html2 Gnus Manual: Appendices

10. Appendices

10.1 History    How Gnus got where it is today.

10.2 On Writing Manuals    Why this is not a beginner's guide.

10.3 Terminology    We use really difficult, like, words here.

10.4 Customization    Tailoring Gnus to your needs.

10.5 Troubleshooting    What you might try if things do not work.

10.6 Gnus Reference Guide    Rilly, rilly technical stuff.

10.7 Emacs for Heathens    A short introduction to Emacsian terms.

10.8 Frequently Asked Questions    A question-and-answer session.

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10.1 History

GNUS was written by Masanobu UMEDA. When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen grew bored and decided to rewrite Gnus.

If you want to investigate the person responsible for this outrage, you can point your (feh!) web browser to `http://quimby.gnus.org/~larsi/'. This is also the primary distribution point for the new and spiffy versions of Gnus, and is known as The Site That Destroys Newsrcs And Drives People Mad.

During the first extended alpha period of development, the new Gnus was called "(ding) Gnus". (ding) is, of course, short for ding is not Gnus, which is a total and utter lie, but who cares? (Besides, the "Gnus" in this abbreviation should probably be pronounced "news" as UMEDA intended, which makes it a more appropriate name, don't you think?)

In any case, after spending all that energy on coming up with a new and spunky name, we decided that the name was too spunky, so we renamed it back again to "Gnus". But in mixed case. "Gnus" vs. "GNUS". New vs. old.

10.1.1 Gnus Versions    What Gnus versions have been released.

10.1.2 Other Gnus Versions    Other Gnus versions that also have been released.

10.1.3 Why?    What's the point of Gnus?

10.1.4 Compatibility    Just how compatible is Gnus with GNUS?

10.1.5 Conformity    Gnus tries to conform to all standards.

10.1.6 Emacsen    Gnus can be run on a few modern Emacsen.

10.1.7 Gnus Development    How Gnus is developed.

10.1.8 Contributors    Oodles of people.

10.1.9 New Features    Pointers to some of the new stuff in Gnus.

10.1.10 Newest Features    Features so new that they haven't been written yet.

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10.1.1 Gnus Versions

The first "proper" release of Gnus 5 was done in November 1995 when it was included in the Emacs 19.30 distribution (132 (ding) Gnus releases plus 15 Gnus 5.0 releases).

In May 1996 the next Gnus generation (aka. "September Gnus" (after 99 releases)) was released under the name "Gnus 5.2" (40 releases).

On July 28th 1996 work on Red Gnus was begun, and it was released on January 25th 1997 (after 84 releases) as "Gnus 5.4" (67 releases).

On September 13th 1997, Quassia Gnus was started and lasted 37 releases. If was released as "Gnus 5.6" on March 8th 1998 (46 releases).

Gnus 5.6 begat Pterodactyl Gnus on August 29th 1998 and was released as "Gnus 5.8" (after 99 releases and a CVS repository) on December 3rd 1999.

If you happen upon a version of Gnus that has a prefixed name -- "(ding) Gnus", "September Gnus", "Red Gnus", "Quassia Gnus" -- don't panic. Don't let it know that you're frightened. Back away. Slowly. Whatever you do, don't run. Walk away, calmly, until you're out of its reach. Find a proper released version of Gnus and snuggle up to that instead.

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10.1.2 Other Gnus Versions

In addition to the versions of Gnus which have had their releases coordinated by Lars, one major development has been Semi-gnus from Japan. It's based on a library called SEMI, which provides MIME capabilities.

These Gnusae are based mainly on Gnus 5.6 and Pterodactyl Gnus. Collectively, they are called "Semi-gnus", and different strains are called T-gnus, ET-gnus, Nana-gnus and Chaos. These provide powerful MIME and multilingualization things, especially important for Japanese users.

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10.1.3 Why?

What's the point of Gnus?

I want to provide a "rad", "happening", "way cool" and "hep" newsreader, that lets you do anything you can think of. That was my original motivation, but while working on Gnus, it has become clear to me that this generation of newsreaders really belong in the stone age. Newsreaders haven't developed much since the infancy of the net. If the volume continues to rise with the current rate of increase, all current newsreaders will be pretty much useless. How do you deal with newsgroups that have thousands of new articles each day? How do you keep track of millions of people who post?

Gnus offers no real solutions to these questions, but I would very much like to see Gnus being used as a testing ground for new methods of reading and fetching news. Expanding on UMEDA-san's wise decision to separate the newsreader from the backends, Gnus now offers a simple interface for anybody who wants to write new backends for fetching mail and news from different sources. I have added hooks for customizations everywhere I could imagine it being useful. By doing so, I'm inviting every one of you to explore and invent.

May Gnus never be complete. C-u 100 M-x all-hail-emacs and C-u 100 M-x all-hail-xemacs.

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10.1.4 Compatibility

Gnus was designed to be fully compatible with GNUS. Almost all key bindings have been kept. More key bindings have been added, of course, but only in one or two obscure cases have old bindings been changed.

Our motto is:

In a cloud bones of steel.

All commands have kept their names. Some internal functions have changed their names.

The gnus-uu package has changed drastically. See section 3.15 Decoding Articles.

One major compatibility question is the presence of several summary buffers. All variables relevant while reading a group are buffer-local to the summary buffer they belong in. Although many important variables have their values copied into their global counterparts whenever a command is executed in the summary buffer, this change might lead to incorrect values being used unless you are careful.

All code that relies on knowledge of GNUS internals will probably fail. To take two examples: Sorting gnus-newsrc-alist (or changing it in any way, as a matter of fact) is strictly verboten. Gnus maintains a hash table that points to the entries in this alist (which speeds up many functions), and changing the alist directly will lead to peculiar results.

Old hilit19 code does not work at all. In fact, you should probably remove all hilit code from all Gnus hooks (gnus-group-prepare-hook and gnus-summary-prepare-hook). Gnus provides various integrated functions for highlighting. These are faster and more accurate. To make life easier for everybody, Gnus will by default remove all hilit calls from all hilit hooks. Uncleanliness! Away!

Packages like expire-kill will no longer work. As a matter of fact, you should probably remove all old GNUS packages (and other code) when you start using Gnus. More likely than not, Gnus already does what you have written code to make GNUS do. (Snicker.)

Even though old methods of doing things are still supported, only the new methods are documented in this manual. If you detect a new method of doing something while reading this manual, that does not mean you have to stop doing it the old way.

Gnus understands all GNUS startup files.

Overall, a casual user who hasn't written much code that depends on GNUS internals should suffer no problems. If problems occur, please let me know by issuing that magic command M-x gnus-bug.

If you are in the habit of sending bug reports very often, you may find the helpful help buffer annoying after a while. If so, set gnus-bug-create-help-buffer to nil to avoid having it pop up at you.

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10.1.5 Conformity

No rebels without a clue here, ma'am. We conform to all standards known to (wo)man. Except for those standards and/or conventions we disagree with, of course.

RFC 822

There are no known breaches of this standard.

RFC 1036

There are no known breaches of this standard, either.

Son-of-RFC 1036

We do have some breaches to this one.

X-Newsreader
User-Agent: These are considered to be "vanity headers", while I consider them to be consumer information. After seeing so many badly formatted articles coming from tin and Netscape I know not to use either of those for posting articles. I would not have known that if it wasn't for the X-Newsreader header.

USEFOR

USEFOR is an IETF working group writing a successor to RFC 1036, based on Son-of-RFC 1036. They have produced a number of drafts proposing various changes to the format of news articles. The Gnus towers will look into implementing the changes when the draft is accepted as an RFC.

If you ever notice Gnus acting non-compliant with regards to the texts mentioned above, don't hesitate to drop a note to Gnus Towers and let us know.

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10.1.6 Emacsen

Gnus should work on :

Emacs 20.3 and up.
XEmacs 20.4 and up.

This Gnus version will absolutely not work on any Emacsen older than that. Not reliably, at least. Older versions of Gnus may work on older Emacs versions.

There are some vague differences between Gnus on the various platforms--XEmacs features more graphics (a logo and a toolbar)---but other than that, things should look pretty much the same under all Emacsen.

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10.1.7 Gnus Development

Gnus is developed in a two-phased cycle. The first phase involves much discussion on the `ding@gnus.org' mailing list, where people propose changes and new features, post patches and new backends. This phase is called the alpha phase, since the Gnusae released in this phase are alpha releases, or (perhaps more commonly in other circles) snapshots. During this phase, Gnus is assumed to be unstable and should not be used by casual users. Gnus alpha releases have names like "Red Gnus" and "Quassia Gnus".

After futzing around for 50-100 alpha releases, Gnus is declared frozen, and only bug fixes are applied. Gnus loses the prefix, and is called things like "Gnus 5.6.32" instead. Normal people are supposed to be able to use these, and these are mostly discussed on the `gnu.emacs.gnus' newsgroup.

Some variable defaults differ between alpha Gnusae and released Gnusae. In particular, mail-source-delete-incoming defaults to nil in alpha Gnusae and t in released Gnusae. This is to prevent lossage of mail if an alpha release hiccups while handling the mail.

The division of discussion between the ding mailing list and the Gnus newsgroup is not purely based on publicity concerns. It's true that having people write about the horrible things that an alpha Gnus release can do (sometimes) in a public forum may scare people off, but more importantly, talking about new experimental features that have been introduced may confuse casual users. New features are frequently introduced, fiddled with, and judged to be found wanting, and then either discarded or totally rewritten. People reading the mailing list usually keep up with these rapid changes, whille people on the newsgroup can't be assumed to do so.

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10.1.8 Contributors

The new Gnus version couldn't have been done without the help of all the people on the (ding) mailing list. Every day for over a year I have gotten billions of nice bug reports from them, filling me with joy, every single one of them. Smooches. The people on the list have been tried beyond endurance, what with my "oh, that's a neat idea <type type>, yup, I'll release it right away <ship off> no wait, that doesn't work at all <type type>, yup, I'll ship that one off right away <ship off> no, wait, that absolutely does not work" policy for releases. Micro$oft--bah. Amateurs. I'm much worse. (Or is that "worser"? "much worser"? "worsest"?)

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Academy for... oops, wrong show.

Masanobu UMEDA---the writer of the original GNUS.
Shenghuo Zhu--uudecode.el, mm-uu.el, rfc1843.el, webmail.el, nnwarchive and many, many other things connected with MIME and other types of en/decoding, as well as general bug fixing, new functionality and stuff.
Per Abrahamsen--custom, scoring, highlighting and SOUP code (as well as numerous other things).
Luis Fernandes--design and graphics.
Justin Sheehy--the FAQ maintainer.
Erik Naggum--help, ideas, support, code and stuff.
Wes Hardaker---`gnus-picon.el' and the manual section on picons (see section 8.15.1 Picons).
Kim-Minh Kaplan--further work on the picon code.
Brad Miller---`gnus-gl.el' and the GroupLens manual section (see section 7.14 GroupLens).
Sudish Joseph--innumerable bug fixes.
Ilja Weis---`gnus-topic.el'.
Steven L. Baur--lots and lots and lots of bugs detections and fixes.
Vladimir Alexiev--the refcard and reference booklets.
Felix Lee & Jamie Zawinski--I stole some pieces from the XGnus distribution by Felix Lee and JWZ.
Scott Byer---`nnfolder.el' enhancements & rewrite.
Peter Mutsaers--orphan article scoring code.
Ken Raeburn--POP mail support.
Hallvard B Furuseth--various bits and pieces, especially dealing with .newsrc files.
Brian Edmonds---`gnus-bbdb.el'.
David Moore--rewrite of `nnvirtual.el' and many other things.
Kevin Davidson--came up with the name ding, so blame him.
Fran�ois Pinard--many, many interesting and thorough bug reports, as well as autoconf support.

This manual was proof-read by Adrian Aichner, with Ricardo Nassif, Mark Borges, and Jost Krieger proof-reading parts of the manual.

The following people have contributed many patches and suggestions:

Christopher Davis, Andrew Eskilsson, Kai Grossjohann, David K�gedal, Richard Pieri, Fabrice Popineau, Daniel Quinlan, Jason L. Tibbitts, III, and Jack Vinson.

Also thanks to the following for patches and stuff:

Jari Aalto, Adrian Aichner, Vladimir Alexiev, Russ Allbery, Peter Arius, Matt Armstrong, Marc Auslander, Miles Bader, Alexei V. Barantsev, Frank Bennett, Robert Bihlmeyer, Chris Bone, Mark Borges, Mark Boyns, Lance A. Brown, Rob Browning, Kees de Bruin, Martin Buchholz, Joe Buehler, Kevin Buhr, Alastair Burt, Joao Cachopo, Zlatko Calusic, Massimo Campostrini, Castor, David Charlap, Dan Christensen, Kevin Christian, Jae-you Chung, James H. Cloos, Jr., Laura Conrad, Michael R. Cook, Glenn Coombs, Andrew J. Cosgriff, Neil Crellin, Frank D. Cringle, Geoffrey T. Dairiki, Andre Deparade, Ulrik Dickow, Dave Disser, Rui-Tao Dong, Joev Dubach, Michael Welsh Duggan, Dave Edmondson, Paul Eggert, Mark W. Eichin, Karl Eichwalder, Enami Tsugutomo, Michael Ernst, Luc Van Eycken, Sam Falkner, Nelson Jose dos Santos Ferreira, Sigbjorn Finne, Sven Fischer, Paul Fisher, Decklin Foster, Gary D. Foster, Paul Franklin, Guy Geens, Arne Georg Gleditsch, David S. Goldberg, Michelangelo Grigni, Dale Hagglund, D. Hall, Magnus Hammerin, Kenichi Handa, Raja R. Harinath, Yoshiki Hayashi, P. E. Jareth Hein, Hisashige Kenji, Scott Hofmann, Marc Horowitz, Gunnar Horrigmo, Richard Hoskins, Brad Howes, Miguel de Icaza, Fran�ois Felix Ingrand, Tatsuya Ichikawa, Ishikawa Ichiro, Lee Iverson, Iwamuro Motonori, Rajappa Iyer, Andreas Jaeger, Adam P. Jenkins, Randell Jesup, Fred Johansen, Gareth Jones, Simon Josefsson, Greg Klanderman, Karl Kleinpaste, Michael Klingbeil, Peter Skov Knudsen, Shuhei Kobayashi, Petr Konecny, Koseki Yoshinori, Thor Kristoffersen, Jens Lautenbacher, Martin Larose, Seokchan Lee, Joerg Lenneis, Carsten Leonhardt, James LewisMoss, Christian Limpach, Markus Linnala, Dave Love, Mike McEwan, Tonny Madsen, Shlomo Mahlab, Nat Makarevitch, Istvan Marko, David Martin, Jason R. Mastaler, Gordon Matzigkeit, Timo Metzemakers, Richard Mlynarik, Lantz Moore, Morioka Tomohiko, Erik Toubro Nielsen, Hrvoje Niksic, Andy Norman, Fred Oberhauser, C. R. Oldham, Alexandre Oliva, Ken Olstad, Masaharu Onishi, Hideki Ono, Ettore Perazzoli, William Perry, Stephen Peters, Jens-Ulrik Holger Petersen, Ulrich Pfeifer, Matt Pharr, Andy Piper, John McClary Prevost, Bill Pringlemeir, Mike Pullen, Jim Radford, Colin Rafferty, Lasse Rasinen, Lars Balker Rasmussen, Joe Reiss, Renaud Rioboo, Roland B. Roberts, Bart Robinson, Christian von Roques, Markus Rost, Jason Rumney, Wolfgang Rupprecht, Jay Sachs, Dewey M. Sasser, Conrad Sauerwald, Loren Schall, Dan Schmidt, Ralph Schleicher, Philippe Schnoebelen, Andreas Schwab, Randal L. Schwartz, Danny Siu, Matt Simmons, Paul D. Smith, Jeff Sparkes, Toby Speight, Michael Sperber, Darren Stalder, Richard Stallman, Greg Stark, Sam Steingold, Paul Stevenson, Jonas Steverud, Paul Stodghill, Kiyokazu Suto, Kurt Swanson, Samuel Tardieu, Teddy, Chuck Thompson, Tozawa Akihiko, Philippe Troin, James Troup, Trung Tran-Duc, Jack Twilley, Aaron M. Ucko, Aki Vehtari, Didier Verna, Vladimir Volovich, Jan Vroonhof, Stefan Waldherr, Pete Ware, Barry A. Warsaw, Christoph Wedler, Joe Wells, Lee Willis, Katsumi Yamaoka and Lloyd Zusman.

For a full overview of what each person has done, the ChangeLogs included in the Gnus alpha distributions should give ample reading (550kB and counting).

Apologies to everybody that I've forgotten, of which there are many, I'm sure.

Gee, that's quite a list of people. I guess that must mean that there actually are people who are using Gnus. Who'd'a thunk it!

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10.1.9 New Features

10.1.9.1 (ding) Gnus    New things in Gnus 5.0/5.1, the first new Gnus.

10.1.9.2 September Gnus    The Thing Formally Known As Gnus 5.3/5.3.

10.1.9.3 Red Gnus    Third time best--Gnus 5.4/5.5.

10.1.9.4 Quassia Gnus    Two times two is four, or Gnus 5.6/5.7.

These lists are, of course, just short overviews of the most important new features. No, really. There are tons more. Yes, we have feeping creaturism in full effect.

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10.1.9.1 (ding) Gnus

New features in Gnus 5.0/5.1:

The look of all buffers can be changed by setting format-like variables (see section 2.1 Group Buffer Format and see section 3.1 Summary Buffer Format).
Local spool and several NNTP servers can be used at once (see section 6. Select Methods).
You can combine groups into virtual groups (see section 6.6.1 Virtual Groups).
You can read a number of different mail formats (see section 6.3 Getting Mail). All the mail backends implement a convenient mail expiry scheme (see section 6.3.9 Expiring Mail).
Gnus can use various strategies for gathering threads that have lost their roots (thereby gathering loose sub-threads into one thread) or it can go back and retrieve enough headers to build a complete thread (see section 3.8.1 Customizing Threading).
Killed groups can be displayed in the group buffer, and you can read them as well (see section 2.11 Listing Groups).
Gnus can do partial group updates--you do not have to retrieve the entire active file just to check for new articles in a few groups (see section 1.10 The Active File).
Gnus implements a sliding scale of subscribedness to groups (see section 2.6 Group Levels).
You can score articles according to any number of criteria (see section 7. Scoring). You can even get Gnus to find out how to score articles for you (see section 7.6 Adaptive Scoring).
Gnus maintains a dribble buffer that is auto-saved the normal Emacs manner, so it should be difficult to lose much data on what you have read if your machine should go down (see section 1.9 Auto Save).
Gnus now has its own startup file (`.gnus') to avoid cluttering up the `.emacs' file.
You can set the process mark on both groups and articles and perform operations on all the marked items (see section 8.1 Process/Prefix).
You can grep through a subset of groups and create a group from the results (see section 6.6.2 Kibozed Groups).
You can list subsets of groups according to, well, anything (see section 2.11 Listing Groups).
You can browse foreign servers and subscribe to groups from those servers (see section 2.14 Browse Foreign Server).
Gnus can fetch articles, asynchronously, on a second connection to the server (see section 3.10 Asynchronous Article Fetching).
You can cache articles locally (see section 3.11 Article Caching).
The uudecode functions have been expanded and generalized (see section 3.15 Decoding Articles).
You can still post uuencoded articles, which was a little-known feature of GNUS' past (see section 3.15.5.3 Uuencoding and Posting).
Fetching parents (and other articles) now actually works without glitches (see section 3.21 Finding the Parent).
Gnus can fetch FAQs and group descriptions (see section 2.17.2 Group Information).
Digests (and other files) can be used as the basis for groups (see section 6.5.3 Document Groups).
Articles can be highlighted and customized (see section 4.3 Customizing Articles).
URLs and other external references can be buttonized (see section 3.16.5 Article Buttons).
You can do lots of strange stuff with the Gnus window & frame configuration (see section 8.5 Windows Configuration).
You can click on buttons instead of using the keyboard (see section 8.10 Buttons).

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10.1.9.2 September Gnus

New features in Gnus 5.2/5.3:

A new message composition mode is used. All old customization variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now obsolete.
Gnus is now able to generate sparse threads--threads where missing articles are represented by empty nodes (see section 3.8.1 Customizing Threading).
(setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server (see section 5.5 Archived Messages).
Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are referred.
Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions (see section 7.14 GroupLens).
Picons (personal icons) can be displayed under XEmacs (see section 8.15.1 Picons).
A trn-like tree buffer can be displayed (see section 3.23 Tree Display).
(setq gnus-use-trees t)
An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary buffers (see section 3.22.1 Pick and Read).
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode (see section 3.22.2 Binary Groups).
Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy (see section 2.16 Group Topics).
(add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
Gnus can re-send and bounce mail (see section 3.5.1 Summary Mail Commands).
Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency is possible (see section 2.7 Group Score).
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on groups of groups (see section 2.8 Marking Groups).
Caching is possible in virtual groups.
nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else (see section 6.5.3 Document Groups).
Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets (see section 6.5.4 SOUP).
The Gnus cache is much faster.
Groups can be sorted according to many criteria (see section 2.12 Sorting Groups).
New group parameters have been introduced to set list-addresses and expiry times (see section 2.10 Group Parameters).
All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used (see section 8.4.5 Formatting Fonts).
There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on process marked articles on the M P submap (see section 3.6.6 Setting Process Marks).
The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been bound to keys on the / submap (see section 3.7 Limiting).
Articles can be made persistent with the * command (see section 3.12 Persistent Articles).
All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
Article headers can be buttonized (see section 3.16.4 Article Washing).
All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
Duplicate mail can now be treated properly (see section 6.3.11 Duplicates).
All summary mode commands are available directly from the article buffer (see section 4.4 Article Keymap).
Frames can be part of gnus-buffer-configuration (see section 8.5 Windows Configuration).
Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process (see section 8.11 Daemons).
Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to weed out spam (see section 8.12 NoCeM).
(setq gnus-use-nocem t)
Groups can be made permanently visible (see section 2.11 Listing Groups).
(setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header (see section 3.8.1 Customizing Threading).
(setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid refetching (see section 3.13 Article Backlog).
(setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate buffer to allow easier treatment.
Gnus can suggest where to save articles (see section 3.14 Saving Articles).
Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving (see section 3.14 Saving Articles).
(setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching articles (see section 3.15.5.2 Other Decode Variables).
(setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text (see section 3.16.4 Article Washing).
Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much cited text to hide is now customizable (see section 3.16.3 Article Hiding).
(setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
Boring headers can be hidden (see section 3.16.3 Article Hiding).
Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.

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10.1.9.3 Red Gnus

New features in Gnus 5.4/5.5:

`nntp.el' has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into Gnus (see section 3.10 Asynchronous Article Fetching).
Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like and, or, not, and parent redirection (see section 7.15 Advanced Scoring).
Article washing status can be displayed in the article mode line (see section 4.5 Misc Article).
`gnus.el' has been split into many smaller files.
Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID can be done (see section 3.28 Duplicate Suppression).
(setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
New variables for specifying what score and adapt files are to be considered home score and adapt files (see section 7.7 Home Score File) have been added.
nndoc was rewritten to be easily extendable (see section 6.5.3.1 Document Server Internals).
Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics (see section 2.16.5 Topic Parameters).
Article editing has been revamped and is now actually usable.
Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions (see section 3.16.7 Article Signature).
Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like. Line numbers are displayed and the . command can be used to pick articles (Pick and Read).
Commands for moving the `.newsrc.eld' from one server to another have been added (see section 1.7 Changing Servers).
There's a way now to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when generating lines in buffers (see section 8.4.3 Advanced Formatting).
Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with M-C-_ (see section 8.13 Undo).
Scoring can be done on words using the new score type w (see section 7.4 Score File Format).
Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis (see section 7.6 Adaptive Scoring).
(setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
Scores can be decayed (see section 7.16 Score Decays).
(setq gnus-decay-scores t)
Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first (see section 7.4 Score File Format).
A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from the native server (see section 1.7 Changing Servers).
A new command for reading collections of documents (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added---M-C-d (see section 3.25.4 Really Various Summary Commands).
Process mark sets can be pushed and popped (see section 3.6.6 Setting Process Marks).
A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting (see section 6.5.5 Mail-To-News Gateways).
A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added (see section 6.4.1 Web Searches).
Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently (see section 2.16.3 Topic Sorting).
Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently (Sorting Groups).
Cached articles can be pulled into the groups (see section 3.25.3 Summary Generation Commands).
Score files are now applied in a more reliable order (see section 7.3 Score Variables).
Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated (see section 6.3.3 Splitting Mail).
More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk from incoming mail before saving the mail (see section 6.3.10 Washing Mail).
Emphasized text can be properly fontisized:

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10.1.9.4 Quassia Gnus

New features in Gnus 5.6:

New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See see section 6.7 Gnus Unplugged for the full story.
The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft group, which is created automatically.
gnus-alter-header-function can now be used to alter header values.
gnus-summary-goto-article now accept Message-ID's.
A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message outside the region: C-c C-v.
You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with C-u C-c C-c.
nntp-rlogin-program---new variable to ease customization.
C-u C-c C-c in gnus-article-edit-mode will now inhibit re-highlighting of the article buffer.
New element in gnus-boring-article-headers---long-to.
M-i symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
L and I in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix a to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
gnus-simplify-subject-functions variable to allow greater control over simplification.
A T---new command for fetching the current thread.
/ T---new command for including the current thread in the limit.
M-RET is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
`\\1'-expressions are now valid in nnmail-split-methods.
The custom-face-lookup function has been removed. If you used this function in your initialization files, you must rewrite them to use face-spec-set instead.
Canceling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix a forces normal posting method.
New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text---W d.
For easier debugging of nntp, you can set nntp-record-commands to a non-nil value.
nntp now uses `~/.authinfo', a `.netrc'-like file, for controlling where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer has been added.
A history of where mails have been split is available.
A new article date command has been added---article-date-iso8601.
Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting gnus-score-thread-simplify.
A new function for citing in Message has been added---message-cite-original-without-signature.
article-strip-all-blank-lines---new article command.
A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has been added.
A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the gnus-adaptive-word-minimum variable.
The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually updated by the gnus-start-date-timer command.
Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.

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10.1.10 Newest Features

Also known as the todo list. Sure to be implemented before the next millennium.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(That a feature appears in this list doesn't necessarily mean that I've decided to actually implement it. It just means that I think it sounds interesting.)

(Yes, this is the actual, up-to-the-second todo list.)

I would like the zombie-page to contain an URL to the source of the latest version of gnus or some explanation on where to find it.
A way to continue editing the latest Message composition.
http://www.sonicnet.com/feature/ari3/
facep is not declared.
Include a section in the manual on why the number of articles isn't the same in the group buffer and on the SPC prompt.
Interacting with rmail fcc isn't easy.

 Hypermail:
<URL:http://www.falch.no/people/pepper/DSSSL-Lite/archives/>
<URL:http://www.eit.com/software/hypermail/hypermail.html>
<URL:http://homer.ncm.com/>
<URL:http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/HTML_Converters/>
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9610/index.html
<URL:http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/www/html/converters.html>
http://www.miranova.com/gnus-list/

`^-- ' is made into - in LaTeX.
gnus-kill is much slower than it was in GNUS 4.1.3.
when expunging articles on low score, the sparse nodes keep hanging on?
starting the first time seems to hang Gnus on some systems. Does NEWGROUPS answer too fast?
nndir doesn't read gzipped files.
FAQ doesn't have an up node?
when moving mail from a procmail spool to the crash-box, the crash-box is only appropriate to one specific group.
`t' `t' makes X-Faces disappear.
nnmh-be-safe means that crossposted articles will be marked as unread.
Orphan score entries don't show on "V t" score trace
when clearing out data, the cache data should also be reset.
rewrite gnus-summary-limit-children to be non-recursive to avoid exceeding lisp nesting on huge groups.
expunged articles are counted when computing scores.
implement gnus-batch-brew-soup
ticked articles aren't easy to read in pick mode -- `n' and stuff just skips past them. Read articles are the same.
topics that contain just groups with ticked articles aren't displayed.
nndoc should always allocate unique Message-IDs.
If there are mail groups the first time you use Gnus, Gnus'll make the mail groups killed.
no "no news is good news" when using topics.
when doing crosspost marking, the cache has to be consulted and articles have to be removed.
nnweb should fetch complete articles when they are split into several parts.
scoring on head immediate doesn't work.
finding short score file names takes forever.
canceling articles in foreign groups.
nntp-open-rlogin no longer works.
C-u C-x C-s (Summary) switches to the group buffer.
move nnmail-split-history out to the backends.
nnweb doesn't work properly.
using a virtual server name as `gnus-select-method' doesn't work?
when killing/yanking a group from one topic to another in a slave, the master will yank it first to one topic and then add it to another. Perhaps.
warn user about `=' redirection of a group in the active file?
take over the XEmacs menubar and offer a toggle between the XEmacs bar and the Gnus bar.

 push active file and NOV file parsing down into C code.
`(canonize-message-id id)'
`(mail-parent-message-id references n)'
`(parse-news-nov-line &optional dependency-hashtb)'
`(parse-news-nov-region beg end &optional dependency-hashtb fullp)'
`(parse-news-active-region beg end hashtb)'

nnml .overview directory with splits.
asynchronous cache
postponed commands.
the selected article show have its Subject displayed in its summary line.
when entering groups, get the real number of unread articles from the server?
sort after gathering threads -- make false roots have the headers of the oldest orphan with a 0 article number?
nndoc groups should inherit the score files of their parents? Also inherit copy prompts and save files.
command to start up Gnus (if not running) and enter a mail mode buffer.
allow editing the group description from the group buffer for backends that support that.
gnus-hide,show-all-topics
groups and sub-topics should be allowed to mingle inside each topic, and not just list all subtopics at the end.
a command to remove all read articles that are not needed to connect threads -- `gnus-summary-limit-to-sparse-unread'?
a variable to turn off limiting/cutting of threads in the tree buffer.
a variable to limit how many files are uudecoded.
add zombie groups to a special "New Groups" topic.
server mode command: close/open all connections
put a file date in gnus-score-alist and check whether the file has been changed before using it.
on exit from a digest group, go to the next article in the parent group.
hide (sub)threads with low score.
when expiring, remove all marks from expired articles.
gnus-summary-limit-to-body
a regexp alist that says what level groups are to be subscribed on. Eg. -- `(("nnml:" . 1))'.
easier interface to nnkiboze to create ephemeral groups that contain groups that match a regexp.
allow newlines in <URL:> urls, but remove them before using the URL.
If there is no From line, the mail backends should fudge one from the "From " line.
fuzzy simplifying should strip all non-alpha-numerical info from subject lines.
gnus-soup-brew-soup-with-high-scores.
nntp-ping-before-connect
command to check whether NOV is evil. "list overview.fmt".
when entering a group, Gnus should look through the score files very early for `local' atoms and set those local variables.
message annotations.
topics are always yanked before groups, and that's not good.
(set-extent-property extent 'help-echo "String to display in minibuf") to display help in the minibuffer on buttons under XEmacs.
allow group line format spec to say how many articles there are in the cache.
AUTHINFO GENERIC
`run-with-idle-timer' in gnus-demon.
stop using invisible text properties and start using overlays instead
C-c C-f C-e to add an Expires header.
go from one group to the next; everything is expunged; go to the next group instead of going to the group buffer.
gnus-renumber-cache -- to renumber the cache using "low" numbers.
record topic changes in the dribble buffer.
`nnfolder-generate-active-file' should look at the folders it finds and generate proper active ranges.
nneething-look-in-files-for-article-heads variable to control whether nneething should sniff all files in the directories.
gnus-fetch-article -- start Gnus, enter group, display article
gnus-dont-move-articles-to-same-group variable when respooling.
when messages are crossposted between several auto-expirable groups, articles aren't properly marked as expirable.
nneething should allow deletion/moving.
TAB on the last button should go to the first button.
if the car of an element in `mail-split-methods' is a function, and the function returns non-nil, use that as the name of the group(s) to save mail in.
command for listing all score files that have been applied.
a command in the article buffer to return to `summary' config.
`gnus-always-post-using-current-server' -- variable to override `C-c C-c' when posting.
nnmail-group-spool-alist -- says where each group should use as a spool file.
when an article is crossposted to an auto-expirable group, the article should be marker as expirable.
article mode command/menu for "send region as URL to browser".
on errors, jump to info nodes that explain the error. For instance, on invalid From headers, or on error messages from the nntp server.
when gathering threads, make the article that has no "Re: " the parent. Also consult Date headers.
a token in splits to call shrink-window-if-larger-than-buffer
`1 0 A M' to do matches on the active hashtb.
duplicates -- command to remove Gnus-Warning header, use the read Message-ID, delete the "original".
when replying to several messages at once, put the "other" message-ids into a See-Also header.
support setext: URL:http://www.bsdi.com/setext/
support ProleText: <URL:http://proletext.clari.net/prole/proletext.html>
when browsing a foreign server, the groups that are already subscribed should be listed as such and not as "K".
generate font names dynamically.
score file mode auto-alist.
allow nndoc to change/add/delete things from documents. Implement methods for each format for adding an article to the document.
`gnus-fetch-old-headers' `all' value to incorporate absolutely all headers there is.
function like `|', but concatenate all marked articles and pipe them to the process.
cache the list of killed (or active) groups in a separate file. Update the file whenever we read the active file or the list of killed groups in the .eld file reaches a certain length.
function for starting to edit a file to put into the current mail group.
score-find-trace should display the total score of the article.
"ghettozie" -- score on Xref header and nix it out after using it to avoid marking as read in other groups it has been crossposted to.
look at procmail splitting. The backends should create the groups automatically if a spool file exists for that group.
function for backends to register themselves with Gnus.
when replying to several process-marked articles, have all the From end up in Cc headers? Variable to toggle.
command to delete a crossposted mail article from all groups it has been mailed to.
`B c' and `B m' should be crosspost aware.
hide-pgp should also hide PGP public key blocks.
Command in the group buffer to respool process-marked groups.
`gnus-summary-find-matching' should accept pseudo-"headers" like "body", "head" and "all"
When buttifying <URL: > things, all white space (including newlines) should be ignored.
Process-marking all groups in a topic should process-mark groups in subtopics as well.
Add non-native groups to the list of killed groups when killing them.
nntp-suggest-kewl-config to probe the nntp server and suggest variable settings.
add edit and forward secondary marks.
nnml shouldn't visit its .overview files.
allow customizing sorting within gathered threads.
`B q' shouldn't select the current article.
nnmbox should support a newsgroups file for descriptions.
allow fetching mail from several pop servers.
Be able to specify whether the saving commands save the original or the formatted article.
a command to reparent with the child process-marked (cf. `T ^'.).
I think the possibility to send a password with nntp-open-rlogin should be a feature in Red Gnus.
The `Z n' command should be possible to execute from a mouse click.
more limiting functions -- date, etc.
be able to limit on a random header; on body; using reverse matches.
a group parameter (`absofucking-total-expiry') that will make Gnus expire even unread articles.
a command to print the article buffer as postscript.
variable to disable password fetching when opening by nntp-open-telnet.
manual: more example servers -- nntp with rlogin, telnet
checking for bogus groups should clean topic alists as well.
canceling articles in foreign groups.
article number in folded topics isn't properly updated by Xref handling.
Movement in the group buffer to the next unread group should go to the next closed topic with unread messages if no group can be found.
Extensive info pages generated on the fly with help everywhere -- in the "*Gnus edit*" buffers, for instance.
Topic movement commands -- like thread movement. Up, down, forward, next.
a way to tick/mark as read Gcc'd articles.
a way to say that all groups within a specific topic comes from a particular server? Hm.
`gnus-article-fill-if-long-lines' -- a function to fill the article buffer if there are any looong lines there.
`T h' should jump to the parent topic and fold it.
a command to create an ephemeral nndoc group out of a file, and then splitting it/moving it to some other group/backend.
a group parameter for nnkiboze groups that says that all kibozed articles should be entered into the cache.
It should also probably be possible to delimit what `gnus-jog-cache' does -- for instance, work on just some groups, or on some levels, and entering just articles that have a score higher than a certain number.
nnfolder should append to the folder instead of re-writing the entire folder to disk when accepting new messages.
allow all backends to do the proper thing with .gz files.
a backend for reading collections of babyl files nnbabylfolder?
a command for making the native groups into foreign groups.
server mode command for clearing read marks from all groups from a server.
when following up multiple articles, include all To, Cc, etc headers from all articles.
a command for deciding what the total score of the current thread is. Also a way to highlight based on this.
command to show and edit group scores
a gnus-tree-minimize-horizontal to minimize tree buffers horizontally.
command to generate nnml overview file for one group.
`C-u C-u a' -- prompt for many crossposted groups.
keep track of which mail groups have received new articles (in this session). Be able to generate a report and perhaps do some marking in the group buffer.
gnus-build-sparse-threads to a number -- build only sparse threads that are of that length.
have nnmh respect mh's unseen sequence in .mh_profile.
cache the newsgroups descriptions locally.
asynchronous posting under nntp.
be able to control word adaptive scoring from the score files.
a variable to make `C-c C-c' post using the "current" select method.
`limit-exclude-low-scored-articles'.
if `gnus-summary-show-thread' is a number, hide threads that have a score lower than this number.
split newsgroup subscription variable up into "order" and "method".
buttonize ange-ftp file names.
a command to make a duplicate copy of the current article so that each copy can be edited separately.
nnweb should allow fetching from the local nntp server.
record the sorting done in the summary buffer so that it can be repeated when limiting/regenerating the buffer.
nnml-generate-nov-databses should generate for all nnml servers.
when the user does commands in the group buffer, check the modification time of the .newsrc.eld file and use ask-user-about-supersession-threat. Also warn when trying to save .newsrc.eld and it has changed.
M-g on a topic will display all groups with 0 articles in the topic.
command to remove all topic stuff.
allow exploding incoming digests when reading incoming mail and splitting the resulting digests.
nnsoup shouldn't set the `message-' variables.
command to nix out all nnoo state information.
nnmail-process-alist that calls functions if group names matches an alist -- before saving.
use buffer-invisibility-spec everywhere for hiding text.
variable to activate each group before entering them to get the (new) number of articles. `gnus-activate-before-entering'.
command to fetch a Message-ID from any buffer, even starting Gnus first if necessary.
when posting and checking whether a group exists or not, just ask the nntp server instead of relying on the active hashtb.
buttonize the output of `C-c C-a' in an apropos-like way.
`G p' should understand process/prefix, and allow editing of several groups at once.
command to create an ephemeral nnvirtual group that matches some regexp(s).
nndoc should understand "Content-Type: message/rfc822" forwarded messages.
it should be possible to score "thread" on the From header.
hitting RET on a "gnus-uu-archive" pseudo article should unpack it.
`B i' should display the article at once in the summary buffer.
remove the "*" mark at once when unticking an article.
`M-s' should highlight the matching text.
when checking for duplicated mails, use Resent-Message-ID if present.
killing and yanking groups in topics should be better. If killing one copy of a group that exists in multiple topics, only that copy should be removed. Yanking should insert the copy, and yanking topics should be possible to be interspersed with the other yankings.
command for enter a group just to read the cached articles. A way to say "ignore the nntp connection; just read from the cache."
`X u' should decode base64 articles.
a way to hide all "inner" cited text, leaving just the most recently cited text.
nnvirtual should be asynchronous.
after editing an article, gnus-original-article-buffer should be invalidated.
there should probably be a way to make Gnus not connect to the server and just read the articles in the server
allow a `set-default' (or something) to change the default value of nnoo variables.
a command to import group infos from a .newsrc.eld file.
groups from secondary servers have the entire select method listed in each group info.
a command for just switching from the summary buffer to the group buffer.
a way to specify that some incoming mail washing functions should only be applied to some groups.
Message `C-f C-t' should ask the user whether to heed mail-copies-to: never.
new group parameter -- `post-to-server' that says to post using the current server. Also a variable to do the same.
the slave dribble files should auto-save to the slave file names.
a group parameter that says what articles to display on group entry, based on article marks.
a way to visually distinguish slave Gnusae from masters. (Whip instead of normal logo?)
Use DJ Bernstein "From " quoting/dequoting, where applicable.
Why is hide-citation-maybe and hide-citation different? Also clear up info.
group user-defined meta-parameters.
From: John Griffith <griffith@sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de>
I like the option for trying to retrieve the FAQ for a group and I was thinking it would be great if for those newsgroups that had archives you could also try to read the archive for that group. Part of the problem is that archives are spread all over the net, unlike FAQs. What would be best I suppose is to find the one closest to your site.
In any case, there is a list of general news group archives at
ftp://ftp.neosoft.com/pub/users/claird/news.lists/newsgroup_archives.html

From: Jason L Tibbitts III <tibbs@hpc.uh.edu>
(add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook
  (lambda ()
    (gnus-group-add-parameter group
       (cons 'gnus-group-date-last-entered (list (current-time-string))))))

(defun gnus-user-format-function-d (headers)
  "Return the date the group was last read."
  (cond ((car (gnus-group-get-parameter gnus-tmp-group 'gnus-group-date-last-entered)))
      (t "")))

tanken var at n�r du bruker `gnus-startup-file' som prefix (FOO) til � lete opp en fil FOO-SERVER, FOO-SERVER.el, FOO-SERVER.eld, kan du la den v�re en liste hvor du bruker hvert element i listen som FOO, istedet. da kunne man hatt forskjellige serveres startup-filer forskjellige steder.

LMI> Well, nnbabyl could alter the group info to heed labels like LMI> answered and read, I guess.

It could also keep them updated (the same for the Status: header of unix mbox files).

They could be used like this:

`M l <name> RET' add label <name> to current message. `M u <name> RET' remove label <name> from current message. `/ l <expr> RET' limit summary buffer according to <expr>. <expr> would be a boolean expression on the labels, e.g. `/ l bug & !fixed RET'

would show all the messages which are labeled `bug' but not labeled `fixed'.

One could also imagine the labels being used for highlighting, or affect the summary line format.

Sender: abraham@dina.kvl.dk
I'd like a gnus-find-file which work like find file, except that it would recognize things that looks like messages or folders:
- If it is a directory containing numbered files, create an nndir summary buffer.
- For other directories, create a nneething summary buffer.
- For files matching "\\`From ", create a nndoc/mbox summary.
- For files matching "\\`BABYL OPTIONS:", create a nndoc/baby summary.
- For files matching "\\`[^ \t\n]+:", create an *Article* buffer.
- For other files, just find them normally.
I'd like `nneething' to use this function, so it would work on a directory potentially containing mboxes or babyl files.
Please send a mail to bwarsaw@cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw) and tell him what you are doing.
Currently, I get prompted:
decend into sci? - type y decend into sci.something ? - type n decend into ucd?
The problem above is that since there is really only one subsection of science, shouldn't it prompt you for only descending sci.something? If there was a sci.somethingelse group or section, then it should prompt for sci? first the sci.something? then sci.somethingelse?...
Ja, det burde v�re en m�te � si slikt. Kanskje en ny variabel? `gnus-use-few-score-files'? S� kunne score-regler legges til den "mest" lokale score-fila. F. eks. ville no-gruppene betjenes av "no.all.SCORE", osv.
What i want is for Gnus to treat any sequence or combination of the following as a single spoiler warning and hide it all, replacing it with a "Next Page" button:
^L's
more than n blank lines
more than m identical lines (which should be replaced with button to show them)
any whitespace surrounding any of the above
Well, we could allow a new value to `gnus-thread-ignore-subject' -- `spaces', or something. (We could even default to that.) And then subjects that differ in white space only could be considered the "same" subject for threading purposes.
Modes to preprocess the contents (e.g. jka-compr) use the second form "(REGEXP FUNCTION NON-NIL)" while ordinary modes (e.g. tex) use the first form "(REGEXP . FUNCTION)", so you could use it to distinguish between those two types of modes. (auto-modes-alist, insert-file-contents-literally.)
Under XEmacs -- do funny article marks: tick - thumb tack killed - skull soup - bowl of soup score below - dim light bulb score over - bright light bulb

Yes. I think the algorithm is as follows:

Group-mode show-list-of-articles-in-group if (key-pressed == SPACE) if (no-more-articles-in-group-to-select) if (articles-selected) start-reading-selected-articles; junk-unread-articles; next-group; else show-next-page; else if (key-pressed = '.') if (consolidated-menus) # same as hide-thread in Gnus select-thread-under-cursor; else select-article-under-cursor; Article-mode if (key-pressed == SPACE) if (more-pages-in-article) next-page; else if (more-selected-articles-to-read) next-article; else next-group;

My precise need here would have been to limit files to Incoming*. One could think of some `nneething-only-files' variable, but I guess it would have been unacceptable if one was using many unrelated such nneething groups.
A more useful approach would be to, in response to the `G D' prompt, be allowed to say something like: `~/.mail/Incoming*', somewhat limiting the top-level directory only (in case directories would be matched by the wildcard expression).
It would be nice if it also handled
<URL:news://sunsite.auc.dk/>
which should correspond to `B nntp RET sunsite.auc.dk' in *Group*.
Take a look at w3-menu.el in the Emacs-W3 distribution - this works out really well. Each menu is 'named' by a symbol that would be on a gnus-*-menus (where * would be whatever, but at least group, summary, and article versions) variable.
So for gnus-summary-menus, I would set to '(sort mark dispose ...)
A value of '1' would just put _all_ the menus in a single 'GNUS' menu in the main menubar. This approach works really well for Emacs-W3 and VM.
nndoc should take care to create unique Message-IDs for all its articles.
gnus-score-followup-article only works when you have a summary buffer active. Make it work when posting from the group buffer as well. (message-sent-hook).
rewrite gnus-demon to use run-with-idle-timers.
* Enhancements to Gnus:
Add two commands:
* gnus-servers (gnus-start-server-buffer?)--enters Gnus and goes straight to the server buffer, without opening any connections to servers first.
* gnus-server-read-server-newsrc--produces a buffer very similar to the group buffer, but with only groups from that server listed; quitting this buffer returns to the server buffer.
add a command to check the integrity of an nnfolder folder -- go through the article numbers and see that there are no duplicates, and stuff.
`unsmileyfy-buffer' to undo smileification.
a command to give all relevant info on an article, including all secondary marks.
when doing `-request-accept-article', the backends should do the nnmail duplicate checking.
allow `message-signature-file' to be a function to return the value of the signature file.
In addition, I would love it if I could configure message-tab so that it could call `bbdb-complete-name' in other headers. So, some sort of interface like
(setq message-tab-alist '((message-header-regexp message-expand-group) ("^\$To\\|[cC]c\\|[bB]cc\$" bbdb-complete-name)))
then you could run the relevant function to complete the information in the header
cache the newsgroups file locally to avoid reloading it all the time.
a command to import a buffer into a group.
nnweb should allow fetching by Message-ID from servers.
point in the article buffer doesn't always go to the beginning of the buffer when selecting new articles.
a command to process mark all unread articles.
`gnus-gather-threads-by-references-and-subject' -- first do gathering by references, and then go through the dummy roots and do more gathering by subject.
gnus-uu-mark-in-numerical-order -- process mark articles in article numerical order.
(gnus-thread-total-score (gnus-id-to-thread (mail-header-id (gnus-summary-article-header)))) bind to a key.
sorting by score is wrong when using sparse threads.
a command to fetch an arbitrary article -- without having to be in the summary buffer.
a new nncvs backend. Each group would show an article, using version branches as threading, checkin date as the date, etc.
http://www.dejanews.com/forms/dnsetfilter_exp.html ? This filter allows one to construct advance queries on the Dejanews database such as specifying start and end dates, subject, author, and/or newsgroup name.
new Date header scoring type -- older, newer
use the summary toolbar in the article buffer.
a command to fetch all articles that are less than X days old.
in pick mode, `q' should save the list of selected articles in the group info. The next time the group is selected, these articles will automatically get the process mark.
Isn't it possible to (also?) allow M-^ to automatically try the default server if it fails on the current server? (controlled by a user variable, (nil, t, 'ask)).
make it possible to cancel articles using the select method for the current group.
`gnus-summary-select-article-on-entry' or something. It'll default to t and will select whatever article decided by `gnus-auto-select-first'.
a new variable to control which selection commands should be unselecting. `first', `best', `next', `prev', `next-unread', `prev-unread' are candidates.
be able to select groups that have no articles in them to be able to post in them (using the current select method).
be able to post via DejaNews.
`x' should retain any sortings that have been performed.
allow the user to specify the precedence of the secondary marks. Also allow them to be displayed separately.
gnus-summary-save-in-pipe should concatenate the results from the processes when doing a process marked pipe.
a new match type, like Followup, but which adds Thread matches on all articles that match a certain From header.
a function that can be read from kill-emacs-query-functions to offer saving living summary buffers.
a function for selecting a particular group which will contain the articles listed in a list of article numbers/id's.

a battery of character translation functions to translate common Mac, MS (etc) characters into ISO 8859-1.

(defun article-fix-m$word () "Fix M$Word smartquotes in an article." (interactive) (save-excursion (let ((buffer-read-only nil)) (goto-char (point-min)) (while (search-forward "\221" nil t) (replace-match "`" t t)) (goto-char (point-min)) (while (search-forward "\222" nil t) (replace-match "'" t t)) (goto-char (point-min)) (while (search-forward "\223" nil t) (replace-match "\"" t t)) (goto-char (point-min)) (while (search-forward "\224" nil t) (replace-match "\"" t t)))))

 (add-hook 'gnus-exit-query-functions
'(lambda ()
   (if (and (file-exists-p nnmail-spool-file)
            (> (nnheader-file-size nnmail-spool-file) 0))
       (yes-or-no-p "New mail has arrived.  Quit Gnus anyways? ")
       (y-or-n-p "Are you sure you want to quit Gnus? "))))

allow message-default-headers to be a function.
new Date score match types -- < > = (etc) that take floating point numbers and match on the age of the article.

>  > > If so, I've got one gripe: It seems that when I fire up gnus 5.2.25
>  > > under xemacs-19.14, it's creating a new frame, but is erasing the
>  > > buffer in the frame that it was called from =:-O
>
>  > Hm.  How do you start up Gnus?  From the toolbar or with
>  > `M-x gnus-other-frame'?
>
>    I normally start it up from the toolbar; at
> least that's the way I've caught it doing the
> deed before.

all commands that react to the process mark should push the current process mark set onto the stack.
gnus-article-hide-pgp Selv ville jeg nok ha valgt � slette den dersom teksten matcher
"\$This\s+\$?[^ ]+ has been automatically signed by"
og det er maks hundre tegn mellom match-end og ----linja. Men -det- er min type heuristikk og langt fra alles.
`gnus-subscribe-sorted' -- insert new groups where they would have been sorted to if `gnus-group-sort-function' were run.
gnus-(group,summary)-highlight should respect any `face' text props set on the lines.
use run-with-idle-timer for gnus-demon instead of the home-brewed stuff for better reliability.
add a way to select which NoCeM type to apply -- spam, troll, etc.
nndraft-request-group should tally auto-save files.
implement nntp-retry-on-break and nntp-command-timeout.
gnus-article-highlight-limit that says when not to highlight (long) articles.
(nnoo-set SERVER VARIABLE VALUE)
nn*-spool-methods
interrupitng agent fetching of articles should save articles.
command to open a digest group, and copy all the articles there to the current group.
a variable to disable article body highlights if there's more than X characters in the body.
handle 480/381 authinfo requests separately.
include the texi/dir file in the distribution.
format spec to "tab" to a position.
Move all prompting to the new `M-n' default style.
command to display all dormant articles.
gnus-auto-select-next makeover -- list of things it should do.
a score match type that adds scores matching on From if From has replied to something someone else has said.
Read Netscape discussion groups: snews://secnews.netscape.com/netscape.communicator.unix
One command to edit the original version if an article, and one to edit the displayed version.
T v -- make all process-marked articles the children of the current article.
Switch from initial text to the new default text mechanism.
How about making it possible to expire local articles? Will it be possible to make various constraints on when an article can be expired, e.g. (read), (age > 14 days), or the more interesting (read & age > 14 days)?
New limit command--limit to articles that have a certain string in the head or body.
Allow breaking lengthy NNTP commands.
gnus-article-highlight-limit, to disable highlighting in big articles.
Editing an article should put the article to be edited in a special, unique buffer.
A command to send a mail to the admin-address group param.
A Date scoring type that will match if the article is less than a certain number of days old.
New spec: %~(tab 56) to put point on column 56
Allow Gnus Agent scoring to use normal score files.
Rething the Agent active file thing. `M-g' doesn't update the active file, for instance.
With dummy roots, `^' and then selecing the first article in any other dummy thread will make Gnus highlight the dummy root instead of the first article.
Propagate all group properties (marks, article numbers, etc) up to the topics for displaying.
`n' in the group buffer with topics should go to the next group with unread articles, even if that group is hidden in a topic.
gnus-posting-styles doesn't work in drafts.
gnus-summary-limit-include-cached is slow when there are many articles in the cache, since it regenerates big parts of the summary buffer for each article.
Implement gnus-batch-brew-soup.
Group parameters and summary commands for un/subscribing to mailing lists.
Introduce nnmail-home-directory.
gnus-fetch-group and friends should exit Gnus when the user exits the group.
The jingle is only played on the second invocation of Gnus.
Bouncing articles should do MIME.
Crossposted articles should "inherit" the % or mark from the other groups it has been crossposted to, or something. (Agent.)
If point is on a group that appears multiple times in topics, and you press `l', point will move to the first instance of the group.
A spec for the group line format to display the number of agent-downloaded articles in the group.
Some nntp servers never respond when posting, so there should be a timeout for all commands.
When stading on a topic line and `t'-ing, point goes to the last line. It should go somewhere else.
I'm having trouble accessing a newsgroup with a "+" in its name with Gnus. There is a new newsgroup on msnews.microsoft.com named "microsoft.public.multimedia.directx.html+time" that I'm trying to access as "nntp+msnews.microsoft.com:microsoft.public.multimedia.directx.html+time" but it gives an error that it cant access the group.
Is the "+" character illegal in newsgroup names? Is there any way in Gnus to work around this? (gnus 5.6.45 - XEmacs 20.4)

When `#F', do:

Subject: Answer to your mails 01.01.1999-01.05.1999 --text follows this line-- Sorry I killfiled you... Under the subject "foo", you wrote on 01.01.1999: > bar Under the subject "foo1", you wrote on 01.01.1999: > bar 1

Allow "orphan" scores in the Agent scoring.

    - Edit article's summary line. 
    - End edit
    - Sort lines in buffer by subject

    --> the old subject line appears in Summary buffer, not the one that was
    just changed to.

Remove list identifiers from the subject in the summary when doing `^' and the like.
Have the Agent write out articles, one by one, as it retrieves them, to avoid having to re-fetch them all if Emacs should crash while fetching.
Be able to forward groups of messages as MIME digests.
nnweb should include the "get whole article" article when getting articles.
When I type W W c (gnus-article-hide-citation) in the summary buffer, the citations are revealed, but the [+] buttons don't turn into [-] buttons. (If I click on one of the [+] buttons, it does turn into a [-] button.)
Perhaps there should be a command to "attach" a buffer of comments to a message? That is, `B WHATEVER', you're popped into a buffer, write something, end with `C-c C-c', and then the thing you've written gets to be the child of the message you're commenting.
Handle external-body parts.
When renaming a group name, nnmail-split-history does not get the group name renamed.
Allow mail splitting on bodies when using advanced mail splitting.
(body "whatever.text")
Be able to run `J u' from summary buffers.
Solve the halting problem.

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10.2 On Writing Manuals

I guess most manuals are written after-the-fact; documenting a program that's already there. This is not how this manual is written. When implementing something, I write the manual entry for that something straight away. I then see that it's difficult to explain the functionality, so I write how it's supposed to be, and then I change the implementation. Writing the documentation and writing the code goes hand in hand.

This, of course, means that this manual has no, or little, flow. It documents absolutely everything in Gnus, but often not where you're looking for it. It is a reference manual, and not a guide to how to get started with Gnus.

That would be a totally different book, that should be written using the reference manual as source material. It would look quite differently.

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10.3 Terminology

news: This is what you are supposed to use this thing for--reading news. News is generally fetched from a nearby NNTP server, and is generally publicly available to everybody. If you post news, the entire world is likely to read just what you have written, and they'll all snigger mischievously. Behind your back.
mail: Everything that's delivered to you personally is mail. Some news/mail readers (like Gnus) blur the distinction between mail and news, but there is a difference. Mail is private. News is public. Mailing is not posting, and replying is not following up.
reply: Send a mail to the person who has written what you are reading.
follow up: Post an article to the current newsgroup responding to the article you are reading.
backend: Gnus gets fed articles from a number of backends, both news and mail backends. Gnus does not handle the underlying media, so to speak--this is all done by the backends.
native: Gnus will always use one method (and backend) as the native, or default, way of getting news.
foreign: You can also have any number of foreign groups active at the same time. These are groups that use non-native non-secondary backends for getting news.
secondary: Secondary backends are somewhere half-way between being native and being foreign, but they mostly act like they are native.
article: A message that has been posted as news.
mail message: A message that has been mailed.
message: A mail message or news article
head: The top part of a message, where administrative information (etc.) is put.
body: The rest of an article. Everything not in the head is in the body.
header: A line from the head of an article.
headers: A collection of such lines, or a collection of heads. Or even a collection of NOV lines.
NOV: When Gnus enters a group, it asks the backend for the headers of all unread articles in the group. Most servers support the News OverView format, which is more compact and much faster to read and parse than the normal HEAD format.
level: Each group is subscribed at some level or other (1-9). The ones that have a lower level are "more" subscribed than the groups with a higher level. In fact, groups on levels 1-5 are considered subscribed; 6-7 are unsubscribed; 8 are zombies; and 9 are killed. Commands for listing groups and scanning for new articles will all use the numeric prefix as working level.
killed groups: No information on killed groups is stored or updated, which makes killed groups much easier to handle than subscribed groups.
zombie groups: Just like killed groups, only slightly less dead.
active file: The news server has to keep track of what articles it carries, and what groups exist. All this information in stored in the active file, which is rather large, as you might surmise.
bogus groups: A group that exists in the `.newsrc' file, but isn't known to the server (i.e., it isn't in the active file), is a bogus group. This means that the group probably doesn't exist (any more).
activating: The act of asking the server for info on a group and computing the number of unread articles is called activating the group. Un-activated groups are listed with `*' in the group buffer.
server: A machine one can connect to and get news (or mail) from.
select method: A structure that specifies the backend, the server and the virtual server settings.
virtual server: A named select method. Since a select method defines all there is to know about connecting to a (physical) server, taking the thing as a whole is a virtual server.
washing: Taking a buffer and running it through a filter of some sort. The result will (more often than not) be cleaner and more pleasing than the original.
ephemeral groups: Most groups store data on what articles you have read. Ephemeral groups are groups that will have no data stored--when you exit the group, it'll disappear into the aether.
solid groups: This is the opposite of ephemeral groups. All groups listed in the group buffer are solid groups.
sparse articles: These are article placeholders shown in the summary buffer when gnus-build-sparse-threads has been switched on.
threading: To put responses to articles directly after the articles they respond to--in a hierarchical fashion.
root: The first article in a thread is the root. It is the ancestor of all articles in the thread.
parent: An article that has responses.
child: An article that responds to a different article--its parent.
digest: A collection of messages in one file. The most common digest format is specified by RFC 1153.

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10.4 Customization

All variables are properly documented elsewhere in this manual. This section is designed to give general pointers on how to customize Gnus for some quite common situations.

10.4.1 Slow/Expensive NNTP Connection    You run a local Emacs and get the news elsewhere.

10.4.2 Slow Terminal Connection    You run a remote Emacs.

10.4.3 Little Disk Space    You feel that having large setup files is icky.

10.4.4 Slow Machine    You feel like buying a faster machine.

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10.4.1 Slow/Expensive NNTP Connection

If you run Emacs on a machine locally, and get your news from a machine over some very thin strings, you want to cut down on the amount of data Gnus has to get from the NNTP server.

gnus-read-active-file: Set this to nil, which will inhibit Gnus from requesting the entire active file from the server. This file is often v. large. You also have to set gnus-check-new-newsgroups and gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups to nil to make sure that Gnus doesn't suddenly decide to fetch the active file anyway.
gnus-nov-is-evil: This one has to be nil. If not, grabbing article headers from the NNTP server will not be very fast. Not all NNTP servers support XOVER; Gnus will detect this by itself.

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10.4.2 Slow Terminal Connection

Let's say you use your home computer for dialing up the system that runs Emacs and Gnus. If your modem is slow, you want to reduce (as much as possible) the amount of data sent over the wires.

gnus-auto-center-summary

Set this to nil to inhibit Gnus from re-centering the summary buffer all the time. If it is vertical, do only vertical re-centering. If it is neither nil nor vertical, do both horizontal and vertical recentering.

gnus-visible-headers

Cut down on the headers included in the articles to the minimum. You can, in fact, make do without them altogether--most of the useful data is in the summary buffer, anyway. Set this variable to `^NEVVVVER' or `From:', or whatever you feel you need.

Set this hook to all the available hiding commands:

(setq gnus-treat-hide-headers 'head gnus-treat-hide-signature t gnus-treat-hide-citation t)

gnus-use-full-window

By setting this to nil, you can make all the windows smaller. While this doesn't really cut down much generally, it means that you have to see smaller portions of articles before deciding that you didn't want to read them anyway.

gnus-thread-hide-subtree

If this is non-nil, all threads in the summary buffer will be hidden initially.

gnus-updated-mode-lines

If this is nil, Gnus will not put information in the buffer mode lines, which might save some time.

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10.4.3 Little Disk Space

The startup files can get rather large, so you may want to cut their sizes a bit if you are running out of space.

gnus-save-newsrc-file: If this is nil, Gnus will never save `.newsrc'---it will only save `.newsrc.eld'. This means that you will not be able to use any other newsreaders than Gnus. This variable is t by default.
gnus-read-newsrc-file: If this is nil, Gnus will never read `.newsrc'---it will only read `.newsrc.eld'. This means that you will not be able to use any other newsreaders than Gnus. This variable is t by default.
gnus-save-killed-list: If this is nil, Gnus will not save the list of dead groups. You should also set gnus-check-new-newsgroups to ask-server and gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups to nil if you set this variable to nil. This variable is t by default.

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10.4.4 Slow Machine

If you have a slow machine, or are just really impatient, there are a few things you can do to make Gnus run faster.

Set gnus-check-new-newsgroups and gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups to nil to make startup faster.

Set gnus-show-threads, gnus-use-cross-reference and gnus-nov-is-evil to nil to make entering and exiting the summary buffer faster.

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10.5 Troubleshooting

Gnus works so well straight out of the box--I can't imagine any problems, really.

Ahem.

Make sure your computer is switched on.
Make sure that you really load the current Gnus version. If you have been running GNUS, you need to exit Emacs and start it up again before Gnus will work.
Try doing an M-x gnus-version. If you get something that looks like `Gnus v5.46; nntp 4.0' you have the right files loaded. If, on the other hand, you get something like `NNTP 3.x' or `nntp flee', you have some old `.el' files lying around. Delete these.
Read the help group (G h in the group buffer) for a FAQ and a how-to.
Gnus works on many recursive structures, and in some extreme (and very rare) cases Gnus may recurse down "too deeply" and Emacs will beep at you. If this happens to you, set max-lisp-eval-depth to 500 or something like that.

If all else fails, report the problem as a bug.

If you find a bug in Gnus, you can report it with the M-x gnus-bug command. M-x set-variable RET debug-on-error RET t RET, and send me the backtrace. I will fix bugs, but I can only fix them if you send me a precise description as to how to reproduce the bug.

You really can never be too detailed in a bug report. Always use the M-x gnus-bug command when you make bug reports, even if it creates a 10Kb mail each time you use it, and even if you have sent me your environment 500 times before. I don't care. I want the full info each time.

It is also important to remember that I have no memory whatsoever. If you send a bug report, and I send you a reply, and then you just send back "No, it's not! Moron!", I will have no idea what you are insulting me about. Always over-explain everything. It's much easier for all of us--if I don't have all the information I need, I will just mail you and ask for more info, and everything takes more time.

If the problem you're seeing is very visual, and you can't quite explain it, copy the Emacs window to a file (with xwd, for instance), put it somewhere it can be reached, and include the URL of the picture in the bug report.

If you just need help, you are better off asking on `gnu.emacs.gnus'. I'm not very helpful.

You can also ask on the ding mailing list---`ding@gnus.org'. Write to `ding-request@gnus.org' to subscribe.

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10.6 Gnus Reference Guide

It is my hope that other people will figure out smart stuff that Gnus can do, and that other people will write those smart things as well. To facilitate that I thought it would be a good idea to describe the inner workings of Gnus. And some of the not-so-inner workings, while I'm at it.

You can never expect the internals of a program not to change, but I will be defining (in some details) the interface between Gnus and its backends (this is written in stone), the format of the score files (ditto), data structures (some are less likely to change than others) and general methods of operation.

10.6.1 Gnus Utility Functions    Common functions and variable to use.

10.6.2 Backend Interface    How Gnus communicates with the servers.

10.6.3 Score File Syntax    A BNF definition of the score file standard.

10.6.4 Headers    How Gnus stores headers internally.

10.6.5 Ranges    A handy format for storing mucho numbers.

10.6.6 Group Info    The group info format.

10.6.7 Extended Interactive    Symbolic prefixes and stuff.

10.6.8 Emacs/XEmacs Code    Gnus can be run under all modern Emacsen.

10.6.9 Various File Formats    Formats of files that Gnus use.

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10.6.1 Gnus Utility Functions

When writing small functions to be run from hooks (and stuff), it's vital to have access to the Gnus internal functions and variables. Below is a list of the most common ones.

gnus-newsgroup-name

This variable holds the name of the current newsgroup.

gnus-find-method-for-group

A function that returns the select method for group.

gnus-group-real-name

Takes a full (prefixed) Gnus group name, and returns the unprefixed name.

gnus-group-prefixed-name

Takes an unprefixed group name and a select method, and returns the full (prefixed) Gnus group name.

gnus-get-info

Returns the group info list for group.

gnus-group-unread

The number of unread articles in group, or t if that is unknown.

gnus-active

The active entry for group.

gnus-set-active

Set the active entry for group.

gnus-add-current-to-buffer-list

Adds the current buffer to the list of buffers to be killed on Gnus exit.

gnus-continuum-version

Takes a Gnus version string as a parameter and returns a floating point number. Earlier versions will always get a lower number than later versions.

gnus-group-read-only-p

Says whether group is read-only or not.

gnus-news-group-p

Says whether group came from a news backend.

gnus-ephemeral-group-p

Says whether group is ephemeral or not.

gnus-server-to-method

Returns the select method corresponding to server.

gnus-server-equal

Says whether two virtual servers are equal.

gnus-group-native-p

Says whether group is native or not.

gnus-group-secondary-p

Says whether group is secondary or not.

gnus-group-foreign-p

Says whether group is foreign or not.

group-group-find-parameter

Returns the parameter list of group. If given a second parameter, returns the value of that parameter for group.

gnus-group-set-parameter

Takes three parameters; group, parameter and value.

gnus-narrow-to-body

Narrows the current buffer to the body of the article.

gnus-check-backend-function

Takes two parameters, function and group. If the backend group comes from supports function, return non-nil.

(gnus-check-backend-function "request-scan" "nnml:misc") => t

gnus-read-method

Prompts the user for a select method.

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10.6.2 Backend Interface

Gnus doesn't know anything about NNTP, spools, mail or virtual groups. It only knows how to talk to virtual servers. A virtual server is a backend and some backend variables. As examples of the first, we have nntp, nnspool and nnmbox. As examples of the latter we have nntp-port-number and nnmbox-directory.

When Gnus asks for information from a backend--say nntp---on something, it will normally include a virtual server name in the function parameters. (If not, the backend should use the "current" virtual server.) For instance, nntp-request-list takes a virtual server as its only (optional) parameter. If this virtual server hasn't been opened, the function should fail.

Note that a virtual server name has no relation to some physical server name. Take this example:

(nntp "odd-one" (nntp-address "ifi.uio.no") (nntp-port-number 4324))

Here the virtual server name is `odd-one' while the name of the physical server is `ifi.uio.no'.

The backends should be able to switch between several virtual servers. The standard backends implement this by keeping an alist of virtual server environments that they pull down/push up when needed.

There are two groups of interface functions: required functions, which must be present, and optional functions, which Gnus will always check for presence before attempting to call 'em.

All these functions are expected to return data in the buffer nntp-server-buffer (` *nntpd*'), which is somewhat unfortunately named, but we'll have to live with it. When I talk about resulting data, I always refer to the data in that buffer. When I talk about return value, I talk about the function value returned by the function call. Functions that fail should return nil as the return value.

Some backends could be said to be server-forming backends, and some might be said not to be. The latter are backends that generally only operate on one group at a time, and have no concept of "server" -- they have a group, and they deliver info on that group and nothing more.

In the examples and definitions I will refer to the imaginary backend nnchoke.

10.6.2.1 Required Backend Functions    Functions that must be implemented.

10.6.2.2 Optional Backend Functions    Functions that need not be implemented.

10.6.2.3 Error Messaging    How to get messages and report errors.

10.6.2.4 Writing New Backends    Extending old backends.

10.6.2.5 Hooking New Backends Into Gnus    What has to be done on the Gnus end.

10.6.2.6 Mail-like Backends    Some tips on mail backends.

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10.6.2.1 Required Backend Functions

(nnchoke-retrieve-headers ARTICLES &optional GROUP SERVER FETCH-OLD)

articles is either a range of article numbers or a list of Message-IDs. Current backends do not fully support either--only sequences (lists) of article numbers, and most backends do not support retrieval of Message-IDs. But they should try for both.

The result data should either be HEADs or NOV lines, and the result value should either be headers or nov to reflect this. This might later be expanded to various, which will be a mixture of HEADs and NOV lines, but this is currently not supported by Gnus.

If fetch-old is non-nil it says to try fetching "extra headers", in some meaning of the word. This is generally done by fetching (at most) fetch-old extra headers less than the smallest article number in articles, and filling the gaps as well. The presence of this parameter can be ignored if the backend finds it cumbersome to follow the request. If this is non-nil and not a number, do maximum fetches.

Here's an example HEAD:

221 1056 Article retrieved. Path: ifi.uio.no!sturles From: sturles@ifi.uio.no (Sturle Sunde) Newsgroups: ifi.discussion Subject: Re: Something very droll Date: 27 Oct 1994 14:02:57 +0100 Organization: Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway Lines: 26 Message-ID: <38o8e1$a0o@holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no> References: <38jdmq$4qu@visbur.ifi.uio.no> NNTP-Posting-Host: holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no .

So a headers return value would imply that there's a number of these in the data buffer.

Here's a BNF definition of such a buffer:

headers = *head head = error / valid-head error-message = [ "4" / "5" ] 2number " " <error message> eol valid-head = valid-message *header "." eol valid-message = "221 " " Article retrieved." eol header = <text> eol

If the return value is nov, the data buffer should contain network overview database lines. These are basically fields separated by tabs.

nov-buffer = *nov-line nov-line = 8*9 [ field <TAB> ] eol field = <text except TAB>

For a closer look at what should be in those fields, see section 10.6.4 Headers.

(nnchoke-open-server SERVER &optional DEFINITIONS)

server is here the virtual server name. definitions is a list of (VARIABLE VALUE) pairs that define this virtual server.

If the server can't be opened, no error should be signaled. The backend may then choose to refuse further attempts at connecting to this server. In fact, it should do so.

If the server is opened already, this function should return a non-nil value. There should be no data returned.

(nnchoke-close-server &optional SERVER)

Close connection to server and free all resources connected to it. Return nil if the server couldn't be closed for some reason.

There should be no data returned.

(nnchoke-request-close)

Close connection to all servers and free all resources that the backend have reserved. All buffers that have been created by that backend should be killed. (Not the nntp-server-buffer, though.) This function is generally only called when Gnus is shutting down.

There should be no data returned.

(nnchoke-server-opened &optional SERVER)

If server is the current virtual server, and the connection to the physical server is alive, then this function should return a non-nil vlue. This function should under no circumstances attempt to reconnect to a server we have lost connection to.

There should be no data returned.

(nnchoke-status-message &optional SERVER)

This function should return the last error message from server.

There should be no data returned.

(nnchoke-request-article ARTICLE &optional GROUP SERVER TO-BUFFER)

The result data from this function should be the article specified by article. This might either be a Message-ID or a number. It is optional whether to implement retrieval by Message-ID, but it would be nice if that were possible.

If to-buffer is non-nil, the result data should be returned in this buffer instead of the normal data buffer. This is to make it possible to avoid copying large amounts of data from one buffer to another, while Gnus mainly requests articles to be inserted directly into its article buffer.

If it is at all possible, this function should return a cons cell where the car is the group name the article was fetched from, and the cdr is the article number. This will enable Gnus to find out what the real group and article numbers are when fetching articles by Message-ID. If this isn't possible, t should be returned on successful article retrieval.

(nnchoke-request-group GROUP &optional SERVER FAST)

Get data on group. This function also has the side effect of making group the current group.

If fast, don't bother to return useful data, just make group the current group.

Here's an example of some result data and a definition of the same:

211 56 1000 1059 ifi.discussion

The first number is the status, which should be 211. Next is the total number of articles in the group, the lowest article number, the highest article number, and finally the group name. Note that the total number of articles may be less than one might think while just considering the highest and lowest article numbers, but some articles may have been canceled. Gnus just discards the total-number, so whether one should take the bother to generate it properly (if that is a problem) is left as an exercise to the reader.

group-status = [ error / info ] eol error = [ "4" / "5" ] 2 " " <Error message> info = "211 " 3* [ " " ] <string>

(nnchoke-close-group GROUP &optional SERVER)

Close group and free any resources connected to it. This will be a no-op on most backends.

There should be no data returned.

(nnchoke-request-list &optional SERVER)

Return a list of all groups available on server. And that means all.

Here's an example from a server that only carries two groups:

ifi.test 0000002200 0000002000 y ifi.discussion 3324 3300 n

On each line we have a group name, then the highest article number in that group, the lowest article number, and finally a flag.

active-file = *active-line active-line = name " " " " <number> " " flags eol name = <string> flags = "n" / "y" / "m" / "x" / "j" / "=" name

The flag says whether the group is read-only (`n'), is moderated (`m'), is dead (`x'), is aliased to some other group (`=other-group') or none of the above (`y').

(nnchoke-request-post &optional SERVER)

This function should post the current buffer. It might return whether the posting was successful or not, but that's not required. If, for instance, the posting is done asynchronously, it has generally not been completed by the time this function concludes. In that case, this function should set up some kind of sentinel to beep the user loud and clear if the posting could not be completed.

There should be no result data from this function.

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10.6.2.2 Optional Backend Functions

(nnchoke-retrieve-groups GROUPS &optional SERVER)

groups is a list of groups, and this function should request data on all those groups. How it does it is of no concern to Gnus, but it should attempt to do this in a speedy fashion.

The return value of this function can be either active or group, which says what the format of the result data is. The former is in the same format as the data from nnchoke-request-list, while the latter is a buffer full of lines in the same format as nnchoke-request-group gives.

group-buffer = *active-line / *group-status

(nnchoke-request-update-info GROUP INFO &optional SERVER)

A Gnus group info (see section 10.6.6 Group Info) is handed to the backend for alterations. This comes in handy if the backend really carries all the information (as is the case with virtual and imap groups). This function should destructively alter the info to suit its needs, and should return the (altered) group info.

There should be no result data from this function.

(nnchoke-request-type GROUP &optional ARTICLE)

When the user issues commands for "sending news" (F in the summary buffer, for instance), Gnus has to know whether the article the user is following up on is news or mail. This function should return news if article in group is news, mail if it is mail and unknown if the type can't be decided. (The article parameter is necessary in nnvirtual groups which might very well combine mail groups and news groups.) Both group and article may be nil.

There should be no result data from this function.

(nnchoke-request-set-mark GROUP ACTION &optional SERVER)

Set/remove/add marks on articles. Normally Gnus handles the article marks (such as read, ticked, expired etc) internally, and store them in ~/.newsrc.eld. Some backends (such as IMAP) however carry all information about the articles on the server, so Gnus need to propagate the mark information to the server.

ACTION is a list of mark setting requests, having this format:

(RANGE ACTION MARK)

Range is a range of articles you wish to update marks on. Action is set, add or del, respectively used for removing all existing marks and setting them as specified, adding (preserving the marks not mentioned) mark and removing (preserving the marks not mentioned) marks. Mark is a list of marks; where each mark is a symbol. Currently used marks are read, tick, reply, expire, killed, dormant, save, download and unsend, but your backend should, if possible, not limit itself to these.

Given contradictory actions, the last action in the list should be the effective one. That is, if your action contains a request to add the tick mark on article 1 and, later in the list, a request to remove the mark on the same article, the mark should in fact be removed.

An example action list:

(((5 12 30) 'del '(tick)) ((10 . 90) 'add '(read expire)) ((92 94) 'del '(read)))

The function should return a range of articles it wasn't able to set the mark on (currently not used for anything).

There should be no result data from this function.

(nnchoke-request-update-mark GROUP ARTICLE MARK)

If the user tries to set a mark that the backend doesn't like, this function may change the mark. Gnus will use whatever this function returns as the mark for article instead of the original mark. If the backend doesn't care, it must return the original mark, and not nil or any other type of garbage.

The only use for this I can see is what nnvirtual does with it--if a component group is auto-expirable, marking an article as read in the virtual group should result in the article being marked as expirable.

There should be no result data from this function.

(nnchoke-request-scan &optional GROUP SERVER)

This function may be called at any time (by Gnus or anything else) to request that the backend check for incoming articles, in one way or another. A mail backend will typically read the spool file or query the POP server when this function is invoked. The group doesn't have to be heeded--if the backend decides that it is too much work just scanning for a single group, it may do a total scan of all groups. It would be nice, however, to keep things local if that's practical.

There should be no result data from this function.

(nnchoke-request-group-description GROUP &optional SERVER)

The result data from this function should be a description of group.

description-line = name <TAB> description eol name = <string> description = <text>

(nnchoke-request-list-newsgroups &optional SERVER)

The result data from this function should be the description of all groups available on the server.

description-buffer = *description-line

(nnchoke-request-newgroups DATE &optional SERVER)

The result data from this function should be all groups that were created after `date', which is in normal human-readable date format. The data should be in the active buffer format.

(nnchoke-request-create-group GROUP &optional SERVER)

This function should create an empty group with name group.

There should be no return data.

(nnchoke-request-expire-articles ARTICLES &optional GROUP SERVER FORCE)

This function should run the expiry process on all articles in the articles range (which is currently a simple list of article numbers.) It is left up to the backend to decide how old articles should be before they are removed by this function. If force is non-nil, all articles should be deleted, no matter how new they are.

This function should return a list of articles that it did not/was not able to delete.

There should be no result data returned.

(nnchoke-request-move-article ARTICLE GROUP SERVER ACCEPT-FORM

&optional LAST)

This function should move article (which is a number) from group by calling accept-form.

This function should ready the article in question for moving by removing any header lines it has added to the article, and generally should "tidy up" the article. Then it should eval accept-form in the buffer where the "tidy" article is. This will do the actual copying. If this eval returns a non-nil value, the article should be removed.

If last is nil, that means that there is a high likelihood that there will be more requests issued shortly, so that allows some optimizations.

The function should return a cons where the car is the group name and the cdr is the article number that the article was entered as.

There should be no data returned.

(nnchoke-request-accept-article GROUP &optional SERVER LAST)

This function takes the current buffer and inserts it into group. If last in nil, that means that there will be more calls to this function in short order.

The function should return a cons where the car is the group name and the cdr is the article number that the article was entered as.

There should be no data returned.

(nnchoke-request-replace-article ARTICLE GROUP BUFFER)

This function should remove article (which is a number) from group and insert buffer there instead.

There should be no data returned.

(nnchoke-request-delete-group GROUP FORCE &optional SERVER)

This function should delete group. If force, it should really delete all the articles in the group, and then delete the group itself. (If there is such a thing as "the group itself".)

There should be no data returned.

(nnchoke-request-rename-group GROUP NEW-NAME &optional SERVER)

This function should rename group into new-name. All articles in group should move to new-name.

There should be no data returned.

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10.6.2.3 Error Messaging

The backends should use the function nnheader-report to report error conditions--they should not raise errors when they aren't able to perform a request. The first argument to this function is the backend symbol, and the rest are interpreted as arguments to format if there are multiple of them, or just a string if there is one of them. This function must always returns nil.

(nnheader-report 'nnchoke "You did something totally bogus") (nnheader-report 'nnchoke "Could not request group %s" group)

Gnus, in turn, will call nnheader-get-report when it gets a nil back from a server, and this function returns the most recently reported message for the backend in question. This function takes one argument--the server symbol.

Internally, these functions access backend-status-string, so the nnchoke backend will have its error message stored in nnchoke-status-string.

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10.6.2.4 Writing New Backends

Many backends are quite similar. nnml is just like nnspool, but it allows you to edit the articles on the server. nnmh is just like nnml, but it doesn't use an active file, and it doesn't maintain overview databases. nndir is just like nnml, but it has no concept of "groups", and it doesn't allow editing articles.

It would make sense if it were possible to "inherit" functions from backends when writing new backends. And, indeed, you can do that if you want to. (You don't have to if you don't want to, of course.)

All the backends declare their public variables and functions by using a package called nnoo.

To inherit functions from other backends (and allow other backends to inherit functions from the current backend), you should use the following macros:

nnoo-declare

This macro declares the first parameter to be a child of the subsequent parameters. For instance:

(nnoo-declare nndir nnml nnmh)

nndir has declared here that it intends to inherit functions from both nnml and nnmh.

defvoo

This macro is equivalent to defvar, but registers the variable as a public server variable. Most state-oriented variables should be declared with defvoo instead of defvar.

In addition to the normal defvar parameters, it takes a list of variables in the parent backends to map the variable to when executing a function in those backends.

(defvoo nndir-directory nil "Where nndir will look for groups." nnml-current-directory nnmh-current-directory)

This means that nnml-current-directory will be set to nndir-directory when an nnml function is called on behalf of nndir. (The same with nnmh.)

nnoo-define-basics

This macro defines some common functions that almost all backends should have.

(nnoo-define-basics nndir)

deffoo

This macro is just like defun and takes the same parameters. In addition to doing the normal defun things, it registers the function as being public so that other backends can inherit it.

nnoo-map-functions

This macro allows mapping of functions from the current backend to functions from the parent backends.

(nnoo-map-functions nndir (nnml-retrieve-headers 0 nndir-current-group 0 0) (nnmh-request-article 0 nndir-current-group 0 0))

This means that when nndir-retrieve-headers is called, the first, third, and fourth parameters will be passed on to nnml-retrieve-headers, while the second parameter is set to the value of nndir-current-group.

nnoo-import

This macro allows importing functions from backends. It should be the last thing in the source file, since it will only define functions that haven't already been defined.

(nnoo-import nndir (nnmh nnmh-request-list nnmh-request-newgroups) (nnml))

This means that calls to nndir-request-list should just be passed on to nnmh-request-list, while all public functions from nnml that haven't been defined in nndir yet should be defined now.

Below is a slightly shortened version of the nndir backend.

;;; nndir.el --- single directory newsgroup access for Gnus ;; Copyright (C) 1995,96 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ;;; Code: (require 'nnheader) (require 'nnmh) (require 'nnml) (require 'nnoo) (eval-when-compile (require 'cl)) (nnoo-declare nndir nnml nnmh) (defvoo nndir-directory nil "Where nndir will look for groups." nnml-current-directory nnmh-current-directory) (defvoo nndir-nov-is-evil nil "*Non-nil means that nndir will never retrieve NOV headers." nnml-nov-is-evil) (defvoo nndir-current-group "" nil nnml-current-group nnmh-current-group) (defvoo nndir-top-directory nil nil nnml-directory nnmh-directory) (defvoo nndir-get-new-mail nil nil nnml-get-new-mail nnmh-get-new-mail) (defvoo nndir-status-string "" nil nnmh-status-string) (defconst nndir-version "nndir 1.0") ;;; Interface functions. (nnoo-define-basics nndir) (deffoo nndir-open-server (server &optional defs) (setq nndir-directory (or (cadr (assq 'nndir-directory defs)) server)) (unless (assq 'nndir-directory defs) (push `(nndir-directory ,server) defs)) (push `(nndir-current-group ,(file-name-nondirectory (directory-file-name nndir-directory))) defs) (push `(nndir-top-directory ,(file-name-directory (directory-file-name nndir-directory))) defs) (nnoo-change-server 'nndir server defs)) (nnoo-map-functions nndir (nnml-retrieve-headers 0 nndir-current-group 0 0) (nnmh-request-article 0 nndir-current-group 0 0) (nnmh-request-group nndir-current-group 0 0) (nnmh-close-group nndir-current-group 0)) (nnoo-import nndir (nnmh nnmh-status-message nnmh-request-list nnmh-request-newgroups)) (provide 'nndir)

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10.6.2.5 Hooking New Backends Into Gnus

Having Gnus start using your new backend is rather easy--you just declare it with the gnus-declare-backend functions. This will enter the backend into the gnus-valid-select-methods variable.

gnus-declare-backend takes two parameters--the backend name and an arbitrary number of abilities.

Here's an example:

(gnus-declare-backend "nnchoke" 'mail 'respool 'address)

The abilities can be:

mail: This is a mailish backend--followups should (probably) go via mail.
post: This is a newsish backend--followups should (probably) go via news.
post-mail: This backend supports both mail and news.
none: This is neither a post nor mail backend--it's something completely different.
respool: It supports respooling--or rather, it is able to modify its source articles and groups.
address: The name of the server should be in the virtual server name. This is true for almost all backends.
prompt-address: The user should be prompted for an address when doing commands like B in the group buffer. This is true for backends like nntp, but not nnmbox, for instance.

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10.6.2.6 Mail-like Backends

One of the things that separate the mail backends from the rest of the backends is the heavy dependence by the mail backends on common functions in `nnmail.el'. For instance, here's the definition of nnml-request-scan:

(deffoo nnml-request-scan (&optional group server) (setq nnml-article-file-alist nil) (nnmail-get-new-mail 'nnml 'nnml-save-nov nnml-directory group))

It simply calls nnmail-get-new-mail with a few parameters, and nnmail takes care of all the moving and splitting of the mail.

This function takes four parameters.

method: This should be a symbol to designate which backend is responsible for the call.
exit-function: This function should be called after the splitting has been performed.
temp-directory: Where the temporary files should be stored.
group: This optional argument should be a group name if the splitting is to be performed for one group only.

nnmail-get-new-mail will call backend-save-mail to save each article. backend-active-number will be called to find the article number assigned to this article.

The function also uses the following variables: backend-get-new-mail (to see whether to get new mail for this backend); and backend-group-alist and backend-active-file to generate the new active file. backend-group-alist should be a group-active alist, like this:

(("a-group" (1 . 10)) ("some-group" (34 . 39)))

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10.6.3 Score File Syntax

Score files are meant to be easily parseable, but yet extremely mallable. It was decided that something that had the same read syntax as an Emacs Lisp list would fit that spec.

Here's a typical score file:

(("summary" ("win95" -10000 nil s) ("Gnus")) ("from" ("Lars" -1000)) (mark -100))

BNF definition of a score file:

score-file = "" / "(" *element ")" element = rule / atom rule = string-rule / number-rule / date-rule string-rule = "(" quote string-header quote space *string-match ")" number-rule = "(" quote number-header quote space *number-match ")" date-rule = "(" quote date-header quote space *date-match ")" quote = <ascii 34> string-header = "subject" / "from" / "references" / "message-id" / "xref" / "body" / "head" / "all" / "followup" number-header = "lines" / "chars" date-header = "date" string-match = "(" quote quote [ "" / [ space score [ "" / space date [ "" / [ space string-match-t ] ] ] ] ] ")" score = "nil" / <integer> date = "nil" / <natural number> string-match-t = "nil" / "s" / "substring" / "S" / "Substring" / "r" / "regex" / "R" / "Regex" / "e" / "exact" / "E" / "Exact" / "f" / "fuzzy" / "F" / "Fuzzy" number-match = "(" [ "" / [ space score [ "" / space date [ "" / [ space number-match-t ] ] ] ] ] ")" number-match-t = "nil" / "=" / "<" / ">" / ">=" / "<=" date-match = "(" quote quote [ "" / [ space score [ "" / space date [ "" / [ space date-match-t ] ] ] ] ")" date-match-t = "nil" / "at" / "before" / "after" atom = "(" [ required-atom / optional-atom ] ")" required-atom = mark / expunge / mark-and-expunge / files / exclude-files / read-only / touched optional-atom = adapt / local / eval mark = "mark" space nil-or-number nil-or-number = "nil" / <integer> expunge = "expunge" space nil-or-number mark-and-expunge = "mark-and-expunge" space nil-or-number files = "files" *[ space <string> ] exclude-files = "exclude-files" *[ space <string> ] read-only = "read-only" [ space "nil" / space "t" ] adapt = "adapt" [ space "ignore" / space "t" / space adapt-rule ] adapt-rule = "(" *[ *[ "(" <string> <integer> ")" ] ")" local = "local" *[ space "(" space <form> ")" ] eval = "eval" space <form> space = *[ " " / <TAB> / <NEWLINE> ]

Any unrecognized elements in a score file should be ignored, but not discarded.

As you can see, white space is needed, but the type and amount of white space is irrelevant. This means that formatting of the score file is left up to the programmer--if it's simpler to just spew it all out on one looong line, then that's ok.

The meaning of the various atoms are explained elsewhere in this manual (see section 7.4 Score File Format).

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10.6.4 Headers

Internally Gnus uses a format for storing article headers that corresponds to the NOV format in a mysterious fashion. One could almost suspect that the author looked at the NOV specification and just shamelessly stole the entire thing, and one would be right.

Header is a severely overloaded term. "Header" is used in RFC 1036 to talk about lines in the head of an article (e.g., From). It is used by many people as a synonym for "head"---"the header and the body". (That should be avoided, in my opinion.) And Gnus uses a format internally that it calls "header", which is what I'm talking about here. This is a 9-element vector, basically, with each header (ouch) having one slot.

These slots are, in order: number, subject, from, date, id, references, chars, lines, xref, and extra. There are macros for accessing and setting these slots--they all have predictable names beginning with mail-header- and mail-header-set-, respectively.

All these slots contain strings, except the extra slot, which contains an alist of header/value pairs (see section 3.1.2 To From Newsgroups).

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10.6.5 Ranges

GNUS introduced a concept that I found so useful that I've started using it a lot and have elaborated on it greatly.

The question is simple: If you have a large amount of objects that are identified by numbers (say, articles, to take a wild example) that you want to qualify as being "included", a normal sequence isn't very useful. (A 200,000 length sequence is a bit long-winded.)

The solution is as simple as the question: You just collapse the sequence.

(1 2 3 4 5 6 10 11 12)

is transformed into

((1 . 6) (10 . 12))

To avoid having those nasty `(13 . 13)' elements to denote a lonesome object, a `13' is a valid element:

((1 . 6) 7 (10 . 12))

This means that comparing two ranges to find out whether they are equal is slightly tricky:

((1 . 5) 7 8 (10 . 12))

and

((1 . 5) (7 . 8) (10 . 12))

are equal. In fact, any non-descending list is a range:

(1 2 3 4 5)

is a perfectly valid range, although a pretty long-winded one. This is also valid:

(1 . 5)

and is equal to the previous range.

Here's a BNF definition of ranges. Of course, one must remember the semantic requirement that the numbers are non-descending. (Any number of repetition of the same number is allowed, but apt to disappear in range handling.)

range = simple-range / normal-range simple-range = "(" number " . " number ")" normal-range = "(" start-contents ")" contents = "" / simple-range *[ " " contents ] / number *[ " " contents ]

Gnus currently uses ranges to keep track of read articles and article marks. I plan on implementing a number of range operators in C if The Powers That Be are willing to let me. (I haven't asked yet, because I need to do some more thinking on what operators I need to make life totally range-based without ever having to convert back to normal sequences.)

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10.6.6 Group Info

Gnus stores all permanent info on groups in a group info list. This list is from three to six elements (or more) long and exhaustively describes the group.

Here are two example group infos; one is a very simple group while the second is a more complex one:

("no.group" 5 ((1 . 54324))) ("nnml:my.mail" 3 ((1 . 5) 9 (20 . 55)) ((tick (15 . 19)) (replied 3 6 (19 . 3))) (nnml "") ((auto-expire . t) (to-address . "ding@gnus.org")))

The first element is the group name---as Gnus knows the group, anyway. The second element is the subscription level, which normally is a small integer. (It can also be the rank, which is a cons cell where the car is the level and the cdr is the score.) The third element is a list of ranges of read articles. The fourth element is a list of lists of article marks of various kinds. The fifth element is the select method (or virtual server, if you like). The sixth element is a list of group parameters, which is what this section is about.

Any of the last three elements may be missing if they are not required. In fact, the vast majority of groups will normally only have the first three elements, which saves quite a lot of cons cells.

Here's a BNF definition of the group info format:

info = "(" group space ralevel space read [ "" / [ space marks-list [ "" / [ space method [ "" / space parameters ] ] ] ] ] ")" group = quote <string> quote ralevel = rank / level level = <integer in the range of 1 to inf> rank = "(" level "." score ")" score = <integer in the range of 1 to inf> read = range marks-lists = nil / "(" *marks ")" marks = "(" range ")" method = "(" *elisp-forms ")" parameters = "(" *elisp-forms ")"

Actually that `marks' rule is a fib. A `marks' is a `<string>' consed on to a `range', but that's a bitch to say in pseudo-BNF.

If you have a Gnus info and want to access the elements, Gnus offers a series of macros for getting/setting these elements.

gnus-info-group
gnus-info-set-group: Get/set the group name.
gnus-info-rank
gnus-info-set-rank: Get/set the group rank (see section 2.7 Group Score).
gnus-info-level
gnus-info-set-level: Get/set the group level.
gnus-info-score
gnus-info-set-score: Get/set the group score (see section 2.7 Group Score).
gnus-info-read
gnus-info-set-read: Get/set the ranges of read articles.
gnus-info-marks
gnus-info-set-marks: Get/set the lists of ranges of marked articles.
gnus-info-method
gnus-info-set-method: Get/set the group select method.
gnus-info-params
gnus-info-set-params: Get/set the group parameters.

All the getter functions take one parameter--the info list. The setter functions take two parameters--the info list and the new value.

The last three elements in the group info aren't mandatory, so it may be necessary to extend the group info before setting the element. If this is necessary, you can just pass on a non-nil third parameter to the three final setter functions to have this happen automatically.

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10.6.7 Extended Interactive

Gnus extends the standard Emacs interactive specification slightly to allow easy use of the symbolic prefix (see section 8.3 Symbolic Prefixes). Here's an example of how this is used:

(defun gnus-summary-increase-score (&optional score symp) (interactive (gnus-interactive "P\ny")) ... )

The best thing to do would have been to implement gnus-interactive as a macro which would have returned an interactive form, but this isn't possible since Emacs checks whether a function is interactive or not by simply doing an assq on the lambda form. So, instead we have gnus-interactive function that takes a string and returns values that are usable to interactive.

This function accepts (almost) all normal interactive specs, but adds a few more.

`y': The current symbolic prefix--the gnus-current-prefix-symbol variable.
`Y': A list of the current symbolic prefixes--the gnus-current-prefix-symbol variable.
`A': The current article number--the gnus-summary-article-number function.
`H': The current article header--the gnus-summary-article-header function.
`g': The current group name--the gnus-group-group-name function.

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10.6.8 Emacs/XEmacs Code

While Gnus runs under Emacs, XEmacs and Mule, I decided that one of the platforms must be the primary one. I chose Emacs. Not because I don't like XEmacs or Mule, but because it comes first alphabetically.

This means that Gnus will byte-compile under Emacs with nary a warning, while XEmacs will pump out gigabytes of warnings while byte-compiling. As I use byte-compilation warnings to help me root out trivial errors in Gnus, that's very useful.

I've also consistently used Emacs function interfaces, but have used Gnusey aliases for the functions. To take an example: Emacs defines a run-at-time function while XEmacs defines a start-itimer function. I then define a function called gnus-run-at-time that takes the same parameters as the Emacs run-at-time. When running Gnus under Emacs, the former function is just an alias for the latter. However, when running under XEmacs, the former is an alias for the following function:

(defun gnus-xmas-run-at-time (time repeat function &rest args) (start-itimer "gnus-run-at-time" `(lambda () (,function ,@args)) time repeat))

This sort of thing has been done for bunches of functions. Gnus does not redefine any native Emacs functions while running under XEmacs--it does this defalias thing with Gnus equivalents instead. Cleaner all over.

In the cases where the XEmacs function interface was obviously cleaner, I used it instead. For example gnus-region-active-p is an alias for region-active-p in XEmacs, whereas in Emacs it is a function.

Of course, I could have chosen XEmacs as my native platform and done mapping functions the other way around. But I didn't. The performance hit these indirections impose on Gnus under XEmacs should be slight.

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10.6.9 Various File Formats

10.6.9.1 Active File Format Information on articles and groups available.

10.6.9.2 Newsgroups File Format Group descriptions.

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10.6.9.1 Active File Format

The active file lists all groups available on the server in question. It also lists the highest and lowest current article numbers in each group.

Here's an excerpt from a typical active file:

soc.motss 296030 293865 y alt.binaries.pictures.fractals 3922 3913 n comp.sources.unix 1605 1593 m comp.binaries.ibm.pc 5097 5089 y no.general 1000 900 y

Here's a pseudo-BNF definition of this file:

active = *group-line group-line = group space high-number space low-number space flag <NEWLINE> group = <non-white-space string> space = " " high-number = <non-negative integer> low-number = <positive integer> flag = "y" / "n" / "m" / "j" / "x" / "=" group

For a full description of this file, see the manual pages for `innd', in particular `active(5)'.

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10.6.9.2 Newsgroups File Format

The newsgroups file lists groups along with their descriptions. Not all groups on the server have to be listed, and not all groups in the file have to exist on the server. The file is meant purely as information to the user.

The format is quite simple; a group name, a tab, and the description. Here's the definition:

newsgroups = *line line = group tab description <NEWLINE> group = <non-white-space string> tab = <TAB> description = <string>

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10.7 Emacs for Heathens

Believe it or not, but some people who use Gnus haven't really used Emacs much before they embarked on their journey on the Gnus Love Boat. If you are one of those unfortunates whom "M-C-a", "kill the region", and "set gnus-flargblossen to an alist where the key is a regexp that is used for matching on the group name" are magical phrases with little or no meaning, then this appendix is for you. If you are already familiar with Emacs, just ignore this and go fondle your cat instead.

10.7.1 Keystrokes Entering text and executing commands.

10.7.2 Emacs Lisp The built-in Emacs programming language.

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10.7.1 Keystrokes

Q: What is an experienced Emacs user?
A: A person who wishes that the terminal had pedals.

Yes, when you use Emacs, you are apt to use the control key, the shift key and the meta key a lot. This is very annoying to some people (notably vile users), and the rest of us just love the hell out of it. Just give up and submit. Emacs really does stand for "Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift", and not "Editing Macros", as you may have heard from other disreputable sources (like the Emacs author).

The shift keys are normally located near your pinky fingers, and are normally used to get capital letters and stuff. You probably use it all the time. The control key is normally marked "CTRL" or something like that. The meta key is, funnily enough, never marked as such on any keyboard. The one I'm currently at has a key that's marked "Alt", which is the meta key on this keyboard. It's usually located somewhere to the left hand side of the keyboard, usually on the bottom row.

Now, us Emacs people don't say "press the meta-control-m key", because that's just too inconvenient. We say "press the M-C-m key". M- is the prefix that means "meta" and "C-" is the prefix that means "control". So "press C-k" means "press down the control key, and hold it down while you press k". "Press M-C-k" means "press down and hold down the meta key and the control key and then press k". Simple, ay?

This is somewhat complicated by the fact that not all keyboards have a meta key. In that case you can use the "escape" key. Then M-k means "press escape, release escape, press k". That's much more work than if you have a meta key, so if that's the case, I respectfully suggest you get a real keyboard with a meta key. You can't live without it.

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10.7.2 Emacs Lisp

Emacs is the King of Editors because it's really a Lisp interpreter. Each and every key you tap runs some Emacs Lisp code snippet, and since Emacs Lisp is an interpreted language, that means that you can configure any key to run any arbitrary code. You just, like, do it.

Gnus is written in Emacs Lisp, and is run as a bunch of interpreted functions. (These are byte-compiled for speed, but it's still interpreted.) If you decide that you don't like the way Gnus does certain things, it's trivial to have it do something a different way. (Well, at least if you know how to write Lisp code.) However, that's beyond the scope of this manual, so we are simply going to talk about some common constructs that you normally use in your `.emacs' file to customize Gnus.

If you want to set the variable gnus-florgbnize to four (4), you write the following:

(setq gnus-florgbnize 4)

This function (really "special form") setq is the one that can set a variable to some value. This is really all you need to know. Now you can go and fill your .emacs file with lots of these to change how Gnus works.

If you have put that thing in your .emacs file, it will be read and evaled (which is lisp-ese for "run") the next time you start Emacs. If you want to change the variable right away, simply say C-x C-e after the closing parenthesis. That will eval the previous "form", which is a simple setq statement here.

Go ahead--just try it, if you're located at your Emacs. After you C-x C-e, you will see `4' appear in the echo area, which is the return value of the form you evaled.

Some pitfalls:

If the manual says "set gnus-read-active-file to some", that means:

(setq gnus-read-active-file 'some)

On the other hand, if the manual says "set gnus-nntp-server to `nntp.ifi.uio.no'", that means:

(setq gnus-nntp-server "nntp.ifi.uio.no")

So be careful not to mix up strings (the latter) with symbols (the former). The manual is unambiguous, but it can be confusing.

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10.8 Frequently Asked Questions

This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list. If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at `http://www.ccs.neu.edu/software/gnus/', and has probably been updated since you got this manual.

10.8.1 Installation    Installation of Gnus.

10.8.2 Customization    Customizing Gnus.

10.8.3 Reading News    News Reading Questions.

10.8.4 Reading Mail    Mail Reading Questions.

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10.8.1 Installation

Q1.1 What is the latest version of Gnus?
The latest (and greatest) version is 5.0.10. You might also run across something called September Gnus. September Gnus is the alpha version of the next major release of Gnus. It is currently not stable enough to run unless you are prepared to debug lisp.
Q1.2 Where do I get Gnus?
Any of the following locations:
- `ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/gnus.tar.gz'
- `ftp://ftp.pilgrim.umass.edu/pub/misc/ding/'
- `gopher://gopher.pilgrim.umass.edu/11/pub/misc/ding/'
- `ftp://aphrodite.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/pub/ding-gnus/'
- `ftp://ftp.solace.mh.se:/pub/gnu/elisp/'
Q1.3 Which version of Emacs do I need?
At least GNU Emacs 19.28, or XEmacs 19.12 is recommended. GNU Emacs 19.25 has been reported to work under certain circumstances, but it doesn't officially work on it. 19.27 has also been reported to work. Gnus has been reported to work under OS/2 as well as Unix.
Q1.4 Where is timezone.el?
Upgrade to XEmacs 19.13. In earlier versions of XEmacs this file was placed with Gnus 4.1.3, but that has been corrected.
Q1.5 When I run Gnus on XEmacs 19.13 I get weird error messages.
You're running an old version of Gnus. Upgrade to at least version 5.0.4.
Q1.6 How do I unsubscribe from the Mailing List?
Send an e-mail message to `ding-request@ifi.uio.no' with the magic word unsubscribe somewhere in it, and you will be removed.
If you are reading the digest version of the list, send an e-mail message to
`ding-rn-digests-d-request@moe.shore.net' with unsubscribe as the subject and you will be removed.

Q1.7 How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?

The basic answer is to byte-compile under XEmacs, and then you can run under either Emacsen. There is, however, a potential version problem with easymenu.el with Gnu Emacs prior to 19.29.

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes :
The internal easymenu.el interface changed between 19.28 and 19.29 in order to make it possible to create byte compiled files that can be shared between Gnu Emacs and XEmacs. The change is upward compatible, but not downward compatible. This gives the following compatibility table:

Compiled with: | Can be used with: ----------------+-------------------------------------- 19.28 | 19.28 19.29 19.29 | 19.29 XEmacs XEmacs | 19.29 XEmacs

If you have Gnu Emacs 19.28 or earlier, or XEmacs 19.12 or earlier, get a recent version of auc-menu.el from `ftp://ftp.iesd.auc.dk/pub/emacs-lisp/auc-menu.el', and install it under the name easymenu.el somewhere early in your load path.

Q1.8 What resources are available?
There is the newsgroup Gnu.emacs.gnus. Discussion of Gnus 5.x is now taking place there. There is also a mailing list, send mail to `ding-request@ifi.uio.no' with the magic word subscribe somewhere in it.
NOTE: the traffic on this list is heavy so you may not want to be on it (unless you use Gnus as your mailer reader, that is). The mailing list is mainly for developers and testers.
Gnus has a home World Wide Web page at
`http://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/ding.html'. Gnus has a write up in the X Windows Applications FAQ at
`http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/xapps/Q-III.html'. The Gnus manual is also available on the World Wide Web. The canonical source is in Norway at
`http://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/ding-manual/gnus_toc.html'.
There are three mirrors in the United States:
1. `http://www.miranova.com/gnus-man/'
2. `http://www.pilgrim.umass.edu/pub/misc/ding/manual/gnus_toc.html'
3. `http://www.rtd.com/~woo/gnus/'
PostScript copies of the Gnus Reference card are available from
`ftp://ftp.cs.ualberta.ca/pub/oolog/gnus/'. They are mirrored at
`ftp://ftp.pilgrim.umass.edu/pub/misc/ding/refcard/' in the United States. And
`ftp://marvin.fkphy.uni-duesseldorf.de/pub/gnus/' in Germany. An online version of the Gnus FAQ is available at
`http://www.miranova.com/~steve/gnus-faq.html'. Off-line formats are also available:
ASCII: `ftp://ftp.miranova.com/pub/gnus/gnus-faq'
PostScript: `ftp://ftp.miranova.com/pub/gnus/gnus-faq.ps'.
Q1.9 Gnus hangs on connecting to NNTP server
I am running XEmacs on SunOS and Gnus prints a message about Connecting to NNTP server and then just hangs.
Ben Wing <wing@netcom.com> writes :
I wonder if you're hitting the infamous libresolv problem. The basic problem is that under SunOS you can compile either with DNS or NIS name lookup libraries but not both. Try substituting the IP address and see if that works; if so, you need to download the sources and recompile.
Q1.10 Mailcrypt 3.4 doesn't work
This problem is verified to still exist in Gnus 5.0.9 and Mailcrypt 3.4. The answer comes from Peter Arius <arius@immd2.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>.
I found out that mailcrypt uses gnus-eval-in-buffer-window, which is a macro. It seems as if you have compiled mailcrypt with plain old GNUS in load path, and the XEmacs byte compiler has inserted that macro definition into `mc-toplev.elc'. The solution is to recompile `mc-toplev.el' with Gnus 5 in load-path, and it works fine.
Steve Baur <steve@miranova.com> adds :
The problem also manifests itself if neither GNUS 4 nor Gnus 5 is in the load-path.
Q1.11 What other packages work with Gnus?
- Mailcrypt.
  Mailcrypt is an Emacs interface to PGP. It works, it installs without hassle, and integrates very easily. Mailcrypt can be obtained from
  `ftp://cag.lcs.mit.edu/pub/patl/mailcrypt-3.4.tar.gz'.
- Tools for Mime.
  Tools for Mime is an Emacs MUA interface to MIME. Installation is a two-step process unlike most other packages, so you should be prepared to move the byte-compiled code somewhere. There are currently two versions of this package available. It can be obtained from
  `ftp://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/GNU/elisp/'. Be sure to apply the supplied patch. It works with Gnus through version 5.0.9. In order for all dependencies to work correctly the load sequence is as follows:
  (load "tm-setup") (load "gnus") (load "mime-compose")
  NOTE: Loading the package disables citation highlighting by default. To get the old behavior back, use the M-t command.

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10.8.2 Customization

Q2.1 Custom Edit does not work under XEmacs
The custom package has not been ported to XEmacs.
Q2.2 How do I quote messages?
I see lots of messages with quoted material in them. I am wondering how to have Gnus do it for me.
This is Gnus, so there are a number of ways of doing this. You can use the built-in commands to do this. There are the F and R keys from the summary buffer which automatically include the article being responded to. These commands are also selectable as Followup and Yank and Reply and Yank in the Post menu.
C-c C-y grabs the previous message and prefixes each line with ail-indentation-spaces spaces or mail-yank-prefix if that is non-nil, unless you have set your own mail-citation-hook, which will be called to do the job.
You might also consider the Supercite package, which allows for pretty arbitrarily complex quoting styles. Some people love it, some people hate it.
Q2.3 How can I keep my nnvirtual:* groups sorted?
How can I most efficiently arrange matters so as to keep my nnvirtual:* (etc) groups at the top of my group selection buffer, whilst keeping everything sorted in alphabetical order. If you don't subscribe often to new groups then the easiest way is to first sort the groups and then manually kill and yank the virtuals wherever you want them.

Q2.4 Any good suggestions on stuff for an all.SCORE file?

Here is a collection of suggestions from the Gnus mailing list.

From "Dave Disser" <disser@sdd.hp.com>
I like blasting anything without lowercase letters. Weeds out most of the make $$ fast, as well as the lame titles like "IBM" and "HP-UX" with no further description.
(("Subject" ("^\$Re: \$?[^a-z]*$" -200 nil R)))

From "Peter Arius" <arius@immd2.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
The most vital entries in my (still young) all.SCORE:

(("xref"
  ("alt.fan.oj-simpson" -1000 nil s))
 ("subject"
  ("\\<\\(make\\|fast\\|big\\)\\s-*\\(money\\|cash\\|bucks?\\)\\>" -1000 nil r)
  ("$$$$" -1000 nil s)))

From "Per Abrahamsen" <abraham@dina.kvl.dk>

(("subject"
  ;; CAPS OF THE WORLD, UNITE
  ("^..[^a-z]+$" -1 nil R)
  ;; $$$ Make Money $$$ (Try work)
  ("$" -1 nil s)
  ;; I'm important! And I have exclamation marks to prove it!
  ("!" -1 nil s)))

From "heddy boubaker" <boubaker@cenatls.cena.dgac.fr>
I would like to contribute with mine.

(
 (read-only t)
 ("subject"
  ;; ALL CAPS SUBJECTS
  ("^\\([Rr][Ee]: +\\)?[^a-z]+$" -1 nil R)
  ;; $$$ Make Money $$$
  ("$$" -10 nil s)
  ;; Empty subjects are worthless!
  ("^ *\\([(<]none[>)]\\|(no subject\\( given\\)?)\\)? *$" -10 nil r)
  ;; Sometimes interesting announces occur!
  ("ANN?OU?NC\\(E\\|ING\\)" +10 nil r)
  ;; Some people think they're on mailing lists
  ("\\(un\\)?sub?scribe" -100 nil r)
  ;; Stop Micro$oft NOW!!
  ("\\(m\\(icro\\)?[s$]\\(oft\\|lot\\)?-?\\)?wind?\\(ows\\|aube\\|oze\\)?[- ]*\\('?95\\|NT\\|3[.]1\\|32\\)" -1001 nil r)
  ;; I've nothing to buy
  ("\\(for\\|4\\)[- ]*sale" -100 nil r)
  ;; SELF-DISCIPLINED people
  ("\\[[^a-z0-9 \t\n][^a-z0-9 \t\n]\\]" +100 nil r)
  )
 ("from"
  ;; To keep track of posters from my site
  (".dgac.fr" +1000 nil s))
 ("followup"
  ;; Keep track of answers to my posts
  ("boubaker" +1000 nil s))
 ("lines"
  ;; Some people have really nothing to say!!
  (1 -10 nil <=))
 (mark -100)
 (expunge -1000)
 )

From "Christopher Jones" <cjones@au.oracle.com>
The sample `all.SCORE' files from Per and boubaker could be augmented with:
(("subject" ;; No junk mail please! ("please ignore" -500 nil s) ("test" -500 nil e)) )

From "Brian Edmonds" <edmonds@cs.ubc.ca>
Augment any of the above with a fast method of scoring down excessively cross posted articles.

 ("xref"
  ;; the more cross posting, the exponentially worse the article
  ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -1 nil r)
  ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -2 nil r)
  ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -4 nil r)
  ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -8 nil r)
  ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -16 nil r)
  ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -32 nil r)
  ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -64 nil r)
  ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -128 nil r)
  ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -256 nil r)
  ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -512 nil r))

Q2.5 What do I use to yank-through when replying?
You should probably reply and followup with R and F, instead of r and f, which solves your problem. But you could try something like:
(defconst mail-yank-ignored-headers "^.*:" "Delete these headers from old message when it's inserted in a reply.")
Q2.6 I don't like the default WWW browser
Now when choosing an URL Gnus starts up a W3 buffer, I would like it to always use Netscape (I don't browse in text-mode ;-).
1. Activate `Customize...' from the `Help' menu.
2. Scroll down to the `WWW Browser' field.
3. Click `mouse-2' on `WWW Browser'.
4. Select `Netscape' from the pop up menu.
5. Press `C-c C-c'
If you are using XEmacs then to specify Netscape do
(setq gnus-button-url 'gnus-netscape-open-url)
Q2.7 What, if any, relation is between "ask-server" and "(setq gnus-read-active-file 'some)"?
In order for Gnus to show you the complete list of newsgroups, it will either have to either store the list locally, or ask the server to transmit the list. You enable the first with
(setq gnus-save-killed-list t)
and the second with
(setq gnus-read-active-file t)
If both are disabled, Gnus will not know what newsgroups exists. There is no option to get the list by casting a spell.
Q2.8 Moving between groups is slow.
Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

Do you call define-key or something like that in one of the summary mode hooks? This would force Emacs to recalculate the keyboard shortcuts. Removing the call should speed up M-x gnus-summary-mode RET by a couple of orders of magnitude. You can use
(define-key gnus-summary-mode-map KEY COMMAND)
in your `.gnus' instead.

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10.8.3 Reading News

Q3.1 How do I convert my kill files to score files?
A kill-to-score translator was written by Ethan Bradford <ethanb@ptolemy.astro.washington.edu>. It is available from
`http://baugi.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/ding-various/gnus-kill-to-score.el'.
Q3.2 My news server has a lot of groups, and killing groups is painfully slow.
Don't do that then. The best way to get rid of groups that should be dead is to edit your newsrc directly. This problem will be addressed in the near future.
Q3.3 How do I use an NNTP server with authentication?
Put the following into your .gnus:
(add-hook 'nntp-server-opened-hook 'nntp-send-authinfo)

Q3.4 Not reading the first article.

How do I avoid reading the first article when a group is selected?

Use RET to select the group instead of SPC.
(setq gnus-auto-select first nil)

Luis Fernandes <elf@mailhost.ee.ryerson.ca>writes:
This is what I use...customize as necessary...

;;; Don't auto-select first article if reading sources, or archives or ;;; jobs postings, etc. and just display the summary buffer (add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook (function (lambda () (cond ((string-match "sources" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) ((string-match "jobs" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) ((string-match "comp\\.archives" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) ((string-match "reviews" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) ((string-match "announce" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) ((string-match "binaries" gnus-newsgroup-name) (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil)) (t (setq gnus-auto-select-first t))))))

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:
Another possibility is to create an `all.binaries.all.SCORE' file like this:
((local (gnus-auto-select-first nil)))
and insert
(setq gnus-auto-select-first t)
in your `.gnus'.

Q3.5 Why aren't BBDB known posters marked in the summary buffer?
Brian Edmonds <edmonds@cs.ubc.ca> writes:
Due to changes in Gnus 5.0, `bbdb-gnus.el' no longer marks known posters in the summary buffer. An updated version, `gnus-bbdb.el' is available at the locations listed below. This package also supports autofiling of incoming mail to folders specified in the BBDB. Extensive instructions are included as comments in the file.
Send mail to `majordomo@edmonds.home.cs.ubc.ca' with the following line in the body of the message: get misc gnus-bbdb.el.
Or get it from the World Wide Web:
`http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/gnus-bbdb.el'.

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10.8.4 Reading Mail

Q4.1 What does the message "Buffer has changed on disk" mean in a mail group?
Your filter program should not deliver mail directly to your folders, instead it should put the mail into spool files. Gnus will then move the mail safely from the spool files into the folders. This will eliminate the problem. Look it up in the manual, in the section entitled "Mail & Procmail".
Q4.2 How do you make articles un-expirable?
I am using nnml to read news and have used gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups to automagically expire articles in some groups (Gnus being one of them). Sometimes there are interesting articles in these groups that I want to keep. Is there any way of explicitly marking an article as un-expirable - that is mark it as read but not expirable?
Use u, !, d or M-u in the summary buffer. You just remove the E mark by setting some other mark. It's not necessary to tick the articles.
Q4.3 How do I delete bogus nnml: groups?
My problem is that I have various mail (nnml) groups generated while experimenting with Gnus. How do I remove them now? Setting the level to 9 does not help. Also gnus-group-check-bogus-groups does not recognize them.
Removing mail groups is tricky at the moment. (It's on the to-do list, though.) You basically have to kill the groups in Gnus, shut down Gnus, edit the active file to exclude these groups, and probably remove the nnml directories that contained these groups as well. Then start Gnus back up again.
Q4.4 What happened to my new mail groups?
I got new mail, but I have never seen the groups they should have been placed in.
They are probably there, but as zombies. Press A z to list zombie groups, and then subscribe to the groups you want with u. This is all documented quite nicely in the user's manual.
Q4.5 Not scoring mail groups
How do you totally turn off scoring in mail groups?
Use an nnbabyl:all.SCORE (or nnmh, or nnml, or whatever) file containing:
((adapt ignore) (local (gnus-use-scoring nil)) (exclude-files "all.SCORE"))

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This document was generated by root on February, 20 2002 using texi2html

10.1 History		How Gnus got where it is today.
10.2 On Writing Manuals		Why this is not a beginner's guide.
10.3 Terminology		We use really difficult, like, words here.
10.4 Customization		Tailoring Gnus to your needs.
10.5 Troubleshooting		What you might try if things do not work.
10.6 Gnus Reference Guide		Rilly, rilly technical stuff.
10.7 Emacs for Heathens		A short introduction to Emacsian terms.
10.8 Frequently Asked Questions		A question-and-answer session.

10.1.1 Gnus Versions		What Gnus versions have been released.
10.1.2 Other Gnus Versions		Other Gnus versions that also have been released.
10.1.3 Why?		What's the point of Gnus?
10.1.4 Compatibility		Just how compatible is Gnus with GNUS?
10.1.5 Conformity		Gnus tries to conform to all standards.
10.1.6 Emacsen		Gnus can be run on a few modern Emacsen.
10.1.7 Gnus Development		How Gnus is developed.
10.1.8 Contributors		Oodles of people.
10.1.9 New Features		Pointers to some of the new stuff in Gnus.
10.1.10 Newest Features		Features so new that they haven't been written yet.

10.1.9.1 (ding) Gnus		New things in Gnus 5.0/5.1, the first new Gnus.
10.1.9.2 September Gnus		The Thing Formally Known As Gnus 5.3/5.3.
10.1.9.3 Red Gnus		Third time best--Gnus 5.4/5.5.
10.1.9.4 Quassia Gnus		Two times two is four, or Gnus 5.6/5.7.

10.4.1 Slow/Expensive NNTP Connection		You run a local Emacs and get the news elsewhere.
10.4.2 Slow Terminal Connection		You run a remote Emacs.
10.4.3 Little Disk Space		You feel that having large setup files is icky.
10.4.4 Slow Machine		You feel like buying a faster machine.

10.6.1 Gnus Utility Functions		Common functions and variable to use.
10.6.2 Backend Interface		How Gnus communicates with the servers.
10.6.3 Score File Syntax		A BNF definition of the score file standard.
10.6.4 Headers		How Gnus stores headers internally.
10.6.5 Ranges		A handy format for storing mucho numbers.
10.6.6 Group Info		The group info format.
10.6.7 Extended Interactive		Symbolic prefixes and stuff.
10.6.8 Emacs/XEmacs Code		Gnus can be run under all modern Emacsen.
10.6.9 Various File Formats		Formats of files that Gnus use.

10.6.2.1 Required Backend Functions		Functions that must be implemented.
10.6.2.2 Optional Backend Functions		Functions that need not be implemented.
10.6.2.3 Error Messaging		How to get messages and report errors.
10.6.2.4 Writing New Backends		Extending old backends.
10.6.2.5 Hooking New Backends Into Gnus		What has to be done on the Gnus end.
10.6.2.6 Mail-like Backends		Some tips on mail backends.

10.6.9.1 Active File Format		Information on articles and groups available.
10.6.9.2 Newsgroups File Format		Group descriptions.

10.7.1 Keystrokes		Entering text and executing commands.
10.7.2 Emacs Lisp		The built-in Emacs programming language.

10.8.1 Installation		Installation of Gnus.
10.8.2 Customization		Customizing Gnus.
10.8.3 Reading News		News Reading Questions.
10.8.4 Reading Mail		Mail Reading Questions.