This is Info file ../info/gnus, produced by Makeinfo-1.63 from the input file gnus.texi. This file documents Gnus, the GNU Emacs newsreader. Copyright (C) 1995,96 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions. File: gnus, Node: Process/Prefix, Next: Interactive, Up: Various Process/Prefix ============== Many functions, among them functions for moving, decoding and saving articles, use what is known as the "Process/Prefix convention". This is a method for figuring out what articles that the user wants the command to be performed on. It goes like this: If the numeric prefix is N, perform the operation on the next N articles, starting with the current one. If the numeric prefix is negative, perform the operation on the previous N articles, starting with the current one. If `transient-mark-mode' in non-`nil' and the region is active, all articles in the region will be worked upon. If there is no numeric prefix, but some articles are marked with the process mark, perform the operation on the articles that are marked with the process mark. If there is neither a numeric prefix nor any articles marked with the process mark, just perform the operation on the current article. Quite simple, really, but it needs to be made clear so that surprises are avoided. One thing that seems to shock & horrify lots of people is that, for instance, `3 d' does exactly the same as `d' `d' `d'. Since each `d' (which marks the current article as read) by default goes to the next unread article after marking, this means that `3 d' will mark the next three unread articles as read, no matter what the summary buffer looks like. Set `gnus-summary-goto-unread' to `nil' for a more straightforward action. File: gnus, Node: Interactive, Next: Formatting Variables, Prev: Process/Prefix, Up: Various Interactive =========== `gnus-novice-user' If this variable is non-`nil', you are either a newcomer to the World of Usenet, or you are very cautious, which is a nice thing to be, really. You will be given questions of the type "Are you sure you want to do this?" before doing anything dangerous. This is `t' by default. `gnus-expert-user' If this variable is non-`nil', you will never ever be asked any questions by Gnus. It will simply assume you know what you're doing, no matter how strange. `gnus-interactive-catchup' Require confirmation before catching up a group if non-`nil'. It is `t' by default. `gnus-interactive-exit' Require confirmation before exiting Gnus. This variable is `t' by default. File: gnus, Node: Formatting Variables, Next: Windows Configuration, Prev: Interactive, Up: Various Formatting Variables ==================== Throughout this manual you've probably noticed lots of variables that are called things like `gnus-group-line-format' and `gnus-summary-mode-line-format'. These control how Gnus is to output lines in the various buffers. There's quite a lot of them. Fortunately, they all use the same syntax, so there's not that much to be annoyed by. Here's an example format spec (from the group buffer): `%M%S%5y: %(%g%)\n'. We see that it is indeed extremely ugly, and that there are lots of percentages everywhere. Each `%' element will be replaced by some string or other when the buffer in question is generated. `%5y' means "insert the `y' spec, and pad with spaces to get a 5-character field". Just like a normal format spec, almost. You can also say `%6,4y', which means that the field will never be more than 6 characters wide and never less than 4 characters wide. There are also specs for highlighting, and these are shared by all the format variables. Text inside the `%(' and `%)' specifiers will get the special `mouse-face' property set, which means that it will be highlighted (with `gnus-mouse-face') when you put the mouse pointer over it. Text inside the `%[' and `%]' specifiers will have their normal faces set using `gnus-face-0', which is `bold' by default. If you say `%1[' instead, you'll get `gnus-face-1' instead, and so on. Create as many faces as you wish. The same goes for the `mouse-face' specs--you can say `%3(hello%)' to have `hello' mouse-highlighted with `gnus-mouse-face-3'. Here's an alternative recipe for the group buffer: ;; Create three face types. (setq gnus-face-1 'bold) (setq gnus-face-3 'italic) ;; We want the article count to be in ;; a bold and green face. So we create ;; a new face called `my-green-bold'. (copy-face 'bold 'my-green-bold) ;; Set the color. (set-face-foreground 'my-green-bold "ForestGreen") (setq gnus-face-2 'my-green-bold) ;; Set the new & fancy format. (setq gnus-group-line-format "%M%S%3{%5y%}%2[:%] %(%1{%g%}%)\n") I'm sure you'll be able to use this scheme to create totally unreadable and extremely vulgar displays. Have fun! Currently Gnus uses the following formatting variables: `gnus-group-line-format', `gnus-summary-line-format', `gnus-server-line-format', `gnus-topic-line-format', `gnus-group-mode-line-format', `gnus-summary-mode-line-format', `gnus-article-mode-line-format', `gnus-server-mode-line-format'. Note that the `%(' specs (and friends) do not make any sense on the mode-line variables. All these format variables can also be arbitrary elisp forms. In that case, they will be `eval'ed to insert the required lines. Gnus includes a command to help you while creating your own format specs. `M-x gnus-update-format' will `eval' the current form, update the spec in question and pop you to a buffer where you can examine the resulting lisp code to be run to generate the line. File: gnus, Node: Windows Configuration, Next: Compilation, Prev: Formatting Variables, Up: Various Windows Configuration ===================== No, there's nothing here about X, so be quiet. If `gnus-use-full-window' non-`nil', Gnus will delete all other windows and occupy the entire Emacs screen by itself. It is `t' by default. `gnus-buffer-configuration' describes how much space each Gnus buffer should be given. Here's an excerpt of this variable: ((group (vertical 1.0 (group 1.0 point) (if gnus-carpal (group-carpal 4)))) (article (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point) (article 1.0)))) This is an alist. The "key" is a symbol that names some action or other. For instance, when displaying the group buffer, the window configuration function will use `group' as the key. A full list of possible names is listed below. The "value" (i. e., the "split") says how much space each buffer should occupy. To take the `article' split as an example - (article (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point) (article 1.0))) This "split" says that the summary buffer should occupy 25% of upper half of the screen, and that it is placed over the article buffer. As you may have noticed, 100% + 25% is actually 125% (yup, I saw y'all reaching for that calculator there). However, the special number `1.0' is used to signal that this buffer should soak up all the rest of the space available after the rest of the buffers have taken whatever they need. There should be only one buffer with the `1.0' size spec per split. Point will be put in the buffer that has the optional third element `point'. Here's a more complicated example: (article (vertical 1.0 (group 4) (summary 0.25 point) (if gnus-carpal (summary-carpal 4)) (article 1.0))) If the size spec is an integer instead of a floating point number, then that number will be used to say how many lines a buffer should occupy, not a percentage. If the "split" looks like something that can be `eval'ed (to be precise--if the `car' of the split is a function or a subr), this split will be `eval'ed. If the result is non-`nil', it will be used as a split. This means that there will be three buffers if `gnus-carpal' is `nil', and four buffers if `gnus-carpal' is non-`nil'. Not complicated enough for you? Well, try this on for size: (article (horizontal 1.0 (vertical 0.5 (group 1.0) (gnus-carpal 4)) (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point) (summary-carpal 4) (article 1.0)))) Whoops. Two buffers with the mystery 100% tag. And what's that `horizontal' thingie? If the first element in one of the split is `horizontal', Gnus will split the window horizontally, giving you two windows side-by-side. Inside each of these strips you may carry on all you like in the normal fashion. The number following `horizontal' says what percentage of the screen is to be given to this strip. For each split, there *must* be one element that has the 100% tag. The splitting is never accurate, and this buffer will eat any leftover lines from the splits. To be slightly more formal, here's a definition of what a legal split may look like: split = frame | horizontal | vertical | buffer | form frame = "(frame " size *split ")" horizontal = "(horizontal " size *split ")" vertical = "(vertical " size *split ")" buffer = "(" buffer-name " " size *[ "point" ] ")" size = number | frame-params buffer-name = group | article | summary ... The limitations are that the `frame' split can only appear as the top-level split. FORM should be an Emacs Lisp form that should return a valid split. We see that each split is fully recursive, and may contain any number of `vertical' and `horizontal' splits. Finding the right sizes can be a bit complicated. No window may be less than `gnus-window-min-height' (default 2) characters high, and all windows must be at least `gnus-window-min-width' (default 1) characters wide. Gnus will try to enforce this before applying the splits. If you want to use the normal Emacs window width/height limit, you can just set these two variables to `nil'. If you're not familiar with Emacs terminology, `horizontal' and `vertical' splits may work the opposite way of what you'd expect. Windows inside a `horizontal' split are shown side-by-side, and windows within a `vertical' split are shown above each other. If you want to experiment with window placement, a good tip is to call `gnus-configure-frame' directly with a split. This is the function that does all the real work when splitting buffers. Below is a pretty nonsensical configuration with 5 windows; two for the group buffer and three for the article buffer. (I said it was nonsensical.) If you `eval' the statement below, you can get an idea of how that would look straight away, without going through the normal Gnus channels. Play with it until you're satisfied, and then use `gnus-add-configuration' to add your new creation to the buffer configuration list. (gnus-configure-frame '(horizontal 1.0 (vertical 10 (group 1.0) (article 0.3 point)) (vertical 1.0 (article 1.0) (horizontal 4 (group 1.0) (article 10))))) You might want to have several frames as well. No prob--just use the `frame' split: (gnus-configure-frame '(frame 1.0 (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point) (article 1.0)) (vertical ((height . 5) (width . 15) (user-position . t) (left . -1) (top . 1)) (picon 1.0)))) This split will result in the familiar summary/article window configuration in the first (or "main") frame, while a small additional frame will be created where picons will be shown. As you can see, instead of the normal `1.0' top-level spec, each additional split should have a frame parameter alist as the size spec. *Note Frame Parameters: (elisp)Frame Parameters. Here's a list of all possible keys for `gnus-buffer-configuration': `group', `summary', `article', `server', `browse', `group-mail', `summary-mail', `summary-reply', `info', `summary-faq', `edit-group', `edit-server', `reply', `reply-yank', `followup', `followup-yank', `edit-score'. Since the `gnus-buffer-configuration' variable is so long and complicated, there's a function you can use to ease changing the config of a single setting: `gnus-add-configuration'. If, for instance, you want to change the `article' setting, you could say: (gnus-add-configuration '(article (vertical 1.0 (group 4) (summary .25 point) (article 1.0)))) You'd typically stick these `gnus-add-configuration' calls in your `.gnus' file or in some startup hook - they should be run after Gnus has been loaded. File: gnus, Node: Compilation, Next: Mode Lines, Prev: Windows Configuration, Up: Various Compilation =========== Remember all those line format specification variables? `gnus-summary-line-format', `gnus-group-line-format', and so on. Now, Gnus will of course heed whatever these variables are, but, unfortunately, changing them will mean a quite significant slow-down. (The default values of these variables have byte-compiled functions associated with them, while the user-generated versions do not, of course.) To help with this, you can run `M-x gnus-compile' after you've fiddled around with the variables and feel that you're (kind of) satisfied. This will result in the new specs being byte-compiled, and you'll get top speed again. File: gnus, Node: Mode Lines, Next: Highlighting and Menus, Prev: Compilation, Up: Various Mode Lines ========== `gnus-updated-mode-lines' says what buffers should keep their mode lines updated. It is a list of symbols. Supported symbols include `group', `article', `summary', `server', `browse', and `tree'. If the corresponding symbol is present, Gnus will keep that mode line updated with information that may be pertinent. If this variable is `nil', screen refresh may be quicker. By default, Gnus displays information on the current article in the mode lines of the summary and article buffers. The information Gnus wishes to display (eg. the subject of the article) is often longer than the mode lines, and therefore have to be cut off at some point. The `gnus-mode-non-string-length' variable says how long the other elements on the line is (i.e., the non-info part). If you put additional elements on the mode line (eg. a clock), you should modify this variable: (add-hook 'display-time-hook (lambda () (setq gnus-mode-non-string-length (+ 21 (if line-number-mode 5 0) (if column-number-mode 4 0) (length display-time-string))))) If this variable is `nil' (which is the default), the mode line strings won't be chopped off, and they won't be padded either. File: gnus, Node: Highlighting and Menus, Next: Buttons, Prev: Mode Lines, Up: Various Highlighting and Menus ====================== The `gnus-visual' variable controls most of the prettifying Gnus aspects. If `nil', Gnus won't attempt to create menus or use fancy colors or fonts. This will also inhibit loading the `gnus-vis.el' file. This variable can be a list of visual properties that are enabled. The following elements are legal, and are all included by default: `group-highlight' Do highlights in the group buffer. `summary-highlight' Do highlights in the summary buffer. `article-highlight' Do highlights in the article buffer. `highlight' Turn on highlighting in all buffers. `group-menu' Create menus in the group buffer. `summary-menu' Create menus in the summary buffers. `article-menu' Create menus in the article buffer. `browse-menu' Create menus in the browse buffer. `server-menu' Create menus in the server buffer. `score-menu' Create menus in the score buffers. `menu' Create menus in all buffers. So if you only want highlighting in the article buffer and menus in all buffers, you could say something like: (setq gnus-visual '(article-highlight menu)) If you want only highlighting and no menus whatsoever, you'd say: (setq gnus-visual '(highlight)) If `gnus-visual' is `t', highlighting and menus will be used in all Gnus buffers. Other general variables that influence the look of all buffers include: `gnus-mouse-face' This is the face (i.e., font) used for mouse highlighting in Gnus. No mouse highlights will be done if `gnus-visual' is `nil'. `gnus-display-type' This variable is symbol indicating the display type Emacs is running under. The symbol should be one of `color', `grayscale' or `mono'. If Gnus guesses this display attribute wrongly, either set this variable in your `~/.emacs' or set the resource `Emacs.displayType' in your `~/.Xdefaults'. `gnus-background-mode' This is a symbol indicating the Emacs background brightness. The symbol should be one of `light' or `dark'. If Gnus guesses this frame attribute wrongly, either set this variable in your `~/.emacs' or set the resource `Emacs.backgroundMode' in your `~/.Xdefaults'. `gnus-display-type'. There are hooks associated with the creation of all the different menus: `gnus-article-menu-hook' Hook called after creating the article mode menu. `gnus-group-menu-hook' Hook called after creating the group mode menu. `gnus-summary-menu-hook' Hook called after creating the summary mode menu. `gnus-server-menu-hook' Hook called after creating the server mode menu. `gnus-browse-menu-hook' Hook called after creating the browse mode menu. `gnus-score-menu-hook' Hook called after creating the score mode menu. File: gnus, Node: Buttons, Next: Daemons, Prev: Highlighting and Menus, Up: Various Buttons ======= Those new-fangled "mouse" contraptions is very popular with the young, hep kids who don't want to learn the proper way to do things these days. Why, I remember way back in the summer of '89, when I was using Emacs on a Tops 20 system. Three hundred users on one single machine, and every user was running Simula compilers. Bah! Right. Well, you can make Gnus display bufferfuls of buttons you can click to do anything by setting `gnus-carpal' to `t'. Pretty simple, really. Tell the chiropractor I sent you. `gnus-carpal-mode-hook' Hook run in all carpal mode buffers. `gnus-carpal-button-face' Face used on buttons. `gnus-carpal-header-face' Face used on carpal buffer headers. `gnus-carpal-group-buffer-buttons' Buttons in the group buffer. `gnus-carpal-summary-buffer-buttons' Buttons in the summary buffer. `gnus-carpal-server-buffer-buttons' Buttons in the server buffer. `gnus-carpal-browse-buffer-buttons' Buttons in the browse buffer. All the `buttons' variables are lists. The elements in these list is either a cons cell where the car contains a text to be displayed and the cdr contains a function symbol, or a simple string. File: gnus, Node: Daemons, Next: NoCeM, Prev: Buttons, Up: Various Daemons ======= Gnus, being larger than any program ever written (allegedly), does lots of strange stuff that you may wish to have done while you're not present. For instance, you may want it to check for new mail once in a while. Or you may want it to close down all connections to all servers when you leave Emacs idle. And stuff like that. Gnus will let you do stuff like that by defining various "handlers". Each handler consists of three elements: A FUNCTION, a TIME, and an IDLE parameter. Here's an example of a handler that closes connections when Emacs has been idle for thirty minutes: (gnus-demon-close-connections nil 30) Here's a handler that scans for PGP headers every hour when Emacs is idle: (gnus-demon-scan-pgp 60 t) This TIME parameter and than IDLE parameter works together in a strange, but wonderful fashion. Basically, if IDLE is `nil', then the function will be called every TIME minutes. If IDLE is `t', then the function will be called after TIME minutes only if Emacs is idle. So if Emacs is never idle, the function will never be called. But once Emacs goes idle, the function will be called every TIME minutes. If IDLE is a number and TIME is a number, the function will be called every TIME minutes only when Emacs has been idle for IDLE minutes. If IDLE is a number and TIME is `nil', the function will be called once every time Emacs has been idle for IDLE minutes. And if TIME is a string, it should look like `07:31', and the function will then be called once every day somewhere near that time. Modified by the IDLE parameter, of course. (When I say "minute" here, I really mean `gnus-demon-timestep' seconds. This is `60' by default. If you change that variable, all the timings in the handlers will be affected.) To set the whole thing in motion, though, you have to set `gnus-use-demon' to `t'. So, if you want to add a handler, you could put something like this in your `.gnus' file: (gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-close-connections nil 30) Some ready-made functions to do this has been created: `gnus-demon-add-nocem', `gnus-demon-add-disconnection', and `gnus-demon-add-scanmail'. Just put those functions in your `.gnus' if you want those abilities. If you add handlers to `gnus-demon-handlers' directly, you should run `gnus-demon-init' to make the changes take hold. To cancel all daemons, you can use the `gnus-demon-cancel' function. Note that adding daemons can be pretty naughty if you overdo it. Adding functions that scan all news and mail from all servers every two seconds is a sure-fire way of getting booted off any respectable system. So behave. File: gnus, Node: NoCeM, Next: Picons, Prev: Daemons, Up: Various NoCeM ===== "Spamming" is posting the same article lots and lots of times. Spamming is bad. Spamming is evil. Spamming is usually canceled within a day or so by various anti-spamming agencies. These agencies usually also send out "NoCeM" messages. NoCeM is pronounced "no see-'em", and means what the name implies--these are messages that make the offending articles, like, go away. What use are these NoCeM messages if the articles are canceled anyway? Some sites do not honor cancel messages and some sites just honor cancels from a select few people. Then you may wish to make use of the NoCeM messages, which are distributed in the `alt.nocem.misc' newsgroup. Gnus can read and parse the messages in this group automatically, and this will make spam disappear. There are some variables to customize, of course: `gnus-use-nocem' Set this variable to `t' to set the ball rolling. It is `nil' by default. `gnus-nocem-groups' Gnus will look for NoCeM messages in the groups in this list. The default is `("alt.nocem.misc" "news.admin.net-abuse.announce")'. `gnus-nocem-issuers' There are many people issuing NoCeM messages. This list says what people you want to listen to. The default is `("Automoose-1" "clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca;" "jem@xpat.com;" "red@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us (Richard E. Depew)")'; fine, upstanding citizens all of them. Known despammers that you can put in this list include: `clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca;' Chris Lewis--Major Canadian despammer who has probably canceled more usenet abuse than anybody else. `Automoose-1' The CancelMoose[tm] on autopilot. The CancelMoose[tm] is reputed to be Norwegian, and was the person(s) who invented NoCeM. `jem@xpat.com;' Jem--Korean despammer who is getting very busy these days. `red@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us (Richard E. Depew)' Richard E. Depew--lone American despammer. He mostly cancels binary postings to non-binary groups and removes spews (regurgitated articles). You do not have to heed NoCeM messages from all these people--just the ones you want to listen to. `gnus-nocem-directory' This is where Gnus will store its NoCeM cache files. The default is `~/News/NoCeM/'. `gnus-nocem-expiry-wait' The number of days before removing old NoCeM entries from the cache. The default is 15. If you make it shorter Gnus will be faster, but you might then see old spam. File: gnus, Node: Picons, Next: Various Various, Prev: NoCeM, Up: Various Picons ====== So... You want to slow down your news reader even more! This is a good way to do so. Its also a great way to impress people staring over your shoulder as you read news. * Menu: * Picon Basics:: What are picons and How do I get them. * Picon Requirements:: Don't go further if you aren't using XEmacs. * Easy Picons:: Displaying Picons - the easy way. * Hard Picons:: The way you should do it. You'll learn something. * Picon Configuration:: Other variables you can trash/tweak/munge/play with. File: gnus, Node: Picon Basics, Next: Picon Requirements, Up: Picons Picon Basics ------------ What are Picons? To quote directly from the Picons Web site (`http://www.cs.indiana.edu/picons/ftp/index.html'): "Picons" is short for "personal icons". They're small, constrained images used to represent users and domains on the net, organized into databases so that the appropriate image for a given e-mail address can be found. Besides users and domains, there are picon databases for Usenet newsgroups and weather forecasts. The picons are in either monochrome `XBM' format or color `XPM' and `GIF' formats. Please see the above mentioned web site for instructions on obtaining and installing the picons databases, or the following ftp site: `http://www.cs.indiana.edu/picons/ftp/index.html'. Gnus expects picons to be installed into a location pointed to by `gnus-picons-database'. File: gnus, Node: Picon Requirements, Next: Easy Picons, Prev: Picon Basics, Up: Picons Picon Requirements ------------------ To use have Gnus display Picons for you, you must be running XEmacs 19.13 or greater since all other versions of Emacs aren't yet able to display images. Additionally, you must have `xpm' support compiled into XEmacs. If you want to display faces from `X-Face' headers, you must have the `netpbm' utilities installed, or munge the `gnus-picons-convert-x-face' variable to use something else. File: gnus, Node: Easy Picons, Next: Hard Picons, Prev: Picon Requirements, Up: Picons Easy Picons ----------- To enable displaying picons, simply put the following line in your `~/.gnus' file and start Gnus. (setq gnus-use-picons t) (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-display-picons t) (add-hook 'gnus-summary-prepare-hook 'gnus-group-display-picons t) (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-picons-article-display-x-face) File: gnus, Node: Hard Picons, Next: Picon Configuration, Prev: Easy Picons, Up: Picons Hard Picons ----------- Gnus can display picons for you as you enter and leave groups and articles. It knows how to interact with three sections of the picons database. Namely, it can display the picons newsgroup pictures, author's face picture(s), and the authors domain. To enable this feature, you need to first decide where to display them. `gnus-picons-display-where' Where the picon images should be displayed. It is `picons' by default (which by default maps to the buffer `*Picons*'). Other valid places could be `article', `summary', or `"*scratch*"' for all I care. Just make sure that you've made the buffer visible using the standard Gnus window configuration routines - *Note Windows Configuration::. Note: If you set `gnus-use-picons' to `t', it will set up your window configuration for you to include the `picons' buffer. Now that you've made that decision, you need to add the following functions to the appropriate hooks so these pictures will get displayed at the right time. `gnus-article-display-picons' Looks up and display the picons for the author and the author's domain in the `gnus-picons-display-where' buffer. Should be added to the `gnus-article-display-hook'. `gnus-group-display-picons' Displays picons representing the current group. This function should be added to the `gnus-summary-prepare-hook' or to the `gnus-article-display-hook' if `gnus-picons-display-where' is set to `article'. `gnus-picons-article-display-x-face' Decodes and displays the X-Face header if present. This function should be added to `gnus-article-display-hook'. Note: You must append them to the hook, so make sure to specify 't' to the append flag of `add-hook': (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-display-picons t) File: gnus, Node: Picon Configuration, Prev: Hard Picons, Up: Picons Picon Configuration ------------------- The following variables offer further control over how things are done, where things are located, and other useless stuff you really don't need to worry about. `gnus-picons-database' The location of the picons database. Should point to a directory containing the `news', `domains', `users' (and so on) subdirectories. Defaults to `/usr/local/faces'. `gnus-picons-news-directory' Sub-directory of the faces database containing the icons for newsgroups. `gnus-picons-user-directories' List of subdirectories to search in `gnus-picons-database' for user faces. Defaults to `("local" "users" "usenix" "misc/MISC")'. `gnus-picons-domain-directories' List of subdirectories to search in `gnus-picons-database' for domain name faces. Defaults to `("domains")'. Some people may want to add `unknown' to this list. `gnus-picons-convert-x-face' The command to use to convert the `X-Face' header to an X bitmap (`xbm'). Defaults to `(format "{ echo '/* Width=48, Height=48 */'; uncompface; } | icontopbm | pbmtoxbm > %s" gnus-picons-x-face-file-name)' `gnus-picons-x-face-file-name' Names a temporary file to store the `X-Face' bitmap in. Defaults to `(format "/tmp/picon-xface.%s.xbm" (user-login-name))'. `gnus-picons-buffer' The name of the buffer that `picons' points to. Defaults to `*Icon Buffer*'. File: gnus, Node: Various Various, Prev: Picons, Up: Various Various Various =============== `gnus-verbose' This variable is an integer between zero and ten. The higher the value, the more messages will be displayed. If this variable is zero, Gnus will never flash any messages, if it is seven (which is the default), most important messages will be shown, and if it is ten, Gnus won't ever shut up, but will flash so many messages it will make your head swim. `gnus-verbose-backends' This variable works the same way as `gnus-verbose', but it applies to the Gnus backends instead of Gnus proper. `nnheader-max-head-length' When the backends read straight heads of articles, they all try to read as little as possible. This variable (default `4096') specifies the absolute max length the backends will try to read before giving up on finding a separator line between the head and the body. If this variable is `nil', there is no upper read bound. If it is `t', the backends won't try to read the articles piece by piece, but read the entire articles. This makes sense with some versions of `ange-ftp'. `nnheader-file-name-translation-alist' This is an alist that says how to translate characters in file names. For instance, if `:' is illegal as a file character in file names on your system (you OS/2 user you), you could say something like: (setq nnheader-file-name-translation-alist '((?: . ?_))) In fact, this is the default value for this variable on OS/2 and MS Windows (phooey) systems. `gnus-hidden-properties' This is a list of properties to use to hide "invisible" text. It is `(invisible t intangible t)' by default on most systems, which makes invisible text invisible and intangible. `gnus-parse-headers-hook' A hook called before parsing headers. It can be used, for instance, to gather statistics on the headers fetched, or perhaps you'd like to prune some headers. I don't see why you'd want that, though. File: gnus, Node: The End, Next: Appendices, Prev: Various, Up: Top The End ******* Well, that's the manual--you can get on with your life now. Keep in touch. Say hello to your cats from me. My *ghod*--I just can't stand goodbyes. Sniffle. Ol' Charles Reznikoff said it pretty well, so I leave the floor to *Te Deum* Not because of victories I sing, having none, but for the common sunshine, the breeze, the largess of the spring. Not for victory but for the day's work done as well as I was able; not for a seat upon the dais but at the common table. File: gnus, Node: Appendices, Next: Index, Prev: The End, Up: Top Appendices ********** * Menu: * History:: How Gnus got where it is today. * Terminology:: We use really difficult, like, words here. * Customization:: Tailoring Gnus to your needs. * Troubleshooting:: What you might try if things do not work. * A Programmers Guide to Gnus:: Rilly, rilly technical stuff. * Emacs for Heathens:: A short introduction to Emacsian terms. * Frequently Asked Questions:: A question-and-answer session. File: gnus, Node: History, Next: Terminology, Up: Appendices 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://www.ifi.uio.no/~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. The first "proper" release of Gnus 5 was done in November 1995 when it was included in the Emacs 19.30 distribution. In May 1996 the next Gnus generation (aka. "September Gnus") was released under the name "Gnus 5.2". * Menu: * Why?:: What's the point of Gnus? * Compatibility:: Just how compatible is Gnus with GNUS? * Conformity:: Gnus tries to conform to all standards. * Emacsen:: Gnus can be run on a few modern Emacsen. * Contributors:: Oodles of people. * New Features:: Pointers to some of the new stuff in Gnus. * Newest Features:: Features so new that they haven't been written yet. File: gnus, Node: Why?, Next: Compatibility, Up: History 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 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 hail-emacs'. File: gnus, Node: Compatibility, Next: Conformity, Prev: Why?, Up: History 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. *note Decoding Articles::.. One major compatibility question is the presence of several summary buffers. All variables that are 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'. File: gnus, Node: Conformity, Next: Emacsen, Prev: Compatibility, Up: History 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. *Usenet Seal of Approval* Gnus hasn't been formally through the Seal process, but I have read through the Seal text and I think Gnus would pass. *Son-of-RFC 1036* We do have some breaches to this one. *MIME* Gnus does no MIME handling, and this standard-to-be seems to think that MIME is the bees' knees, so we have major breakage here. *X-Newsreader* This is considered to be a "vanity header", while I consider it 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. *References* Gnus does line breaking on this header. I infer from RFC1036 that being conservative in what you output is not creating 5000-character lines, so it seems like a good idea to me. However, this standard-to-be says that whitespace in the `References' header is to be preserved, so... It doesn't matter one way or the other to Gnus, so if somebody tells me what The Way is, I'll change it. Or not. If you ever notice Gnus acting non-compliantly with regards to the texts mentioned above, don't hesitate to drop a note to Gnus Towers and let us know. File: gnus, Node: Emacsen, Next: Contributors, Prev: Conformity, Up: History Emacsen ------- Gnus should work on : * Emacs 19.30 and up. * XEmacs 19.13 and up. * Mule versions based on Emacs 19.30 and up. Gnus will absolutely not work on any Emacsen older than that. Not reliably, at least. There are some vague differences between Gnus on the various platforms: * The mouse-face on Gnus lines under Emacs and Mule is delimited to certain parts of the lines while they cover the entire line under XEmacs. * The same with current-article marking--XEmacs puts an underline under the entire summary line while Emacs and Mule are nicer and kinder. * XEmacs features more graphics--a logo and a toolbar. * Citation highlighting us better under Emacs and Mule than under XEmacs. * Emacs 19.26-19.28 have tangible hidden headers, which can be a bit confusing. File: gnus, Node: Contributors, Next: New Features, Prev: Emacsen, Up: History 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 , yup, I'll release it right away no wait, that doesn't work at all , yup, I'll ship that one off right away 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. * Per Abrahamsen Custom, scoring, highlighting and SOUP code (as well as numerous other things). * Luis Fernandes Design and graphics. * Wes Hardaker `gnus-picon.el' and the manual section on "picons" (*note Picons::.). * Brad Miller `gnus-gl.el' and the GroupLens manual section (*note GroupLens::.). * Sudish Joseph Innumerable bug fixes. * Ilja Weis `gnus-topic.el'. * Steven L. Baur Lots and lots of bugs detections and fixes. * Vladimir Alexiev The refcard and reference booklets. * Felix Lee & JWZ 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'. * Ricardo Nassif and Mark Borges Proof-reading. * Kevin Davidson Came up with the name "ding", so blame him. Peter Arius, Stainless Steel Rat, Ulrik Dickow, Jack Vinson, Daniel Quinlan, Frank D. Cringle, Geoffrey T. Dairiki, Fabrice Popineau and Andrew Eskilsson have all contributed code and suggestions. File: gnus, Node: New Features, Next: Newest Features, Prev: Contributors, Up: History New Features ------------ * The look of all buffers can be changed by setting format-like variables (*note Group Buffer Format::. and *note Summary Buffer Format::.). * Local spool and several NNTP servers can be used at once (*note Select Methods::.). * You can combine groups into virtual groups (*note Virtual Groups::.). * You can read a number of different mail formats (*note Getting Mail::.). All the mail backends implement a convenient mail expiry scheme (*note 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 (*note Customizing Threading::.). * Killed groups can be displayed in the group buffer, and you can read them as well (*note 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 (*note The Active File::.). * Gnus implements a sliding scale of subscribedness to groups (*note Group Levels::.). * You can score articles according to any number of criteria (*note Scoring::.). You can even get Gnus to find out how to score articles for you (*note 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 (*note 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 (*note Process/Prefix::.). * You can grep through a subset of groups and create a group from the results (*note Kibozed Groups::.). * You can list subsets of groups according to, well, anything (*note Listing Groups::.). * You can browse foreign servers and subscribe to groups from those servers (*note Browse Foreign Server::.). * Gnus can fetch articles asynchronously on a second connection to the server (*note Asynchronous Fetching::.). * You can cache articles locally (*note Article Caching::.). * The uudecode functions have been expanded and generalized (*note Decoding Articles::.). * You can still post uuencoded articles, which was a little-known feature of GNUS' past (*note Uuencoding and Posting::.). * Fetching parents (and other articles) now actually works without glitches (*note Finding the Parent::.). * Gnus can fetch FAQs and group descriptions (*note Group Information::.). * Digests (and other files) can be used as the basis for groups (*note Document Groups::.). * Articles can be highlighted and customized (*note Customizing Articles::.). * URLs and other external references can be buttonized (*note Article Buttons::.). * You can do lots of strange stuff with the Gnus window & frame configuration (*note Windows Configuration::.). * You can click on buttons instead of using the keyboard (*note Buttons::.). * Gnus can use NoCeM files to weed out spam (*note NoCeM::.). This is, of course, just a *short* overview of the *most* important new features. No, really. There are tons more. Yes, we have feeping creaturism in full effect, but nothing too gratuitous, I would hope. File: gnus, Node: Newest Features, Prev: New Features, Up: History Newest Features --------------- Also known as the "todo list". Sure to be implemented before the next millennium. Be afraid. Be very afraid. * Native MIME support is something that should be done. * A better and simpler method for specifying mail composing methods. * Allow posting through mail-to-news gateways. * Really do unbinhexing. And much, much, much more. There is more to come than has already been implemented. (But that's always true, isn't it?) `' is where the actual up-to-the-second todo list is located, so if you're really curious, you could point your Web browser over that-a-way.