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--- The Detailed Node Listing ---
Starting Gnus
New Groups
Group Buffer
Group Buffer Format
Group Topics
Misc Group Stuff
Summary Buffer
Summary Buffer Format
Choosing Articles
Reply, Followup and Post
Marking Articles
Threading
Customizing Threading
Decoding Articles
Decoding Variables
Article Treatment
Alternative Approaches
Various Summary Stuff
Article Buffer
Composing Messages
Select Methods
Server Buffer
Getting News
NNTP
Getting Mail
Mail Sources
Choosing a Mail Back End
Browsing the Web
IMAP
Other Sources
Document Groups
SOUP
Combined Groups
Email Based Diary
The NNDiary Back End
The Gnus Diary Library
Gnus Unplugged
Agent Categories
Agent Commands
Scoring
GroupLens
Advanced Scoring
Various
Formatting Variables
Image Enhancements
Thwarting Email Spam
Spam Package
Spam Statistics Package
Appendices
History
New Features
Customization
Gnus Reference Guide
Back End Interface
Various File Formats
Emacs for Heathens
If you are haven't used Emacs much before using Gnus, read Emacs for Heathens first.
If your system administrator has set things up properly, starting Gnus
and reading news is extremely easy—you just type M-x gnus in
your Emacs. If not, you should customize the variable
gnus-select-method as described in Finding the News. For a
minimal setup for posting should also customize the variables
user-full-name and user-mail-address.
If you want to start Gnus in a different frame, you can use the command M-x gnus-other-frame instead.
If things do not go smoothly at startup, you have to twiddle some variables in your ~/.gnus.el file. This file is similar to ~/.emacs, but is read when Gnus starts.
If you puzzle at any terms used in this manual, please refer to the terminology section (see Terminology).
The gnus-select-method variable says where Gnus should look for
news. This variable should be a list where the first element says
how and the second element says where. This method is your
native method. All groups not fetched with this method are
foreign groups.
For instance, if the `news.somewhere.edu' NNTP server is where you want to get your daily dosage of news from, you'd say:
(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.somewhere.edu"))
If you want to read directly from the local spool, say:
(setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
If you can use a local spool, you probably should, as it will almost
certainly be much faster. But do not use the local spool if your
server is running Leafnode (which is a simple, standalone private news
server); in this case, use (nntp "localhost").
If this variable is not set, Gnus will take a look at the
NNTPSERVER environment variable. If that variable isn't set,
Gnus will see whether gnus-nntpserver-file
(/etc/nntpserver by default) has any opinions on the matter.
If that fails as well, Gnus will try to use the machine running Emacs
as an NNTP server. That's a long shot, though.
If gnus-nntp-server is set, this variable will override
gnus-select-method. You should therefore set
gnus-nntp-server to nil, which is what it is by default.
You can also make Gnus prompt you interactively for the name of an
NNTP server. If you give a non-numerical prefix to gnus
(i.e., C-u M-x gnus), Gnus will let you choose between the servers
in the gnus-secondary-servers list (if any). You can also just
type in the name of any server you feel like visiting. (Note that this
will set gnus-nntp-server, which means that if you then M-x
gnus later in the same Emacs session, Gnus will contact the same
server.)
However, if you use one NNTP server regularly and are just interested in a couple of groups from a different server, you would be better served by using the B command in the group buffer. It will let you have a look at what groups are available, and you can subscribe to any of the groups you want to. This also makes .newsrc maintenance much tidier. See Foreign Groups.
A slightly different approach to foreign groups is to set the
gnus-secondary-select-methods variable. The select methods
listed in this variable are in many ways just as native as the
gnus-select-method server. They will also be queried for active
files during startup (if that's required), and new newsgroups that
appear on these servers will be subscribed (or not) just as native
groups are.
For instance, if you use the nnmbox back end to read your mail,
you would typically set this variable to
(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnmbox "")))
If no startup files exist (see Startup Files), Gnus will try to determine what groups should be subscribed by default.
If the variable gnus-default-subscribed-newsgroups is set, Gnus
will subscribe you to just those groups in that list, leaving the rest
killed. Your system administrator should have set this variable to
something useful.
Since she hasn't, Gnus will just subscribe you to a few arbitrarily picked groups (i.e., `*.newusers'). (Arbitrary is defined here as whatever Lars thinks you should read.)
You'll also be subscribed to the Gnus documentation group, which should help you with most common problems.
If gnus-default-subscribed-newsgroups is t, Gnus will just
use the normal functions for handling new groups, and not do anything
special.
If the default server is down, Gnus will understandably have some problems starting. However, if you have some mail groups in addition to the news groups, you may want to start Gnus anyway.
Gnus, being the trusting sort of program, will ask whether to proceed without a native select method if that server can't be contacted. This will happen whether the server doesn't actually exist (i.e., you have given the wrong address) or the server has just momentarily taken ill for some reason or other. If you decide to continue and have no foreign groups, you'll find it difficult to actually do anything in the group buffer. But, hey, that's your problem. Blllrph!
If you know that the server is definitely down, or you just want to read
your mail without bothering with the server at all, you can use the
gnus-no-server command to start Gnus. That might come in handy
if you're in a hurry as well. This command will not attempt to contact
your primary server—instead, it will just activate all groups on level
1 and 2. (You should preferably keep no native groups on those two
levels.) Also see Group Levels.
You might want to run more than one Emacs with more than one Gnus at the same time. If you are using different .newsrc files (e.g., if you are using the two different Gnusae to read from two different servers), that is no problem whatsoever. You just do it.
The problem appears when you want to run two Gnusae that use the same .newsrc file.
To work around that problem some, we here at the Think-Tank at the Gnus Towers have come up with a new concept: Masters and slaves. (We have applied for a patent on this concept, and have taken out a copyright on those words. If you wish to use those words in conjunction with each other, you have to send $1 per usage instance to me. Usage of the patent (Master/Slave Relationships In Computer Applications) will be much more expensive, of course.)
Anyway, you start one Gnus up the normal way with M-x gnus (or however you do it). Each subsequent slave Gnusae should be started with M-x gnus-slave. These slaves won't save normal .newsrc files, but instead save slave files that contain information only on what groups have been read in the slave session. When a master Gnus starts, it will read (and delete) these slave files, incorporating all information from them. (The slave files will be read in the sequence they were created, so the latest changes will have precedence.)
Information from the slave files has, of course, precedence over the information in the normal (i.e., master) .newsrc file.
If the .newsrc* files have not been saved in the master when the slave starts, you may be prompted as to whether to read an auto-save file. If you answer “yes”, the unsaved changes to the master will be incorporated into the slave. If you answer “no”, the slave may see some messages as unread that have been read in the master.
If you are satisfied that you really never want to see any new groups,
you can set gnus-check-new-newsgroups to nil. This will
also save you some time at startup. Even if this variable is
nil, you can always subscribe to the new groups just by pressing
U in the group buffer (see Group Maintenance). This variable
is ask-server by default. If you set this variable to
always, then Gnus will query the back ends for new groups even
when you do the g command (see Scanning New Messages).
Gnus normally determines whether a group is new or not by comparing the
list of groups from the active file(s) with the lists of subscribed and
dead groups. This isn't a particularly fast method. If
gnus-check-new-newsgroups is ask-server, Gnus will ask the
server for new groups since the last time. This is both faster and
cheaper. This also means that you can get rid of the list of killed
groups altogether, so you may set gnus-save-killed-list to
nil, which will save time both at startup, at exit, and all over.
Saves disk space, too. Why isn't this the default, then?
Unfortunately, not all servers support this command.
I bet I know what you're thinking now: How do I find out whether my
server supports ask-server? No? Good, because I don't have a
fail-safe answer. I would suggest just setting this variable to
ask-server and see whether any new groups appear within the next
few days. If any do, then it works. If none do, then it doesn't
work. I could write a function to make Gnus guess whether the server
supports ask-server, but it would just be a guess. So I won't.
You could telnet to the server and say HELP and see
whether it lists `NEWGROUPS' among the commands it understands. If
it does, then it might work. (But there are servers that lists
`NEWGROUPS' without supporting the function properly.)
This variable can also be a list of select methods. If so, Gnus will
issue an ask-server command to each of the select methods, and
subscribe them (or not) using the normal methods. This might be handy
if you are monitoring a few servers for new groups. A side effect is
that startup will take much longer, so you can meditate while waiting.
Use the mantra “dingnusdingnusdingnus” to achieve permanent bliss.
What Gnus does when it encounters a new group is determined by the
gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method variable.
This variable should contain a function. This function will be called with the name of the new group as the only parameter.
Some handy pre-fab functions are:
gnus-subscribe-zombiesgnus-subscribe-randomlygnus-subscribe-alphabeticallygnus-subscribe-hierarchicallygnus-subscribe-alphabetically is slight.
gnus-subscribe-alphabetically will subscribe new groups in a strictly
alphabetical fashion, while this function will enter groups into its
hierarchy. So if you want to have the `rec' hierarchy before the
`comp' hierarchy, this function will not mess that configuration
up. Or something like that.
gnus-subscribe-interactivelygnus-subscribe-killedgnus-subscribe-topicssubscribe topic
parameter (see Topic Parameters). For instance, a subscribe
topic parameter that looks like
"nnslashdot"
will mean that all groups that match that regex will be subscribed under that topic.
If no topics match the groups, the groups will be subscribed in the top-level topic.
A closely related variable is
gnus-subscribe-hierarchical-interactive. (That's quite a
mouthful.) If this variable is non-nil, Gnus will ask you in a
hierarchical fashion whether to subscribe to new groups or not. Gnus
will ask you for each sub-hierarchy whether you want to descend the
hierarchy or not.
One common mistake is to set the variable a few paragraphs above
(gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method) to
gnus-subscribe-hierarchical-interactive. This is an error. This
will not work. This is ga-ga. So don't do it.
A nice and portable way to control which new newsgroups should be subscribed (or ignored) is to put an options line at the start of the .newsrc file. Here's an example:
options -n !alt.all !rec.all sci.all
This line obviously belongs to a serious-minded intellectual scientific
person (or she may just be plain old boring), because it says that all
groups that have names beginning with `alt' and `rec' should
be ignored, and all groups with names beginning with `sci' should
be subscribed. Gnus will not use the normal subscription method for
subscribing these groups.
gnus-subscribe-options-newsgroup-method is used instead. This
variable defaults to gnus-subscribe-alphabetically.
If you don't want to mess with your .newsrc file, you can just
set the two variables gnus-options-subscribe and
gnus-options-not-subscribe. These two variables do exactly the
same as the .newsrc `options -n' trick. Both are regexps,
and if the new group matches the former, it will be unconditionally
subscribed, and if it matches the latter, it will be ignored.
Yet another variable that meddles here is
gnus-auto-subscribed-groups. It works exactly like
gnus-options-subscribe, and is therefore really superfluous,
but I thought it would be nice to have two of these. This variable is
more meant for setting some ground rules, while the other variable is
used more for user fiddling. By default this variable makes all new
groups that come from mail back ends (nnml, nnbabyl,
nnfolder, nnmbox, nnmh, and nnmaildir)
subscribed. If you don't like that, just set this variable to
nil.
New groups that match this regexp are subscribed using
gnus-subscribe-options-newsgroup-method.
Sometimes it is necessary to move from one NNTP server to another. This happens very rarely, but perhaps you change jobs, or one server is very flaky and you want to use another.
Changing the server is pretty easy, right? You just change
gnus-select-method to point to the new server?
Wrong!
Article numbers are not (in any way) kept synchronized between different
NNTP servers, and the only way Gnus keeps track of what articles
you have read is by keeping track of article numbers. So when you
change gnus-select-method, your .newsrc file becomes
worthless.
Gnus provides a few functions to attempt to translate a .newsrc file from one server to another. They all have one thing in common—they take a looong time to run. You don't want to use these functions more than absolutely necessary.
If you have access to both servers, Gnus can request the headers for all
the articles you have read and compare Message-IDs and map the
article numbers of the read articles and article marks. The M-x
gnus-change-server command will do this for all your native groups. It
will prompt for the method you want to move to.
You can also move individual groups with the M-x gnus-group-move-group-to-server command. This is useful if you want to move a (foreign) group from one server to another.
If you don't have access to both the old and new server, all your marks and read ranges have become worthless. You can use the M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups command to clear out all data that you have on your native groups. Use with caution.
Clear the data from the current group only—nix out marks and the
list of read articles (gnus-group-clear-data).
After changing servers, you must move the cache hierarchy away,
since the cached articles will have wrong article numbers, which will
affect which articles Gnus thinks are read.
gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups will ask you if you want
to have it done automatically; for gnus-group-clear-data, you
can use M-x gnus-cache-move-cache (but beware, it will move the
cache for all groups).
Most common Unix news readers use a shared startup file called .newsrc. This file contains all the information about what groups are subscribed, and which articles in these groups have been read.
Things got a bit more complicated with gnus. In addition to keeping the .newsrc file updated, it also used a file called .newsrc.el for storing all the information that didn't fit into the .newsrc file. (Actually, it also duplicated everything in the .newsrc file.) gnus would read whichever one of these files was the most recently saved, which enabled people to swap between gnus and other newsreaders.
That was kinda silly, so Gnus went one better: In addition to the .newsrc and .newsrc.el files, Gnus also has a file called .newsrc.eld. It will read whichever of these files that are most recent, but it will never write a .newsrc.el file. You should never delete the .newsrc.eld file—it contains much information not stored in the .newsrc file.
You can turn off writing the .newsrc file by setting
gnus-save-newsrc-file to nil, which means you can delete
the file and save some space, as well as exiting from Gnus faster.
However, this will make it impossible to use other newsreaders than
Gnus. But hey, who would want to, right? Similarly, setting
gnus-read-newsrc-file to nil makes Gnus ignore the
.newsrc file and any .newsrc-SERVER files, which can be
convenient if you use a different news reader occasionally, and you
want to read a different subset of the available groups with that
news reader.
If gnus-save-killed-list (default t) is nil, Gnus
will not save the list of killed groups to the startup file. This will
save both time (when starting and quitting) and space (on disk). It
will also mean that Gnus has no record of what groups are new or old,
so the automatic new groups subscription methods become meaningless.
You should always set gnus-check-new-newsgroups to nil or
ask-server if you set this variable to nil (see New Groups). This variable can also be a regular expression. If that's
the case, remove all groups that do not match this regexp before
saving. This can be useful in certain obscure situations that involve
several servers where not all servers support ask-server.
The gnus-startup-file variable says where the startup files are.
The default value is ~/.newsrc, with the Gnus (El Dingo) startup
file being whatever that one is, with a `.eld' appended.
If you want version control for this file, set
gnus-backup-startup-file. It respects the same values as the
version-control variable.
gnus-save-newsrc-hook is called before saving any of the newsrc
files, while gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook is called just before
saving the .newsrc.eld file, and
gnus-save-standard-newsrc-hook is called just before saving the
.newsrc file. The latter two are commonly used to turn version
control on or off. Version control is on by default when saving the
startup files. If you want to turn backup creation off, say something like:
(defun turn-off-backup ()
(set (make-local-variable 'backup-inhibited) t))
(add-hook 'gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook 'turn-off-backup)
(add-hook 'gnus-save-standard-newsrc-hook 'turn-off-backup)
When Gnus starts, it will read the gnus-site-init-file
(.../site-lisp/gnus-init by default) and gnus-init-file
(~/.gnus by default) files. These are normal Emacs Lisp files
and can be used to avoid cluttering your ~/.emacs and
site-init files with Gnus stuff. Gnus will also check for files
with the same names as these, but with .elc and .el
suffixes. In other words, if you have set gnus-init-file to
~/.gnus, it will look for ~/.gnus.elc, ~/.gnus.el,
and finally ~/.gnus (in this order). If Emacs was invoked with
the -q or --no-init-file options (see Initial Options), Gnus doesn't read
gnus-init-file.
Whenever you do something that changes the Gnus data (reading articles, catching up, killing/subscribing groups), the change is added to a special dribble buffer. This buffer is auto-saved the normal Emacs way. If your Emacs should crash before you have saved the .newsrc files, all changes you have made can be recovered from this file.
If Gnus detects this file at startup, it will ask the user whether to read it. The auto save file is deleted whenever the real startup file is saved.
If gnus-use-dribble-file is nil, Gnus won't create and
maintain a dribble buffer. The default is t.
Gnus will put the dribble file(s) in gnus-dribble-directory. If
this variable is nil, which it is by default, Gnus will dribble
into the directory where the .newsrc file is located. (This is
normally the user's home directory.) The dribble file will get the same
file permissions as the .newsrc file.
If gnus-always-read-dribble-file is non-nil, Gnus will
read the dribble file on startup without querying the user.
When Gnus starts, or indeed whenever it tries to determine whether new articles have arrived, it reads the active file. This is a very large file that lists all the active groups and articles on the server.
Before examining the active file, Gnus deletes all lines that match the
regexp gnus-ignored-newsgroups. This is done primarily to reject
any groups with bogus names, but you can use this variable to make Gnus
ignore hierarchies you aren't ever interested in. However, this is not
recommended. In fact, it's highly discouraged. Instead, see New Groups for an overview of other variables that can be used instead.
The active file can be rather Huge, so if you have a slow network, you
can set gnus-read-active-file to nil to prevent Gnus from
reading the active file. This variable is some by default.
Gnus will try to make do by getting information just on the groups that you actually subscribe to.
Note that if you subscribe to lots and lots of groups, setting this
variable to nil will probably make Gnus slower, not faster. At
present, having this variable nil will slow Gnus down
considerably, unless you read news over a 2400 baud modem.
This variable can also have the value some. Gnus will then
attempt to read active info only on the subscribed groups. On some
servers this is quite fast (on sparkling, brand new INN servers that
support the LIST ACTIVE group command), on others this isn't fast
at all. In any case, some should be faster than nil, and
is certainly faster than t over slow lines.
Some news servers (old versions of Leafnode and old versions of INN, for
instance) do not support the LIST ACTIVE group. For these
servers, nil is probably the most efficient value for this
variable.
If this variable is nil, Gnus will ask for group info in total
lock-step, which isn't very fast. If it is some and you use an
NNTP server, Gnus will pump out commands as fast as it can, and
read all the replies in one swoop. This will normally result in better
performance, but if the server does not support the aforementioned
LIST ACTIVE group command, this isn't very nice to the server.
If you think that starting up Gnus takes too long, try all the three different values for this variable and see what works best for you.
In any case, if you use some or nil, you should definitely
kill all groups that you aren't interested in to speed things up.
Note that this variable also affects active file retrieval from secondary select methods.
gnus-load-hookgnus-before-startup-hookgnus-startup-hookgnus-started-hookgnus-setup-news-hookgnus-check-bogus-newsgroupsnil, Gnus will check for and delete all bogus groups at
startup. A bogus group is a group that you have in your
.newsrc file, but doesn't exist on the news server. Checking for
bogus groups can take quite a while, so to save time and resources it's
best to leave this option off, and do the checking for bogus groups once
in a while from the group buffer instead (see Group Maintenance).
gnus-inhibit-startup-messagenil, the startup message won't be displayed. That way,
your boss might not notice as easily that you are reading news instead
of doing your job. Note that this variable is used before
~/.gnus.el is loaded, so it should be set in .emacs instead.
gnus-no-groups-messagegnus-play-startup-jinglenil, play the Gnus jingle at startup.
gnus-startup-jinglenil. The
default is `Tuxedomoon.Jingle4.au'.
The group buffer lists all (or parts) of the available groups. It is the first buffer shown when Gnus starts, and will never be killed as long as Gnus is active.
You can customize the Group Mode tool bar, see M-x customize-apropos RET gnus-group-tool-bar. This feature is only available in Emacs.
The tool bar icons are now (de)activated correctly depending on the
cursor position. Therefore, moving around in the Group Buffer is
slower. You can disable this via the variable
gnus-group-update-tool-bar. Its default value depends on your
Emacs version.
The default format of the group buffer is nice and dull, but you can make it as exciting and ugly as you feel like.
Here's a couple of example group lines:
25: news.announce.newusers
* 0: alt.fan.andrea-dworkin
Quite simple, huh?
You can see that there are 25 unread articles in `news.announce.newusers'. There are no unread articles, but some ticked articles, in `alt.fan.andrea-dworkin' (see that little asterisk at the beginning of the line?).
You can change that format to whatever you want by fiddling with the
gnus-group-line-format variable. This variable works along the
lines of a format specification, which is pretty much the same as
a printf specifications, for those of you who use (feh!) C.
See Formatting Variables.
`%M%S%5y:%B%(%g%)\n' is the value that produced those lines above.
There should always be a colon on the line; the cursor always moves to the colon after performing an operation. See Positioning Point. Nothing else is required—not even the group name. All displayed text is just window dressing, and is never examined by Gnus. Gnus stores all real information it needs using text properties.
(Note that if you make a really strange, wonderful, spreadsheet-like layout, everybody will believe you are hard at work with the accounting instead of wasting time reading news.)
Here's a list of all available format characters:
Gnus uses this estimation because the NNTP protocol provides
efficient access to max-number and min-number but getting
the true unread message count is not possible efficiently. For
hysterical raisins, even the mail back ends, where the true number of
unread messages might be available efficiently, use the same limited
interface. To remove this restriction from Gnus means that the back
end interface has to be changed, which is not an easy job. If you
want to work on this, please contact the Gnus mailing list.
gnus-read-active-file or use the group buffer M-d
command.
gnus-group-uncollapsed-levels
variable says how many levels to leave at the end of the group name.
The default is 1—this will mean that group names like
`gnu.emacs.gnus' will be shortened to `g.e.gnus'.
gnus-new-mail-mark) if there has arrived new mail to
the group lately.
gnus-process-mark) if the group is process marked.
gnus-user-format-function-`X', where `X' is the letter
following `%u'. The function will be passed a single dummy
parameter as argument. The function should return a string, which will
be inserted into the buffer just like information from any other
specifier.
All the “number-of” specs will be filled with an asterisk (`*') if no info is available—for instance, if it is a non-activated foreign group, or a bogus native group.
The mode line can be changed by setting
gnus-group-mode-line-format (see Mode Line Formatting). It
doesn't understand that many format specifiers:
Highlighting in the group buffer is controlled by the
gnus-group-highlight variable. This is an alist with elements
that look like (form . face). If form evaluates to
something non-nil, the face will be used on the line.
Here's an example value for this variable that might look nice if the background is dark:
(cond (window-system
(setq custom-background-mode 'light)
(defface my-group-face-1
'((t (:foreground "Red" :bold t))) "First group face")
(defface my-group-face-2
'((t (:foreground "DarkSeaGreen4" :bold t)))
"Second group face")
(defface my-group-face-3
'((t (:foreground "Green4" :bold t))) "Third group face")
(defface my-group-face-4
'((t (:foreground "SteelBlue" :bold t))) "Fourth group face")
(defface my-group-face-5
'((t (:foreground "Blue" :bold t))) "Fifth group face")))
(setq gnus-group-highlight
'(((> unread 200) . my-group-face-1)
((and (< level 3) (zerop unread)) . my-group-face-2)
((< level 3) . my-group-face-3)
((zerop unread) . my-group-face-4)
(t . my-group-face-5)))
Also see Faces and Fonts.
Variables that are dynamically bound when the forms are evaluated include:
groupunreadmethodmailplevelscoretickedtotaltopicWhen the forms are evaled, point is at the beginning of the line
of the group in question, so you can use many of the normal Gnus
functions for snarfing info on the group.
gnus-group-update-hook is called when a group line is changed.
It will not be called when gnus-visual is nil. This hook
calls gnus-group-highlight-line by default.
All movement commands understand the numeric prefix and will behave as expected, hopefully.
gnus-group-next-unread-group).
gnus-group-prev-unread-group).
gnus-group-next-group).
gnus-group-prev-group).
gnus-group-next-unread-group-same-level).
gnus-group-prev-unread-group-same-level).
Three commands for jumping to groups:
gnus-group-jump-to-group). Killed groups can be jumped to, just
like living groups.
gnus-group-best-unread-group).
gnus-group-first-unread-group).
If gnus-group-goto-unread is nil, all the movement
commands will move to the next group, not the next unread group. Even
the commands that say they move to the next unread group. The default
is t.
gnus-group-read-group). If there are no
unread articles in the group, or if you give a non-numerical prefix to
this command, Gnus will offer to fetch all the old articles in this
group from the server. If you give a numerical prefix n, n
determines the number of articles Gnus will fetch. If n is
positive, Gnus fetches the n newest articles, if n is
negative, Gnus fetches the abs(n) oldest articles.
Thus, SPC enters the group normally, C-u SPC offers old articles, C-u 4 2 SPC fetches the 42 newest articles, and C-u - 4 2 SPC fetches the 42 oldest ones.
When you are in the group (in the Summary buffer), you can type
M-g to fetch new articles, or C-u M-g to also show the old
ones.
gnus-group-select-group). Takes the same arguments as
gnus-group-read-group—the only difference is that this command
does not display the first unread article automatically upon group
entry.
gnus-group-quick-select-group). No
scoring/killing will be performed, there will be no highlights and no
expunging. This might be useful if you're in a real hurry and have to
enter some humongous group. If you give a 0 prefix to this command
(i.e., 0 M-RET), Gnus won't even generate the summary buffer,
which is useful if you want to toggle threading before generating the
summary buffer (see Summary Generation Commands).
gnus-group-visible-select-group).
gnus-group-select-group-ephemerally). Even threading has been
turned off. Everything you do in the group after selecting it in this
manner will have no permanent effects.
The gnus-large-newsgroup variable says what Gnus should
consider to be a big group. If it is nil, no groups are
considered big. The default value is 200. If the group has more
(unread and/or ticked) articles than this, Gnus will query the user
before entering the group. The user can then specify how many
articles should be fetched from the server. If the user specifies a
negative number (-n), the n oldest articles will be
fetched. If it is positive, the n articles that have arrived
most recently will be fetched.
gnus-large-ephemeral-newsgroup is the same as
gnus-large-newsgroup, but is only used for ephemeral
newsgroups.
If gnus-auto-select-first is non-nil, select an article
automatically when entering a group with the SPACE command.
Which article this is is controlled by the
gnus-auto-select-subject variable. Valid values for this
variable are:
unreadfirstunseenunseen-or-unreadbestThis variable can also be a function. In that case, that function will be called to place point on a subject line.
If you want to prevent automatic selection in some group (say, in a
binary group with Huge articles) you can set the
gnus-auto-select-first variable to nil in
gnus-select-group-hook, which is called when a group is
selected.
gnus-group-unsubscribe-current-group).
gnus-group-unsubscribe-group).
gnus-group-kill-group).
gnus-group-yank-group).
gnus-group-transpose-groups). This isn't
really a subscription command, but you can use it instead of a
kill-and-yank sequence sometimes.
gnus-group-kill-region).
gnus-group-kill-all-zombies).
gnus-group-kill-level).
These groups can't be yanked back after killing, so this command should
be used with some caution. The only time where this command comes in
really handy is when you have a .newsrc with lots of unsubscribed
groups that you want to get rid off. S C-k on level 7 will
kill off all unsubscribed groups that do not have message numbers in the
.newsrc file.
Also see Group Levels.
gnus-group-catchup-current).
gnus-group-catchup-group-hook is called when catching up a group from
the group buffer.
gnus-group-catchup-current-all).
gnus-group-clear-data).
All groups have a level of subscribedness. For instance, if a group is on level 2, it is more subscribed than a group on level 5. You can ask Gnus to just list groups on a given level or lower (see Listing Groups), or to just check for new articles in groups on a given level or lower (see Scanning New Messages).
Remember: The higher the level of the group, the less important it is.
Gnus considers groups from levels 1 to
gnus-level-subscribed (inclusive) (default 5) to be subscribed,
gnus-level-subscribed (exclusive) and
gnus-level-unsubscribed (inclusive) (default 7) to be
unsubscribed, gnus-level-zombie to be zombies (walking dead)
(default 8) and gnus-level-killed to be killed (completely dead)
(default 9). Gnus treats subscribed and unsubscribed groups exactly the
same, but zombie and killed groups have no information on what articles
you have read, etc, stored. This distinction between dead and living
groups isn't done because it is nice or clever, it is done purely for
reasons of efficiency.
It is recommended that you keep all your mail groups (if any) on quite low levels (e.g. 1 or 2).
Maybe the following description of the default behavior of Gnus helps to understand what these levels are all about. By default, Gnus shows you subscribed nonempty groups, but by hitting L you can have it show empty subscribed groups and unsubscribed groups, too. Type l to go back to showing nonempty subscribed groups again. Thus, unsubscribed groups are hidden, in a way.
Zombie and killed groups are similar to unsubscribed groups in that they are hidden by default. But they are different from subscribed and unsubscribed groups in that Gnus doesn't ask the news server for information (number of messages, number of unread messages) on zombie and killed groups. Normally, you use C-k to kill the groups you aren't interested in. If most groups are killed, Gnus is faster.
Why does Gnus distinguish between zombie and killed groups? Well, when a new group arrives on the server, Gnus by default makes it a zombie group. This means that you are normally not bothered with new groups, but you can type A z to get a list of all new groups. Subscribe the ones you like and kill the ones you don't want. (A k shows a list of killed groups.)
If you want to play with the level variables, you should show some care. Set them once, and don't touch them ever again. Better yet, don't touch them at all unless you know exactly what you're doing.
Two closely related variables are gnus-level-default-subscribed
(default 3) and gnus-level-default-unsubscribed (default 6),
which are the levels that new groups will be put on if they are
(un)subscribed. These two variables should, of course, be inside the
relevant valid ranges.
If gnus-keep-same-level is non-nil, some movement commands
will only move to groups of the same level (or lower). In
particular, going from the last article in one group to the next group
will go to the next group of the same level (or lower). This might be
handy if you want to read the most important groups before you read the
rest.
If this variable is best, Gnus will make the next newsgroup the
one with the best level.
All groups with a level less than or equal to
gnus-group-default-list-level will be listed in the group buffer
by default.
If gnus-group-list-inactive-groups is non-nil, non-active
groups will be listed along with the unread groups. This variable is
t by default. If it is nil, inactive groups won't be
listed.
If gnus-group-use-permanent-levels is non-nil, once you
give a level prefix to g or l, all subsequent commands will
use this level as the “work” level.
Gnus will normally just activate (i. e., query the server about) groups
on level gnus-activate-level or less. If you don't want to
activate unsubscribed groups, for instance, you might set this variable
to 5. The default is 6.
You would normally keep important groups on high levels, but that scheme is somewhat restrictive. Don't you wish you could have Gnus sort the group buffer according to how often you read groups, perhaps? Within reason?
This is what group score is for. You can have Gnus assign a score to each group through the mechanism described below. You can then sort the group buffer based on this score. Alternatively, you can sort on score and then level. (Taken together, the level and the score is called the rank of the group. A group that is on level 4 and has a score of 1 has a higher rank than a group on level 5 that has a score of 300. (The level is the most significant part and the score is the least significant part.))
If you want groups you read often to get higher scores than groups you
read seldom you can add the gnus-summary-bubble-group function to
the gnus-summary-exit-hook hook. This will result (after
sorting) in a bubbling sort of action. If you want to see that in
action after each summary exit, you can add
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-rank or
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-score to the same hook, but that will
slow things down somewhat.
If you want to perform some command on several groups, and they appear subsequently in the group buffer, you would normally just give a numerical prefix to the command. Most group commands will then do your bidding on those groups.
However, if the groups are not in sequential order, you can still perform a command on several groups. You simply mark the groups first with the process mark and then execute the command.
gnus-group-mark-group).
gnus-group-unmark-group).
gnus-group-unmark-all-groups).
gnus-group-mark-region).
gnus-group-mark-buffer).
gnus-group-mark-regexp).
Also see Process/Prefix.
If you want to execute some command on all groups that have been marked
with the process mark, you can use the M-&
(gnus-group-universal-argument) command. It will prompt you for
the command to be executed.
Below are some group mode commands for making and editing general foreign
groups, as well as commands to ease the creation of a few
special-purpose groups. All these commands insert the newly created
groups under point—gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method is not
consulted.
Changes from the group editing commands are stored in
~/.newsrc.eld (gnus-startup-file). An alternative is the
variable gnus-parameters, See Group Parameters.
gnus-group-make-group). Gnus will prompt you
for a name, a method and possibly an address. For an easier way
to subscribe to NNTP groups (see Browse Foreign Server).
gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group). Gnus
will prompt you for a name, a method and an address.
gnus-group-rename-group). This is valid only on some
groups—mail groups mostly. This command might very well be quite slow
on some back ends.
gnus-group-customize).
gnus-group-edit-group-method).
gnus-group-edit-group-parameters).
gnus-group-edit-group).
gnus-group-make-directory-group).
gnus-group-make-help-group).
gnus-group-make-archive-group). By
default a group pointing to the most recent articles will be created
(gnus-group-recent-archive-directory), but given a prefix, a full
group will be created from gnus-group-archive-directory.
gnus-group-make-kiboze-group).
See Kibozed Groups.
nneething back end (gnus-group-enter-directory).
See Anything Groups.
gnus-group-make-doc-group). If you give a prefix to this
command, you will be prompted for a file name and a file type.
Currently supported types are mbox, babyl,
digest, news, rnews, mmdf, forward,
rfc934, rfc822-forward, mime-parts,
standard-digest, slack-digest, clari-briefs,
nsmail, outlook, oe-dbx, and mailman. If
you run this command without a prefix, Gnus will guess at the file
type. See Document Groups.
gnus-useful-groups
(gnus-group-make-useful-group).
gnus-group-make-web-group). If you give a prefix to this
command, make a solid group instead. You will be prompted for the
search engine type and the search string. Valid search engine types
include google, dejanews, and gmane.
See Web Searches.
If you use the google search engine, you can limit the search
to a particular group by using a match string like
`shaving group:alt.sysadmin.recovery'.
gnus-group-make-rss-group). You will be prompted for an URL.
See RSS.
gnus-group-delete-group). If given a prefix, this function will
actually delete all the articles in the group, and forcibly remove the
group itself from the face of the Earth. Use a prefix only if you are
absolutely sure of what you are doing. This command can't be used on
read-only groups (like nntp groups), though.
nnvirtual group
(gnus-group-make-empty-virtual). See Virtual Groups.
nnvirtual group
(gnus-group-add-to-virtual). Uses the process/prefix convention.
See Select Methods, for more information on the various select methods.
If gnus-activate-foreign-newsgroups is a positive number,
Gnus will check all foreign groups with this level or lower at startup.
This might take quite a while, especially if you subscribe to lots of
groups from different NNTP servers. Also see Group Levels;
gnus-activate-level also affects activation of foreign
newsgroups.
The group parameters store information local to a particular group. Here's an example group parameter list:
((to-address . "ding@gnus.org")
(auto-expire . t))
We see that each element consists of a “dotted pair”—the thing before the dot is the key, while the thing after the dot is the value. All the parameters have this form except local variable specs, which are not dotted pairs, but proper lists.
Some parameters have correspondent customizable variables, each of which is an alist of regexps and values.
The following group parameters can be used:
to-address (to-address . "some@where.com")
This is primarily useful in mail groups that represent closed mailing lists—mailing lists where it's expected that everybody that writes to the mailing list is subscribed to it. Since using this parameter ensures that the mail only goes to the mailing list itself, it means that members won't receive two copies of your followups.
Using to-address will actually work whether the group is foreign
or not. Let's say there's a group on the server that is called
`fa.4ad-l'. This is a real newsgroup, but the server has gotten
the articles from a mail-to-news gateway. Posting directly to this
group is therefore impossible—you have to send mail to the mailing
list address instead.
See also gnus-parameter-to-address-alist.
to-list (to-list . "some@where.com")
It is totally ignored when doing a followup—except that if it is present in a news group, you'll get mail group semantics when doing f.
If you do an a command in a mail group and you have neither a
to-list group parameter nor a to-address group parameter,
then a to-list group parameter will be added automatically upon
sending the message if gnus-add-to-list is set to t.
If this variable is set, gnus-mailing-list-mode is turned on when
entering summary buffer.
See also gnus-parameter-to-list-alist.
subscribedt, Gnus will consider the
to-address and to-list parameters for this group as addresses of
mailing lists you are subscribed to. Giving Gnus this information is
(only) a first step in getting it to generate correct Mail-Followup-To
headers for your posts to these lists. The second step is to put the
following in your .gnus.el
(setq message-subscribed-address-functions
'(gnus-find-subscribed-addresses))
See Mailing Lists, for
a complete treatment of available MFT support.
visible(visible . t),
that group will always be visible in the Group buffer, regardless
of whether it has any unread articles.
This parameter cannot be set via gnus-parameters. See
gnus-permanently-visible-groups as an alternative.
broken-reply-to(broken-reply-to . t) signals that Reply-To
headers in this group are to be ignored, and for the header to be hidden
if reply-to is part of gnus-boring-article-headers. This
can be useful if you're reading a mailing list group where the listserv
has inserted Reply-To headers that point back to the listserv
itself. That is broken behavior. So there!
to-group(to-group . "some.group.name") means that all
posts in that group will be sent to some.group.name.
newsgroup(newsgroup . t) in the group parameter list, Gnus
will treat all responses as if they were responses to news articles.
This can be useful if you have a mail group that's really a mirror of a
news group.
gcc-self(gcc-self . t) is present in the group parameter list, newly
composed messages will be Gcc'd to the current group. If
(gcc-self . none) is present, no Gcc: header will be
generated, if (gcc-self . "string") is present, this string will
be inserted literally as a gcc header. This parameter takes
precedence over any default Gcc rules as described later
(see Archived Messages).
Caveat: Adding (gcc-self . t) to the parameter list of
nntp groups (or the like) isn't valid. An nntp server
doesn't accept articles.
auto-expire(auto-expire
. t), all articles read will be marked as expirable. For an
alternative approach, see Expiring Mail.
See also gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups.
total-expire(total-expire . t), all read articles will be put through the
expiry process, even if they are not marked as expirable. Use with
caution. Unread, ticked and dormant articles are not eligible for
expiry.
See also gnus-total-expirable-newsgroups.
expiry-wait(expiry-wait . 10), this value will override any
nnmail-expiry-wait and nnmail-expiry-wait-function
(see Expiring Mail) when expiring expirable messages. The value
can either be a number of days (not necessarily an integer) or the
symbols never or immediate.
expiry-targetnnmail-expiry-target.
score-file(score-file . "file") will make
file into the current score file for the group in question. All
interactive score entries will be put into this file.
adapt-file(adapt-file . "file") will make
file into the current adaptive file for the group in question.
All adaptive score entries will be put into this file.
admin-addressdisplay(display . MODE) say which articles to
display on entering the group. Valid values are:
allan integerdefaultan arrayHere are some examples:
[unread][not expire][and (not reply) (not expire)]The available operators are not, and and or.
Predicates include tick, unsend, undownload,
unread, dormant, expire, reply,
killed, bookmark, score, save,
cache, forward, unseen and recent.
The display parameter works by limiting the summary buffer to
the subset specified. You can pop the limit by using the / w
command (see Limiting).
comment(comment . "This is a comment") are
arbitrary comments on the group. You can display comments in the
group line (see Group Line Specification).
charset(charset . iso-8859-1) will make
iso-8859-1 the default charset; that is, the charset that will be
used for all articles that do not specify a charset.
See also gnus-group-charset-alist.
ignored-charsets(ignored-charsets x-unknown iso-8859-1)
will make iso-8859-1 and x-unknown ignored; that is, the
default charset will be used for decoding articles.
See also gnus-group-ignored-charsets-alist.
posting-stylegnus-posting-styles alist, except that there's no regexp matching
the group name (of course). Style elements in this group parameter will
take precedence over the ones found in gnus-posting-styles.
For instance, if you want a funky name and signature in this group only,
instead of hacking gnus-posting-styles, you could put something
like this in the group parameters:
(posting-style
(name "Funky Name")
("X-My-Header" "Funky Value")
(signature "Funky Signature"))
post-methodgnus-post-method.
banner(banner . regexp) causes any part of an article
that matches the regular expression regexp to be stripped. Instead of
regexp, you can also use the symbol signature which strips the
last signature or any of the elements of the alist
gnus-article-banner-alist.
sieveFor example, if the `INBOX.list.sieve' group has the (sieve
address "sender" "sieve-admin@extundo.com") group parameter, when
translating the group parameter into a Sieve script (see Sieve Commands) the following Sieve code is generated:
if address \"sender\" \"sieve-admin@extundo.com\" {
fileinto \"INBOX.list.sieve\";
}
The Sieve language is described in RFC 3028. See Emacs Sieve.
(agent parameters)(variable form)(gnus-show-threads nil) in the group parameters of
that group. gnus-show-threads will be made into a local variable
in the summary buffer you enter, and the form nil will be
evaled there.
Note that this feature sets the variable locally to the summary buffer.
But some variables are evaluated in the article buffer, or in the
message buffer (of a reply or followup or otherwise newly created
message). As a workaround, it might help to add the variable in
question to gnus-newsgroup-variables. See Various Summary Stuff. So if you want to set message-from-style via the group
parameters, then you may need the following statement elsewhere in your
~/.gnus file:
(add-to-list 'gnus-newsgroup-variables 'message-from-style)
A use for this feature is to remove a mailing list identifier tag in the subject fields of articles. E.g. if the news group
nntp+news.gnus.org:gmane.text.docbook.apps
has the tag `DOC-BOOK-APPS:' in the subject of all articles, this
tag can be removed from the article subjects in the summary buffer for
the group by putting (gnus-list-identifiers "DOCBOOK-APPS:")
into the group parameters for the group.
This can also be used as a group-specific hook function. If you want to
hear a beep when you enter a group, you could put something like
(dummy-variable (ding)) in the parameters of that group.
dummy-variable will be set to the (meaningless) result of the
(ding) form.
Alternatively, since the VARIABLE becomes local to the group, this pattern can be used to temporarily change a hook. For example, if the following is added to a group parameter
(gnus-summary-prepared-hook
'(lambda nil (local-set-key "d" (local-key-binding "n"))))
when the group is entered, the 'd' key will not mark the article as expired.
Use the G p or the G c command to edit group parameters of a group. (G p presents you with a Lisp-based interface, G c presents you with a Customize-like interface. The latter helps avoid silly Lisp errors.) You might also be interested in reading about topic parameters (see Topic Parameters).
Group parameters can be set via the gnus-parameters variable too.
But some variables, such as visible, have no effect (For this
case see gnus-permanently-visible-groups as an alternative.).
For example:
(setq gnus-parameters
'(("mail\\..*"
(gnus-show-threads nil)
(gnus-use-scoring nil)
(gnus-summary-line-format
"%U%R%z%I%(%[%d:%ub%-23,23f%]%) %s\n")
(gcc-self . t)
(display . all))
("^nnimap:\\(foo.bar\\)$"
(to-group . "\\1"))
("mail\\.me"
(gnus-use-scoring t))
("list\\..*"
(total-expire . t)
(broken-reply-to . t))))
String value of parameters will be subjected to regexp substitution, as
the to-group example shows.
By default, whether comparing the group name and one of those regexps
specified in gnus-parameters is done in a case-sensitive manner
or a case-insensitive manner depends on the value of
case-fold-search at the time when the comparison is done. The
value of case-fold-search is typically t; it means, for
example, the element ("INBOX\\.FOO" (total-expire . t)) might be
applied to both the `INBOX.FOO' group and the `INBOX.foo'
group. If you want to make those regexps always case-sensitive, set the
value of the gnus-parameters-case-fold-search variable to
nil. Otherwise, set it to t if you want to compare them
always in a case-insensitive manner.
These commands all list various slices of the groups available.
gnus-group-list-groups). If the numeric prefix is used, this
command will list only groups of level ARG and lower. By default, it
only lists groups of level five (i.e.,
gnus-group-default-list-level) or lower (i.e., just subscribed
groups).
gnus-group-list-all-groups). If the numeric prefix is used,
this command will list only groups of level ARG and lower. By default,
it lists groups of level seven or lower (i.e., just subscribed and
unsubscribed groups).
gnus-group-list-level). If given a prefix, also list the groups
with no unread articles.
gnus-group-list-killed). If given a
prefix argument, really list all groups that are available, but aren't
currently (un)subscribed. This could entail reading the active file
from the server.
gnus-group-list-zombies).
gnus-group-list-matching).
gnus-group-list-all-matching).
gnus-group-list-active). This
might very well take quite a while. It might actually be a better idea
to do a A M to list all matching, and just give `.' as the
thing to match on. Also note that this command may list groups that
don't exist (yet)—these will be listed as if they were killed groups.
Take the output with some grains of salt.
gnus-group-apropos).
gnus-group-description-apropos).
gnus-group-list-cached).
gnus-group-list-dormant).
gnus-group-list-limit).
gnus-group-list-flush).
gnus-group-list-plus).
Groups that match the gnus-permanently-visible-groups regexp will
always be shown, whether they have unread articles or not. You can also
add the visible element to the group parameters in question to
get the same effect.
Groups that have just ticked articles in it are normally listed in the
group buffer. If gnus-list-groups-with-ticked-articles is
nil, these groups will be treated just like totally empty
groups. It is t by default.
The C-c C-s (gnus-group-sort-groups) command sorts the
group buffer according to the function(s) given by the
gnus-group-sort-function variable. Available sorting functions
include:
gnus-group-sort-by-alphabetgnus-group-sort-by-real-namegnus-group-sort-by-levelgnus-group-sort-by-scoregnus-group-sort-by-rankgnus-group-sort-by-unreadgnus-group-sort-by-methodgnus-group-sort-by-servergnus-group-sort-function can also be a list of sorting
functions. In that case, the most significant sort key function must be
the last one.
There are also a number of commands for sorting directly according to some sorting criteria:
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-alphabet).
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-unread).
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-level).
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-score). See Group Score.
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-rank). See Group Score.
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-method).
gnus-group-sort-groups-by-real-name).
All the commands below obey the process/prefix convention (see Process/Prefix).
When given a symbolic prefix (see Symbolic Prefixes), all these commands will sort in reverse order.
You can also sort a subset of the groups:
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-alphabet).
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-unread).
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-level).
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-score). See Group Score.
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-rank). See Group Score.
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-method).
gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-real-name).
gnus-group-sort-function.
And finally, note that you can use C-k and C-y to manually move groups around.
gnus-group-check-bogus-groups).
gnus-group-find-new-groups).
With 1 C-u, use the ask-server method to query the server
for new groups. With 2 C-u's, use most complete method possible
to query the server for new groups, and subscribe the new groups as
zombies.
gnus-group-expire-articles). That is, delete
all expirable articles in the group that have been around for a while.
(see Expiring Mail).
gnus-group-expire-all-groups).
gnus-group-browse-foreign-server).
A new buffer with a list of available groups will appear. This buffer
will use the gnus-browse-mode. This buffer looks a bit (well,
a lot) like a normal group buffer.
Here's a list of keystrokes available in the browse mode:
gnus-group-next-group).
gnus-group-prev-group).
gnus-browse-read-group).
gnus-browse-select-group).
gnus-browse-unsubscribe-current-group).
gnus-browse-exit).
gnus-browse-describe-group).
gnus-browse-describe-briefly).
gnus-group-suspend). This doesn't really exit Gnus,
but it kills all buffers except the Group buffer. I'm not sure why this
is a gain, but then who am I to judge?
gnus-group-exit).
gnus-group-quit).
The dribble file will be saved, though (see Auto Save).
gnus-suspend-gnus-hook is called when you suspend Gnus and
gnus-exit-gnus-hook is called when you quit Gnus, while
gnus-after-exiting-gnus-hook is called as the final item when
exiting Gnus.
Note:
Miss Lisa Cannifax, while sitting in English class, felt her feet go numbly heavy and herself fall into a hazy trance as the boy sitting behind her drew repeated lines with his pencil across the back of her plastic chair.
If you read lots and lots of groups, it might be convenient to group them hierarchically according to topics. You put your Emacs groups over here, your sex groups over there, and the rest (what, two groups or so?) you put in some misc section that you never bother with anyway. You can even group the Emacs sex groups as a sub-topic to either the Emacs groups or the sex groups—or both! Go wild!
Here's an example:
Gnus
Emacs -- I wuw it!
3: comp.emacs
2: alt.religion.emacs
Naughty Emacs
452: alt.sex.emacs
0: comp.talk.emacs.recovery
Misc
8: comp.binaries.fractals
13: comp.sources.unix
To get this fab functionality you simply turn on (ooh!) the
gnus-topic minor mode—type t in the group buffer. (This
is a toggling command.)
Go ahead, just try it. I'll still be here when you get back. La de dum... Nice tune, that... la la la... What, you're back? Yes, and now press l. There. All your groups are now listed under `misc'. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy? Hot and bothered?
If you want this permanently enabled, you should add that minor mode to the hook for the group mode. Put the following line in your ~/.gnus.el file:
(add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
When the topic minor mode is turned on, a new T submap will be available. In addition, a few of the standard keys change their definitions slightly.
In general, the following kinds of operations are possible on topics. First of all, you want to create topics. Secondly, you want to put groups in topics and to move them around until you have an order you like. The third kind of operation is to show/hide parts of the whole shebang. You might want to hide a topic including its subtopics and groups, to get a better overview of the other groups.
Here is a list of the basic keys that you might need to set up topics the way you like.
gnus-topic-create-topic).
gnus-topic-indent). If given a prefix,
“un-indent” the topic instead.
gnus-topic-unindent).
The following two keys can be used to move groups and topics around. They work like the well-known cut and paste. C-k is like cut and C-y is like paste. Of course, this being Emacs, we use the terms kill and yank rather than cut and paste.
gnus-topic-kill-group). All groups in the
topic will be removed along with the topic.
gnus-topic-yank-group). Note that all topics will be yanked
before all groups.
So, to move a topic to the beginning of the list of topics, just hit C-k on it. This is like the “cut” part of cut and paste. Then, move the cursor to the beginning of the buffer (just below the “Gnus” topic) and hit C-y. This is like the “paste” part of cut and paste. Like I said – E-Z.
You can use C-k and C-y on groups as well as on topics. So you can move topics around as well as groups.
After setting up the topics the way you like them, you might wish to hide a topic, or to show it again. That's why we have the following key.
gnus-topic-select-group).
When you perform this command on a group, you'll enter the group, as
usual. When done on a topic line, the topic will be folded (if it was
visible) or unfolded (if it was folded already). So it's basically a
toggling command on topics. In addition, if you give a numerical
prefix, group on that level (and lower) will be displayed.
Now for a list of other commands, in no particular order.
gnus-topic-move-group). This command uses the process/prefix
convention (see Process/Prefix).
gnus-topic-jump-to-topic).
gnus-topic-copy-group). This command uses the process/prefix
convention (see Process/Prefix).
gnus-topic-hide-topic). If given
a prefix, hide the topic permanently.
gnus-topic-show-topic). If given
a prefix, show the topic permanently.
gnus-topic-remove-group).
This command is mainly useful if you have the same group in several
topics and wish to remove it from one of the topics. You may also
remove a group from all topics, but in that case, Gnus will add it to
the root topic the next time you start Gnus. In fact, all new groups
(which, naturally, don't belong to any topic) will show up in the root
topic.
This command uses the process/prefix convention
(see Process/Prefix).
gnus-topic-move-matching).
gnus-topic-copy-matching).
gnus-topic-toggle-display-empty-topics).
gnus-topic-mark-topic). This command works recursively on
sub-topics unless given a prefix.
gnus-topic-unmark-topic). This command works recursively on
sub-topics unless given a prefix.
gnus-topic-expire-articles). (see Expiring Mail).
gnus-topic-rename).
gnus-topic-delete).
gnus-topic-list-active).
gnus-topic-goto-next-topic).
gnus-topic-goto-previous-topic).
gnus-topic-edit-parameters).
See Topic Parameters.
The previous section told you how to tell Gnus which topics to display. This section explains how to tell Gnus what to display about each topic.
The topic lines themselves are created according to the
gnus-topic-line-format variable (see Formatting Variables).
Valid elements are:
Each sub-topic (and the groups in the sub-topics) will be indented with
gnus-topic-indent-level times the topic level number of spaces.
The default is 2.
gnus-topic-mode-hook is called in topic minor mode buffers.
The gnus-topic-display-empty-topics says whether to display even
topics that have no unread articles in them. The default is t.
You can sort the groups in each topic individually with the following commands:
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-alphabet).
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-unread).
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-level).
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-score). See Group Score.
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-rank). See Group Score.
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-method).
gnus-topic-sort-groups-by-server).
gnus-group-sort-function variable
(gnus-topic-sort-groups).
When given a prefix argument, all these commands will sort in reverse order. See Sorting Groups, for more information about group sorting.
So, let's have a look at an example group buffer:
Gnus
Emacs -- I wuw it!
3: comp.emacs
2: alt.religion.emacs
Naughty Emacs
452: alt.sex.emacs
0: comp.talk.emacs.recovery
Misc
8: comp.binaries.fractals
13: comp.sources.unix
So, here we have one top-level topic (`Gnus'), two topics under that, and one sub-topic under one of the sub-topics. (There is always just one (1) top-level topic). This topology can be expressed as follows:
(("Gnus" visible)
(("Emacs -- I wuw it!" visible)
(("Naughty Emacs" visible)))
(("Misc" visible)))
This is in fact how the variable gnus-topic-topology would look
for the display above. That variable is saved in the .newsrc.eld
file, and shouldn't be messed with manually—unless you really want
to. Since this variable is read from the .newsrc.eld file,
setting it in any other startup files will have no effect.
This topology shows what topics are sub-topics of what topics (right),
and which topics are visible. Two settings are currently
allowed—visible and invisible.
All groups in a topic will inherit group parameters from the parent (and ancestor) topic parameters. All valid group parameters are valid topic parameters (see Group Parameters). When the agent is enabled, all agent parameters (See Agent Parameters in Category Syntax) are also valid topic parameters.
In addition, the following parameters are only valid as topic parameters:
subscribesubscribe topic parameter says what groups go in what topic. Its
value should be a regexp to match the groups that should go in that
topic.
subscribe-levelsubscribe parameter),
the group will be subscribed with the level specified in the
subscribe-level instead of gnus-level-default-subscribed.
Group parameters (of course) override topic parameters, and topic parameters in sub-topics override topic parameters in super-topics. You know. Normal inheritance rules. (Rules is here a noun, not a verb, although you may feel free to disagree with me here.)
Gnus
Emacs
3: comp.emacs
2: alt.religion.emacs
452: alt.sex.emacs
Relief
452: alt.sex.emacs
0: comp.talk.emacs.recovery
Misc
8: comp.binaries.fractals
13: comp.sources.unix
452: alt.sex.emacs
The `Emacs' topic has the topic parameter (score-file
. "emacs.SCORE"); the `Relief' topic has the topic parameter
(score-file . "relief.SCORE"); and the `Misc' topic has the
topic parameter (score-file . "emacs.SCORE"). In addition,
`alt.religion.emacs' has the group parameter (score-file
. "religion.SCORE").
Now, when you enter `alt.sex.emacs' in the `Relief' topic, you will get the relief.SCORE home score file. If you enter the same group in the `Emacs' topic, you'll get the emacs.SCORE home score file. If you enter the group `alt.religion.emacs', you'll get the religion.SCORE home score file.
This seems rather simple and self-evident, doesn't it? Well, yes. But
there are some problems, especially with the total-expiry
parameter. Say you have a mail group in two topics; one with
total-expiry and one without. What happens when you do M-x
gnus-expire-all-expirable-groups? Gnus has no way of telling which one
of these topics you mean to expire articles from, so anything may
happen. In fact, I hereby declare that it is undefined what
happens. You just have to be careful if you do stuff like that.
(define-key gnus-group-mode-map (kbd "v j d")
(lambda ()
(interactive)
(gnus-group-jump-to-group "nndraft:drafts")))
On keys reserved for users in Emacs and on keybindings in general
See Keymaps.
gnus-group-enter-server-mode).
See Server Buffer.
gnus-group-post-news). If given a prefix, post to the group
under the point. If the prefix is 1, prompt for a group to post to.
Contrary to what the name of this function suggests, the prepared
article might be a mail instead of a news, if a mail group is specified
with the prefix argument. See Composing Messages.
gnus-group-mail). If given a prefix,
use the posting style of the group under the point. If the prefix is 1,
prompt for a group name to find the posting style.
See Composing Messages.
gnus-group-news). If given a prefix,
post to the group under the point. If the prefix is 1, prompt
for group to post to. See Composing Messages.
This function actually prepares a news even when using mail groups. This is useful for “posting” messages to mail groups without actually sending them over the network: they're just saved directly to the group in question. The corresponding back end must have a request-post method for this to work though.
Variables for the group buffer:
gnus-group-mode-hookgnus-group-prepare-hookgnus-group-prepared-hookgnus-permanently-visible-groupsgnus-group-name-charset-method-alistFor example:
(setq gnus-group-name-charset-method-alist
'(((nntp "news.com.cn") . cn-gb-2312)))
gnus-group-name-charset-group-alist((".*"
utf-8)) is the default value if UTF-8 is supported, otherwise the
default is nil.
For example:
(setq gnus-group-name-charset-group-alist
'(("\\.com\\.cn:" . cn-gb-2312)))
gnus-group-get-new-news). If given a non-numerical prefix, this
command will force a total re-reading of the active file(s) from the
back end(s).
gnus-group-get-new-news-this-group).
gnus-goto-next-group-when-activating says whether this command is
to move point to the next group or not. It is t by default.
gnus-activate-all-groups).
gnus-group-restart). This saves the .newsrc
file(s), closes the connection to all servers, clears up all run-time
Gnus variables, and then starts Gnus all over again.
gnus-get-new-news-hook is run just before checking for new news.
gnus-after-getting-new-news-hook is run after checking for new
news.
gnus-group-fetch-faq). Gnus will try to get the FAQ
from gnus-group-faq-directory, which is usually a directory on
a remote machine. This variable can also be a list of directories.
In that case, giving a prefix to this command will allow you to choose
between the various sites. ange-ftp (or efs) will be
used for fetching the file.
If fetching from the first site is unsuccessful, Gnus will attempt to go
through gnus-group-faq-directory and try to open them one by one.
gnus-group-fetch-charter). Query for a group if given a
prefix argument.
Gnus will use gnus-group-charter-alist to find the location of
the charter. If no location is known, Gnus will fetch the control
messages for the group, which in some cases includes the charter.
ftp.isc.org (gnus-group-fetch-control). Query for a
group if given a prefix argument.
If gnus-group-fetch-control-use-browse-url is non-nil,
Gnus will open the control messages in a browser using
browse-url. Otherwise they are fetched using ange-ftp
and displayed in an ephemeral group.
Note that the control messages are compressed. To use this command
you need to turn on auto-compression-mode (see Compressed Files).
gnus-group-describe-group). If given
a prefix, force Gnus to re-read the description from the server.
gnus-group-describe-all-groups). If given a
prefix, force Gnus to re-read the description file from the server.
gnus-version).
gnus-group-describe-briefly).
gnus-info-find-node).
It can be convenient to let Gnus keep track of when you last read a
group. To set the ball rolling, you should add
gnus-group-set-timestamp to gnus-select-group-hook:
(add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook 'gnus-group-set-timestamp)
After doing this, each time you enter a group, it'll be recorded.
This information can be displayed in various ways—the easiest is to use the `%d' spec in the group line format:
(setq gnus-group-line-format
"%M\%S\%p\%P\%5y: %(%-40,40g%) %d\n")
This will result in lines looking like:
* 0: mail.ding 19961002T012943
0: custom 19961002T012713
As you can see, the date is displayed in compact ISO 8601 format. This may be a bit too much, so to just display the date, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-group-line-format
"%M\%S\%p\%P\%5y: %(%-40,40g%) %6,6~(cut 2)d\n")
If you would like greater control of the time format, you can use a user-defined format spec. Something like the following should do the trick:
(setq gnus-group-line-format
"%M\%S\%p\%P\%5y: %(%-40,40g%) %ud\n")
(defun gnus-user-format-function-d (headers)
(let ((time (gnus-group-timestamp gnus-tmp-group)))
(if time
(format-time-string "%b %d %H:%M" time)
"")))
gnus-init-file, which defaults to
~/.gnus.el) (gnus-group-read-init-file).
gnus-group-save-newsrc). If given a prefix, force saving the
file(s) whether Gnus thinks it is necessary or not.
Sieve is a server-side mail filtering language. In Gnus you can use
the sieve group parameter (see Group Parameters) to specify
sieve rules that should apply to each group. Gnus provides two
commands to translate all these group parameters into a proper Sieve
script that can be transfered to the server somehow.
The generated Sieve script is placed in gnus-sieve-file (by
default ~/.sieve). The Sieve code that Gnus generate is placed
between two delimiters, gnus-sieve-region-start and
gnus-sieve-region-end, so you may write additional Sieve code
outside these delimiters that will not be removed the next time you
regenerate the Sieve script.
The variable gnus-sieve-crosspost controls how the Sieve script
is generated. If it is non-nil (the default) articles is
placed in all groups that have matching rules, otherwise the article
is only placed in the group with the first matching rule. For
example, the group parameter `(sieve address "sender"
"owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu")' will generate the following piece of Sieve
code if gnus-sieve-crosspost is nil. (When
gnus-sieve-crosspost is non-nil, it looks the same
except that the line containing the call to stop is removed.)
if address "sender" "owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu" {
fileinto "INBOX.ding";
stop;
}
See Emacs Sieve.
sieve group parameters and
put you into the gnus-sieve-file without saving it.
gnus-sieve-file using the
sieve group parameters, save the file and upload it to the
server using the sieveshell program.
A line for each article is displayed in the summary buffer. You can move around, read articles, post articles and reply to articles.
The most common way to a summary buffer is to select a group from the group buffer (see Selecting a Group).
You can have as many summary buffers open as you wish.
You can customize the Summary Mode tool bar, see M-x customize-apropos RET gnus-summary-tool-bar. This feature is only available in Emacs.
The key v is reserved for users. You can bind it key to some function or better use it as a prefix key. For example:
(define-key gnus-summary-mode-map (kbd "v -") "LrS") ;; lower subthread
Gnus will use the value of the gnus-extract-address-components
variable as a function for getting the name and address parts of a
From header. Two pre-defined functions exist:
gnus-extract-address-components, which is the default, quite
fast, and too simplistic solution; and
mail-extract-address-components, which works very nicely, but is
slower. The default function will return the wrong answer in 5% of the
cases. If this is unacceptable to you, use the other function instead:
(setq gnus-extract-address-components
'mail-extract-address-components)
gnus-summary-same-subject is a string indicating that the current
article has the same subject as the previous. This string will be used
with those specs that require it. The default is "".
You can change the format of the lines in the summary buffer by changing
the gnus-summary-line-format variable. It works along the same
lines as a normal format string, with some extensions
(see Formatting Variables).
There should always be a colon or a point position marker on the line;
the cursor always moves to the point position marker or the colon after
performing an operation. (Of course, Gnus wouldn't be Gnus if it wasn't
possible to change this. Just write a new function
gnus-goto-colon which does whatever you like with the cursor.)
See Positioning Point.
The default string is `%U%R%z%I%(%[%4L: %-23,23f%]%) %s\n'.
The following format specification characters and extended format specification(s) are understood:
gnus-list-identifiers. See Article Hiding.
gnus-summary-same-subject otherwise.
(gnus-summary-same-subject defaults to "".)
From header.
From header).
To header or the Newsgroups header (see To From Newsgroups).
From header). This differs from the n
spec in that it uses the function designated by the
gnus-extract-address-components variable, which is slower, but
may be more thorough.
From header). This works the same way as
the a spec.
>
+->
| +->
| | \->
| | \->
| \->
+->
\->
You can customize the appearance with the following options. Note that it is possible to make the thread display look really neat by replacing the default ASCII characters with graphic line-drawing glyphs.
gnus-sum-thread-tree-rootnil, use subject
instead. The default is `> '.
gnus-sum-thread-tree-false-rootnil, use subject instead. The default is `> '.
gnus-sum-thread-tree-single-indentnil, use subject
instead. The default is `'.
gnus-sum-thread-tree-verticalgnus-sum-thread-tree-indentgnus-sum-thread-tree-leaf-with-othergnus-sum-thread-tree-single-leafgnus-summary-default-score and the score is less than
gnus-summary-zcore-fuzz, this spec will not be used.
Xref.
Date.
Date in DD-MMM format.
Date in YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS format.
Message-ID.
References.
gnus-not-empty-thread-mark) will be displayed if the
article has any children.
gnus-user-date-format-alist.
gnus-user-format-function-x, where x is the letter
following `%u'. The function will be passed the current header as
argument. The function should return a string, which will be inserted
into the summary just like information from any other summary specifier.
Text between `%(' and `%)' will be highlighted with
gnus-mouse-face when the mouse point is placed inside the area.
There can only be one such area.
The `%U' (status), `%R' (replied) and `%z' (zcore) specs have to be handled with care. For reasons of efficiency, Gnus will compute what column these characters will end up in, and “hard-code” that. This means that it is invalid to have these specs after a variable-length spec. Well, you might not be arrested, but your summary buffer will look strange, which is bad enough.
The smart choice is to have these specs as far to the left as possible. (Isn't that the case with everything, though? But I digress.)
This restriction may disappear in later versions of Gnus.
In some groups (particularly in archive groups), the From header
isn't very interesting, since all the articles there are written by
you. To display the information in the To or Newsgroups
headers instead, you need to decide three things: What information to
gather; where to display it; and when to display it.
gnus-extra-headers. This is a list of header symbols. For
instance:
(setq gnus-extra-headers
'(To Newsgroups X-Newsreader))
This will result in Gnus trying to obtain these three headers, and storing it in header structures for later easy retrieval.
gnus-extra-header function. Here's a format line spec that will
access the X-Newsreader header:
"%~(form (gnus-extra-header 'X-Newsreader))@"
gnus-ignored-from-addresses variable says when the `%f'
summary line spec returns the To, Newsreader or
From header. If this regexp matches the contents of the
From header, the value of the To or Newsreader
headers are used instead.
A related variable is nnmail-extra-headers, which controls when
to include extra headers when generating overview (NOV) files.
If you have old overview files, you should regenerate them after
changing this variable, by entering the server buffer using ^,
and then g on the appropriate mail server (e.g. nnml) to cause
regeneration.
You also have to instruct Gnus to display the data by changing the
%n spec to the %f spec in the
gnus-summary-line-format variable.
In summary, you'd typically put something like the following in ~/.gnus.el:
(setq gnus-extra-headers
'(To Newsgroups))
(setq nnmail-extra-headers gnus-extra-headers)
(setq gnus-summary-line-format
"%U%R%z%I%(%[%4L: %-23,23f%]%) %s\n")
(setq gnus-ignored-from-addresses
"Your Name Here")
(The values listed above are the default values in Gnus. Alter them to fit your needs.)
A note for news server administrators, or for users who wish to try to convince their news server administrator to provide some additional support:
The above is mostly useful for mail groups, where you have control over the NOV files that are created. However, if you can persuade your nntp admin to add (in the usual implementation, notably INN):
Newsgroups:full
to the end of her overview.fmt file, then you can use that just as you would the extra headers from the mail groups.
You can also change the format of the summary mode bar (see Mode Line Formatting). Set gnus-summary-mode-line-format to whatever you
like. The default is `Gnus: %%b [%A] %Z'.
Here are the elements you can play with:
gnus-visual-mark-article-hookgnus-visual is nil.
gnus-summary-update-hookgnus-visual is nil.
gnus-summary-selected-facegnus-summary-highlight(form
. face). If you would, for instance, like ticked articles to be
italic and high-scored articles to be bold, you could set this variable
to something like
(((eq mark gnus-ticked-mark) . italic)
((> score default) . bold))
As you may have guessed, if form returns a non-nil value,
face will be applied to the line.
All the straight movement commands understand the numeric prefix and behave pretty much as you'd expect.
None of these commands select articles.
gnus-summary-next-unread-subject).
gnus-summary-prev-unread-subject).
gnus-summary-goto-subject).
If Gnus asks you to press a key to confirm going to the next group, you can use the C-n and C-p keys to move around the group buffer, searching for the next group to read without actually returning to the group buffer.
Variables related to summary movement:
gnus-auto-select-nextt and the next group is
empty, Gnus will exit summary mode and return to the group buffer. If
this variable is neither t nor nil, Gnus will select the
next group with unread articles. As a special case, if this variable
is quietly, Gnus will select the next group without asking for
confirmation. If this variable is almost-quietly, the same
will happen only if you are located on the last article in the group.
Finally, if this variable is slightly-quietly, the Z n
command will go to the next group without confirmation. Also
see Group Levels.
gnus-auto-select-samenil, all the movement commands will try to go to the next
article with the same subject as the current. (Same here might
mean roughly equal. See gnus-summary-gather-subject-limit
for details (see Customizing Threading).) If there are no more
articles with the same subject, go to the first unread article.
This variable is not particularly useful if you use a threaded display.
gnus-summary-check-currentnil, all the “unread” movement commands will not proceed
to the next (or previous) article if the current article is unread.
Instead, they will choose the current article.
gnus-auto-center-summarynil, Gnus will keep the point in the summary buffer
centered at all times. This makes things quite tidy, but if you have a
slow network connection, or simply do not like this un-Emacsism, you can
set this variable to nil to get the normal Emacs scrolling
action. This will also inhibit horizontal re-centering of the summary
buffer, which might make it more inconvenient to read extremely long
threads.
This variable can also be a number. In that case, center the window at the given number of lines from the top.
None of the following movement commands understand the numeric prefix, and they all select and display an article.
If you want to fetch new articles or redisplay the group, see Exiting the Summary Buffer.
gnus-summary-next-page).
If you have an article window open already and you press SPACE
again, the article will be scrolled. This lets you conveniently
SPACE through an entire newsgroup. See Paging the Article.
gnus-summary-next-unread-article).
gnus-summary-prev-unread-article).
gnus-summary-next-article).
gnus-summary-prev-article).
gnus-summary-next-same-subject).
gnus-summary-prev-same-subject).
gnus-summary-first-unread-article).
gnus-summary-best-unread-article). If given a prefix argument,
go to the first unread article that has a score over the default score.
gnus-summary-goto-last-article).
gnus-summary-pop-article). This command differs from the
command above in that you can pop as many previous articles off the
history as you like, while l toggles the two last read articles.
For a somewhat related issue (if you use these commands a lot),
see Article Backlog.
Message-ID, and then go to that
article (gnus-summary-goto-article).
Some variables relevant for moving and selecting articles:
gnus-auto-extend-newsgroupnil. Gnus will then fetch the article from
the server and display it in the article buffer.
gnus-select-article-hooknil. If you would like each article to be saved in the Agent as
you read it, putting gnus-agent-fetch-selected-article on this
hook will do so.
gnus-mark-article-hookgnus-summary-mark-read-and-unread-as-read, and will change the
mark of almost any article you read to gnus-read-mark. The only
articles not affected by this function are ticked, dormant, and
expirable articles. If you'd instead like to just have unread articles
marked as read, you can use gnus-summary-mark-unread-as-read
instead. It will leave marks like gnus-low-score-mark,
gnus-del-mark (and so on) alone.
gnus-summary-next-page).
If gnus-article-skip-boring is non-nil and the rest of
the article consists only of citations and signature, then it will be
skipped; the next article will be shown instead. You can customize
what is considered uninteresting with
gnus-article-boring-faces. You can manually view the article's
pages, no matter how boring, using C-M-v.
gnus-summary-prev-page).
gnus-summary-scroll-up).
gnus-summary-scroll-down).
gnus-summary-show-article). If
given a prefix, fetch the current article, but don't run any of the
article treatment functions. This will give you a “raw” article, just
the way it came from the server.
If given a numerical prefix, you can do semi-manual charset stuff.
C-u 0 g cn-gb-2312 RET will decode the message as if it were
encoded in the cn-gb-2312 charset. If you have
(setq gnus-summary-show-article-charset-alist
'((1 . cn-gb-2312)
(2 . big5)))
then you can say C-u 1 g to get the same effect.
gnus-summary-beginning-of-article).
gnus-summary-end-of-article).
gnus-summary-isearch-article).
gnus-summary-select-article-buffer).
Commands for composing a mail message:
gnus-summary-reply).
gnus-summary-reply-with-original). This
command uses the process/prefix convention.
gnus-summary-wide-reply). A wide reply is a reply that
goes out to all people listed in the To, From (or
Reply-to) and Cc headers. If Mail-Followup-To is
present, that's used instead.
gnus-summary-wide-reply-with-original). This command uses
the process/prefix convention.
gnus-summary-wide-reply). A very wide reply is a reply
that goes out to all people listed in the To, From (or
Reply-to) and Cc headers in all the process/prefixed
articles. This command uses the process/prefix convention.
gnus-summary-very-wide-reply-with-original). This
command uses the process/prefix convention.
Reply-To field (gnus-summary-reply-broken-reply-to).
If you need this because a mailing list incorrectly sets a
Reply-To header pointing to the list, you probably want to set
the broken-reply-to group parameter instead, so things will work
correctly. See Group Parameters.
Reply-To field
(gnus-summary-reply-broken-reply-to-with-original).
gnus-summary-mail-forward). If no prefix is given, the message
is forwarded according to the value of (message-forward-as-mime)
and (message-forward-show-mml); if the prefix is 1, decode the
message and forward directly inline; if the prefix is 2, forward message
as an rfc822 MIME section; if the prefix is 3, decode message and
forward as an rfc822 MIME section; if the prefix is 4, forward message
directly inline; otherwise, the message is forwarded as no prefix given
but use the flipped value of (message-forward-as-mime). By
default, the message is decoded and forwarded as an rfc822 MIME
section.
gnus-summary-mail-other-window). By default, use
the posting style of the current group. If given a prefix, disable that.
If the prefix is 1, prompt for a group name to find the posting style.
gnus-summary-news-other-window). By default,
post to the current group. If given a prefix, disable that. If the
prefix is 1, prompt for a group to post to.
This function actually prepares a news even when using mail groups.
This is useful for “posting” messages to mail groups without actually
sending them over the network: they're just saved directly to the group
in question. The corresponding back end must have a request-post method
for this to work though.
gnus-summary-resend-bounced-mail). You
will be popped into a mail buffer where you can edit the headers before
sending the mail off again. If you give a prefix to this command, and
the bounced mail is a reply to some other mail, Gnus will try to fetch
that mail and display it for easy perusal of its headers. This might
very well fail, though.
gnus-summary-resend-message will prompt you for an address to
send the current message off to, and then send it to that place. The
headers of the message won't be altered—but lots of headers that say
Resent-To, Resent-From and so on will be added. This
means that you actually send a mail to someone that has a To
header that (probably) points to yourself. This will confuse people.
So, natcherly you'll only do that if you're really eVIl.
This command is mainly used if you have several accounts and want to
ship a mail to a different account of yours. (If you're both
root and postmaster and get a mail for postmaster
to the root account, you may want to resend it to
postmaster. Ordnung muss sein!
This command understands the process/prefix convention
(see Process/Prefix).
gnus-uu-digest-mail-forward). This command
uses the process/prefix convention (see Process/Prefix).
gnus-summary-mail-crosspost-complaint).
This command is provided as a way to fight back against the current
crossposting pandemic that's sweeping Usenet. It will compose a reply
using the gnus-crosspost-complaint variable as a preamble. This
command understands the process/prefix convention
(see Process/Prefix) and will prompt you before sending each mail.
Also See Header Commands, for more information.
Commands for posting a news article:
gnus-summary-post-news). By
default, post to the current group. If given a prefix, disable that.
If the prefix is 1, prompt for another group instead.
gnus-summary-followup).
gnus-summary-followup-with-original). This command uses the
process/prefix convention.
gnus-summary-followup-to-mail).
gnus-summary-followup-to-mail-with-original). This command uses
the process/prefix convention.
gnus-summary-post-forward).
If no prefix is given, the message is forwarded according to the value
of (message-forward-as-mime) and
(message-forward-show-mml); if the prefix is 1, decode the
message and forward directly inline; if the prefix is 2, forward message
as an rfc822 MIME section; if the prefix is 3, decode message and
forward as an rfc822 MIME section; if the prefix is 4, forward message
directly inline; otherwise, the message is forwarded as no prefix given
but use the flipped value of (message-forward-as-mime). By
default, the message is decoded and forwarded as an rfc822 MIME section.
gnus-uu-digest-post-forward). This command uses the
process/prefix convention.
gnus-uu-post-news). (see Uuencoding and Posting).
Also See Header Commands, for more information.
gnus-summary-yank-message). This command prompts for
what message buffer you want to yank into, and understands the
process/prefix convention (see Process/Prefix).
Have you ever written something, and then decided that you really, really, really wish you hadn't posted that?
Well, you can't cancel mail, but you can cancel posts.
Find the article you wish to cancel (you can only cancel your own
articles, so don't try any funny stuff). Then press C or S
c (gnus-summary-cancel-article). Your article will be
canceled—machines all over the world will be deleting your article.
This command uses the process/prefix convention (see Process/Prefix).
Be aware, however, that not all sites honor cancels, so your article may live on here and there, while most sites will delete the article in question.
Gnus will use the “current” select method when canceling. If you want to use the standard posting method, use the `a' symbolic prefix (see Symbolic Prefixes).
Gnus ensures that only you can cancel your own messages using a
Cancel-Lock header (see Canceling News).
If you discover that you have made some mistakes and want to do some corrections, you can post a superseding article that will replace your original article.
Go to the original article and press S s
(gnus-summary-supersede-article). You will be put in a buffer
where you can edit the article all you want before sending it off the
usual way.
The same goes for superseding as for canceling, only more so: Some sites do not honor superseding. On those sites, it will appear that you have posted almost the same article twice.
If you have just posted the article, and change your mind right away,
there is a trick you can use to cancel/supersede the article without
waiting for the article to appear on your site first. You simply return
to the post buffer (which is called *sent ...*). There you will
find the article you just posted, with all the headers intact. Change
the Message-ID header to a Cancel or Supersedes
header by substituting one of those words for the word
Message-ID. Then just press C-c C-c to send the article as
you would do normally. The previous article will be
canceled/superseded.
Just remember, kids: There is no 'c' in 'supersede'.
Sometimes, you might wish to delay the sending of a message. For
example, you might wish to arrange for a message to turn up just in time
to remind your about the birthday of your Significant Other. For this,
there is the gnus-delay package. Setup is simple:
(gnus-delay-initialize)
Normally, to send a message you use the C-c C-c command from
Message mode. To delay a message, use C-c C-j
(gnus-delay-article) instead. This will ask you for how long the
message should be delayed. Possible answers are:
42d means to delay for 42 days. Available letters are m
(minutes), h (hours), d (days), w (weeks), M
(months) and Y (years).
YYYY-MM-DD. The message will be
delayed until that day, at a specific time (eight o'clock by default).
See also gnus-delay-default-hour.
hh:mm format, 24h, no am/pm
stuff. The deadline will be at that time today, except if that time has
already passed, then it's at the given time tomorrow. So if it's ten
o'clock in the morning and you specify 11:15, then the deadline
is one hour and fifteen minutes hence. But if you specify 9:20,
that means a time tomorrow.
The action of the gnus-delay-article command is influenced by a
couple of variables:
gnus-delay-default-hourgnus-delay-default-delaygnus-delay-group"delayed".
gnus-delay-header"X-Gnus-Delayed".
The way delaying works is like this: when you use the
gnus-delay-article command, you give a certain delay. Gnus
calculates the deadline of the message and stores it in the
X-Gnus-Delayed header and puts the message in the
nndraft:delayed group.
And whenever you get new news, Gnus looks through the group for articles
which are due and sends them. It uses the gnus-delay-send-queue
function for this. By default, this function is added to the hook
gnus-get-new-news-hook. But of course, you can change this.
Maybe you want to use the demon to send drafts? Just tell the demon to
execute the gnus-delay-send-queue function.
gnus-delay-initializegnus-delay-send-queue in
gnus-get-new-news-hook. But it accepts the optional second
argument no-check. If it is non-nil,
gnus-get-new-news-hook is not changed. The optional first
argument is ignored.
For example, (gnus-delay-initialize nil t) means to do nothing.
Presumably, you want to use the demon for sending due delayed articles.
Just don't forget to set that up :-)
There are several marks you can set on an article.
You have marks that decide the readedness (whoo, neato-keano neologism ohoy!) of the article. Alphabetic marks generally mean read, while non-alphabetic characters generally mean unread.
In addition, you also have marks that do not affect readedness.
The following marks mark articles as (kinda) unread, in one form or other.
gnus-ticked-mark).
Ticked articles are articles that will remain visible always. If
you see an article that you find interesting, or you want to put off
reading it, or replying to it, until sometime later, you'd typically
tick it. However, articles can be expired (from news servers by the
news server software, Gnus itself never expires ticked messages), so if
you want to keep an article forever, you'll have to make it persistent
(see Persistent Articles).
gnus-dormant-mark).
Dormant articles will only appear in the summary buffer if there
are followups to it. If you want to see them even if they don't have
followups, you can use the / D command (see Limiting).
Otherwise (except for the visibility issue), they are just like ticked
messages.
gnus-unread-mark).
Unread articles are articles that haven't been read at all yet.
All the following marks mark articles as read.
gnus-del-mark).
gnus-read-mark).
gnus-ancient-mark).
gnus-killed-mark).
gnus-kill-file-mark).
gnus-low-score-mark).
gnus-catchup-mark).
gnus-canceled-mark)
gnus-souped-mark). See SOUP.
gnus-sparse-mark). See Customizing Threading.
gnus-duplicate-mark). See Duplicate Suppression.
All these marks just mean that the article is marked as read, really. They are interpreted differently when doing adaptive scoring, though.
One more special mark, though:
gnus-expirable-mark).
Marking articles as expirable (or have them marked as such automatically) doesn't make much sense in normal groups—a user doesn't control expiring of news articles, but in mail groups, for instance, articles marked as expirable can be deleted by Gnus at any time.
There are some marks that have nothing to do with whether the article is read or not.
gnus-replied-mark).
gnus-forwarded-mark).
gnus-cached-mark). See Article Caching.
gnus-saved-mark).
gnus-recent-mark). Note that not all servers support this
mark, in which case it simply never appears. Compare with
gnus-unseen-mark.
gnus-unseen-mark).
Compare with gnus-recent-mark.
gnus-downloaded-mark controls which character to
use.)
gnus-undownloaded-mark controls which character to use.)
gnus-downloadable-mark controls which character to
use.)
gnus-not-empty-thread-mark and
gnus-empty-thread-mark in the third column, respectively.
gnus-process-mark). A
variety of commands react to the presence of the process mark. For
instance, X u (gnus-uu-decode-uu) will uudecode and view
all articles that have been marked with the process mark. Articles
marked with the process mark have a `#' in the second column.
You might have noticed that most of these “non-readedness” marks appear in the second column by default. So if you have a cached, saved, replied article that you have process-marked, what will that look like?
Nothing much. The precedence rules go as follows: process -> cache -> replied -> saved. So if the article is in the cache and is replied, you'll only see the cache mark and not the replied mark.
All the marking commands understand the numeric prefix.
gnus-summary-clear-mark-forward). In other words, mark the
article as unread.
gnus-summary-tick-article-forward).
See Article Caching.
gnus-summary-mark-as-dormant). See Article Caching.
gnus-summary-mark-as-read-forward).
gnus-summary-mark-as-read-backward).
gnus-summary-kill-same-subject-and-select).
gnus-summary-kill-same-subject).
gnus-summary-catchup).
gnus-summary-catchup-all).
gnus-summary-catchup-to-here).
gnus-summary-catchup-from-here).
gnus-summary-mark-region-as-read).
gnus-summary-kill-below).
gnus-summary-mark-as-expirable).
gnus-summary-set-bookmark).
gnus-summary-remove-bookmark).
gnus-summary-clear-above).
gnus-summary-tick-above).
gnus-summary-clear-above).
The gnus-summary-goto-unread variable controls what action should
be taken after setting a mark. If non-nil, point will move to
the next/previous unread article. If nil, point will just move
one line up or down. As a special case, if this variable is
never, all the marking commands as well as other commands (like
SPACE) will move to the next article, whether it is unread or not.
The default is t.
Some people would like the command that ticks an article (!) go to the next article. Others would like it to go to the next unread article. Yet others would like it to stay on the current article. And even though I haven't heard of anybody wanting it to go to the previous (unread) article, I'm sure there are people that want that as well.
Multiply these five behaviors with five different marking commands, and you get a potentially complex set of variable to control what each command should do.
To sidestep that mess, Gnus provides commands that do all these different things. They can be found on the M M map in the summary buffer. Type M M C-h to see them all—there are too many of them to list in this manual.
While you can use these commands directly, most users would prefer altering the summary mode keymap. For instance, if you would like the ! command to go to the next article instead of the next unread article, you could say something like:
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'my-alter-summary-map)
(defun my-alter-summary-map ()
(local-set-key "!" 'gnus-summary-put-mark-as-ticked-next))
or
(defun my-alter-summary-map ()
(local-set-key "!" "MM!n"))
Process marks are displayed as # in the summary buffer, and are
used for marking articles in such a way that other commands will
process these articles. For instance, if you process mark four
articles and then use the * command, Gnus will enter these four
articles into the cache. For more information,
see Process/Prefix.
gnus-summary-mark-as-processable).
gnus-summary-unmark-as-processable).
gnus-summary-unmark-all-processable).
gnus-uu-invert-processable).
Subject header that matches a regular
expression (gnus-uu-mark-by-regexp).
Subject header that matches a regular
expression (gnus-uu-unmark-by-regexp).
gnus-uu-mark-region).
gnus-uu-unmark-region).
gnus-uu-mark-thread).
gnus-uu-unmark-thread).
gnus-uu-mark-over).
gnus-uu-mark-series).
gnus-uu-mark-sparse).
gnus-uu-mark-all).
gnus-uu-mark-buffer).
gnus-summary-kill-process-mark).
gnus-summary-yank-process-mark).
gnus-summary-save-process-mark).
Also see the & command in Searching for Articles, for how to set process marks based on article body contents.
It can be convenient to limit the summary buffer to just show some subset of the articles currently in the group. The effect most limit commands have is to remove a few (or many) articles from the summary buffer.
All limiting commands work on subsets of the articles already fetched from the servers. None of these commands query the server for additional articles.
gnus-summary-limit-to-subject). If given a prefix, exclude
matching articles.
gnus-summary-limit-to-author). If given a prefix, exclude
matching articles.
gnus-summary-limit-to-extra). If given a prefix, exclude
matching articles.
gnus-summary-limit-to-unread). If given a prefix, limit the
buffer to articles strictly unread. This means that ticked and
dormant articles will also be excluded.
gnus-summary-limit-to-marks).
gnus-summary-limit-to-age). If given a prefix, limit to
articles younger than that number of days.
gnus-summary-limit-to-articles).
gnus-summary-pop-limit). If given a prefix, pop all limits off
the stack.
gnus-summary-limit-to-unseen).
gnus-summary-limit-to-score).
display
group parameter predicate
(gnus-summary-limit-to-display-predicate). See Group Parameters, for more on this predicate.
gnus-summary-limit-include-expunged).
gnus-summary-limit-include-dormant).
gnus-summary-limit-include-cached).
gnus-summary-limit-exclude-dormant).
gnus-summary-limit-exclude-marks).
gnus-summary-limit-exclude-childless-dormant).
gnus-summary-limit-mark-excluded-as-read). If given a prefix,
also mark excluded ticked and dormant articles as read.
-get-new-mail is non-nil.
Gnus threads articles by default. To thread is to put responses to articles directly after the articles they respond to—in a hierarchical fashion.
Threading is done by looking at the References headers of the
articles. In a perfect world, this would be enough to build pretty
trees, but unfortunately, the References header is often broken
or simply missing. Weird news propagation exacerbates the problem,
so one has to employ other heuristics to get pleasing results. A
plethora of approaches exists, as detailed in horrible detail in
Customizing Threading.
First, a quick overview of the concepts:
gnus-summary-make-false-rootnil, Gnus will gather all loose subtrees into one big tree
and create a dummy root at the top. (Wait a minute. Root at the top?
Yup.) Loose subtrees occur when the real root has expired, or you've
read or killed the root in a previous session.
When there is no real root of a thread, Gnus will have to fudge something. This variable says what fudging method Gnus should use. There are four possible values:
adoptdummygnus-summary-dummy-line-format is used to specify the
format of the dummy roots. It accepts only one format spec: `S',
which is the subject of the article. See Formatting Variables.
If you want all threads to have a dummy root, even the non-gathered
ones, set gnus-summary-make-false-root-always to t.
emptygnus-summary-same-subject as the subject (see Summary Buffer Format).)
nonenilgnus-summary-gather-subject-limitnil, Gnus requires an exact match between the
subjects of the loose threads before gathering them into one big
super-thread. This might be too strict a requirement, what with the
presence of stupid newsreaders that chop off long subject lines. If
you think so, set this variable to, say, 20 to require that only the
first 20 characters of the subjects have to match. If you set this
variable to a really low number, you'll find that Gnus will gather
everything in sight into one thread, which isn't very helpful.
If you set this variable to the special value fuzzy, Gnus will
use a fuzzy string comparison algorithm on the subjects (see Fuzzy Matching).
gnus-simplify-subject-fuzzy-regexpgnus-simplify-ignored-prefixesgnus-summary-gather-subject-limit to something as low
as 10, you might consider setting this variable to something sensible:
(setq gnus-simplify-ignored-prefixes
(concat
"\\`\\[?\\("
(mapconcat
'identity
'("looking"
"wanted" "followup" "summary\\( of\\)?"
"help" "query" "problem" "question"
"answer" "reference" "announce"
"How can I" "How to" "Comparison of"
;; ...
)
"\\|")
"\\)\\s *\\("
(mapconcat 'identity
'("for" "for reference" "with" "about")
"\\|")
"\\)?\\]?:?[ \t]*"))
All words that match this regexp will be removed before comparing two
subjects.
gnus-simplify-subject-functionsnil, this variable overrides
gnus-summary-gather-subject-limit. This variable should be a
list of functions to apply to the Subject string iteratively to
arrive at the simplified version of the string.
Useful functions to put in this list include:
gnus-simplify-subject-regnus-simplify-subject-fuzzygnus-simplify-whitespacegnus-simplify-all-whitespaceYou may also write your own functions, of course.
gnus-summary-gather-exclude-subjectgnus-summary-gather-exclude-subject to say
what subjects should be excluded from the gathering process.gnus-summary-thread-gathering-functionSubject headers. This means
that totally unrelated articles may end up in the same “thread”, which
is confusing. An alternate approach is to look at all the
Message-IDs in all the References headers to find matches.
This will ensure that no gathered threads ever include unrelated
articles, but it also means that people who have posted with broken
newsreaders won't be gathered properly. The choice is yours—plague or
cholera:
gnus-gather-threads-by-subjectSubjects exclusively.
gnus-gather-threads-by-referencesReferences headers exclusively.
If you want to test gathering by References, you could say
something like:
(setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
gnus-fetch-old-headersnil, Gnus will attempt to build old threads by fetching
more old headers—headers to articles marked as read. If you would
like to display as few summary lines as possible, but still connect as
many loose threads as possible, you should set this variable to
some or a number. If you set it to a number, no more than that
number of extra old headers will be fetched. In either case, fetching
old headers only works if the back end you are using carries overview
files—this would normally be nntp, nnspool,
nnml, and nnmaildir. Also remember that if the root of
the thread has been expired by the server, there's not much Gnus can
do about that.
This variable can also be set to invisible. This won't have any
visible effects, but is useful if you use the A T command a lot
(see Finding the Parent).
gnus-fetch-old-ephemeral-headersgnus-fetch-old-headers, but only used for ephemeral
newsgroups.
gnus-build-sparse-threadssome. Gnus will then look at
the complete References headers of all articles and try to string
together articles that belong in the same thread. This will leave
gaps in the threading display where Gnus guesses that an article
is missing from the thread. (These gaps appear like normal summary
lines. If you select a gap, Gnus will try to fetch the article in
question.) If this variable is t, Gnus will display all these
“gaps” without regard for whether they are useful for completing the
thread or not. Finally, if this variable is more, Gnus won't cut
off sparse leaf nodes that don't lead anywhere. This variable is
nil by default.
gnus-read-all-available-headersnnultimate groups.
If you don't use those, then it's safe to leave this as the default
nil. If you want to use this variable, it should be a regexp
that matches the group name, or t for all groups.
gnus-show-threadsnil, no threading will be done, and all of
the rest of the variables here will have no effect. Turning threading
off will speed group selection up a bit, but it is sure to make reading
slower and more awkward.
gnus-thread-hide-subtreenil, all threads will be hidden when the summary buffer is
generated.
This can also be a predicate specifier (see Predicate Specifiers).
Available predicates are gnus-article-unread-p and
gnus-article-unseen-p.
Here's an example:
(setq gnus-thread-hide-subtree
'(or gnus-article-unread-p
gnus-article-unseen-p))
(It's a pretty nonsensical example, since all unseen articles are also
unread, but you get my drift.)
gnus-thread-expunge-belowgnus-thread-score-function) less than this number will be
expunged. This variable is nil by default, which means that no
threads are expunged.
gnus-thread-hide-killednil, the subtree
will be hidden.
gnus-thread-ignore-subjectnil, which is the default, the subject
change is ignored. If it is nil, a change in the subject will
result in a new thread.
gnus-thread-indent-levelgnus-sort-gathered-threads-functiongnus-thread-sort-by-number, responses can end
up appearing before the article to which they are responding to.
Setting this variable to an alternate value
(e.g. gnus-thread-sort-by-date), in a group's parameters or in an
appropriate hook (e.g. gnus-summary-generate-hook) can produce a
more logical sub-thread ordering in such instances.
gnus-parse-headers-hookgnus-alter-header-functionnil, this function will be called to allow alteration of
article header structures. The function is called with one parameter,
the article header vector, which it may alter in any way. For instance,
if you have a mail-to-news gateway which alters the Message-IDs
in systematic ways (by adding prefixes and such), you can use this
variable to un-scramble the Message-IDs so that they are more
meaningful. Here's one example:
(setq gnus-alter-header-function 'my-alter-message-id)
(defun my-alter-message-id (header)
(let ((id (mail-header-id header)))
(when (string-match
"\\(<[^<>@]*\\)\\.?cygnus\\..*@\\([^<>@]*>\\)" id)
(mail-header-set-id
(concat (match-string 1 id) "@" (match-string 2 id))
header))))
gnus-summary-kill-thread). If the prefix argument is positive,
remove all marks instead. If the prefix argument is negative, tick
articles instead.
gnus-summary-lower-thread).
gnus-summary-raise-thread).
gnus-uu-mark-thread).
gnus-uu-unmark-thread).
gnus-summary-toggle-threads).
gnus-summary-show-thread).
gnus-summary-hide-thread).
gnus-summary-show-all-threads).
gnus-summary-hide-all-threads).
gnus-summary-rethread-current). This works even when the
summary buffer is otherwise unthreaded.
gnus-summary-reparent-thread).
The following commands are thread movement commands. They all understand the numeric prefix.
gnus-summary-next-thread).
gnus-summary-prev-thread).
gnus-summary-down-thread).
gnus-summary-up-thread).
gnus-summary-top-thread).
If you ignore subject while threading, you'll naturally end up with
threads that have several different subjects in them. If you then issue
a command like T k (gnus-summary-kill-thread) you might not
wish to kill the entire thread, but just those parts of the thread that
have the same subject as the current article. If you like this idea,
you can fiddle with gnus-thread-operation-ignore-subject. If it
is non-nil (which it is by default), subjects will be ignored
when doing thread commands. If this variable is nil, articles in
the same thread with different subjects will not be included in the
operation in question. If this variable is fuzzy, only articles
that have subjects fuzzily equal will be included (see Fuzzy Matching).
If you are using a threaded summary display, you can sort the threads by
setting gnus-thread-sort-functions, which can be either a single
function, a list of functions, or a list containing functions and
(not some-function) elements.
By default, sorting is done on article numbers. Ready-made sorting
predicate functions include gnus-thread-sort-by-number,
gnus-thread-sort-by-author, gnus-thread-sort-by-subject,
gnus-thread-sort-by-date, gnus-thread-sort-by-score,
gnus-thread-sort-by-most-recent-number,
gnus-thread-sort-by-most-recent-date,
gnus-thread-sort-by-random and
gnus-thread-sort-by-total-score.
Each function takes two threads and returns non-nil if the first
thread should be sorted before the other. Note that sorting really is
normally done by looking only at the roots of each thread.
If you use more than one function, the primary sort key should be the
last function in the list. You should probably always include
gnus-thread-sort-by-number in the list of sorting
functions—preferably first. This will ensure that threads that are
equal with respect to the other sort criteria will be displayed in
ascending article order.
If you would like to sort by reverse score, then by subject, and finally by number, you could do something like:
(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions
'(gnus-thread-sort-by-number
gnus-thread-sort-by-subject
(not gnus-thread-sort-by-total-score)))
The threads that have highest score will be displayed first in the summary buffer. When threads have the same score, they will be sorted alphabetically. The threads that have the same score and the same subject will be sorted by number, which is (normally) the sequence in which the articles arrived.
If you want to sort by score and then reverse arrival order, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions
'((lambda (t1 t2)
(not (gnus-thread-sort-by-number t1 t2)))
gnus-thread-sort-by-score))
The function in the gnus-thread-score-function variable (default
+) is used for calculating the total score of a thread. Useful
functions might be max, min, or squared means, or whatever
tickles your fancy.
If you are using an unthreaded display for some strange reason or
other, you have to fiddle with the gnus-article-sort-functions
variable. It is very similar to the
gnus-thread-sort-functions, except that it uses slightly
different functions for article comparison. Available sorting
predicate functions are gnus-article-sort-by-number,
gnus-article-sort-by-author,
gnus-article-sort-by-subject, gnus-article-sort-by-date,
gnus-article-sort-by-random, and
gnus-article-sort-by-score.
If you want to sort an unthreaded summary display by subject, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-article-sort-functions
'(gnus-article-sort-by-number
gnus-article-sort-by-subject))
If you read your news from an NNTP server that's far away, the network latencies may make reading articles a chore. You have to wait for a while after pressing n to go to the next article before the article appears. Why can't Gnus just go ahead and fetch the article while you are reading the previous one? Why not, indeed.
First, some caveats. There are some pitfalls to using asynchronous article fetching, especially the way Gnus does it.
Let's say you are reading article 1, which is short, and article 2 is quite long, and you are not interested in reading that. Gnus does not know this, so it goes ahead and fetches article 2. You decide to read article 3, but since Gnus is in the process of fetching article 2, the connection is blocked.
To avoid these situations, Gnus will open two (count 'em two) connections to the server. Some people may think this isn't a very nice thing to do, but I don't see any real alternatives. Setting up that extra connection takes some time, so Gnus startup will be slower.
Gnus will fetch more articles than you will read. This will mean that the link between your machine and the NNTP server will become more loaded than if you didn't use article pre-fetch. The server itself will also become more loaded—both with the extra article requests, and the extra connection.
Ok, so now you know that you shouldn't really use this thing... unless you really want to.
Here's how: Set gnus-asynchronous to t. The rest should
happen automatically.
You can control how many articles are to be pre-fetched by setting
gnus-use-article-prefetch. This is 30 by default, which means
that when you read an article in the group, the back end will pre-fetch
the next 30 articles. If this variable is t, the back end will
pre-fetch all the articles it can without bound. If it is
nil, no pre-fetching will be done.
There are probably some articles that you don't want to pre-fetch—read
articles, for instance. The gnus-async-prefetch-article-p
variable controls whether an article is to be pre-fetched. This
function should return non-nil when the article in question is
to be pre-fetched. The default is gnus-async-read-p, which
returns nil on read articles. The function is called with an
article data structure as the only parameter.
If, for instance, you wish to pre-fetch only unread articles shorter than 100 lines, you could say something like:
(defun my-async-short-unread-p (data)
"Return non-nil for short, unread articles."
(and (gnus-data-unread-p data)
(< (mail-header-lines (gnus-data-header data))
100)))
(setq gnus-async-prefetch-article-p 'my-async-short-unread-p)
These functions will be called many, many times, so they should preferably be short and sweet to avoid slowing down Gnus too much. It's probably a good idea to byte-compile things like this.
Articles have to be removed from the asynch buffer sooner or later. The
gnus-prefetched-article-deletion-strategy says when to remove
articles. This is a list that may contain the following elements:
readexitThe default value is (read exit).
If you have an extremely slow NNTP connection, you may consider turning article caching on. Each article will then be stored locally under your home directory. As you may surmise, this could potentially use huge amounts of disk space, as well as eat up all your inodes so fast it will make your head swim. In vodka.
Used carefully, though, it could be just an easier way to save articles.
To turn caching on, set gnus-use-cache to t. By default,
all articles ticked or marked as dormant will then be copied
over to your local cache (gnus-cache-directory). Whether this
cache is flat or hierarchical is controlled by the
gnus-use-long-file-name variable, as usual.
When re-selecting a ticked or dormant article, it will be fetched from the cache instead of from the server. As articles in your cache will never expire, this might serve as a method of saving articles while still keeping them where they belong. Just mark all articles you want to save as dormant, and don't worry.
When an article is marked as read, is it removed from the cache.
The entering/removal of articles from the cache is controlled by the
gnus-cache-enter-articles and gnus-cache-remove-articles
variables. Both are lists of symbols. The first is (ticked
dormant) by default, meaning that ticked and dormant articles will be
put in the cache. The latter is (read) by default, meaning that
articles marked as read are removed from the cache. Possibly
symbols in these two lists are ticked, dormant,
unread and read.
So where does the massive article-fetching and storing come into the
picture? The gnus-jog-cache command will go through all
subscribed newsgroups, request all unread articles, score them, and
store them in the cache. You should only ever, ever ever ever, use this
command if 1) your connection to the NNTP server is really, really,
really slow and 2) you have a really, really, really huge disk.
Seriously. One way to cut down on the number of articles downloaded is
to score unwanted articles down and have them marked as read. They will
not then be downloaded by this command.
It is likely that you do not want caching on all groups. For instance,
if your nnml mail is located under your home directory, it makes no
sense to cache it somewhere else under your home directory. Unless you
feel that it's neat to use twice as much space.
To limit the caching, you could set gnus-cacheable-groups to a
regexp of groups to cache, `^nntp' for instance, or set the
gnus-uncacheable-groups regexp to `^nnml', for instance.
Both variables are nil by default. If a group matches both
variables, the group is not cached.
The cache stores information on what articles it contains in its active
file (gnus-cache-active-file). If this file (or any other parts
of the cache) becomes all messed up for some reason or other, Gnus
offers two functions that will try to set things right. M-x
gnus-cache-generate-nov-databases will (re)build all the NOV
files, and gnus-cache-generate-active will (re)generate the active
file.
gnus-cache-move-cache will move your whole
gnus-cache-directory to some other location. You get asked to
where, isn't that cool?
Closely related to article caching, we have persistent articles. In fact, it's just a different way of looking at caching, and much more useful in my opinion.
Say you're reading a newsgroup, and you happen on to some valuable gem that you want to keep and treasure forever. You'd normally just save it (using one of the many saving commands) in some file. The problem with that is that it's just, well, yucky. Ideally you'd prefer just having the article remain in the group where you found it forever; untouched by the expiry going on at the news server.
This is what a persistent article is—an article that just won't be deleted. It's implemented using the normal cache functions, but you use two explicit commands for managing persistent articles:
gnus-cache-enter-article).
gnus-cache-remove-article). This will normally delete the
article.
Both these commands understand the process/prefix convention.
To avoid having all ticked articles (and stuff) entered into the cache,
you should set gnus-use-cache to passive if you're just
interested in persistent articles:
(setq gnus-use-cache 'passive)
If you have a slow connection, but the idea of using caching seems unappealing to you (and it is, really), you can help the situation some by switching on the backlog. This is where Gnus will buffer already read articles so that it doesn't have to re-fetch articles you've already read. This only helps if you are in the habit of re-selecting articles you've recently read, of course. If you never do that, turning the backlog on will slow Gnus down a little bit, and increase memory usage some.
If you set gnus-keep-backlog to a number n, Gnus will store
at most n old articles in a buffer for later re-fetching. If this
variable is non-nil and is not a number, Gnus will store
all read articles, which means that your Emacs will grow without
bound before exploding and taking your machine down with you. I put
that in there just to keep y'all on your toes.
The default value is 20.
Gnus can save articles in a number of ways. Below is the documentation
for saving articles in a fairly straight-forward fashion (i.e., little
processing of the article is done before it is saved). For a different
approach (uudecoding, unsharing) you should use gnus-uu
(see Decoding Articles).
For the commands listed here, the target is a file. If you want to
save to a group, see the B c (gnus-summary-copy-article)
command (see Mail Group Commands).
If gnus-save-all-headers is non-nil, Gnus will not delete
unwanted headers before saving the article.
If the preceding variable is nil, all headers that match the
gnus-saved-headers regexp will be kept, while the rest will be
deleted before saving.
gnus-summary-save-article).
gnus-summary-save-article-mail).
gnus-summary-save-article-rmail).
gnus-summary-save-article-file).
gnus-summary-write-article-file).
gnus-summary-save-article-body-file).
gnus-summary-save-article-folder).
gnus-summary-save-article-vm).
gnus-summary-pipe-output).
If given a symbolic prefix (see Symbolic Prefixes), include the
complete headers in the piped output.
gnus-summary-muttprint-program.
(gnus-summary-muttprint).
All these commands use the process/prefix convention
(see Process/Prefix). If you save bunches of articles using these
functions, you might get tired of being prompted for files to save each
and every article in. The prompting action is controlled by
the gnus-prompt-before-saving variable, which is always by
default, giving you that excessive prompting action you know and
loathe. If you set this variable to t instead, you'll be prompted
just once for each series of articles you save. If you like to really
have Gnus do all your thinking for you, you can even set this variable
to nil, which means that you will never be prompted for files to
save articles in. Gnus will simply save all the articles in the default
files.
You can customize the gnus-default-article-saver variable to make
Gnus do what you want it to. You can use any of the eight ready-made
functions below, or you can create your own.
gnus-summary-save-in-rmailgnus-rmail-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-plain-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-in-mailgnus-mail-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-plain-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-in-filegnus-file-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-numeric-save-name.
gnus-summary-write-to-filegnus-file-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-numeric-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-body-in-filegnus-file-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-numeric-save-name.
gnus-summary-write-body-to-filegnus-file-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-numeric-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-in-folderrcvstore from the MH
library. Uses the function in the gnus-folder-save-name variable
to get a file name to save the article in. The default is
gnus-folder-save-name, but you can also use
gnus-Folder-save-name, which creates capitalized names.
gnus-summary-save-in-vmThe symbol of each function may have the following properties:
:decodenil means save decoded articles. This is
meaningful only with gnus-summary-save-in-file,
gnus-summary-save-body-in-file,
gnus-summary-write-to-file, and
gnus-summary-write-body-to-file.
:functiongnus-prompt-before-saving is bound to
t and all articles are saved in a single file. This is
meaningful only with gnus-summary-write-to-file and
gnus-summary-write-body-to-file.
:headersgnus-save-all-headers and gnus-saved-headers control what
headers should be saved.
All of these functions, except for the last one, will save the article
in the gnus-article-save-directory, which is initialized from the
SAVEDIR environment variable. This is ~/News/ by
default.
As you can see above, the functions use different functions to find a suitable name of a file to save the article in. Below is a list of available functions that generate names:
gnus-Numeric-save-namegnus-numeric-save-namegnus-Plain-save-namegnus-plain-save-namegnus-sender-save-nameYou can have Gnus suggest where to save articles by plonking a regexp into
the gnus-split-methods alist. For instance, if you would like to
save articles related to Gnus in the file gnus-stuff, and articles
related to VM in vm-stuff, you could set this variable to something
like:
(("^Subject:.*gnus\\|^Newsgroups:.*gnus" "gnus-stuff")
("^Subject:.*vm\\|^Xref:.*vm" "vm-stuff")
(my-choosing-function "../other-dir/my-stuff")
((equal gnus-newsgroup-name "mail.misc") "mail-stuff"))
We see that this is a list where each element is a list that has two
elements—the match and the file. The match can either be
a string (in which case it is used as a regexp to match on the article
head); it can be a symbol (which will be called as a function with the
group name as a parameter); or it can be a list (which will be
evaled). If any of these actions have a non-nil result,
the file will be used as a default prompt. In addition, the
result of the operation itself will be used if the function or form
called returns a string or a list of strings.
You basically end up with a list of file names that might be used when saving the current article. (All “matches” will be used.) You will then be prompted for what you really want to use as a name, with file name completion over the results from applying this variable.
This variable is ((gnus-article-archive-name)) by default, which
means that Gnus will look at the articles it saves for an
Archive-name line and use that as a suggestion for the file
name.
Here's an example function to clean up file names somewhat. If you have lots of mail groups called things like `nnml:mail.whatever', you may want to chop off the beginning of these group names before creating the file name to save to. The following will do just that:
(defun my-save-name (group)
(when (string-match "^nnml:mail." group)
(substring group (match-end 0))))
(setq gnus-split-methods
'((gnus-article-archive-name)
(my-save-name)))
Finally, you have the gnus-use-long-file-name variable. If it is
nil, all the preceding functions will replace all periods
(`.') in the group names with slashes (`/')—which means that
the functions will generate hierarchies of directories instead of having
all the files in the top level directory
(~/News/alt/andrea-dworkin instead of
~/News/alt.andrea-dworkin.) This variable is t by default
on most systems. However, for historical reasons, this is nil on
Xenix and usg-unix-v machines by default.
This function also affects kill and score file names. If this variable
is a list, and the list contains the element not-score, long file
names will not be used for score files, if it contains the element
not-save, long file names will not be used for saving, and if it
contains the element not-kill, long file names will not be used
for kill files.
If you'd like to save articles in a hierarchy that looks something like a spool, you could
(setq gnus-use-long-file-name '(not-save)) ; to get a hierarchy (setq gnus-default-article-saver 'gnus-summary-save-in-file) ; no encoding
Then just save with o. You'd then read this hierarchy with
ephemeral nneething groups—G D in the group buffer, and
the top level directory as the argument (~/News/). Then just walk
around to the groups/directories with nneething.
Sometime users post articles (or series of articles) that have been encoded in some way or other. Gnus can decode them for you.
All these functions use the process/prefix convention (see Process/Prefix) for finding out what articles to work on, with the extension that a “single article” means “a single series”. Gnus can find out by itself what articles belong to a series, decode all the articles and unpack/view/save the resulting file(s).
Gnus guesses what articles are in the series according to the following simplish rule: The subjects must be (nearly) identical, except for the last two numbers of the line. (Spaces are largely ignored, however.)
For example: If you choose a subject called `cat.gif (2/3)', Gnus will find all the articles that match the regexp `^cat.gif ([0-9]+/[0-9]+).*$'.
Subjects that are non-standard, like `cat.gif (2/3) Part 6 of a series', will not be properly recognized by any of the automatic viewing commands, and you have to mark the articles manually with #.
gnus-uu-decode-uu).
gnus-uu-decode-uu-and-save).
gnus-uu-decode-uu-view).
gnus-uu-decode-uu-and-save-view).
Remember that these all react to the presence of articles marked with
the process mark. If, for instance, you'd like to decode and save an
entire newsgroup, you'd typically do M P a
(gnus-uu-mark-all) and then X U
(gnus-uu-decode-uu-and-save).
All this is very much different from how gnus-uu worked with
gnus 4.1, where you had explicit keystrokes for everything under
the sun. This version of gnus-uu generally assumes that you mark
articles in some way (see Setting Process Marks) and then press
X u.
Note: When trying to decode articles that have names matching
gnus-uu-notify-files, which is hard-coded to
`[Cc][Ii][Nn][Dd][Yy][0-9]+.\\(gif\\|jpg\\)', gnus-uu will
automatically post an article on `comp.unix.wizards' saying that
you have just viewed the file in question. This feature can't be turned
off.
Shell archives (“shar files”) used to be a popular way to distribute sources, but it isn't used all that much today. In any case, we have some commands to deal with these:
gnus-uu-decode-unshar).
gnus-uu-decode-unshar-and-save).
gnus-uu-decode-unshar-view).
gnus-uu-decode-unshar-and-save-view).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript-and-save).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript-view).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript-and-save-view).
gnus-uu-decode-save).
gnus-uu-decode-binhex). This
doesn't really work yet.
Adjective, not verb.
Gnus uses rule variables to decide how to view a file. All these variables are of the form
(list '(regexp1 command2)
'(regexp2 command2)
...)
gnus-uu-user-view-rulessox to convert an .au sound file, you could
say something like:
(setq gnus-uu-user-view-rules
(list '("\\\\.au$" "sox %s -t .aiff > /dev/audio")))
gnus-uu-user-view-rules-endgnus-uu-user-archive-rulesgnus-uu-grabbed-file-functionsgnus-uu-be-dangerousnil, be as conservative as possible. If t, ignore things
that didn't work, and overwrite existing files. Otherwise, ask each
time.
gnus-uu-ignore-files-by-namegnus-uu-ignore-files-by-typegnus-uu is not a MIME package (yet), so this is slightly
kludgey.
gnus-uu-tmp-dirgnus-uu does its work.
gnus-uu-do-not-unpack-archivesnil means that gnus-uu won't peek inside archives
looking for files to display.
gnus-uu-view-and-savenil means that the user will always be asked to save a file
after viewing it.
gnus-uu-ignore-default-view-rulesnil means that gnus-uu will ignore the default viewing
rules.
gnus-uu-ignore-default-archive-rulesnil means that gnus-uu will ignore the default archive
unpacking commands.
gnus-uu-kill-carriage-returnnil means that gnus-uu will strip all carriage returns
from articles.
gnus-uu-unmark-articles-not-decodednil means that gnus-uu will mark unsuccessfully
decoded articles as unread.
gnus-uu-correct-stripped-uucodenil means that gnus-uu will try to fix
uuencoded files that have had trailing spaces deleted.
gnus-uu-pre-uudecode-hookuudecode.
gnus-uu-view-with-metamailnil means that gnus-uu will ignore the viewing
commands defined by the rule variables and just fudge a MIME
content type based on the file name. The result will be fed to
metamail for viewing.
gnus-uu-save-in-digestnil means that gnus-uu, when asked to save without
decoding, will save in digests. If this variable is nil,
gnus-uu will just save everything in a file without any
embellishments. The digesting almost conforms to RFC 1153—no easy way
to specify any meaningful volume and issue numbers were found, so I
simply dropped them.
gnus-uu-post-include-before-composingnil means that gnus-uu will ask for a file to encode
before you compose the article. If this variable is t, you can
either include an encoded file with C-c C-i or have one included
for you when you post the article.
gnus-uu-post-lengthgnus-uu-post-threadednil means that gnus-uu will post the encoded file in a
thread. This may not be smart, as no other decoder I have seen is able
to follow threads when collecting uuencoded articles. (Well, I have
seen one package that does that—gnus-uu, but somehow, I don't
think that counts...) Default is nil.
gnus-uu-post-separate-descriptionnil means that the description will be posted in a separate
article. The first article will typically be numbered (0/x). If this
variable is nil, the description the user enters will be included
at the beginning of the first article, which will be numbered (1/x).
Default is t.
After decoding, if the file is some sort of archive, Gnus will attempt to unpack the archive and see if any of the files in the archive can be viewed. For instance, if you have a gzipped tar file pics.tar.gz containing the files pic1.jpg and pic2.gif, Gnus will uncompress and de-tar the main file, and then view the two pictures. This unpacking process is recursive, so if the archive contains archives of archives, it'll all be unpacked.
Finally, Gnus will normally insert a pseudo-article for each extracted file into the summary buffer. If you go to these “articles”, you will be prompted for a command to run (usually Gnus will make a suggestion), and then the command will be run.
If gnus-view-pseudo-asynchronously is nil, Emacs will wait
until the viewing is done before proceeding.
If gnus-view-pseudos is automatic, Gnus will not insert
the pseudo-articles into the summary buffer, but view them
immediately. If this variable is not-confirm, the user won't even
be asked for a confirmation before viewing is done.
If gnus-view-pseudos-separately is non-nil, one
pseudo-article will be created for each file to be viewed. If
nil, all files that use the same viewing command will be given as
a list of parameters to that command.
If gnus-insert-pseudo-articles is non-nil, insert
pseudo-articles when decoding. It is t by default.
So; there you are, reading your pseudo-articles in your virtual newsgroup from the virtual server; and you think: Why isn't anything real anymore? How did we get here?
Reading through this huge manual, you may have quite forgotten that the object of newsreaders is to actually, like, read what people have written. Reading articles. Unfortunately, people are quite bad at writing, so there are tons of functions and variables to make reading these articles easier.
Not only do you want your article buffer to look like fruit salad, but you want it to look like technicolor fruit salad.
gnus-article-highlight). This function highlights header, cited
text, the signature, and adds buttons to the body and the head.
gnus-article-highlight-headers). The
highlighting will be done according to the gnus-header-face-alist
variable, which is a list where each element has the form
(regexp name content).
regexp is a regular expression for matching the
header, name is the face used for highlighting the header name
(see Faces and Fonts) and content is the face for highlighting
the header value. The first match made will be used. Note that
regexp shouldn't have `^' prepended—Gnus will add one.
gnus-article-highlight-citation).
Some variables to customize the citation highlights:
gnus-cite-parse-max-sizegnus-cite-max-prefixgnus-cite-face-listgnus-supercite-regexpgnus-supercite-secondary-regexpgnus-cite-minimum-match-countgnus-cite-attribution-prefixgnus-cite-attribution-suffixgnus-cite-attribution-facegnus-cite-ignore-quoted-fromnil, no citation highlighting will be performed on lines
beginning with `>From '. Those lines may have been quoted by MTAs
in order not to mix up with the envelope From line. The default value
is t.
gnus-article-highlight-signature).
Everything after gnus-signature-separator (see Article Signature) in an article will be considered a signature and will be
highlighted with gnus-signature-face, which is italic by
default.
See Customizing Articles, for how to highlight articles automatically.
People commonly add emphasis to words in news articles by writing things
like `_this_' or `*this*' or `/this/'. Gnus can make
this look nicer by running the article through the W e
(gnus-article-emphasize) command.
How the emphasis is computed is controlled by the
gnus-emphasis-alist variable. This is an alist where the first
element is a regular expression to be matched. The second is a number
that says what regular expression grouping is used to find the entire
emphasized word. The third is a number that says what regexp grouping
should be displayed and highlighted. (The text between these two
groupings will be hidden.) The fourth is the face used for
highlighting.
(setq gnus-emphasis-alist
'(("_\\(\\w+\\)_" 0 1 gnus-emphasis-underline)
("\\*\\(\\w+\\)\\*" 0 1 gnus-emphasis-bold)))
By default, there are seven rules, and they use the following faces:
gnus-emphasis-bold, gnus-emphasis-italic,
gnus-emphasis-underline, gnus-emphasis-bold-italic,
gnus-emphasis-underline-italic,
gnus-emphasis-underline-bold, and
gnus-emphasis-underline-bold-italic.
If you want to change these faces, you can either use M-x
customize, or you can use copy-face. For instance, if you want
to make gnus-emphasis-italic use a red face instead, you could
say something like:
(copy-face 'red 'gnus-emphasis-italic)
If you want to highlight arbitrary words, you can use the
gnus-group-highlight-words-alist variable, which uses the same
syntax as gnus-emphasis-alist. The highlight-words group
parameter (see Group Parameters) can also be used.
See Customizing Articles, for how to fontize articles automatically.
Or rather, hiding certain things in each article. There usually is much too much cruft in most articles.
gnus-article-hide-headers). See Hiding Headers.
gnus-article-hide-boring-headers). See Hiding Headers.
gnus-article-hide-signature). See Article Signature.
gnus-list-identifiers. These
are strings some mailing list servers add to the beginning of all
Subject headers—for example, `[zebra 4711]'. Any leading
`Re: ' is skipped before stripping. gnus-list-identifiers
may not contain \\(..\\).
gnus-list-identifiersgnus-article-hide-pem).
banner group parameter
(gnus-article-strip-banner). This is mainly used to hide those
annoying banners and/or signatures that some mailing lists and moderated
groups adds to all the messages. The way to use this function is to add
the banner group parameter (see Group Parameters) to the
group you want banners stripped from. The parameter either be a string,
which will be interpreted as a regular expression matching text to be
removed, or the symbol signature, meaning that the (last)
signature should be removed, or other symbol, meaning that the
corresponding regular expression in gnus-article-banner-alist is
used.
Regardless of a group, you can hide things like advertisements only when
the sender of an article has a certain mail address specified in
gnus-article-address-banner-alist.
gnus-article-address-banner-alist(address . banner), where address is a regexp
matching a mail address in the From header, banner is one of a
symbol signature, an item in gnus-article-banner-alist,
a regexp and nil. If address matches author's mail
address, it will remove things like advertisements. For example, if a
sender has the mail address `hail@yoo-hoo.co.jp' and there is a
banner something like `Do You Yoo-hoo!?' in all articles he
sends, you can use the following element to remove them:
("@yoo-hoo\\.co\\.jp\\'" .
"\n_+\nDo You Yoo-hoo!\\?\n.*\n.*\n")
gnus-article-hide-citation). Some variables for
customizing the hiding:
gnus-cited-opened-text-button-line-formatgnus-cited-closed-text-button-line-formatgnus-cited-lines-visiblegnus-article-hide-citation-maybe) depending on the
following two variables:
gnus-cite-hide-percentagegnus-cite-hide-absolutegnus-article-hide-citation-in-followups). This isn't very
useful as an interactive command, but might be a handy function to stick
have happen automatically (see Customizing Articles).
All these “hiding” commands are toggles, but if you give a negative prefix to these commands, they will show what they have previously hidden. If you give a positive prefix, they will always hide.
Also see Article Highlighting for further variables for citation customization.
See Customizing Articles, for how to hide article elements automatically.
We call this “article washing” for a really good reason. Namely, the A key was taken, so we had to use the W key instead.
Washing is defined by us as “changing something from something to something else”, but normally results in something looking better. Cleaner, perhaps.
See Customizing Articles, if you want to change how Gnus displays articles by default.
gnus-summary-show-article). This is also not really washing.
If you type this, you see the article without any previously applied
interactive Washing functions but with all default treatments
(see Customizing Articles).
gnus-summary-stop-page-breaking). See Misc Article, for page
delimiters.
gnus-summary-caesar-message).
Unreadable articles that tell you to read them with Caesar rotate or rot13.
(Typically offensive jokes and such.)
It's commonly called “rot13” because each letter is rotated 13
positions in the alphabet, e. g. `B' (letter #2) -> `O' (letter
#15). It is sometimes referred to as “Caesar rotate” because Caesar
is rumored to have employed this form of, uh, somewhat weak encryption.
gnus-summary-morse-message).
gnus-summary-toggle-header).
gnus-summary-verbose-headers).
gnus-article-treat-overstrike).
gnus-article-dumbquotes-map
(gnus-article-treat-dumbquotes). Note that this function guesses
whether a character is a sm*rtq**t* or not, so it should only be used
interactively.
Sm*rtq**t*s are M****s***'s unilateral extension to the character map in
an attempt to provide more quoting characters. If you see something
like \222 or \264 where you're expecting some kind of
apostrophe or quotation mark, then try this wash.
gnus-article-outlook-deuglify-article).
gnus-outlook-deuglify-unwrap-min and
gnus-outlook-deuglify-unwrap-max, indicating the minimum and
maximum length of an unwrapped citation line.
(gnus-article-outlook-unwrap-lines).
gnus-article-outlook-repair-attribution).
gnus-article-outlook-rearrange-citation).
gnus-article-fill-cited-article).
You can give the command a numerical prefix to specify the width to use
when filling.
gnus-article-fill-long-lines).
gnus-article-capitalize-sentences).
gnus-article-remove-cr).
gnus-article-de-quoted-unreadable).
Quoted-Printable is one common MIME encoding employed when
sending non-ASCII (i.e., 8-bit) articles. It typically
makes strings like `déjà vu' look like `d=E9j=E0 vu', which
doesn't look very readable to me. Note that this is usually done
automatically by Gnus if the message in question has a
Content-Transfer-Encoding header that says that this encoding
has been done. If a prefix is given, a charset will be asked for.
gnus-article-de-base64-unreadable). Base64 is
one common MIME encoding employed when sending
non-ASCII (i.e., 8-bit) articles. Note that this is
usually done automatically by Gnus if the message in question has a
Content-Transfer-Encoding header that says that this encoding
has been done. If a prefix is given, a charset will be asked for.
gnus-article-decode-HZ). HZ (or HZP) is one
common encoding employed when sending Chinese articles. It typically
makes strings look like `~{<:Ky2;S{#,NpJ)l6HK!#~}'.
gnus-article-unsplit-urls).
gnus-article-wash-html). Note that this is
usually done automatically by Gnus if the message in question has a
Content-Type header that says that the message is HTML.
If a prefix is given, a charset will be asked for. If it is a number,
the charset defined in gnus-summary-show-article-charset-alist
(see Paging the Article) will be used.
The default is to use the function specified by
mm-text-html-renderer (see Display Customization) to convert the
HTML, but this is controlled by the
gnus-article-wash-function variable. Pre-defined functions you
can use include:
w3w3mw3m-standalonelinkslynxhtml2textgnus-article-add-buttons).
See Article Buttons.
gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head).
gnus-article-verify-x-pgp-sig). Control messages such as
newgroup and checkgroups are usually signed by the
hierarchy maintainer. You need to add the PGP public key of
the maintainer to your keyring to verify the
message.1
gnus-summary-force-verify-and-decrypt). See Security.
X-No-Archive header from the beginning of
article bodies (gnus-article-strip-headers-in-body).
gnus-article-strip-leading-blank-lines).
gnus-article-strip-multiple-blank-lines).
gnus-article-remove-trailing-blank-lines).
gnus-article-strip-blank-lines).
gnus-article-strip-all-blank-lines).
gnus-article-strip-leading-space).
gnus-article-strip-trailing-space).
See Customizing Articles, for how to wash articles automatically.
These commands perform various transformations of article header.
gnus-article-treat-unfold-headers).
Newsgroups and Followup-To headers
(gnus-article-treat-fold-newsgroups).
gnus-article-treat-fold-headers).
gnus-article-remove-leading-whitespace).
People often include references to other stuff in articles, and it would be nice if Gnus could just fetch whatever it is that people talk about with the minimum of fuzz when you hit RET or use the middle mouse button on these references.
Gnus adds buttons to certain standard references by default: Well-formed URLs, mail addresses, Message-IDs, Info links, man pages and Emacs or Gnus related references. This is controlled by two variables, one that handles article bodies and one that handles article heads:
gnus-button-alist (regexp button-par use-p function data-par)
gnus-button-url-regexp and gnus-button-mid-or-mail-regexp.
evaled, and if the result is non-nil,
this is considered a match. This is useful if you want extra sifting to
avoid false matches. Often variables named
gnus-button-*-level are used here, See Article Button Levels, but any other form may be used too.
So the full entry for buttonizing URLs is then
("<URL:\\([^\n\r>]*\\)>" 0 t gnus-button-url 1)
gnus-header-button-alist (header regexp button-par use-p function data-par)
header is a regular expression.
gnus-button-*-levelgnus-button-url-regexpgnus-button-man-handlergnus-button-mid-or-mail-regexpgnus-button-prefer-mid-or-mailmid or
mail, Gnus will always assume that the string is a message ID or
a mail address, respectively. If this variable is set to the symbol
ask, always query the user what to do. If it is a function, this
function will be called with the string as its only argument. The
function must return mid, mail, invalid or
ask. The default value is the function
gnus-button-mid-or-mail-heuristic.
gnus-button-mid-or-mail-heuristicmid if it's a message IDs, mail if
it's a mail address, ask if unsure and invalid if the
string is invalid.
gnus-button-mid-or-mail-heuristic-alist(RATE . REGEXP) pairs used by the function
gnus-button-mid-or-mail-heuristic.
gnus-button-ctan-handlergnus-ctan-urlgnus-button-ctan-handler.
gnus-article-button-facegnus-article-mouse-faceSee Customizing Articles, for how to buttonize articles automatically.
The higher the value of the variables gnus-button-*-level,
the more buttons will appear. If the level is zero, no corresponding
buttons are displayed. With the default value (which is 5) you should
already see quite a lot of buttons. With higher levels, you will see
more buttons, but you may also get more false positives. To avoid them,
you can set the variables gnus-button-*-level local to
specific groups (see Group Parameters). Here's an example for the
variable gnus-parameters:
;; increase gnus-button-*-level in some groups:
(setq gnus-parameters
'(("\\<\\(emacs\\|gnus\\)\\>" (gnus-button-emacs-level 10))
("\\<unix\\>" (gnus-button-man-level 10))
("\\<tex\\>" (gnus-button-tex-level 10))))
gnus-button-browse-levelgnus-button-url-regexp, browse-url, and
browse-url-browser-function.
gnus-button-emacs-levelgnus-button-handle-custom,
gnus-button-handle-describe-function,
gnus-button-handle-describe-variable,
gnus-button-handle-symbol,
gnus-button-handle-describe-key,
gnus-button-handle-apropos,
gnus-button-handle-apropos-command,
gnus-button-handle-apropos-variable,
gnus-button-handle-apropos-documentation, and
gnus-button-handle-library.
gnus-button-man-levelgnus-button-man-handler.
gnus-button-message-levelgnus-button-mid-or-mail-regexp,
gnus-button-prefer-mid-or-mail,
gnus-button-mid-or-mail-heuristic, and
gnus-button-mid-or-mail-heuristic-alist.
gnus-button-tex-levelgnus-ctan-url,
gnus-button-ctan-handler,
gnus-button-ctan-directory-regexp, and
gnus-button-handle-ctan-bogus-regexp.
The date is most likely generated in some obscure timezone you've never heard of, so it's quite nice to be able to find out what the time was when the article was sent.
gnus-article-date-ut).
gnus-article-date-iso8601).
gnus-article-date-local).
gnus-article-date-english).
gnus-article-date-user). The format is specified by the
gnus-article-time-format variable, and is a string that's passed
to format-time-string. See the documentation of that variable
for a list of possible format specs.
gnus-article-date-lapsed). It looks something like:
X-Sent: 6 weeks, 4 days, 1 hour, 3 minutes, 8 seconds ago
The value of gnus-article-date-lapsed-new-header determines
whether this header will just be added below the old Date one, or will
replace it.
An advantage of using Gnus to read mail is that it converts simple bugs into wonderful absurdities.
If you want to have this line updated continually, you can put
(gnus-start-date-timer)
in your ~/.gnus.el file, or you can run it off of some hook. If
you want to stop the timer, you can use the gnus-stop-date-timer
command.
gnus-article-date-original). This can
be useful if you normally use some other conversion function and are
worried that it might be doing something totally wrong. Say, claiming
that the article was posted in 1854. Although something like that is
totally impossible. Don't you trust me? *titter*
See Customizing Articles, for how to display the date in your preferred format automatically.
These commands add various frivolous display gimmicks to the article buffer in Emacs versions that support them.
X-Face headers are small black-and-white images supplied by the
message headers (see X-Face).
Face headers are small colored images supplied by the message
headers (see Face).
Smileys are those little `:-)' symbols that people like to litter their messages with (see Smileys).
Picons, on the other hand, reside on your own system, and Gnus will try to match the headers to what you have (see Picons).
All these functions are toggles—if the elements already exist, they'll be removed.
X-Face in the From header.
(gnus-article-display-x-face).
Face in the From header.
(gnus-article-display-face).
gnus-treat-smiley).
From header (gnus-treat-from-picon).
Cc, To)
(gnus-treat-mail-picon).
Newsgroups and
Followup-To) (gnus-treat-newsgroups-picon).
gnus-article-remove-images).
Each article is divided into two parts—the head and the body. The
body can be divided into a signature part and a text part. The variable
that says what is to be considered a signature is
gnus-signature-separator. This is normally the standard
`^-- $' as mandated by son-of-RFC 1036. However, many people use
non-standard signature separators, so this variable can also be a list
of regular expressions to be tested, one by one. (Searches are done
from the end of the body towards the beginning.) One likely value is:
(setq gnus-signature-separator
'("^-- $" ; The standard
"^-- *$" ; A common mangling
"^-------*$" ; Many people just use a looong
; line of dashes. Shame!
"^ *--------*$" ; Double-shame!
"^________*$" ; Underscores are also popular
"^========*$")) ; Pervert!
The more permissive you are, the more likely it is that you'll get false positives.
gnus-signature-limit provides a limit to what is considered a
signature when displaying articles.
nil, there is no signature in the buffer.
This variable can also be a list where the elements may be of the types listed above. Here's an example:
(setq gnus-signature-limit
'(200.0 "^---*Forwarded article"))
This means that if there are more than 200 lines after the signature separator, or the text after the signature separator is matched by the regular expression `^---*Forwarded article', then it isn't a signature after all.
The following commands all understand the numerical prefix. For instance, 3 b means “view the third MIME part”.
The rest of these MIME commands do not use the numerical prefix in the same manner:
gnus-summary-repair-multipart).
gnus-summary-save-parts). Understands the process/prefix
convention (see Process/Prefix).
gnus-summary-toggle-display-buttonized).
gnus-article-decode-mime-words).
gnus-article-decode-charset).
This command looks in the Content-Type header to determine the
charset. If there is no such header in the article, you can give it a
prefix, which will prompt for the charset to decode as. In regional
groups where people post using some common encoding (but do not
include MIME headers), you can set the charset group/topic
parameter to the required charset (see Group Parameters).
gnus-mime-view-all-parts).
Relevant variables:
gnus-ignored-mime-typesnil.
To have all Vcards be ignored, you'd say something like this:
(setq gnus-ignored-mime-types
'("text/x-vcard"))
gnus-article-loose-mimenil, Gnus won't require the `MIME-Version' header
before interpreting the message as a MIME message. This helps
when reading messages from certain broken mail user agents. The
default is nil.
gnus-article-emulate-mimenil, Gnus will look in message bodies to
see if it finds these encodings, and if so, it'll run them through the
Gnus MIME machinery. The default is t. Only
single-part yEnc encoded attachments can be decoded. There's no support
for encoding in Gnus.
gnus-unbuttonized-mime-typesgnus-buttonized-mime-types. The default value is
(".*/.*"). This variable is only used when
gnus-inhibit-mime-unbuttonizing is nil.
gnus-buttonized-mime-typesgnus-unbuttonized-mime-types. The default value is nil.
This variable is only used when gnus-inhibit-mime-unbuttonizing
is nil.
To see e.g. security buttons but no other buttons, you could set this
variable to ("multipart/signed") and leave
gnus-unbuttonized-mime-types at the default value.
You could also add "multipart/alternative" to this list to
display radio buttons that allow you to choose one of two media types
those mails include. See also mm-discouraged-alternatives
(see Display Customization).
gnus-inhibit-mime-unbuttonizingnil, then all MIME parts get buttons. The
default value is nil.
gnus-article-mime-part-functionHere's an example function the does the latter:
(defun my-save-all-jpeg-parts (handle)
(when (equal (car (mm-handle-type handle)) "image/jpeg")
(with-temp-buffer
(insert (mm-get-part handle))
(write-region (point-min) (point-max)
(read-file-name "Save jpeg to: ")))))
(setq gnus-article-mime-part-function
'my-save-all-jpeg-parts)
gnus-mime-multipart-functionsgnus-mime-display-multipart-alternative-as-mixedgnus-mime-display-multipart-related-as-mixedIf displaying "text/html" is discouraged, see
mm-discouraged-alternatives, images or other material inside a
"multipart/related" part might be overlooked when this variable is
nil. Display Customization.
gnus-mime-display-multipart-as-mixedt, it
overrides nil values of
gnus-mime-display-multipart-alternative-as-mixed and
gnus-mime-display-multipart-related-as-mixed.
mm-file-name-rewrite-functionsReady-made functions include
mm-file-name-delete-whitespace,
mm-file-name-trim-whitespace,
mm-file-name-collapse-whitespace, and
mm-file-name-replace-whitespace. The later uses the value of
the variable mm-file-name-replace-whitespace to replace each
whitespace character in a file name with that string; default value
is "_" (a single underscore).
The standard functions capitalize, downcase,
upcase, and upcase-initials may be useful, too.
Everybody knows that whitespace characters in file names are evil, except those who don't know. If you receive lots of attachments from such unenlightened users, you can make live easier by adding
(setq mm-file-name-rewrite-functions
'(mm-file-name-trim-whitespace
mm-file-name-collapse-whitespace
mm-file-name-replace-whitespace))
to your ~/.gnus.el file.
People use different charsets, and we have MIME to let us know what
charsets they use. Or rather, we wish we had. Many people use
newsreaders and mailers that do not understand or use MIME, and
just send out messages without saying what character sets they use. To
help a bit with this, some local news hierarchies have policies that say
what character set is the default. For instance, the `fj'
hierarchy uses iso-2022-jp.
This knowledge is encoded in the gnus-group-charset-alist
variable, which is an alist of regexps (use the first item to match full
group names) and default charsets to be used when reading these groups.
In addition, some people do use soi-disant MIME-aware agents that
aren't. These blithely mark messages as being in iso-8859-1
even if they really are in koi-8. To help here, the
gnus-newsgroup-ignored-charsets variable can be used. The
charsets that are listed here will be ignored. The variable can be
set on a group-by-group basis using the group parameters (see Group Parameters). The default value is (unknown-8bit x-unknown),
which includes values some agents insist on having in there.
When posting, gnus-group-posting-charset-alist is used to
determine which charsets should not be encoded using the MIME
encodings. For instance, some hierarchies discourage using
quoted-printable header encoding.
This variable is an alist of regexps and permitted unencoded charsets
for posting. Each element of the alist has the form (test
header body-list), where:
nil
means encode all charsets),
nil (always
encode using quoted-printable) or t (always use 8bit).
See Encoding Customization, for additional variables that control which MIME charsets are used when sending messages.
Other charset tricks that may be useful, although not Gnus-specific:
If there are several MIME charsets that encode the same Emacs charset, you can choose what charset to use by saying the following:
(put-charset-property 'cyrillic-iso8859-5
'preferred-coding-system 'koi8-r)
This means that Russian will be encoded using koi8-r instead of
the default iso-8859-5 MIME charset.
If you want to read messages in koi8-u, you can cheat and say
(define-coding-system-alias 'koi8-u 'koi8-r)
This will almost do the right thing.
And finally, to read charsets like windows-1251, you can say
something like
(codepage-setup 1251)
(define-coding-system-alias 'windows-1251 'cp1251)
gnus-summary-print-article). gnus-ps-print-hook will
be run just before printing the buffer. An alternative way to print
article is to use Muttprint (see Saving Articles).
You can have the summary buffer sorted in various ways, even though I can't really see why you'd want that.
gnus-summary-sort-by-number).
gnus-summary-sort-by-author).
gnus-summary-sort-by-subject).
gnus-summary-sort-by-date).
gnus-summary-sort-by-lines).
gnus-summary-sort-by-chars).
gnus-summary-sort-by-score).
gnus-summary-sort-by-random).
gnus-summary-sort-by-original).
These functions will work both when you use threading and when you don't use threading. In the latter case, all summary lines will be sorted, line by line. In the former case, sorting will be done on a root-by-root basis, which might not be what you were looking for. To toggle whether to use threading, type T T (see Thread Commands).
References in the current article are not mangled, you
can just press ^ or A r
(gnus-summary-refer-parent-article). If everything goes well,
you'll get the parent. If the parent is already displayed in the
summary buffer, point will just move to this article.
If given a positive numerical prefix, fetch that many articles back into
the ancestry. If given a negative numerical prefix, fetch just that
ancestor. So if you say 3 ^, Gnus will fetch the parent, the
grandparent and the grandgrandparent of the current article. If you say
-3 ^, Gnus will only fetch the grandgrandparent of the current
article.
References header of the
article (gnus-summary-refer-references).
gnus-summary-refer-thread). This command has to fetch all the
headers in the current group to work, so it usually takes a while. If
you do it often, you may consider setting gnus-fetch-old-headers
to invisible (see Filling In Threads). This won't have any
visible effects normally, but it'll make this command work a whole lot
faster. Of course, it'll make group entry somewhat slow.
The gnus-refer-thread-limit variable says how many old (i. e.,
articles before the first displayed in the current group) headers to
fetch when doing this command. The default is 200. If t, all
the available headers will be fetched. This variable can be overridden
by giving the A T command a numerical prefix.
gnus-summary-refer-article) will ask you
for a Message-ID, which is one of those long, hard-to-read
thingies that look something like `<38o6up$6f2@hymir.ifi.uio.no>'.
You have to get it all exactly right. No fuzzy searches, I'm afraid.
Gnus looks for the Message-ID in the headers that have already
been fetched, but also tries all the select methods specified by
gnus-refer-article-method if it is not found.
If the group you are reading is located on a back end that does not
support fetching by Message-ID very well (like nnspool),
you can set gnus-refer-article-method to an NNTP method. It
would, perhaps, be best if the NNTP server you consult is the one
updating the spool you are reading from, but that's not really
necessary.
It can also be a list of select methods, as well as the special symbol
current, which means to use the current select method. If it
is a list, Gnus will try all the methods in the list until it finds a
match.
Here's an example setting that will first try the current method, and then ask Google if that fails:
(setq gnus-refer-article-method
'(current
(nnweb "google" (nnweb-type google))))
Most of the mail back ends support fetching by Message-ID, but
do not do a particularly excellent job at it. That is, nnmbox,
nnbabyl, nnmaildir, nnml, are able to locate
articles from any groups, while nnfolder, and nnimap are
only able to locate articles that have been posted to the current
group. (Anything else would be too time consuming.) nnmh does
not support this at all.
Different people like to read news using different methods. This being Gnus, we offer a small selection of minor modes for the summary buffers.
Some newsreaders (like nn and, uhm, Netnews on VM/CMS) use
a two-phased reading interface. The user first marks in a summary
buffer the articles she wants to read. Then she starts reading the
articles with just an article buffer displayed.
Gnus provides a summary buffer minor mode that allows
this—gnus-pick-mode. This basically means that a few process
mark commands become one-keystroke commands to allow easy marking, and
it provides one additional command for switching to the summary buffer.
Here are the available keystrokes when using pick mode:
gnus-pick-article-or-thread). If the variable
gnus-thread-hide-subtree is true, then this key selects the
entire thread when used at the first article of the thread. Otherwise,
it selects just the article. If given a numerical prefix, go to that
thread or article and pick it. (The line number is normally displayed
at the beginning of the summary pick lines.)
gnus-pick-next-page). If
at the end of the buffer, start reading the picked articles.
gnus-pick-unmark-article-or-thread). If the variable
gnus-thread-hide-subtree is true, then this key unpicks the
thread if used at the first article of the thread. Otherwise it unpicks
just the article. You can give this key a numerical prefix to unpick
the thread or article at that line.
gnus-pick-start-reading). If
given a prefix, mark all unpicked articles as read first. If
gnus-pick-display-summary is non-nil, the summary buffer
will still be visible when you are reading.
All the normal summary mode commands are still available in the
pick-mode, with the exception of u. However ! is available
which is mapped to the same function
gnus-summary-tick-article-forward.
If this sounds like a good idea to you, you could say:
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
gnus-pick-mode-hook is run in pick minor mode buffers.
If gnus-mark-unpicked-articles-as-read is non-nil, mark
all unpicked articles as read. The default is nil.
The summary line format in pick mode is slightly different from the
standard format. At the beginning of each line the line number is
displayed. The pick mode line format is controlled by the
gnus-summary-pick-line-format variable (see Formatting Variables). It accepts the same format specs that
gnus-summary-line-format does (see Summary Buffer Lines).
If you spend much time in binary groups, you may grow tired of hitting X u, n, RET all the time. M-x gnus-binary-mode is a minor mode for summary buffers that makes all ordinary Gnus article selection functions uudecode series of articles and display the result instead of just displaying the articles the normal way.
The only way, in fact, to see the actual articles is the g
command, when you have turned on this mode
(gnus-binary-show-article).
gnus-binary-mode-hook is called in binary minor mode buffers.
If you don't like the normal Gnus summary display, you might try setting
gnus-use-trees to t. This will create (by default) an
additional tree buffer. You can execute all summary mode commands
in the tree buffer.
There are a few variables to customize the tree display, of course:
gnus-tree-mode-hookgnus-tree-mode-line-formatgnus-selected-tree-facemodeline.
gnus-tree-line-formatValid specs are:
From header.
See Formatting Variables.
Variables related to the display are:
gnus-tree-brackets ((real-open . real-close)
(sparse-open . sparse-close)
(dummy-open . dummy-close))
and the default is ((?[ . ?]) (?( . ?)) (?{ . ?}) (?< . ?>)).
gnus-tree-parent-child-edges(?- ?\\ ?|).
gnus-tree-minimize-windownil, Gnus will try to keep the tree
buffer as small as possible to allow more room for the other Gnus
windows. If this variable is a number, the tree buffer will never be
higher than that number. The default is t. Note that if you
have several windows displayed side-by-side in a frame and the tree
buffer is one of these, minimizing the tree window will also resize all
other windows displayed next to it.
You may also wish to add the following hook to keep the window minimized at all times:
(add-hook 'gnus-configure-windows-hook
'gnus-tree-perhaps-minimize)
gnus-generate-tree-functiongnus-generate-horizontal-tree and
gnus-generate-vertical-tree (which is the default).
Here's an example from a horizontal tree buffer:
{***}-(***)-[odd]-[Gun]
| \[Jan]
| \[odd]-[Eri]
| \(***)-[Eri]
| \[odd]-[Paa]
\[Bjo]
\[Gun]
\[Gun]-[Jor]
Here's the same thread displayed in a vertical tree buffer:
{***}
|--------------------------\-----\-----\
(***) [Bjo] [Gun] [Gun]
|--\-----\-----\ |
[odd] [Jan] [odd] (***) [Jor]
| | |--\
[Gun] [Eri] [Eri] [odd]
|
[Paa]
If you're using horizontal trees, it might be nice to display the trees side-by-side with the summary buffer. You could add something like the following to your ~/.gnus.el file:
(setq gnus-use-trees t
gnus-generate-tree-function 'gnus-generate-horizontal-tree
gnus-tree-minimize-window nil)
(gnus-add-configuration
'(article
(vertical 1.0
(horizontal 0.25
(summary 0.75 point)
(tree 1.0))
(article 1.0))))
See Window Layout.
Some commands only make sense in mail groups. If these commands are invalid in the current group, they will raise a hell and let you know.
All these commands (except the expiry and edit commands) use the process/prefix convention (see Process/Prefix).
gnus-summary-expire-articles). That is, delete all
expirable articles in the group that have been around for a while.
(see Expiring Mail).
gnus-summary-expire-articles-now). This means that all
articles eligible for expiry in the current group will
disappear forever into that big /dev/null in the sky.
gnus-summary-delete-article).
gnus-summary-move-article). Marks will be preserved if
gnus-preserve-marks is non-nil (which is the default).
gnus-summary-copy-article). Marks will be preserved if
gnus-preserve-marks is non-nil (which is the default).
gnus-summary-crosspost-article). This will create a new copy of
the article in the other group, and the Xref headers of the article will
be properly updated.
gnus-summary-import-article). You will be prompted for a file
name, a From header and a Subject header.
gnus-summary-create-article). You will be prompted for a
From header and a Subject header.
gnus-summary-respool-article).
gnus-summary-respool-default-method will be used as the default
select method when respooling. This variable is nil by default,
which means that the current group select method will be used instead.
Marks will be preserved if gnus-preserve-marks is non-nil
(which is the default).
gnus-summary-edit-article). To finish
editing and make the changes permanent, type C-c C-c
(gnus-summary-edit-article-done). If you give a prefix to the
C-c C-c command, Gnus won't re-highlight the article.
gnus-summary-respool-query).
gnus-summary-respool-trace).
Newsgroups header in them, but not always. This command
(gnus-summary-article-posted-p) will try to fetch the current
article from your news server (or rather, from
gnus-refer-article-method or gnus-select-method) and will
report back whether it found the article or not. Even if it says that
it didn't find the article, it may have been posted anyway—mail
propagation is much faster than news propagation, and the news copy may
just not have arrived yet.
gnus-article-encrypt-body).
The body is encrypted with the encryption protocol specified by the
variable gnus-article-encrypt-protocol.
If you move (or copy) articles regularly, you might wish to have Gnus
suggest where to put the articles. gnus-move-split-methods is a
variable that uses the same syntax as gnus-split-methods
(see Saving Articles). You may customize that variable to create
suggestions you find reasonable. (Note that
gnus-move-split-methods uses group names where
gnus-split-methods uses file names.)
(setq gnus-move-split-methods
'(("^From:.*Lars Magne" "nnml:junk")
("^Subject:.*gnus" "nnfolder:important")
(".*" "nnml:misc")))
gnus-summary-display-while-buildingnil, show and update the summary buffer as it's being
built. If t, update the buffer after every line is inserted.
If the value is an integer, n, update the display every n
lines. The default is nil.
gnus-summary-display-arrownil, display an arrow in the fringe to indicate the
current article.
gnus-summary-mode-hookgnus-summary-generate-hookgnus-summary-prepare-hookgnus-summary-prepared-hookgnus-summary-ignore-duplicatesMessage-ID,
it has to do something drastic. No articles are allowed to have the
same Message-ID, but this may happen when reading mail from some
sources. Gnus allows you to customize what happens with this variable.
If it is nil (which is the default), Gnus will rename the
Message-ID (for display purposes only) and display the article as
any other article. If this variable is t, it won't display the
article—it'll be as if it never existed.
gnus-alter-articles-to-read-functionFor instance, the following function adds the list of cached articles to the list in one particular group:
(defun my-add-cached-articles (group articles)
(if (string= group "some.group")
(append gnus-newsgroup-cached articles)
articles))
gnus-newsgroup-variablesnil), that should be made global while the summary
buffer is active.
Note: The default expressions will be evaluated (using function
eval) before assignment to the local variable rather than just
assigned to it. If the default expression is the symbol global,
that symbol will not be evaluated but the global value of the local
variable will be used instead.
These variables can be used to set variables in the group parameters while still allowing them to affect operations done in other buffers. For example:
(setq gnus-newsgroup-variables
'(message-use-followup-to
(gnus-visible-headers .
"^From:\\|^Newsgroups:\\|^Subject:\\|^Date:\\|^To:")))
Also see Group Parameters.
gnus-summary-fetch-faq). Gnus will try
to get the FAQ from gnus-group-faq-directory, which
is usually a directory on a remote machine. This variable can also be
a list of directories. In that case, giving a prefix to this command
will allow you to choose between the various sites. ange-ftp
or efs will probably be used for fetching the file.
gnus-summary-describe-group). If given a prefix, force
rereading the description from the server.
gnus-summary-describe-briefly).
gnus-info-find-node).
gnus-summary-search-article-forward).
gnus-summary-search-article-backward).
gnus-summary-execute-command). If the header is an empty
string, the match is done on the entire article. If given a prefix,
search backward instead.
For instance, & RET some.*string RET # will put the process mark on
all articles that have heads or bodies that match `some.*string'.
gnus-summary-universal-argument).
gnus-summary-prepare).
gnus-summary-insert-cached-articles).
gnus-summary-insert-dormant-articles).
gnus-summary-enter-digest-group). Gnus will try to
guess what article type is currently displayed unless you give a prefix
to this command, which forces a “digest” interpretation. Basically,
whenever you see a message that is a collection of other messages of
some format, you C-d and read these messages in a more convenient
fashion.
gnus-summary-read-document). It does this by opening several
nndoc groups for each document, and then opening an
nnvirtual group on top of these nndoc groups. This
command understands the process/prefix convention
(see Process/Prefix).
gnus-summary-toggle-truncation). This will probably confuse the
line centering function in the summary buffer, so it's not a good idea
to have truncation switched off while reading articles.
gnus-summary-expand-window).
If given a prefix, force an article window configuration.
gnus-summary-edit-parameters).
gnus-summary-customize-parameters).
Exiting from the summary buffer will normally update all info on the group and return you to the group buffer.
gnus-summary-exit). gnus-summary-prepare-exit-hook is
called before doing much of the exiting, which calls
gnus-summary-expire-articles by default.
gnus-summary-exit-hook is called after finishing the exit
process. gnus-group-no-more-groups-hook is run when returning to
group mode having no more (unread) groups.
gnus-summary-exit-no-update).
gnus-summary-catchup-and-exit).
gnus-summary-catchup-all-and-exit).
gnus-summary-catchup-and-goto-next-group).
gnus-summary-reselect-current-group). If given a prefix, select
all articles, both read and unread.
gnus-summary-rescan-group). If given a prefix, select all
articles, both read and unread.
gnus-summary-next-group).
gnus-summary-prev-group).
gnus-summary-save-newsrc). If
given a prefix, also save the .newsrc file(s). Using this
command will make exit without updating (the Q command) worthless.
gnus-exit-group-hook is called when you exit the current group
with an “updating” exit. For instance Q
(gnus-summary-exit-no-update) does not call this hook.
If you're in the habit of exiting groups, and then changing your mind
about it, you might set gnus-kill-summary-on-exit to nil.
If you do that, Gnus won't kill the summary buffer when you exit it.
(Quelle surprise!) Instead it will change the name of the buffer to
something like `*Dead Summary ... *' and install a minor mode
called gnus-dead-summary-mode. Now, if you switch back to this
buffer, you'll find that all keys are mapped to a function called
gnus-summary-wake-up-the-dead. So tapping any keys in a dead
summary buffer will result in a live, normal summary buffer.
There will never be more than one dead summary buffer at any one time.
The data on the current group will be updated (which articles you have
read, which articles you have replied to, etc.) when you exit the
summary buffer. If the gnus-use-cross-reference variable is
t (which is the default), articles that are cross-referenced to
this group and are marked as read, will also be marked as read in the
other subscribed groups they were cross-posted to. If this variable is
neither nil nor t, the article will be marked as read in
both subscribed and unsubscribed groups (see Crosspost Handling).
Marking cross-posted articles as read ensures that you'll never have to read the same article more than once. Unless, of course, somebody has posted it to several groups separately. Posting the same article to several groups (not cross-posting) is called spamming, and you are by law required to send nasty-grams to anyone who perpetrates such a heinous crime. You may want to try NoCeM handling to filter out spam (see NoCeM).
Remember: Cross-posting is kinda ok, but posting the same article
separately to several groups is not. Massive cross-posting (aka.
velveeta) is to be avoided at all costs, and you can even use the
gnus-summary-mail-crosspost-complaint command to complain about
excessive crossposting (see Summary Mail Commands).
One thing that may cause Gnus to not do the cross-posting thing
correctly is if you use an NNTP server that supports xover
(which is very nice, because it speeds things up considerably) which
does not include the Xref header in its NOV lines. This is
Evil, but all too common, alas, alack. Gnus tries to Do The Right Thing
even with xover by registering the Xref lines of all
articles you actually read, but if you kill the articles, or just mark
them as read without reading them, Gnus will not get a chance to snoop
the Xref lines out of these articles, and will be unable to use
the cross reference mechanism.
To check whether your NNTP server includes the Xref header
in its overview files, try `telnet your.nntp.server nntp',
`MODE READER' on inn servers, and then say `LIST
overview.fmt'. This may not work, but if it does, and the last line you
get does not read `Xref:full', then you should shout and whine at
your news admin until she includes the Xref header in the
overview files.
If you want Gnus to get the Xrefs right all the time, you have to
set gnus-nov-is-evil to t, which slows things down
considerably.
C'est la vie.
For an alternative approach, see Duplicate Suppression.
By default, Gnus tries to make sure that you don't have to read the same article more than once by utilizing the crossposting mechanism (see Crosspost Handling). However, that simple and efficient approach may not work satisfactory for some users for various reasons.
Xref header. This
is evil and not very common.
Xref header in the
.overview data bases. This is evil and all too common, alas.
I'm sure there are other situations where Xref handling fails as
well, but these four are the most common situations.
If, and only if, Xref handling fails for you, then you may
consider switching on duplicate suppression. If you do so, Gnus
will remember the Message-IDs of all articles you have read or
otherwise marked as read, and then, as if by magic, mark them as read
all subsequent times you see them—in all groups. Using this
mechanism is quite likely to be somewhat inefficient, but not overly
so. It's certainly preferable to reading the same articles more than
once.
Duplicate suppression is not a very subtle instrument. It's more like a sledge hammer than anything else. It works in a very simple fashion—if you have marked an article as read, it adds this Message-ID to a cache. The next time it sees this Message-ID, it will mark the article as read with the `M' mark. It doesn't care what group it saw the article in.
gnus-suppress-duplicatesnil, suppress duplicates.
gnus-save-duplicate-listnil, save the list of duplicates to a file. This will
make startup and shutdown take longer, so the default is nil.
However, this means that only duplicate articles read in a single Gnus
session are suppressed.
gnus-duplicate-list-lengthMessage-IDs to keep in the duplicate
suppression list. The default is 10000.
gnus-duplicate-fileIf you have a tendency to stop and start Gnus often, setting
gnus-save-duplicate-list to t is probably a good idea. If
you leave Gnus running for weeks on end, you may have it nil. On
the other hand, saving the list makes startup and shutdown much slower,
so that means that if you stop and start Gnus often, you should set
gnus-save-duplicate-list to nil. Uhm. I'll leave this up
to you to figure out, I think.
Gnus is able to verify signed messages or decrypt encrypted messages. The formats that are supported are PGP, PGP/MIME and S/MIME, however you need some external programs to get things to work:
The variables that control security functionality on reading messages include:
mm-verify-optionnever, not verify;
always, always verify; known, only verify known
protocols. Otherwise, ask user.
mm-decrypt-optionnever, no decryption;
always, always decrypt; known, only decrypt known
protocols. Otherwise, ask user.
mml1991-usepgg, but
mailcrypt and gpg are also supported although
deprecated.
mml2015-usepgg, but
mailcrypt and gpg are also supported although
deprecated.
By default the buttons that display security information are not
shown, because they clutter reading the actual e-mail. You can type
K b manually to display the information. Use the
gnus-buttonized-mime-types and
gnus-unbuttonized-mime-types variables to control this
permanently. MIME Commands for further details, and hints on
how to customize these variables to always display security
information.
Snarfing OpenPGP keys (i.e., importing keys from articles into your key ring) is not supported explicitly through a menu item or command, rather Gnus do detect and label keys as `application/pgp-keys', allowing you to specify whatever action you think is appropriate through the usual MIME infrastructure. You can use a ~/.mailcap entry (see mailcap) such as the following to import keys using GNU Privacy Guard when you click on the MIME button (see Using MIME).
application/pgp-keys; gpg --import --interactive --verbose; needsterminal
This happens to also be