Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ
Frank Schmitt
During the last two weeks I wrote a new FAQ for Gnus which is now in a
state where I'm ready with everything I wanted to include. The FAQ is
hosted in various formats at http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/
I'd appreciate any comments regarding the content of the FAQ, e.g.
-what is missing
-what is explained in an unclear way
-are there any errors or possibilities for optimization in the
Lisp examples?
etc.
There's a mailinglist for the FAQ, but I'd suggest to discuss this first
draft in this thread. Further on, English isn't my primary language, so
corrections of spelling, grammar etc are welcome, too.
I'll send the FAQ to this group as a FollowUp to this posting.
Many thanks to the team from my.gnus.org and the guys from #mygnus on
irc.my.gnus.org for hosting the FAQ, creating the layout, doing
formatting and markup and other various help.
--
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Frank Schmitt
> I'll send the FAQ to this group as a FollowUp to this posting.
Here it comes:
Frequently Asked Questions
$Id: gnus-faq-neu.xml,v 1.9 2003/01/02 15:26:46 fschmitt Exp $
Copyright (c) 1995, 1996 Free Software Foundation.
Copyright (c) 1995, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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/]
Please submit features and suggestions to the FAQ submissions list
[mailto:faq-sub...@my.gnus.org]. You can also subscribe to the FAQ
discussion list [mailto:faq-su...@my.gnus.org]
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's changed since last time?
1.2. What is the latest version of Gnus?
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?
2. Getting Messages
2.1. I just installed Gnus, started it via M-x gnus but it
only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
2.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus
means.
2.3. My Newsserver requires authentification, how to store
username and password on disk?
2.4. Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to
subscribe to a group.
2.5. 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?
2.6. I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this
possible?
2.7. And how about local spool files?
2.8. OK, News work now, but I want to be able to read my mail
with Gnus, too. How to do it?
2.9. And what about IMAP?
2.10. At office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can
I use Gnus to read my mail from it?
2.11. Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server
it retrieves via POP3?
3. Reading messages
3.1. When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to
view them again?
3.2. How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time
I enter a group, even when it's read?
3.3. How to view the headers of a message?
3.4. How to view the raw unformatted message?
3.5. How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at
the top of the article buffer?
3.6. I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the
text part if it's available. How to do it?
3.7. Can I use some other Browser than w3 to render my
HTML-mails?
3.8. Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted
mails more readable?
3.9. 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?
3.10. How can i disable threading in some (e.g. mail-)
groups, or set other variables specific for some groups?
3.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups
to those?
3.12. 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?
3.13. I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer,
how to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
3.14. I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to
tweak it?
3.15. How to split incoming mails in several groups?
4. Composing messages
4.1. What are the basic commands I need to know for sending
mail and postings?
4.2. How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing
messages?
4.3. How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To,
signature...?
4.4. Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on
the group I post too?
4.5. Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly
spellchecking?
4.6. Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting
to?
4.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't
remember all those email addresses?
4.8. Sometimes I see little images at the top of article
buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my postings,
too?
4.9. Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in
newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in
newsgroups?
4.10. How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
4.11. I want gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and
news, how to do it?
5. Old messages
5.1. How to import my old mail into Gnus?
5.2. How to archive interesting messages?
5.3. How to search for a specific message?
5.4. How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
5.5. I want that all read messages are expired (at least in
some groups). How to do it?
5.6. I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move
them to an other group.
6. Getting help
6.1. How to find informations and help inside Emacs?
6.2. I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g.
attachments, pgp, mime...), is it not documented?
6.3. Which websites should I know?
6.4. Which mailinglists and newsgroups are there?
6.5. I need realtime help, where to find it?
7. Tuning Gnus
7.1. Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
7.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
7.3. Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
1. Installation FAQ
1.1. What's changed since last time?
1.2. What is the latest version of Gnus?
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?
1.1. What's changed since last time?
This file is $Id: gnus-faq-neu.xml,v 1.9 2003/01/02 15:26:46 fschmitt Exp $.
1.2. What is the latest version of Gnus?
As of this posting, the latest Gnus version is 5.8.8. 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.
1.3. Where and how to get Gnus?
The latest 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].
1.4. 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 batchfile 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 add the following lines to
your ~/.xemacs/init.el or ~/.emacs:
(add-to-list 'load-path
"/path/to/gnus/lisp")
Make sure that you don't have any gnus related stuff before this line,
on MS Windows use "\\" instead of "/".
1.5. 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.
1.6. 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. Getting Messages
2.1. I just installed Gnus, started it via M-x gnus but it only says "nntp (news) open error",
what to do?
2.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.
2.3. My Newsserver requires authentification, how to store username and password on disk?
2.4. Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to subscribe to a group.
2.5. 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?
2.6. I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible?
2.7. And how about local spool files?
2.8. OK, News work now, but I want to be able to read my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it?
2.9. And what about IMAP?
2.10. At office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use Gnus to read my mail from it?
2.11. Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it retrieves via POP3?
2.1. 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
informations 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 "y...@yourprovider.net")
(setq user-full-name "Your Name")
2.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.
Well, than let's change this. The ~ means the home directory where Gnus and [X]Emacs look
for the configuration files. So first thing you've got to do is 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, under NT, 2000 and XP, hit Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system
options, there you'll find the possibility to set environment variables, create a new one
with name HOME and value C:\myhome.
Now to create ~/.gnus, start Emacs and say C-x C-f C:\myhome\.gnus RET C-x C-s.
2.3. My Newsserver requires authentification, how to store username 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
.
2.4. 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 summary buffer (use the
tab-completion Luke). Otherwise hit ^ in summary buffer, this brings you to the server
buffer. Now place point (the cursor) over the server which carries the group you want and
say u to subscribe to it.
2.5. 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.
2.6. 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"))
2.7. 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 a nntp-Server as primary newssource:
(setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you want something different, add
something like this to ~/.gnus:
(setq nnspool-spool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")
You might have to specify more stuff like the program used to post articles, see the Gnus
manual on how to do this.
2.8. OK, News work 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 those: 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 send 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 backend to use. Gnus supports many different backends, 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 filesystem has problems
with many small files, the nnfolder-backend 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:
(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net"
:user "yourUserName"
:password "yourPassword"))
If you want to read your mail from a traditional spool file on your local machine, it's
(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
(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 (because
procmail already splitted your mail) it's
(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 a 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")
2.9. 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 backend to your select-method and give the informations 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 informations.
2.10. At 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.
2.11. 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 Mailserver.
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.
3. Reading messages
3.1. When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them again?
3.2. How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I enter a group, even when it's
read?
3.3. How to view the headers of a message?
3.4. How to view the raw unformatted message?
3.5. How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at the top of the article buffer?
3.6. I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if it's available. How to
do it?
3.7. Can I use some other Browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails?
3.8. Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails more readable?
3.9. 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?
3.10. How can i disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set other variables specific
for some groups?
3.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those?
3.12. 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?
3.13. I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how to change it? Perhaps even a
three pane display?
3.14. I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it?
3.15. How to split incoming mails in several groups?
3.1. 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
3.2. 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).
3.3. How to view the headers of a message?
Say t to show all headers, one more t hides them again.
3.4. How to view the raw unformatted message?
Say C-u g to show the raw message g returns to normal view.
3.5. 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, it's value is a
regular expression, header lines which match it are shown. So if you want author, subject,
date, eventual Followup-To and MUA / NUA say this in ~/.gnus:
(setq gnus-visible-headers
"^\\(From:\\|Subject:\\|Date:\\|Followup-To:\\|X-Newsreader:\\|User-Agent:\\|X-Mailer\\)")
3.6. I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if it's available. How to
do it?
Say
(setq mm-discouraged-alternatives '("text/html" "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.
3.7. 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)
3.8. 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.
3.9. 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.
3.10. 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.
3.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those?
Stop those "can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes in Gnus County :-). 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]
3.12. 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' backends. 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 a 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).
3.13. 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)))))
3.14. 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 subnodes. 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
3.15. 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:\\).*loca...@xemacs.bla.*")
("Gnus-Tut" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*loca...@socha.bla.*")
("tcsh" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*loca...@mx.gw.bla.*")
("BAfH" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@.*uni-muenchen.bla.*")
("Hamster-src" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*hamster-sourcen@yahoogroups.\\(de\\|com\\).*")
("Tagesschau" "^From: tagesschau <loca...@www.tagesschau.bla>$")
("Replies" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*loca...@Frank-Schmitt.bla.*")
("EK" "^From:.*\\(loca...@privateprovider.bla\\|loca...@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 spam...@gmx.bla$")
("Spam" "^Received: from link2buy.com")
("Spam" "^CC: .*azz...@t-online.bla")
("Spam" "^X-Mailer-Version: 1.50 BETA")
("Uni" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*loca...@uni-koblenz.bla.*")
("Inbox" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*\\(my\ name\\|add...@one.bla\\|adr...@two.bla\\)")
("Spam" "")))
4. Composing messages
4.1. What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and postings?
4.2. How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
4.3. How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...?
4.4. Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group I post too?
4.5. Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spellchecking?
4.6. Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to?
4.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all those email addresses?
4.8. Sometimes I see little images at the top of article buffer. What's that and how can I send
one with my postings, too?
4.9. Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm
replying by mail in newsgroups?
4.10. How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
4.11. I want gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and news, how to do it?
4.1. 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 FollowUp 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.
4.2. 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)
4.3. 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 "m...@there.bla")
(organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
(signature-file "~/.signature")
("X-SampleHeader" "foobar")
(eval (setq some-function "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.
4.4. 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 mesage-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 "mySpa...@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
("Reply-To" "hereRealRepl...@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
)
((message-mail-p) ;;mail?
(address "usedFo...@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
)
("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact
(address "usedFo...@Frank-Schmitt.net")
("Reply-To" nil)
)
("^gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general$"
(eval (setq mail-envelope-from "Azz...@rz-online.de"))
(address "Azz...@rz-online.de")
)
)
)
4.5. Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spellchecking?
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 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)))
4.6. 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.
4.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all those email addresses?
You want 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 adress:
(setq bbdb-user-mail-names
(regexp-opt '("Your....@here.bla"
"Your....@mail.there.bla")))
;;cycling while completing email adresses
(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.
4.8. 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.
4.9. 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))
4.10. 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.
4.11. 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. Old messages
5.1. How to import my old mail into Gnus?
5.2. How to archive interesting messages?
5.3. How to search for a specific message?
5.4. How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
5.5. I want that all read messages are expired (at least in some groups). How to do it?
5.6. I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them to an other group.
5.1. 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 RETin 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 a and either copy them to the
desired group by saying B c name.of.group or send them through nnmail-split-methods
(respool them) by saying B r.
5.2. 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 Paul Moore
(gus...@morpheus.demon.co.uk) 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'."
(interactive "P")
(let ((archive-name
(format
"nnml:1.%s"
(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 prefered backend)
5.3. 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], if you found the
posting there, tell Google to display the raw message, look for the message-id, and say
M-^ t...@message.id RET in a summary buffer.
An other 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. 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 inconvient since you are not displaying the found mail in Gnus. Here
comes nnir into action. Nnir is a frontend 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/]. Instructions on how to use it are at
the top of the file.
5.4. 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.
5.5. 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.
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 paramters for the group. (Hit G
p 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).
5.6. I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them to an other 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?")
6. Getting help
6.1. How to find informations and help inside Emacs?
6.2. I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g. attachments, pgp, mime...), is it
not documented?
6.3. Which websites should I know?
6.4. Which mailinglists and newsgroups are there?
6.5. I need realtime help, where to find it?
6.1. How to find informations and help inside Emacs?
The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say C-h i 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.
6.2. 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.
6.3. 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.
6.4. Which mailinglists 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 mailinglist (di...@gnus.org) dealing with development of
Gnus (this is the right place for bug reports, too). 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.
6.5. I need realtime 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.
7. Tuning Gnus
7.1. Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
7.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
7.3. Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
7.1. 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 bytecompile 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.
7.2. 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. 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.
7.3. 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 an other name.
Backend
In Gnus terminology a backend is a virtual server, a layer between
core Gnus and the real nntp-, POP3-, IMAP- or whatever-server
which offers Gnus a standardisized 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 backend, 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.
Jesper Harder
> During the last two weeks I wrote a new FAQ for Gnus
Excellent!
> I'd appreciate any comments regarding the content of the FAQ, e.g.
Some general comments:
* It would be nice with a slightly shorter line length in the plain text
version.
* Where's the source? I have some more trivial corrections (typos
etc.), but it's easier to just fix them and send a diff rather than
list all of them.
> 1.2. What is the latest version of Gnus?
> As of this posting, the latest Gnus version is 5.8.8. This version is very stable and
> should be the choice for all beginners.
Maybe you should mention what Gnus 5.9 is here.
> 1.3. Where and how to get Gnus?
> The latest version of Gnus is included in Emacs 21
^
released
(just to make it clear).
> 1.4. What to do with the tarball now?
>
> [..] If you don't want to (or aren't allowed to) install Gnus
> system-wide, you can add the following lines to your
> ~/.xemacs/init.el or ~/.emacs:
>
> (add-to-list 'load-path
> "/path/to/gnus/lisp")
You also need something like
(add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "~/cvsgnus/texi/")
to get the proper documentation for the installed version of Gnus.
> 2.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.
> Well, than let's change this. The ~ means the home directory where Gnus and [X]Emacs look
> for the configuration files. So first thing you've got to do is 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, under NT, 2000 and XP
Is this step strictly necessary? The last time I used Gnus under
ms-windows (win98) just doing `C-x C-f ~/.gnus' was enough to get the
correct file.
> 2.7. And how about local spool files?
>
> Or this if you don't want a nntp-Server as primary newssource:
an NNTP server as primary news source:
> 2.8. OK, News work now, but I want to be able to read my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it?
>
> However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way it
> should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which backend to
back end
(this is the spelling used in the Gnus manual).
> 3.5. 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, it's value is a
its
> 4.4. Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group I post too?
>
> (setq gnus-posting-styles
> '((".*" ;;default
> (name "Frank Schmitt")
> (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
> (signature-file "~/.signature")
> )
> ((message-news-p) ;;Usenet news?
> (address "mySpa...@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
> ("Reply-To" "hereRealRepl...@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
> )
> ((message-mail-p) ;;mail?
> (address "usedFo...@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
> )
> ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact
> (address "usedFo...@Frank-Schmitt.net")
> ("Reply-To" nil)
> )
> ("^gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general$"
> (eval (setq mail-envelope-from "Azz...@rz-online.de"))
> (address "Azz...@rz-online.de")
> )
> )
> )
This would look much nicer without closing parentheses on lines by
themselves. To quote the Emacs manual: "Lisp programmers find this
disconcerting".
> 4.5. Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spellchecking?
> 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].
AFAIK, both ispell.el and flyspell.el are included with Emacs and
XEmacs -- so there shouldn't be any reason to install them by hand.
> 5.3. 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],
But why the leave the comfort of Gnus when you can do Google Usenet
searches from within Gnus with `G w' ?-)
> An other 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,
Maybe `M-s', which also searches the body, should be mentioned, too.
> 6.4. Which mailinglists and newsgroups are there?
> general questions and the ding mailinglist (di...@gnus.org) dealing with development of
> Gnus (this is the right place for bug reports, too).
Why not `M-x gnus-bug' (or `C-c C-b')?
> 7.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
> To speed up building of summary say
Other suggestions:
* Increase the value of `gc-cons-threshold' -- setting it to 4000000
made a noticeable difference for me.
* Make sure that `gnus-use-correct-string-widths' is nil (unless you
really care about alignment of CJK characters). In Oort with Emacs 21
it should _never_ be necessary to set it to a non-nil value.
> NUA
>
> NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you use to
Is this term widely used? (I haven't heard it before). I think the
term used by Usefor is 'Posting Agent'.
Frank Schmitt
> Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>
> * It would be nice with a slightly shorter line length in the plain text
> version.
The line length is determined by the widest lisp
snippets. However I'll try to find out if there's a chance for reducing it.
> * Where's the source? I have some more trivial corrections (typos
> etc.), but it's easier to just fix them and send a diff rather than
> list all of them.
It's at http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnus/ I'll mention it in the FAQ
and ask the MGO team to include this information on http://my.gnus.org/FAQ
>> 1.2. What is the latest version of Gnus?
>> As of this posting, the latest Gnus version is 5.8.8. This version is very stable and
>> should be the choice for all beginners.
>
> Maybe you should mention what Gnus 5.9 is here.
Done.
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.
>> 1.3. Where and how to get Gnus?
>> The latest version of Gnus is included in Emacs 21
> ^
> released
> (just to make it clear).
Done.
>> 1.4. What to do with the tarball now?
>>
>> [..] If you don't want to (or aren't allowed to) install Gnus
>> system-wide, you can add the following lines to your
>> ~/.xemacs/init.el or ~/.emacs:
>>
>> (add-to-list 'load-path
>> "/path/to/gnus/lisp")
>
> You also need something like
>
> (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "~/cvsgnus/texi/")
>
> to get the proper documentation for the installed version of Gnus.
Done
>> 2.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.
>> Well, than let's change this. The ~ means the home directory where Gnus and [X]Emacs look
>> for the configuration files. So first thing you've got to do is 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, under NT, 2000 and XP
>
> Is this step strictly necessary? The last time I used Gnus under
> ms-windows (win98) just doing `C-x C-f ~/.gnus' was enough to get the
> correct file.
If you don't set HOME, XEmacs will take C:\ as the home directory
which is really pleasant.
>> 2.7. And how about local spool files?
>>
>> Or this if you don't want a nntp-Server as primary newssource:
> an NNTP server as primary news source:
Done.
>> 2.8. OK, News work now, but I want to be able to read my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it?
>>
>> However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way it
>> should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which backend to
> back end
> (this is the spelling used in the Gnus manual).
Done.
>> 3.5. 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, it's value is a
> its
Done.
Done.
>> 4.5. Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spellchecking?
>
>> 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].
>
> AFAIK, both ispell.el and flyspell.el are included with Emacs and
> XEmacs -- so there shouldn't be any reason to install them by hand.
AFAIK flyspell.el is neither shipped with XEmacs nor available through
package system. I'll look into this.
>> 5.3. 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],
>
> But why the leave the comfort of Gnus when you can do Google Usenet
> searches from within Gnus with `G w' ?-)
Because this doesn't work with 5.8.8, as when it was released there was
no groups.google.com (Or am I wrong here). But I'll mention the
possibility for Oort.
>> An other 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,
>
> Maybe `M-s', which also searches the body, should be mentioned, too.
Cool, didn't know this one.
>> 6.4. Which mailinglists and newsgroups are there?
>> general questions and the ding mailinglist (di...@gnus.org) dealing with development of
>> Gnus (this is the right place for bug reports, too).
>
> Why not `M-x gnus-bug' (or `C-c C-b')?
OK.
>> 7.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
>> To speed up building of summary say
>
> Other suggestions:
>
> * Increase the value of `gc-cons-threshold' -- setting it to 4000000
> made a noticeable difference for me.
Yes, for me too.
> * Make sure that `gnus-use-correct-string-widths' is nil (unless you
> really care about alignment of CJK characters). In Oort with Emacs 21
> it should _never_ be necessary to set it to a non-nil value.
>
>> NUA
>>
>> NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you use to
>
> Is this term widely used? (I haven't heard it before). I think the
> term used by Usefor is 'Posting Agent'.
No idea, you sometimes here it in German newsgroups.
Thanks for your suggestions Jesper.
Frank Schmitt
> Jesper Harder <har...@myrealbox.com> writes:
>
>> * It would be nice with a slightly shorter line length in the plain text
>> version.
>
> The line length is determined by the widest lisp
> snippets. However I'll try to find out if there's a chance for reducing it.
OK, problem solved, the text is now about 74 characters wide.
>> AFAIK, both ispell.el and flyspell.el are included with Emacs and
>> XEmacs -- so there shouldn't be any reason to install them by hand.
>
> AFAIK flyspell.el is neither shipped with XEmacs nor available through
> package system. I'll look into this.
Just found out flyspell.el is in XEmacs text-modes package.
>> * Make sure that `gnus-use-correct-string-widths' is nil (unless you
>> really care about alignment of CJK characters). In Oort with Emacs 21
>> it should _never_ be necessary to set it to a non-nil value.
Hey, this gives a reasonable speed improvement. Shouldn't this be nil by
default as long as we are not in a Asian Usenet hierarchy?
Don Saklad
Of course, another neat way to use gnus is together with http://groups.google.com
which among the other features highlights in color the correspondents and the
respondents writings.
I remain, as always, advocating for email in gnus even though it
didn't work at this end yet !
Cheers!
oo__ dWs
Frank Schmitt
> ...Nifty ! Thank you Frank Schmitt !
>
> Of course, another neat way to use gnus is together with http://groups.google.com
> which among the other features highlights in color the correspondents and the
> respondents writings.
Which Gnus does as well.
> I remain, as always, advocating for email in gnus even though it
> didn't work at this end yet !
Then the part of the FAQ which deals with Mails is either not
understandable enough, or your environment is very special, or you
didn't read it intense enough or you've got trouble understanding
technical documentation.
Don Saklad
how do you learn about the system environment?
a. What's needed is a list of the system commands or types of commands
that give users information about the system that might be handy to
know when setting up email in gnus.
1 ...
2 ...
3 ...
b. What's needed is a list of directories and files where users might
try looking for information about the system that might be useful
to know in setting up email in gnus.
1 ...
2 ...
...
c. What's needed is a list of possible email lists archives on the
system where users might try looking for information about the
system that might be useful to know in setting up email in gnus.
1 ...
2 ...
...
d. What's needed are strategies users might try on their own to get
the information about the system needed to set up email in gnus
where the users might be a neophyte and not know how to interpret
the information.
1 ...
2 ...
...
In every case there's no need to look to blame, scapegoat. What works
better is a method of continual improvement as the years go by taking
into account new developments and recognition of the variety of
communities' constituencies perceptions. Educational methodologies are
part of a discipline studied intensely by others that might be applied
to a variety of responsive materials as well as the people who develop
instructive techniques applying the discipline to themselves. It's not
for everyone to be an expert on such a discipline and yet benefit.
It's not for everyone to be an expect on the content of the email in
gnus technical documents and yet benefit.
Kai Großjohann
> 2.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.
> Well, than let's change this. The ~ means the home directory where Gnus and [X]Emacs look
> for the configuration files. So first thing you've got to do is 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, under NT, 2000 and XP, hit Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system
> options, there you'll find the possibility to set environment variables, create a new one
> with name HOME and value C:\myhome.
>
> Now to create ~/.gnus, start Emacs and say C-x C-f C:\myhome\.gnus RET C-x C-s.
I suggest the following:
You don't need to know what it 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.)
If you don't like the directory that Emacs has chosen, you can
set the HOME environment variable to a directory you like.
Maybe you want to add more instructions on setting environment
variables on Windows.
> Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you want something different, add
> something like this to ~/.gnus:
>
> (setq nnspool-spool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")
This is a server parameter, so it should be used like this:
(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
'(nnspool "" (nnspool-directory ...)))
> 3.6. I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if it's available. How to
> do it?
> Say
>
> (setq mm-discouraged-alternatives '("text/html" "text/richtext"))
How about this?
(require 'mm-decode)
(add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
> 3.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those?
> Stop those "can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes in Gnus County :-). It's a
Gnus country
^
> 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]
> 3.15. 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.
IMHO, fancy splitting is even easier than normal splitting :-)
> 5.2. 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 Paul Moore
> (gus...@morpheus.demon.co.uk) 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'."
> (interactive "P")
> (let ((archive-name
> (format
> "nnml:1.%s"
> (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 prefered backend)
I like to turn on the cache (it's on by default I think) and then
just tick the message.
> ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/
> [ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/]. Instructions on how to use it are at
> the top of the file.
Mention mirror?
> 5.5. 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.
I like to say that Gnus hits E for you whenever you read a message.
> 6.1. How to find informations and help inside Emacs?
> The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say C-h i m Gnus RET to start the Gnus manual,
I suggest C-h i d m ...
^
With a single key, you're always sure that the user can find it, even
if they have been reading something else before.
> 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.
--
Ambibibentists unite!
Kai Großjohann
> The line length is determined by the widest lisp snippets. However
> I'll try to find out if there's a chance for reducing it.
Make the Lisp snippet narrower!
--
Ambibibentists unite!
Frank Haun
> 5.2. How to archive interesting messages?
[...]
> (defun my-archive-article (%&optional n)
[...]
As I wrote it, I've tested it with Emacs only, and unfortunately it
doesn't work with my "XEmacs 21.4 (patch 5)", because
`replace-regexp-in-string' is unknown. I've published a new Version:
http://my.gnus.org/Lisp/1017324897
Frank.
Frank Schmitt
Sorry Don, but my English isn't good enough to understand what you're
writing. Could you try to use shorter, easier constructed sentences and
avoid less seldom used words?
Don Saklad
One of the automatic translators
http://de.altavista.com/babelfish
http://babelfish.altavista.com
Don Saklad
[ http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=68wulmm2u1.fsf%40fencepost.gnu.org&output=gplain ]
Don Saklad
Don Saklad
a. a list of system commands or types of commands that give neophyte
users information about the system they use, for example
information about the system a neophyte user might need to set up
email in gnus or to put the correct code in a dotfile.
1 ...
2 ...
3 ...
b. a list of directories and files where neophyte users might try
looking for more information about the system they use, for example
directories and files with more information about the system a
neophyte user might need to set up email in gnus or to put the
correct code in a dotfile.
1 ...
2 ...
c. a list of possible email lists archives on the system where
neophyte users might try looking for more information about the
system they use.
1 ...
2 ...
d. a list of strategies neophyte users might try on their own to get
more information about the system they use.
1 ...
2 ...
Kai Großjohann
> The difficulty people can encounter is with respect to the question...
> how do you learn about the system environment?
You keep asking this question over and over, and the answer remains
the same: ask your system administrator. That's the best I can do,
even though you might not like this answer.
--
Ambibibentists unite!
Kai Großjohann
> One of the automatic translators
I'm sure that Frank's knowledge of English is much better than theirs!
--
Ambibibentists unite!
Don Saklad
Don Saklad
http://www.cutsinger.net/socratic.html
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> > The difficulty people can encounter is with respect to the
> > question... how do you learn about the system environment?
>
> You keep asking this question over and over, and the answer remains
> the same: ask your system administrator. That's the best I can do,
> even though you might not like this answer.
The problem is that many newbies they _are_ the sysadmins--and they
really don't know what they're doing. Here they are with an incredibly
fine-tuned computing machine, and they need some help figuring out how
to use it. Very few folks buy a computer for a computer; most buy a
computer for a word processort, a financial calculator &c. Thus it
would seem to me that for many, their introduction to system
administration might come from configuring emacs, GnuCash or gnus. Sad
but true.
> Ambibibentists unite!
That's folks who drink both beer _and_ wine, right?
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
In France, they're having trouble translating a lot of Internet terms
into French. In France the law is you have to use French words. For
example, there are no French words for surfing the Web, there aren't any
French words for chat session, and there aren't any French words for
hacker. Of course, a lot of other words don't translate to French
either: military victory, deodorant... --Jay Leno
Robin S. Socha
> kai.gro...@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>> Dan Saklad is still a moron:
>>> The difficulty people can encounter is with respect to the
>>> question... how do you learn about the system environment?
>>
>> You keep asking this question over and over, and the answer remains
>> the same: ask your system administrator. That's the best I can do,
>> even though you might not like this answer.
>
> The problem is that many newbies they _are_ the sysadmins--and
> they really don't know what they're doing.
"This is UNIX. Stop acting so helpless."(DJB)
> Here they are with an incredibly fine-tuned computing machine, and
> they need some help figuring out how to use it.
Well, yes. And USENET is organized according to topics. This is *not*
comp.os.linux.answers. This isn't a UNIX newsgroup, either. Miss Saklad
is trying to make one believe that the Gnus FAQ needs instructions to
admin your operating system. Well, I'm sure you'll help her write the
documents necessary to cover *ALL* of these:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html#Platforms>
> Very few folks buy a computer for a computer; most buy a computer for
> a word processort, a financial calculator &c. Thus it would seem to
> me that for many, their introduction to system administration might
> come from configuring emacs, GnuCash or gnus. Sad but true.
Yes. So? This is totally irrelevant regarding the problem in
question. Frank is trying to overhaul the Gnus FAQ. If you want to
contribute, well, that's great. As for Miss Saklad:
<http://templeofhate.com/users/rsocha/rant/dsaklad.php>
Henrik Enberg
> * Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net> writes:
>
>> The problem is that many newbies they _are_ the sysadmins--and
>> they really don't know what they're doing.
>
> "This is UNIX. Stop acting so helpless."(DJB)
Mr. Bernstein really isn't someone you should select as role-model if
you want to be helpful towards people.
Don Saklad
Don Saklad
Don Saklad
2.8 ...The most common cases are those: 1:
those: OR are: OR these: OR as follows:
2.8 ...Outgoing mail is send by Sendmail, Postfix or some other MTA...
send OR sent
2.8
...And finally if you want to read your mail from several files in one directory (because
procmail already splitted your mail) it's...
splitted OR had already split OR has already split
OR because procmail already splitted OR procmail having already split
() OR , for example
parentheses OR comma OR commas
Don Saklad
how to get set up running email in gnus. Currently, I use rmail in emacs.
What I've tried so far didn't work out !
Here's my /home/dsaklad/.emacs
(menu-bar-mode -1)
(display-time-mode 1)
(column-number-mode 1)
(put 'eval-expression 'disabled nil)
(put 'downcase-region 'disabled nil)
(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.mit.edu")) ; maybe fix this
(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
'((nnml "")))
(setq nnmail-spool-file "/var/spool/mail/dsaklad")
;(load "rmail-spam-filter.el")
(require 'rmail)
;(load "get-new-mail-for-spam-filter.el")
And here's one of the items from the documentation...
[
...more
X-URL: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&selm=y9631ejh.fsf%40hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de&rnum=2
]
2.8. OK, News work 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 those:
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 send 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 backend to use.
Gnus supports many different backends, 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 filesystem has problems
with many small files, the nnfolder-backend 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:
(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net"
:user "yourUserName"
:password "yourPassword"))
If you want to read your mail from a traditional spool file on your local machine, it's
(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
(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 (because
procmail already splitted your mail) it's
(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 a 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")
Derrell...@unwireduniverse.com
> If you would, please let me know any little thing, anything else about
> how to get set up running email in gnus. Currently, I use rmail in emacs.
Since Rmail is currently working, your Rmail settings can help provide the
settings for gnus. What is your current value of rmail-primary-inbox-list?
In a working Rmail environment, put your cursor at the end of the following
line, type C-x C-e, and send us the output.
(describe-variable 'rmail-primary-inbox-list)
(If you think about it some, the output of the above command, along with the
gnus FAQ, should give you the information you need to get email working with
gnus. If you can get it working yourself with this info, don't bother to send
us the output of the command; just let us know you got it working.)
Derrell
Kai Großjohann
> The problem is that many newbies they _are_ the sysadmins--and they
> really don't know what they're doing.
In this case, they ask their ISP...
--
Ambibibentists unite!
Derrell...@unwireduniverse.com
Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
> under NT, 2000 and XP, hit Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system options, there
> you'll find the possibility to set environment variables, create a new one
> with name HOME and value C:\myhome.
I'm unable to get to this system options screen using any combination of the
above three keys. (I don't run gnus on windows, but I was curious about
accessing the system options.)
I noticed a number of grammar/word usage issues but I think they've all
already been mentioned here.
A section on converting from Rmail or other mail agents, to gnus, might be
useful. Rmail seems to use the variable rmail-primary-inbox-list, so providing
an example of looking at what's there and converting it to a (file :path "xxx")
entry in mail-sources should be beneficial. (What other common mail UAs are
in use?)
Derrell
Don Saklad
rmail-primary-inbox-list's value is
nil
Documentation:
*List of files which are inboxes for user's primary mail file `~/RMAIL'.
`nil' means the default, which is ("/usr/spool/mail/$USER")
(the name varies depending on the operating system,
and the value of the environment variable MAIL overrides it).
You can customize this variable.
Defined in `rmail'.
rmail-primary-inbox-list's value is
nil
Documentation:
*List of files which are inboxes for user's primary mail file `~/RMAIL'.
`nil' means the default, which is ("/usr/spool/mail/$USER")
(the name varies depending on the operating system,
and the value of the environment variable MAIL overrides it).
You can customize this variable.
Defined in `rmail'.
Derrell...@unwireduniverse.com
> #("rmail-primary-inbox-list's value is ^Jnil^J^JDocumentation:^J*List of files which are inboxes for user's primary mail file `~/RMAIL'.^J`nil' means the default, which is (\"/usr/spool/mail/$USER\")^J(the name varies depending on the operating system,^J
>
> rmail-primary-inbox-list's value is
> nil
>
> Documentation:
> *List of files which are inboxes for user's primary mail file `~/RMAIL'.
> `nil' means the default, which is ("/usr/spool/mail/$USER")
Fine. So your mail goes the the "default" location on your machine. That's
either /usr/spool/mail/dsaklad or /usr/mail/dsaklad in all likelihood.
Put the following in your .gnus file and restart emacs. Send yourself some
mail, start gnus, and it should retrieve the message.
(setq
;; Do not agentize
gnus-agent nil
;; Get mail
gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml "private"))
;; Where to get mail from
mail-sources '((file
:path
"/usr/spool/mail/dsaklad")
(file
:path
"/usr/mail/dsaklad"))
)
Kai Großjohann
> Put the following in your .gnus file and restart emacs. Send yourself some
> mail, start gnus, and it should retrieve the message.
>
>
>
> (setq
>
> ;; Do not agentize
> gnus-agent nil
>
> ;; Get mail
> gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml "private"))
>
> ;; Where to get mail from
> mail-sources '((file
> :path
> "/usr/spool/mail/dsaklad")
> (file
> :path
> "/usr/mail/dsaklad"))
> )
This will not work because Don uses Gnus 5.7. But he showed his
config, and it seemed to be right (if the filename he gave is right).
I don't know why it doesn't work for him.
--
Ambibibentists unite!
Adam Sjøgren
>> ;; Where to get mail from mail-sources '((file :path
>> "/usr/spool/mail/dsaklad") (file :path "/usr/mail/dsaklad")) )
> This will not work because Don uses Gnus 5.7. But he showed his
> config, and it seemed to be right (if the filename he gave is
> right). I don't know why it doesn't work for him. --
Dons Gnus section has this path to his mailspool:
(setq nnmail-spool-file "/var/spool/mail/dsaklad")
... while Dons rmail-help says that /usr/spool/mail/$USER is
probably the default. Maybe his system is so old, that it hasn't
migrated mailspools to /var?
To Don:
Have you tried using:
(setq nnmail-spool-file "/usr/spool/mail/dsaklad")
_or_:
(setq nnmail-spool-file "/usr/mail/dsaklad")
_or_:
(setq nnmail-spool-file "/var/mail/dsaklad")
?
You can determine whether any of the files exist by using the "ls"
command:
ls /usr/spool/mail/dsaklad
ls /usr/mail/dsaklad
ls /var/mail/dsaklad
Whether the MAIL enviroment variable is set, can be determined by
using the "echo" command:
echo $MAIL
Please try those four commands and post the output.
Best regards,
--
"What about 'swing'?" Adam Sjøgren
"Swing? That's a good message." as...@koldfront.dk
Frank Schmitt
> Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>
> Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>
>> under NT, 2000 and XP, hit Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system options, there
>> you'll find the possibility to set environment variables, create a new one
>> with name HOME and value C:\myhome.
>
> I'm unable to get to this system options screen using any combination of the
> above three keys. (I don't run gnus on windows, but I was curious about
> accessing the system options.)
Strange, worked for me on all systems I use. Does anybody have an idea
how the following way through the menus is called in an English Windows
(only have a German here):
Start->Settings->Systemsettings->System?, backward translation correct?
> I noticed a number of grammar/word usage issues but I think they've all
> already been mentioned here.
Yes, I got quite many corrections, but as I'm a bit short of time at the
moment I'll probably not manage it to work them in until Tuesday, I'll
then send a second draft.
> A section on converting from Rmail or other mail agents, to gnus, might be
> useful. Rmail seems to use the variable rmail-primary-inbox-list, so providing
> an example of looking at what's there and converting it to a (file :path "xxx")
> entry in mail-sources should be beneficial. (What other common mail UAs are
> in use?)
As I have absolutely no idea about Rmail, perhaps somebody else can take
this one, converting from Pain, Mutt and VM could possibly be
interesting, too. But in the end: Shouldn't the suggested "export to
mbox and import to Gnus groups" approach work for all of them?
Derrell...@unwireduniverse.com
>> A section on converting from Rmail or other mail agents, to gnus, might be
>> useful. Rmail seems to use the variable rmail-primary-inbox-list, so
>> providing an example of looking at what's there and converting it to a
>> (file :path "xxx") entry in mail-sources should be beneficial. (What other
>> common mail UAs are in use?)
>
> As I have absolutely no idea about Rmail, perhaps somebody else can take
> this one, converting from Pain, Mutt and VM could possibly be
> interesting, too. But in the end: Shouldn't the suggested "export to
> mbox and import to Gnus groups" approach work for all of them?
I was thinking more of the issues that have been discussed here recently,
where Rmail is working (or VM or ...) which can provide some insight into what
to select mail-sources to. Once new mail can be received, one can worry about
how to import old mail.
Cheers,
Derrell
Don Saklad
nestle:~> echo #MAIL
nestle:~> ls /var/mail/dsaklad
/var/mail/dsaklad
nestle:~> ls /usr
X11R6 bin doc etc games i486-linuxlibc1 include info lib local local.original lost+found man sbin share src tmp
nestle:~> cat /home/dsaklad/.emacs
(menu-bar-mode -1)
(display-time-mode 1)
(column-number-mode 1)
(put 'eval-expression 'disabled nil)
(put 'downcase-region 'disabled nil)
(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.mit.edu")) ; maybe fix this
(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
'((nnml "")))
(setq nnmail-spool-file "/var/spool/mail/dsaklad")
;(load "rmail-spam-filter.el")
(require 'rmail)
;(load "get-new-mail-for-spam-filter.el")
Just in, here's an idea from another correspondent...
I use RMAIL in Emacs. In Gnus, type "Gf~/RMAIL" to view RMAIL as a
newsgroup. RMAIL will remain one of your selected newgroups. This
method is read-only. To delete messages from Gnus I guess you need to
mess with the feeds like you are trying.
http://www.sunsite.ualberta.ca/Documentation/Gnu/emacs-20.5/html_node/gnus/gnus_143.html
is documentation close to the version running on nestle.ai.mit.edu.
-=-=-=-=-
G f runs the command gnus-group-make-doc-group
which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `gnus-group'.
(gnus-group-make-doc-group FILE TYPE)
Create a group that uses a single file as the source.
Don Saklad
I see listed the following...
/var: mail -> spool/mail
/var/mail: dsaklad
/var/spool: mail -> /nfs/mail/spool
/var/spool/mail: dsaklad
/nfs/mail/spool: dsaklad
Adam Sjøgren
> /var/spool/mail: dsaklad
This would indicate that your .gnus is correct indeed with regards to
where your mailspool is located.
Frank Schmitt
> I was thinking more of the issues that have been discussed here recently,
> where Rmail is working (or VM or ...) which can provide some insight into what
> to select mail-sources to. Once new mail can be received, one can worry about
> how to import old mail.
Ah, OK, I noted it in my todo list.
Adam Sjøgren
> "Note to experienced users: Please don't encourage anti-support
> behavior. Don't try to answer questions from users who don't
> provide the necessary information. Guessing what they did is an
> incredible waste of time." (DJB)
Well, I think DJB is wrong on a number of issues. The problem here is
that a waste of time can often be fun.
> Miss Saklad has an admin. Let him solve her problems. Somebody
> suffciently clueless not to understand "man ls" should not be
> running Gnus on a Unix system. YMMV.
YMMV, indeed.
Galen Boyer
You have posted way too many obscure urls for me to think that you can't
use the same discovery mechanism to find the section in the Gnus info
that explains the basics of mail retrieval.
--
Galen deForest Boyer
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.
Ichimusai
> During the last two weeks I wrote a new FAQ for Gnus which is now in a
> state where I'm ready with everything I wanted to include. The FAQ is
> hosted in various formats at http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/
[...]
I have checked some of it out and it looks great! I will learn a lot
from it!
Thank you for the time to put this together. I am sure it will be very
helpful to a rookie like myself though I have used Gnus for a while I
still discover new things almost every day...
--
AA #769 ICQ: 1645566 Yahoo: Ichimusai AOL: Ichimusai1972 MSN: Ichimusai
IRC: Ichimusai#AmigaSWE@IRCnet URL: http://www.ichimusai.org/
Virgo: (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Certain shortcomings in your education and
upbringing cause you to read meaning into the relationships among various
celestial bodies.
Frank Schmitt
> You don't need to know what it 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.)
OK, I mentioned this possibility, but I also wrote that people really
want to set home.
> If you don't like the directory that Emacs has chosen, you can
> set the HOME environment variable to a directory you like.
>
> Maybe you want to add more instructions on setting environment
> variables on Windows.
Aren't the instructions I gave sufficient?
>> (setq nnspool-spool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")
>
> This is a server parameter, so it should be used like this:
>
> (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
> '(nnspool "" (nnspool-directory ...)))
Done.
>> (setq mm-discouraged-alternatives '("text/html" "text/richtext"))
>
> How about this?
>
> (require 'mm-decode)
> (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
Done. (OK, as I'm advocating eval-after-load later I used this instead
of require):
(eval-after-load "mm-decode"
'(add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html"))
(eval-after-load "mm-decode"
'(add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext"))
Should one do this with progn instead? How?
>> 3.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those?
>> Stop those "can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes in Gnus County :-). It's a
>
> Gnus country
> ^
OK.
> I like to turn on the cache (it's on by default I think) and then
> just tick the message.
I mentioned this possibility.
>> ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/
>
> Mention mirror?
Done.
>> Auto-expire means, that
>> every article which has no marks set and is selected for reading is marked as expirable.
>
> I like to say that Gnus hits E for you whenever you read a message.
Nice, included.
>> 6.1. How to find informations and help inside Emacs?
>> The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say C-h i m Gnus RET to start the Gnus manual,
>
> I suggest C-h i d m ...
> ^
Done.
Thanks for your suggestions Kai.
Frank Schmitt
> Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>
>> 5.2. How to archive interesting messages?
> [...]
>> (defun my-archive-article (%&optional n)
> [...]
>
> As I wrote it, I've tested it with Emacs only, and unfortunately it
> doesn't work with my "XEmacs 21.4 (patch 5)", because
> `replace-regexp-in-string' is unknown. I've published a new Version:
>
> http://my.gnus.org/Lisp/1017324897
Ok, I just included the new version and changed the author to your
name. (How come that I had the memory that it was Paul Moore who wrote
it?)
> Frank.
Me2
Frank Schmitt
I don't see a misspelling in office, should I use a different term, or
what do you mean?
Frank Schmitt
> -grammatical items of interest
Thanks, I correct the errors according to your suggestions.
Frank Schmitt
> That looked like a typo at the third word...
>
>
> 2.8. OK, News work now, but I want to be able to read my mail with Gnus, too.
Why? "They work now", or should it be "it works now"? I changed it to
"Reading news works now".
Derrell...@unwireduniverse.com
> Don Saklad <dsa...@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> It looked like a typo at the second word...
>>
>> 2.10. At office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
>> Gnus to read my mail from it?
The grammar isn't quite correct. "At my office" or At the office" would be
more correct.
Martin Christensen
Hash: SHA1
>>>>> "Frank" == Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>> 2.8. OK, News work now, but I want to be able to read my mail with
>> Gnus, too.
Frank> Why? "They work now", or should it be "it works now"? I changed
Frank> it to "Reading news works now".
Because 'news' is uncountable. When you get only one piece of
information, you don't get 'a new', you just get 'news'.
Martin
- --
Homepage: http://www.cs.auc.dk/~factotum/
GPG public key: http://www.cs.auc.dk/~factotum/gpgkey.txt
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Frank Schmitt
>>>>>> "Frank" == Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>>> 2.8. OK, News work now, but I want to be able to read my mail with
>>> Gnus, too.
> Frank> Why? "They work now", or should it be "it works now"? I changed
> Frank> it to "Reading news works now".
>
> Because 'news' is uncountable. When you get only one piece of
> information, you don't get 'a new', you just get 'news'.
So "Reading news works now" is correct, right?
Frank Schmitt
>>> 2.10. At office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
>>> Gnus to read my mail from it?
>
> The grammar isn't quite correct. "At my office" or At the office" would be
> more correct.
Thanks, I changed it to the latter.
Martin Christensen
Hash: SHA1
>>>>> "Frank" == Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
Frank> So "Reading news works now" is correct, right?
Yes, exactly.
Intending no offence, but this is just another reason why English
isn't the brightest suggestion when it comes to picking _the_
international language... Oh well, pet cause and all that. :-)
Martin
- --
Homepage: http://www.cs.auc.dk/~factotum/
GPG public key: http://www.cs.auc.dk/~factotum/gpgkey.txt
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Frank Schmitt
> Intending no offence, but this is just another reason why English
> isn't the brightest suggestion when it comes to picking _the_
> international language... Oh well, pet cause and all that. :-)
I don't think that German would have been a better solution. (Ask Mark
Twain why :-)), not to speak of Latin.
Frank Schmitt
> I was thinking more of the issues that have been discussed here recently,
> where Rmail is working (or VM or ...) which can provide some insight into what
> to select mail-sources to. Once new mail can be received, one can worry about
> how to import old mail.
Thinking one more time about this, I'm wondering if this really makes
much sense. I mean why should somebody have problems telling Gnus where
to fetch mail from if he was able to tell it another mail reader. (Don
doesn't count, his case is uhm, very special)
Martin Christensen
Hash: SHA1
>>>>> "Frank" == Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>> Intending no offence, but this is just another reason why English
>> isn't the brightest suggestion when it comes to picking _the_
>> international language... Oh well, pet cause and all that. :-)
Frank> I don't think that German would have been a better
Frank> solution. (Ask Mark Twain why :-)), not to speak of Latin.
Deutsch ist nicht für sprechen, nur schimpfen und kommandieren. :-)
Gawd, I haven't used that language in six or seven years, and I
suppose I don't suck any less at it now than I did then... hehe.
Seriously, I think that Esperanto or equivalent languages built (and
implemented!) upon the same principles as Esperanto would be the way
to go. Those who don't know about it owe it to themselves to look it
up and learn the basic principles.
Martin
- --
Homepage: http://www.cs.auc.dk/~factotum/
GPG public key: http://www.cs.auc.dk/~factotum/gpgkey.txt
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Derrell...@unwireduniverse.com
> Derrell...@UnwiredUniverse.com writes:
>
>> I was thinking more of the issues that have been discussed here recently,
>> where Rmail is working (or VM or ...) which can provide some insight into
>> what to select mail-sources to. Once new mail can be received, one can
>> worry about how to import old mail.
>
> Thinking one more time about this, I'm wondering if this really makes
> much sense. I mean why should somebody have problems telling Gnus where
> to fetch mail from if he was able to tell it another mail reader. (Don
> doesn't count, his case is uhm, very special)
Notwithstanding the "special case", emacs doesn't exactly make it trivial to
know what variable does what. Your point is well taken, though. Maybe a
table showing what variable to grok (Rmail, VM), or what configuration file to
look in (other email user agents), would be as adequate as a full description
of moving from X to gnus.
Cheers,
Derrell
Kester Clegg
> 4.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all those email addresses?
>
You can store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple
alias syntax:
alias al "Al <a...@english-heritage.org.uk>"
alias alessio "Alessio Petrelli <a...@katamail.com>"
alias angela "Angela Poole <ang...@york.gov.uk>"
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.
--
************************************************************************
Kester Clegg Dept. of Computer Science,
Research Assistant (UTC) University of York,
Tel (01904) 43 27 49 email: kester at cs.york.ac.uk
************************************************************************
Reiner Steib
> Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>
>> 4.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all
>> those email addresses?
> You can store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple
> alias syntax:
[...]
A link to the manual should be enough, IMHO:
(Info-goto-node "(message)Mail Aliases")
Bye, Reiner.
--
,,,
(o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo--- PGP key available via WWW http://rsteib.home.pages.de/
Frank Schmitt
> On Tue, Jan 07 2003, Kester Clegg wrote:
>
>> Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>>
>>> 4.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all
>>> those email addresses?
>> You can store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple
>> alias syntax:
> [...]
>
> A link to the manual should be enough, IMHO:
>
> (Info-goto-node "(message)Mail Aliases")
Thanks to both of you, added.
Benjamin Lewis
> Reiner Steib <4uce.02...@gmx.net> writes:
>
>> On Tue, Jan 07 2003, Kester Clegg wrote:
>>
>>> Frank Schmitt <usere...@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>>>
>>>> 4.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all
>>>> those email addresses?
>>> You can store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple
>>> alias syntax:
>> [...]
>>
>> A link to the manual should be enough, IMHO:
>>
>> (Info-goto-node "(message)Mail Aliases")
>
> Thanks to both of you, added.
Maybe also stick in a pointer to the bbdb?
--
Benjamin Lewis
Dinosaurs aren't extinct. They've just learned to hide in the trees.
Frank Schmitt
Kester Clegg
> >>> 4.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all
> >>> those email addresses?
> >> You can store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple
> >> alias syntax:
> > [...]
> >
> > A link to the manual should be enough, IMHO:
> >
> > (Info-goto-node "(message)Mail Aliases")
>
> Thanks to both of you, added.
What about also mentioning BBDB as a more sophisticated option?
Robin S. Socha
[...]
> What about also mentioning BBDB as a more sophisticated option?
What about fixing your broken address (it's <kes...@cs.york.ac.uk>,
right?) and reading the document you're talking about?
<http://my.gnus.org/faq/html-nochunks/#id2786654>
Kester Clegg
> What about fixing your broken address (it's <kes...@cs.york.ac.uk>,
> right?)
Absolutely right. But why should my broken address upset you so much?
Kester Clegg
> SpamAssassin, TMDA, rbldns...
Too lazy...
> Any of my users faking their addresses lose their
> accounts. NQA. Forever.
Well, I may fake it, but not in a way that means a human can't reply to
me if they need to. I mean, they can always ring me if they want to!
So I didn't imagine it would upset anyone.
Kai Großjohann
> kai.gro...@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>
>> You don't need to know what it 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.)
>
> OK, I mentioned this possibility, but I also wrote that people really
> want to set home.
Why? (It's a genuine question, I don't use Windows. Hm. Oh, maybe
putting files in C:\ is not a good idea in case you want to delete
the system partition. Ah, yes.)
>> If you don't like the directory that Emacs has chosen, you can
>> set the HOME environment variable to a directory you like.
>>
>> Maybe you want to add more instructions on setting environment
>> variables on Windows.
>
> Aren't the instructions I gave sufficient?
Ah, a misunderstanding. What I meant is this: if you like my text
and want to delete yours, don't. Instead, at least add stuff about
setting env vars under Windows to my text.
But it seems you don't like my text so much anyway, so there is no
danger :-)
>>> (setq mm-discouraged-alternatives '("text/html" "text/richtext"))
>>
>> How about this?
>>
>> (require 'mm-decode)
>> (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
>
> Done. (OK, as I'm advocating eval-after-load later I used this instead
> of require):
>
> (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
> '(add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html"))
> (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
> '(add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext"))
>
> Should one do this with progn instead? How?
Yes, maybe a progn would be nice:
(eval-after-load "mm-decode"
'(progn
(add-to-list ...)
(add-to-list ...)))
The indentation of the above snippet is wrong.
> Thanks for your suggestions Kai.
De nada. Thank *you* for writing the FAQ!
--
Ambibibentists unite!
Frank Schmitt
> Yes, maybe a progn would be nice:
>
> (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
> '(progn
> (add-to-list ...)
> (add-to-list ...)))
>
> The indentation of the above snippet is wrong.
What's wrong with it, or to be more constructive, how to indent properly
(eval-after-load "mm-decode"
'(progn
(add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
(add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext")))
?
Kai Großjohann
> kai.gro...@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>
>> Yes, maybe a progn would be nice:
>>
>> (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
>> '(progn
>> (add-to-list ...)
>> (add-to-list ...)))
>>
>> The indentation of the above snippet is wrong.
>
> What's wrong with it
I don't know. I wasn't in Lisp mode when I wrote it. Just do TAB on
each line, or C-M-\ on the region. Then you don't have to think
about it ;-)
--
Ambibibentists unite!