar 22 18:13:00 2003
+Subject: Gnus FAQ
+Message-ID: <lars-doc8@eyesore.no>
+
+This is the text version of the Gnus FAQ, see http://my.gnus.org for
+the up to date version of this document, there you can also find a
+html version and various other formats.
+
+Frequently Asked Questions
+
+Table of Contents
+
+Introduction
+Frequently Asked Questions with Answers
+Glossary
+
+Abstract
+
+This is the new Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list. If you have a
+Web browser, the official hypertext version is at http://
+my.gnus.org/FAQ/ [http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/], the Docbook source is
+available from http://sourceforge.net [http://sourceforge.net/
+projects/gnus/].
+
+Please submit features and suggestions to the FAQ discussion list
+[mailto:faq-discuss@my.gnus.org]. The list is protected against
+junk mail with qconfirm [http://smarden.org/qconfirm/index.html].
+As a subscriber, your submissions will automatically pass. You can
+also subscribe to the list by sending a blank email to
+faq-discuss-subscribe@my.gnus.org
+[mailto:faq-discuss-subscribe@my.gnus.org] and browse the archive.
+
+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:
+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.
+
+Frequently Asked Questions with Answers
+
+1. Installation FAQ
+
+ 1.1. What is the latest version of Gnus?
+ 1.2. Where and how to get Gnus?
+ 1.3. What to do with the tarball now?
+ 1.4. Which version of Emacs do I need?
+ 1.5. How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
+
+2. Startup / Group buffer
+
+ 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?
+
+3. Getting Messages
+
+ 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?
+
+4. Reading messages
+
+ 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?
+
+5. Composing messages
+
+ 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?
+
+6. Old messages
+
+ 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.
+
+7. Getting help
+
+ 7.1. How to find information and help inside Emacs?
+ 7.2. I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g.
+ attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
+ 7.3. Which websites should I know?
+ 7.4. Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
+ 7.5. Where to report bugs?
+ 7.6. I need real-time help, where to find it?
+
+8. Tuning Gnus
+
+ 8.1. Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
+ 8.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
+ 8.3. Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
+
+1. Installation FAQ
+
+1.1. What is the latest version of Gnus?
+
+ As of this posting, the latest Gnus version is 5.8.8(which is
+ basically the same as Gnus 5.9 which is shipped with GNU Emacs).
+ This version is very stable and should be the choice for all
+ beginners. However 5.8.8 is quite old, so many people today use the
+ BETA version from CVS called Oort Gnus, which contains a huge
+ amount of new features. If you want to do this too, be aware that
+ it's beta and might have bugs and at worst case might eat your
+ mail.
+
+1.2. Where and how to get Gnus?
+
+ The latest released version of Gnus is included in Emacs 21 and
+ available through the package system of XEmacs 21.4, so the easiest
+ way is getting one of those. If you don't want or can't do this,
+ get the Gnus tarball from http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz
+ [http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz] or via anonymous FTP from
+ ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz [ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/
+ gnus/gnus.tar.gz].
+
+1.3. What to do with the tarball now?
+
+ Untar it via tar xvzf gnus.tar.gz and do the common ./configure;
+ make; make install circle. (under MS-Windows either get the Cygwin
+ environment from 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 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:
+
+ (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/"))
+
+
+ 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, "/
+ ").
+
+1.4. Which version of Emacs do I need?
+
+ Gnus 5.8.8 requires an emacs version that is greater than or equal
+ to Emacs 20.3 or XEmacs 20.1.
+
+1.5. How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
+
+ 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.
+
+2. Startup / Group buffer
+
+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?
+
+ 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 q in group
+ buffer instead of just killing Emacs.
+
+2.2. Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to, what's this?
+
+ 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.
+
+2.3. How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
+
+ 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 :-)):
+
+ (setq gnus-group-line-format "%P%M%S[%5t]%5y : %(%g%)\n")
+
+
+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?
+
+ 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 T n to create a topic at point and 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.
+
+2.5. How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to sort the
+ groups in a topic?
+
+ Move point over the group you want to move and hit C-k, now move
+ point to the place where you want the group to be and hit C-y.
+
+3. Getting Messages
+
+3.1. I just installed Gnus, started it via M-x gnus but it only says
+ "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
+
+ 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:
+
+ (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.yourprovider.net"))
+ (setq user-mail-address "you@yourprovider.net")
+ (setq user-full-name "Your Name")
+
+
+3.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.
+
+ 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 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
+
+ SET HOME=C:\myhome
+
+
+ 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 C-x C-f ~/.gnus RET C-x C-s. in Emacs.
+
+3.3. My news server requires authentication, how to store user name and
+ password on disk?
+
+ Create a file ~/.authinfo which includes for each server a line
+ like this
+
+ machine news.yourprovider.net login YourUserName password YourPassword
+
+ . 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
+
+ chmod 600 ~/.authinfo
+
+ in a shell.)
+
+3.4. Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to subscribe to
+ a group.
+
+ If you know the name of the group say 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 RET,
+ move point to the group you want to subscribe to and say u to
+ subscribe to it.
+
+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?
+
+ Some providers allow restricted anonymous access and full access
+ only after authorization. To make Gnus send authinfo to those
+ servers append
+
+ force yes
+
+ to the line for those servers in ~/.authinfo.
+
+3.6. I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible?
+
+ Of course. You can specify more sources for articles in the
+ variable gnus-secondary-select-methods. Add something like this in
+ ~/.gnus:
+
+ (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourSecondProvider.net"))
+ (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourThirdProvider.net"))
+
+
+3.7. And how about local spool files?
+
+ No problem, this is just one more select method called nnspool, so
+ you want this:
+
+ (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnspool ""))
+
+
+ Or this if you don't want an NNTP Server as primary news source:
+
+ (setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
+
+
+ Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you want
+ something different, change the line above to something like this:
+
+ (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
+ '(nnspool "" (nnspool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")))
+
+
+ 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.
+
+3.8. OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail
+ with Gnus, too. How to do it?
+
+ 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:
+
+ (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml ""))
+
+
+ As you might have guessed, if you want nnfolder, it's
+
+ (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnfolder ""))
+
+
+ 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:
+
+ (eval-after-load "mail-source"
+ '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net"
+ :user "yourUserName"
+ :password "yourPassword"))
+
+
+ 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
+
+ (eval-after-load "mail-source"
+ '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(file :path "/path/to/spool/file"))
+
+
+ If it's a Maildir, with one file per message as used by postfix,
+ Qmail and (optionally) fetchmail it's
+
+ (eval-after-load "mail-source"
+ '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(maildir :path "/path/to/Maildir/"
+ :subdirs ("cur" "new")))
+
+
+ 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
+
+ (eval-after-load "mail-source"
+ '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(directory :path "/path/to/procmail-dir/"
+ :suffix ".prcml"))
+
+
+ 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
+
+ (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
+ (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
+ (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.yourProvider.net")
+
+
+3.9. And what about IMAP?
+
+ 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
+
+ (add-to-list 'mail-sources '(imap :server "mail.mycorp.com"
+ :user "username"
+ :pass "password"
+ :stream network
+ :authentication login
+ :mailbox "INBOX"
+ :fetchflag "\\Seen"))
+
+
+ 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.
+
+ (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.*")))
+
+
+ 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.
+
+3.10. At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
+ Gnus to read my mail from it?
+
+ Offer your administrator a pair of new running shoes for activating
+ IMAP on the server and follow the instructions above.
+
+3.11. Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it retrieves
+ via POP3?
+
+ 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.
+
+4. Reading messages
+
+4.1. When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them
+ again?
+
+ If you enter the group by saying RET in summary buffer with point
+ over the group, only unread and ticked messages are loaded. Say C-u
+ RET instead to load all available messages. If you want only the
+ e.g. 300 newest say C-u 300 RET
+
+ Loading only unread messages can be annoying if you have threaded
+ view enabled, say
+
+ (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 'some)
+
+
+ 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 use Oort Gnus, you can say /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 ^, if you want to retrieve the
+ whole thread the message you're just reading belongs to, A T is
+ your friend.
+
+4.2. How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I enter a
+ group, even when it's read?
+
+ You can tick important messages. To do this hit u while point is in
+ summary buffer over the message. When you want to remove the mark,
+ hit either d (this deletes the tick mark and set's unread mark) or
+ M c (which deletes all marks for the message).
+
+4.3. How to view the headers of a message?
+
+ Say t to show all headers, one more t hides them again.
+
+4.4. How to view the raw unformatted message?
+
+ Say C-u g to show the raw message g returns to normal view.
+
+4.5. How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at the top of
+ the article buffer?
+
+ 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:
+
+ (setq gnus-visible-headers
+ "^\\(From:\\|Subject:\\|Date:\\|Followup-To:\\|X-Newsreader:\\|User-Agent:\\|X-Mailer:\\)")
+
+
+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?
+
+ Say
+
+ (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
+ '(progn
+ (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
+ (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext")))
+
+
+ in ~/.gnus. If you don't want HTML rendered, even if there's no
+ text alternative add
+
+ (setq mm-automatic-display (remove "text/html" mm-automatic-display))
+
+
+ too.
+
+4.7. Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails?
+
+ Only if you use Oort Gnus. 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
+
+ (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'links)
+
+
+4.8. Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails more
+ readable?
+
+ 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" ( W w ),
+ "Decode ROT13" ( W r ) and "Outlook Deuglify" which repairs the
+ dumb quoting used by many users of Microsoft products ( W k ) sadly
+ the last one is only available in Oort Gnus.
+
+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?
+
+ 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 L, to set up a rule which
+ lowers the score. Now Gnus asks you which the criteria for lowering
+ the Score shall be. Hit ? twice to see all possibilities, we want a
+ which means the author (the from header). Now Gnus wants to know
+ which kind of matching we want. Hit either e for an exact match or
+ 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. p to apply the rule now and
+ let it last forever. If you want to raise the score instead of
+ lowering it say I instead of L.
+
+ You can also set up rules by hand. To do this say 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:
+
+ (("references" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 500 nil s))
+ ("message-id" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 999 nil s)))
+
+
+ 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
+
+ (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t)
+
+
+ in ~/.gnus.
+
+4.10. How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set
+ other variables specific for some groups?
+
+ While in group buffer move point over the group and hit 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.
+
+4.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those?
+
+ 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 my.gnus.org [http://my.gnus.org/Members/dzimmerm
+ /HowTo%2C2002-07-25%2C1027619165012198456/view]
+
+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?
+
+ 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 C-u RET (this makes Gnus get
+ all messages), then hit M P b to mark all messages and then say 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).
+
+4.13. I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how to
+ change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
+
+ 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"):
+
+ (gnus-add-configuration '(article (vertical 1.0 (summary .35 point) (article 1.0))))
+
+
+ A three pane layout, Group buffer on the left, summary buffer
+ top-right, article buffer bottom-right:
+
+ (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)))))
+
+
+4.14. I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it?
+
+ 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.
+
+ Oort 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, DON'T TRY TO USE IT WITH 5.8.8!
+
+ (setq gnus-summary-line-format ":%U%R %B %s %-60=|%4L |%-20,20f |%&user-date; \n")
+
+
+ resulting in:
+
+ :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
+
+
+4.15. How to split incoming mails in several groups?
+
+ 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
+
+ (setq nnmail-crosspost nil)
+
+
+ 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):
+
+ (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" "")))
+
+
+5. Composing messages
+
+5.1. What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and
+ postings?
+
+ To start composing a new mail hit m either in Group or Summary
+ buffer, for a posting, it's either a in Group buffer and filling
+ the Newsgroups header manually or a in the Summary buffer of the
+ group where the posting shall be send to. Replying by mail is r if
+ you don't want to cite the author, or import the cited text
+ manually and R to cite the text of the original message. For a
+ follow up to a newsgroup, it's f and F (analog to r and R.
+
+ Enter new headers above the line saying "--text follows this
+ line--", enter the text below the line. When ready hit C-c C-c, to
+ send the message, if you want to finish it later hit C-c C-d to
+ save it in the drafts group, where you can start editing it again
+ by saying D e.
+
+5.2. How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
+
+ Say
+
+ (add-hook 'message-mode-hook
+ (lambda ()
+ (setq fill-column 72)
+ (turn-on-auto-fill)))
+
+
+ in ~/.gnus. You can reformat a paragraph by hitting M-q (as usual)
+
+5.3. How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...?
+
+ There are other ways, but you should use posting styles for this.
+ (See below why). This example should make the syntax clear:
+
+ (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")))))
+
+
+ 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.
+
+5.4. Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group
+ I post too?
+
+ 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$". Because of this put
+ general settings at the top and specific ones at the bottom.
+
+ (setq gnus-posting-styles
+ '((".*" ;;default
+ (name "Frank Schmitt")
+ (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
+ (signature-file "~/.signature") )
+ ((message-news-p) ;;Usenet news?
+ (address "mySpamTrap@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
+ ("Reply-To" "hereRealRepliesOnlyPlease@Frank-Schmitt.bla") )
+ ((message-mail-p) ;;mail?
+ (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.bla") )
+ ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact
+ (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.net")
+ ("Reply-To" nil) )
+ ("^gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general$"
+ (eval (setq mail-envelope-from "Azzrael@rz-online.de"))
+ (address "Azzrael@rz-online.de")) ))
+
+
+5.5. Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking?
+
+ 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 ispell [http://
+ fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html] or aspell [http:
+ //aspell.sourceforge.net/] installed and in your Path. Then you
+ need ispell.el [http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html]
+ and for on-the-fly spell-checking flyspell.el [http://
+ www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/personnel/Manuel.Serrano/flyspell/
+ flyspell.html]. 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
+
+ (setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
+
+ in your Emacs configuration file.
+
+ If you want your outgoing messages to be spell-checked, say
+
+ (add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)
+
+ In your ~/.gnus, if you prefer on-the-fly spell-checking say
+
+ (add-hook 'message-mode-hook (lambda () (flyspell-mode 1)))
+
+5.6. Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to?
+
+ Yes, say something like
+
+ (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")))))
+
+
+ in ~/.gnus. Change "^de\\." and "deutsch8" to something that suits
+ your needs.
+
+5.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all those
+ email addresses?
+
+ 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:
+
+ alias al "Al <al@english-heritage.bla>"
+
+
+ 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 bbdb's
+ homepage [http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/]. Now place the following in
+ ~/.gnus, to activate bbdb for Gnus:
+
+ (require 'bbdb)
+ (bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message)
+
+
+ Now you probably want some general bbdb configuration, place them
+ in ~/.emacs:
+
+ (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)
+
+
+ Now you should be ready to go. Say M-x bbdb RET RET to open a bbdb
+ buffer showing all entries. Say c to create a new entry, b to
+ search your BBDB and 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 TAB to cycle through know recipients.
+
+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?
+
+ 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 this site [ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/]. and
+ create the actual X-face by saying
+
+ cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon |compface > file.face
+ cat ./file.face | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g' | sed 's/\"/\\\"/g' > ./file.face.quoted
+
+
+ if you can't use compface, there's an online X-face converter at
+ http://www.dairiki.org/xface/ [http://www.dairiki.org/xface/]. If
+ you use MS Windows, you could also use the WinFace program from
+ 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
+
+ (setq message-default-headers
+ (with-temp-buffer
+ (insert "X-Face: ")
+ (insert-file-contents "~/.xemacs/xface")
+ (buffer-string)))
+
+
+ in ~/.gnus.
+
+5.9. Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups. Can Gnus
+ warn me, when I'm replying by mail in newsgroups?
+
+ Put this in ~/.gnus:
+
+ (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))
+
+
+ In Oort you can use
+
+ (setq gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news t)
+
+
+ instead to achieve the same result.
+
+5.10. How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
+
+ Say
+
+ (eval-after-load "message"
+ '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
+
+
+ in ~/.gnus. (This is the default behaviour in Oort Gnus.)
+
+5.11. I want gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and news, how
+ to do it?
+
+ 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.
+
+ (setq gnus-message-archive-group
+ '((if (message-news-p)
+ "nnml:Send-News"
+ "nnml:Send-Mail")))
+
+
+5.12. People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why aren't they and
+ how to fix it?
+
+ 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:
+
+ (defun message-make-message-id()
+ (concat "<"(message-unique-id)"@yourmachine.yourdomain.tld>"))
+
+
+ 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. 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
+
+ (setq message-required-news-headers
+ (remove' Message-ID message-required-news-headers))
+
+
+ you can also tell Gnus not to generate Message-IDs for mail by
+ saying
+
+ (setq message-required-mail-headers
+ (remove' Message-ID message-required-mail-headers))
+
+
+ , 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.
+
+6. Old messages
+
+6.1. How to import my old mail into Gnus?
+
+ 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 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 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 C-u RET (thus making sure all messages are retrieved), mark
+ all messages by saying M P b and either copy them to the desired
+ group by saying B c name.of.group RET or send them through
+ nnmail-split-methods (respool them) by saying B r.
+
+6.2. How to archive interesting messages?
+
+ 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 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:
+
+ (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)))
+
+
+ You can now say 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
+
+ (setq gnus-use-cache t)
+
+
+ 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.
+
+6.3. How to search for a specific message?
+
+ There are several ways for this, too. For a posting from a Usenet
+ group the easiest solution is probably to ask groups.google.com
+ [http://groups.google.com] (in Oort Gnus you can search
+ groups.google.com with G W), if you found the posting there, tell
+ Google to display the raw message, look for the message-id, and say
+ M-^ the@message.id RET in a summary 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 C-s, it's smart enough to look at articles in
+ collapsed threads, too. If you want to search bodies, too try 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
+ ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/ [ftp://
+ ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/] or 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.
+
+6.4. How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
+
+ You can of course just mark the mail you don't need anymore by
+ saying # with point over the mail and then say B DEL to get rid of
+ them forever. You could also instead of actually deleting them,
+ send them to a junk-group by saying 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 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.
+
+6.5. I want that all read messages are expired (at least in some
+ groups). How to do it?
+
+ 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 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 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 u) or
+ dormant mark (hit u), when you use auto-expire, you can also set
+ the read mark (hit d).
+
+6.6. I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them to
+ another group.
+
+ Say something like this in ~/.gnus:
+
+ (setq nnmail-expiry-target "nnml:expired")
+
+
+ (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?")
+
+7. Getting help
+
+7.1. How to find information and help inside Emacs?
+
+ The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say C-h i d m Gnus RET to
+ start the Gnus manual, then walk through the menus or do a
+ full-text search with s). Then there are the general Emacs help
+ commands starting with C-h, type C-h ? ? to get a list of all
+ available help commands and their meaning. Finally M-x
+ apropos-command lets you search through all available functions and
+ M-x apropos searches the bound variables.
+
+7.2. I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g. attachments,
+ PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
+
+ There's not only the Gnus manual but also the manuals for message,
+ emacs-mime, sieve and (only in Oort Gnus) 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.
+
+7.3. Which websites should I know?
+
+ The two most important ones are the official Gnus website [http://
+ www.gnus.org]. and it's sister site my.gnus.org (MGO) [http://
+ my.gnus.org], hosting an archive of lisp snippets, howtos, a (not
+ really finished) tutorial and this FAQ.
+
+ Tell me about other sites which are interesting.
+
+7.4. Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
+
+ 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.
+
+7.5. Where to report bugs?
+
+ Say M-x gnus-bug, this will start a message to the gnus bug mailing
+ list [mailto:bugs@gnus.org] including information about your
+ environment which make it easier to help you.
+
+7.6. I need real-time help, where to find it?
+
+ 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.
+
+8. Tuning Gnus
+
+8.1. Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
+
+ 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 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:
+
+ (require 'message)
+ (add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled))
+
+
+ then as soon as you start Gnus, message.el is loaded. If you
+ replace it with
+
+ (eval-after-load "message"
+ '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
+
+
+ it's loaded when it's needed.
+
+8.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
+
+ 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
+
+ (gnus-compile)
+
+
+ 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
+
+ (setq gc-cons-threshold 3500000)
+
+
+ in ~/.emacs. If you don't care about width of CJK characters or use
+ Oort Gnus together with a recent GNU Emacs, you should say
+
+ (setq gnus-use-correct-string-widths nil)
+
+
+ in ~/.gnus (thanks to Jesper harder for the last two suggestions).
+ Finally if this also doesn't help, you might want to jump in the
+ cold water and try Oort Gnus, there some work has been done to
+ speed up summary generation. Read and remember the warnings about
+ Oort at the top of this FAQ.
+
+8.3. Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
+
+ 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.
+
+Glossary
+
+~/.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.
+
+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.
+
+Emacs
+
+ When the term Emacs is used in this FAQ, it means either GNU
+ Emacs or XEmacs.
+
+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.
+
+MUA
+
+ MUA is an acronym for Mail User Agent, it's the program you use
+ to read and write e-mails.
+
+NUA
+
+ NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you use
+ to read and write Usenet news.
+
projects / gnus / commitdiff