Import Oort Gnus v0.19.

[elisp/gnus.git-] / etc / gnus-tut.txt

From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
Subject: So you want to use the new Gnus
Message-ID: <lars-doc1@eyesore.no>

Actually, since you are reading this, chances are you are already
using the new Gnus.  Congratulations.

This entire newsgroup you are reading is, in fact, no real newsgroup
at all, in the traditional sense.  It is an example of one of the
"foreign" select methods that Gnus may use.

The text you are now reading is stored in the "etc" directory with the
rest of the Emacs sources.  You are using the "nndoc" backend for
accessing it.  Scary, isn't it?

This isn't the real documentation.  `M-x info', `m gnus <RET>' to read
that.  This "newsgroup" is intended as a kinder, gentler way of getting
people started.

Gnus is a rewrite of GNUS 4.1, written by Masanobu Umeda.  The rewrite
was done by moi, yours truly, your humble servant, Lars Magne
Ingebrigtsen.  If you have a WWW browser, you can investigate to your
heart's delight at <URL:http://www.gnus.org/> and
<URL:http://quimby.gnus.org/lmi/>.

;; Copyright (C) 1995 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

;; Author: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>
;; Keywords: news

;; This file is part of GNU Emacs.

;; GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
;; the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
;; any later version.

;; GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
;; but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
;; GNU General Public License for more details.

;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
;; along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to the
;; Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
;; Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
Subject: Starting up
Message-ID: <lars-doc2@eyesore.no>

If you are having problems with Gnus not finding your server, you have
to set `gnus-select-method'.  A "method" is a way of specifying *how*
the news is to be found, and from *where*.

Say you want to read news from you local, friendly nntp server
"news.my.local.server". 

(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.my.local.server"))

Quite easy, huh?

From the news spool:

(setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))

From your mh-e spool:

(setq gnus-select-method '(nnmh ""))

There's a whole bunch of other methods for reading mail and news, see
the "Foreign groups" article for that.


From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
Subject: Where are all the groups, then?
Message-ID: <lars-doc3@eyesore.no>

If this is the first time you have used a newsreader, you won't have a
.newsrc file.  This means that Gnus will think that all the newsgroups
on the server are "new", and kill them all.

If you have a .newsrc file, the new groups will be processed with the
function in the `gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method' variable, which is
`gnus-subscribe-zombies' by default.

This means that all the groups have been made into "zombies" - not
quite dead, but not exactly alive, either.

Jump back to the *Group* buffer, and type `A z' to list all the zombie
groups.  Look though the list, and subscribe to the groups you want to
read by pressing `u' on the one you think look interesting.

If all the groups have been killed, type `A k' to list all the killed
groups.  Subscribe to them the same way.

When you are satisfied, press `S z' to kill all the zombie groups.

Now you should have a nice list of all groups you are interested in.

(If you later want to subscribe to more groups, press `A k' to
list all the kill groups, and repeat.  You can also type `U' and be
prompted for groups to subscribe to.)


From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
Subject: I want to read my mail!
Message-ID: <lars-doc4@eyesore.no>

Yes, Virginia, you can read mail with Gnus.

First you have to decide which mail backend you want to use.  You have
nnml, which is a one-file-one-mail backend, which is quite nice, but
apt to make your systems administrator go crazy and come after you
with a shotgun.

nnmbox uses a Unix mail box to store mail.  Nice, but slow.

nnmh uses mh-e folders, which is also a one-file-one-mail thingie, but
slower than nnml.  (It doesn't support NOV files.)

So if you want to go with nnmbox, you can simply say:

(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnmbox "")))

(The same for the other methods, kind of.)

You should also set `nnmail-split-methods' to something sensible: 

(setq nnmail-split-methods 
      '(("mail.junk" "From:.*Lars")
        ("mail.misc "")))

This will put all mail from me in you junk mail group, and the rest in
"mail.misc". 

These groups will be subscribe the same way as the normal groups, so
you will probably find them among the zombie groups after you set
these variables and re-start Gnus.


From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
Subject: Foreign newsgroups
Message-ID: <lars-doc5@eyesore.no>

These are groups that do not come from `gnus-select-method'. 

Say you want to read "alt.furniture.couches" from "news.funet.fi".  You
can then either type `B news.funet.fi <RET>' to browse that server and
subscribe to that group, or you can type 
`G m alt.furniture.couches<RET>nntp<RET>news.funet.fi<RET>', if you
like to type a lot.

If you want to read a directory as a newsgroup, you can create an
nndir group, much the same way.  There's a shorthand for that,
though.  If, for instance, you want to read the (ding) list archives,
you could type `G d /ftp <RET>'.

There's lots more to know about foreign groups, but you have to read
the info pages to find out more.


From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
Subject: Low level changes in GNUS, or, Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
Message-ID: <lars-doc6@eyesore.no>

Gnus really isn't GNUS, even though it looks like it.  If you scrape
the surface, you'll find that most things have changed.

This means that old code that relies on GNUS internals will fail.  

In particular, `gnus-newsrc-hashtb', `gnus-newsrc-assoc',
`gnus-killed-list', the `nntp-header-' macros and the display formats
have all changed.  If you have some code lying around that depend on
these, or change these, you'll have to re-write your code.

Old hilit19 code does not work at all.  In fact, you should probably
remove all hilit code from all the Gnus hooks
(`gnus-group-prepare-hook', `gnus-summary-prepare-hook' and
`gnus-summary-article-hook').  (Well, at the very least the first
two.)  Gnus provides various integrated functions for highlighting,
which are both faster and more accurated.

There is absolutely no chance, whatsoever, of getting Gnus to work
with Emacs 18.  It won't even work on Emacsen older than Emacs
20.3/XEmacs 20.4.  Upgrade your Emacs or die.

        
From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
Subject: How do I re-scan my mail groups?
Message-ID: <lars-doc8@eyesore.no>

Reading the active file from the nntp server is a drag.

Just press `M-g' on the mail groups, and they will be re-scanned.

You can also re-scan all the mail groups by putting them on level 1
(`S l 1'), and saying `1 g' to re-scan all level 1 groups.


From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
Subject: How do I set up virtual newsgroups?
Message-ID: <lars-doc9@eyesore.no>

Virtual newsgroups are collections of other newsgroups.  Why people
want this is beyond me, but here goes:

Create the group by saying

`G V my.virtual.newsgroup<RET>nnvirtual<RET>^rec\.aquaria\.*<RET>'

This will create the group "nnvirtual:my.virtual.newsgroup", which
will collect all articles from all the groups in the "rec.aquaria"
hierarchy.  

If you want to edit the regular expression, just type `M-e' on the
group line.

Note that all the groups that are part of the virtual group have to be
alive.  This means that the cannot, absolutely not, be zombie or
killed.  They can be unsubscribed; that's no problem.

You can combine groups from different servers in the same virtual
newsgroup, something that may actually be useful.  Say you have the
group "comp.headers" on the server "news.server.no" and the same group
on "news.server.edu".  If people have posted articles with Distribution
headers that stop propagation of their articles, combining these two
newsgroups into one virtual newsgroup should give you a better view of
what's going on.

One caveat, though: The virtual group article numbers from the first
source group (group A) will always be lower than the article numbers
from the second (group B).  This means that Gnus will believe that
articles from group A are older than articles from group B.  Threading
will lessen these problems, but it might be a good idea to sort the
threads over the date of the articles to get a correct feel for the
flow of the groups:

(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions '(gnus-thread-sort-by-date))

If you only want this in virtual groups, you could say something along
the lines of:

(setq gnus-select-group-hook
      (lambda ()
        (if (eq 'nnvirtual (car (gnus-find-method-for-group 
                                  gnus-newsgroup-name)))
            (progn
              (make-local-variable 'gnus-thread-sort-functions)
              (setq gnus-thread-sort-functions '(gnus-thread-sort-by-date))))))


From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995
From: larsi@gnus.org (ding)
Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995
Subject: Bugs & stuff
Message-ID: <lars-doc7@eyesore.no>

If you want to report a bug, please type `M-x gnus-bug'.  This will
give me a precise overview of your Gnus and Emacs version numbers,
along with a look at all Gnus variables you have changed.

Du not expect a reply back, but your bug should be fixed in the next
version.  If the bug persists, please re-submit your bug report.

When a bug occurs, I need a recipe for how to trigger the bug.  You
have to tell me exactly what you do to uncover the bug, and you should
(setq debug-on-error t) and send me the backtrace along with the bug
report.  

If I am not able to reproduce the bug, I won't be able to fix it.

I would, of course, prefer that you locate the bug, fix it, and mail
me the patches, but one can't have everything. 

If you have any questions on usage, the "ding@gnus.org" mailing list
is where to post the questions.


From fschmitt Sat Mar 22 18:13:00 2003
From: faq@my.gnus.org (Gnus FAQ team)
Date: Sat Mar 22 18:13:00 2003
Subject: Gnus FAQ
Message-ID: <lars-doc8@eyesore.no>

This is the text version of the Gnus FAQ, see http://my.gnus.org for
the up to date version of this document, there you can also find a
html version and various other formats. There's also a texinfo version 
of the FAQ distributed with Gnus.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Frequently Asked Questions with Answers
Glossary

Abstract

This is the new Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list. If you have a
Web browser, the official hypertext version is at http://
my.gnus.org/FAQ/ [http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/], the Docbook source is
available from http://sourceforge.net [http://sourceforge.net/
projects/gnus/].

Please submit features and suggestions to the FAQ discussion list
[mailto:faq-discuss@my.gnus.org]. The list is protected against
junk mail with qconfirm [http://smarden.org/qconfirm/index.html].
As a subscriber, your submissions will automatically pass. You can
also subscribe to the list by sending a blank email to
faq-discuss-subscribe@my.gnus.org
[mailto:faq-discuss-subscribe@my.gnus.org] and browse the archive.

Introduction

This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.

Gnus is a Usenet Newsreader and Electronic Mail User Agent
implemented as a part of Emacs. It's been around in some form for
almost a decade now, and has been distributed as a standard part of
Emacs for much of that time. Gnus 5 is the latest (and greatest)
incarnation. The original version was called GNUS, and was written
by Masanobu UMEDA. When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne
Ingebrigtsen grew bored and decided to rewrite Gnus.

Its biggest strength is the fact that it is extremely customizable.
It is somewhat intimidating at first glance, but most of the
complexity can be ignored until you're ready to take advantage of
it. If you receive a reasonable volume of e-mail (you're on various
mailing lists), or you would like to read high-volume mailing lists
but cannot keep up with them, or read high volume newsgroups or are
just bored, then Gnus is what you want.

This FAQ was maintained by Justin Sheehy until March 2002. He would
like to thank Steve Baur and Per Abrahamsen for doing a wonderful
job with this FAQ before him. We would like to do the same -
thanks, Justin!

If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at:
http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/ [http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/]. This version is
much nicer than the unofficial hypertext versions that are archived
at Utrecht, Oxford, Smart Pages, Ohio State, and other FAQ
archives. See the resources question below if you want information
on obtaining it in another format.

The information contained here was compiled with the assistance of
the Gnus development mailing list, and any errors or misprints are
the my.gnus.org team's fault, sorry.

Frequently Asked Questions with Answers

1. Installation FAQ

    1.1. What is the latest version of Gnus?
    1.2. What's new in 5.10.0?
    1.3. Where and how to get Gnus?
    1.4. What to do with the tarball now?
    1.5. Which version of Emacs do I need?
    1.6. How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?

2. Startup / Group buffer

    2.1. Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save
        file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean
        and how to prevent it?
    2.2. Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to,
        what's this?
    2.3. How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
    2.4. My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to
        sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse
        through them?
    2.5. How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to
        sort the groups in a topic?

3. Getting Messages

    3.1. I just installed Gnus, started it via M-x gnus but it only
        says "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
    3.2. I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus
        means.
    3.3. My news server requires authentication, how to store user
        name and password on disk?
    3.4. Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to
        subscribe to a group.
    3.5. Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed
        to post on this server as well as I am, what's that?
    3.6. I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this
        possible?
    3.7. And how about local spool files?
    3.8. OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read
        my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it?
    3.9. And what about IMAP?
    3.10. At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers,
        can I use Gnus to read my mail from it?
    3.11. Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it
        retrieves via POP3?

4. Reading messages

    4.1. When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to
        view them again?
    4.2. How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I
        enter a group, even when it's read?
    4.3. How to view the headers of a message?
    4.4. How to view the raw unformatted message?
    4.5. How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at
        the top of the article buffer?
    4.6. I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the
        text part if it's available. How to do it?
    4.7. Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my
        HTML-mails?
    4.8. Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails
        more readable?
    4.9. Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific
        authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I
        highlight more interesting ones in some way?
    4.10. How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups,
        or set other variables specific for some groups?
    4.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to
        those?
    4.12. The number of total messages in a group which Gnus
        displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in
        mail groups. Is this a bug?
    4.13. I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer,
        how to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
    4.14. I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to
        tweak it?
    4.15. How to split incoming mails in several groups?

5. Composing messages

    5.1. What are the basic commands I need to know for sending
        mail and postings?
    5.2. How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
    5.3. How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To,
        signature...?
    5.4. Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on
        the group I post too?
    5.5. Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly
        spell-checking?
    5.6. Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting
        to?
    5.7. Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember
        all those email addresses?
    5.8. Sometimes I see little images at the top of article
        buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my
        postings, too?
    5.9. Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups.
        Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in newsgroups?
    5.10. How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
    5.11. I want gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and
        news, how to do it?
    5.12. People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why aren't
        they and how to fix it?

6. Old messages

    6.1. How to import my old mail into Gnus?
    6.2. How to archive interesting messages?
    6.3. How to search for a specific message?
    6.4. How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
    6.5. I want that all read messages are expired (at least in
        some groups). How to do it?
    6.6. I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move
        them to another group.

7. Gnus in a dial-up environment

    7.1. I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I
        minimize the time I've got to be connected?
    7.2. So what was this thing about the Agent?
    7.3. I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it?
    7.4. How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings while
        I'm offline?

8. Getting help

    8.1. How to find information and help inside Emacs?
    8.2. I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g.
        attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
    8.3. Which websites should I know?
    8.4. Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
    8.5. Where to report bugs?
    8.6. I need real-time help, where to find it?

9. Tuning Gnus

    9.1. Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
    9.2. How to speed up the process of entering a group?
    9.3. Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?

1. Installation FAQ

1.1.  What is the latest version of Gnus?

      Jingle please: Gnus 5.10.0 is released, get it while it's hot! As
      well as the step in version number is rather small, Gnus 5.10 has
      tons of new features which you shouldn't miss, however if you are
      cautious, you might prefer to stay with 5.8.8 respectively 5.9
      (they are basically the same) until some bugfix releases are out.

1.2.  What's new in 5.10.0?

      First of all, you should have a look into the file GNUS-NEWS in the
      toplevel directory of the Gnus tarball, there the most important
      changes are listed. Here's a short list of the changes I find
      especially important/interesting:

        * Major rewrite of the Gnus agent, Gnus agent is now active by
          default.

          Many new article washing functions for dealing with ugly
          formatted articles.

          Anti Spam features.

          message-utils now included in Gnus.

          New format specifiers for summary lines, e.g. %B for a complex
          trn-style thread tree.

1.3.  Where and how to get Gnus?

      The latest released version of Gnus isn't included in Emacs 21 and
      until now it also isn't available through the package system of
      XEmacs 21.4, therefor you should get the Gnus tarball from http://
      www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz [http://www.gnus.org/dist/
      gnus.tar.gz] or via anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/
      gnus.tar.gz [ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz].

1.4.  What to do with the tarball now?

      Untar it via tar xvzf gnus.tar.gz and do the common ./configure;
      make; make install circle. (under MS-Windows either get the Cygwin
      environment from http://www.cygwin.com [http://www.cygwin.com]
      which allows you to do what's described above or unpack the tarball
      with some packer (e.g. Winace from http://www.winace.com [http://
      www.winace.com]) and use the batch-file make.bat included in the
      tarball to install Gnus. If you don't want to (or aren't allowed
      to) install Gnus system-wide, you can install it in your home
      directory and add the following lines to your ~/.xemacs/init.el or
      ~/.emacs:

      (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/gnus/lisp")
      (if (featurep 'xemacs)
          (add-to-list 'Info-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/")
        (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/"))


      Make sure that you don't have any gnus related stuff before this
      line, on MS Windows use something like "C:/path/to/lisp" (yes, "/
      ").

1.5.  Which version of Emacs do I need?

      Gnus 5.10.0 requires an Emacs version that is greater than or equal
      to Emacs 20.3 or XEmacs 20.1.

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

      You can't use the same copy of Gnus in both as the Lisp files are
      byte-compiled to a format which is different depending on which
      Emacs did the compilation. Get one copy of Gnus for Emacs and one
      for XEmacs.

2. Startup / Group buffer

2.1.  Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save file
      exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean and how to
      prevent it?

      This message means that the last time you used Gnus, it wasn't
      properly exited and therefor couldn't write its informations to
      disk (e.g. which messages you read), you are now asked if you want
      to restore those informations from the auto-save file.

      To prevent this message make sure you exit Gnus via q in group
      buffer instead of just killing Emacs.

2.2.  Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to, what's this?

      You get the message described in the q/a pair above while starting
      Gnus, right? It's an other symptom for the same problem, so read
      the answer above.

2.3.  How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?

      You've got to tweak the value of the variable
      gnus-group-line-format. See the manual node "Group Line
      Specification" for information on how to do this. An example for
      this (guess from whose .gnus :-)):

      (setq gnus-group-line-format "%P%M%S[%5t]%5y : %(%g%)\n")


2.4.  My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to sort my
      groups into categories so I can easier browse through them?

      Gnus offers the topic mode, it allows you to sort your groups in,
      well, topics, e.g. all groups dealing with Linux under the topic
      linux, all dealing with music under the topic music and all dealing
      with scottish music under the topic scottish which is a subtopic of
      music.

      To enter topic mode, just hit t while in Group buffer. Now you can
      use T n to create a topic at point and T m to move a group to a
      specific topic. For more commands see the manual or the menu. You
      might want to include the %P specifier at the beginning of your
      gnus-group-line-format variable to have the groups nicely indented.

2.5.  How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to sort the
      groups in a topic?

      Move point over the group you want to move and hit C-k, now move
      point to the place where you want the group to be and hit C-y.

3. Getting Messages

3.1.  I just installed Gnus, started it via M-x gnus but it only says
      "nntp (news) open error", what to do?

      You've got to tell Gnus where to fetch the news from. Read the
      documentation for information on how to do this. As a first start,
      put those lines in ~/.gnus:

      (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.yourprovider.net"))
      (setq user-mail-address "you@yourprovider.net")
      (setq user-full-name "Your Name")


3.2.  I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.

      The ~/ means the home directory where Gnus and Emacs look for the
      configuration files. However, you don't really need to know what
      this means, it suffices that Emacs knows what it means :-) You can
      type C-x C-f ~/.gnus RET (yes, with the forward slash, even on
      Windows), and Emacs will open the right file for you. (It will most
      likely be new, and thus empty.) However, I'd discourage you from
      doing so, since the directory Emacs chooses will most certainly not
      be what you want, so let's do it the correct way. The first thing
      you've got to do is to create a suitable directory (no blanks in
      directory name please) e.g. c:\myhome. Then you must set the
      environment variable HOME to this directory. To do this under Win9x
      or Me include the line

      SET HOME=C:\myhome


      in your autoexec.bat and reboot. Under NT, 2000 and XP, hit
      Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system options (if it doesn't work, go
      to Control Panel -> System). There you'll find the possibility to
      set environment variables, create a new one with name HOME and
      value C:\myhome, a reboot is not necessary.

      Now to create ~/.gnus, say C-x C-f ~/.gnus RET C-x C-s. in Emacs.

3.3.  My news server requires authentication, how to store user name and
      password on disk?

      Create a file ~/.authinfo which includes for each server a line
      like this

      machine news.yourprovider.net login YourUserName password YourPassword

      . Make sure that the file isn't readable to others if you work on a
      OS which is capable of doing so. (Under Unix say

      chmod 600 ~/.authinfo

      in a shell.)

3.4.  Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to subscribe to
      a group.

      If you know the name of the group say U name.of.group RET in group
      buffer (use the tab-completion Luke). Otherwise hit ^ in group
      buffer, this brings you to the server buffer. Now place point (the
      cursor) over the server which carries the group you want, hit RET,
      move point to the group you want to subscribe to and say u to
      subscribe to it.

3.5.  Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed to post on
      this server as well as I am, what's that?

      Some providers allow restricted anonymous access and full access
      only after authorization. To make Gnus send authinfo to those
      servers append

      force yes

      to the line for those servers in ~/.authinfo.

3.6.  I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible?

      Of course. You can specify more sources for articles in the
      variable gnus-secondary-select-methods. Add something like this in
      ~/.gnus:

      (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourSecondProvider.net"))
      (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nntp "news.yourThirdProvider.net"))


3.7.  And how about local spool files?

      No problem, this is just one more select method called nnspool, so
      you want this:

      (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnspool ""))


      Or this if you don't want an NNTP Server as primary news source:

      (setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))


      Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you want
      something different, change the line above to something like this:

      (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
                   '(nnspool "" (nnspool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")))


      This sets the spool directory for this server only. You might have
      to specify more stuff like the program used to post articles, see
      the Gnus manual on how to do this.

3.8.  OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail
      with Gnus, too. How to do it?

      That's a bit harder since there are many possible sources for mail,
      many possible ways for storing mail and many different ways for
      sending mail. The most common cases are these: 1: You want to read
      your mail from a pop3 server and send them directly to a SMTP
      Server 2: Some program like fetchmail retrieves your mail and
      stores it on disk from where Gnus shall read it. Outgoing mail is
      sent by Sendmail, Postfix or some other MTA. Sometimes, you even
      need a combination of the above cases.

      However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way it
      should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which back end to use.
      Gnus supports many different back ends, the most commonly used one
      is nnml. It stores every mail in one file and is therefor quite
      fast. However you might prefer a one file per group approach if
      your file system has problems with many small files, the nnfolder
      back end is then probably the choice for you. To use nnml add the
      following to ~/.gnus:

      (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml ""))


      As you might have guessed, if you want nnfolder, it's

      (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnfolder ""))


      Now we need to tell Gnus, where to get it's mail from. If it's a
      POP3 server, then you need something like this:

      (eval-after-load "mail-source"
        '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net"
                                          :user "yourUserName"
                                          :password "yourPassword"))


      Make sure ~/.gnus isn't readable to others if you store your
      password there. If you want to read your mail from a traditional
      spool file on your local machine, it's

      (eval-after-load "mail-source"
        '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(file :path "/path/to/spool/file"))


      If it's a Maildir, with one file per message as used by postfix,
      Qmail and (optionally) fetchmail it's

      (eval-after-load "mail-source"
        '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(maildir :path "/path/to/Maildir/"
                                              :subdirs ("cur" "new")))


      And finally if you want to read your mail from several files in one
      directory, for example because procmail already split your mail,
      it's

      (eval-after-load "mail-source"
        '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(directory :path "/path/to/procmail-dir/"
                                                :suffix ".prcml"))


      Where :suffix ".prcml" tells Gnus only to use files with the suffix
      .prcml.

      OK, now you only need to tell Gnus how to send mail. If you want to
      send mail via sendmail (or whichever MTA is playing the role of
      sendmail on your system), you don't need to do anything. However,
      if you want to send your mail to an SMTP Server you need the
      following in your ~/.gnus

      (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
      (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
      (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.yourProvider.net")


3.9.  And what about IMAP?

      There are two ways of using IMAP with Gnus. The first one is to use
      IMAP like POP3, that means Gnus fetches the mail from the IMAP
      server and stores it on disk. If you want to do this (you don't
      really want to do this) add the following to ~/.gnus

      (add-to-list 'mail-sources '(imap :server "mail.mycorp.com"
                                        :user "username"
                                        :pass "password"
                                        :stream network
                                        :authentication login
                                        :mailbox "INBOX"
                                        :fetchflag "\\Seen"))


      You might have to tweak the values for stream and/or
      authentification, see the Gnus manual node "Mail Source Specifiers"
      for possible values.

      If you want to use IMAP the way it's intended, you've got to follow
      a different approach. You've got to add the nnimap back end to your
      select method and give the information about the server there.

      (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
                               '(nnimap "Give the baby a name"
                                        (nnimap-address "imap.yourProvider.net")
                                        (nnimap-port 143)
                                        (nnimap-list-pattern "archive.*")))


      Again, you might have to specify how to authenticate to the server
      if Gnus can't guess the correct way, see the Manual Node "IMAP" for
      detailed information.

3.10. At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
      Gnus to read my mail from it?

      Offer your administrator a pair of new running shoes for activating
      IMAP on the server and follow the instructions above.

3.11. Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it retrieves
      via POP3?

      First of all, that's not the way POP3 is intended to work, if you
      have the possibility, you should use the IMAP Protocol if you want
      your messages to stay on the server. Nevertheless there might be
      situations where you need the feature, but sadly Gnus itself has no
      predefined functionality to do so.

      However this is Gnus county so there are possibilities to achieve
      what you want. The easiest way is to get an external program which
      retrieves copies of the mail and stores them on disk, so Gnus can
      read it from there. On Unix systems you could use e.g. fetchmail
      for this, on MS Windows you can use Hamster, an excellent local
      news and mail server.

      The other solution would be, to replace the method Gnus uses to get
      mail from POP3 servers by one which is capable of leaving the mail
      on the server. If you use XEmacs, get the package mail-lib, it
      includes an enhanced pop3.el, look in the file, there's
      documentation on how to tell Gnus to use it and not to delete the
      retrieved mail. For GNU Emacs look for the file epop3.el which can
      do the same (If you know the home of this file, please send me an
      e-mail). You can also tell Gnus to use an external program (e.g.
      fetchmail) to fetch your mail, see the info node "Mail Source
      Specifiers" in the Gnus manual on how to do it.

4. Reading messages

4.1.  When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them
      again?

      If you enter the group by saying RET in summary buffer with point
      over the group, only unread and ticked messages are loaded. Say C-u
      RET instead to load all available messages. If you want only the
      e.g. 300 newest say C-u 300 RET

      Loading only unread messages can be annoying if you have threaded
      view enabled, say

      (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 'some)


      in ~/.gnus to load enough old articles to prevent teared threads,
      replace 'some with t to load all articles (Warning: Both settings
      enlarge the amount of data which is fetched when you enter a group
      and slow down the process of entering a group).

      If you already use Gnus 5.10.0, you can say /o N In summary buffer
      to load the last N messages, this feature is not available in 5.8.8

      If you don't want all old messages, but the parent of the message
      you're just reading, you can say ^, if you want to retrieve the
      whole thread the message you're just reading belongs to, A T is
      your friend.

4.2.  How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I enter a
      group, even when it's read?

      You can tick important messages. To do this hit u while point is in
      summary buffer over the message. When you want to remove the mark,
      hit either d (this deletes the tick mark and set's unread mark) or
      M c (which deletes all marks for the message).

4.3.  How to view the headers of a message?

      Say t to show all headers, one more t hides them again.

4.4.  How to view the raw unformatted message?

      Say C-u g to show the raw message g returns to normal view.

4.5.  How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at the top of
      the article buffer?

      The variable gnus-visible-headers controls which headers are shown,
      its value is a regular expression, header lines which match it are
      shown. So if you want author, subject, date, and if the header
      exists, Followup-To and MUA / NUA say this in ~/.gnus:

      (setq gnus-visible-headers
      "^\\(From:\\|Subject:\\|Date:\\|Followup-To:\\|X-Newsreader:\\|User-Agent:\\|X-Mailer:\\)")


4.6.  I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if
      it's available. How to do it?

      Say

      (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
       '(progn
            (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
            (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext")))


      in ~/.gnus. If you don't want HTML rendered, even if there's no
      text alternative add

      (setq mm-automatic-display (remove "text/html" mm-automatic-display))


      too.

4.7.  Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails?

      Only if you use Gnus 5.10.0 or younger. In this case you've got the
      choice between w3, w3m, links, lynx and html2text, which one is
      used can be specified in the variable mm-text-html-renderer, so if
      you want links to render your mail say

      (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'links)


4.8.  Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails more
      readable?

      Gnus offers you several functions to "wash" incoming mail, you can
      find them if you browse through the menu, item Article->Washing.
      The most interesting ones are probably "Wrap long lines" ( W w ),
      "Decode ROT13" ( W r ) and "Outlook Deuglify" which repairs the
      dumb quoting used by many users of Microsoft products ( W Y f gives
      you full deuglify. See W Y C-h or have a look at the menus for
      other deuglifications). Outlook deuglify is only available since
      Gnus 5.10.0.

4.9.  Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific authors or
      with specific words in the subject? And can I highlight more
      interesting ones in some way?

      You want Scoring. Scoring means, that you define rules which assign
      each message an integer value. Depending on the value the message
      is highlighted in summary buffer (if it's high, say +2000) or
      automatically marked read (if the value is low, say -800) or some
      other action happens.

      There are basically three ways of setting up rules which assign the
      scoring-value to messages. The first and easiest way is to set up
      rules based on the article you are just reading. Say you're reading
      a message by a guy who always writes nonsense and you want to
      ignore his messages in the future. Hit L, to set up a rule which
      lowers the score. Now Gnus asks you which the criteria for lowering
      the Score shall be. Hit ? twice to see all possibilities, we want a
      which means the author (the from header). Now Gnus wants to know
      which kind of matching we want. Hit either e for an exact match or
      s for substring-match and delete afterwards everything but the name
      to score down all authors with the given name no matter which email
      address is used. Now you need to tell Gnus when to apply the rule
      and how long it should last, hit e.g. p to apply the rule now and
      let it last forever. If you want to raise the score instead of
      lowering it say I instead of L.

      You can also set up rules by hand. To do this say V f in summary
      buffer. Then you are asked for the name of the score file, it's
      name.of.group.SCORE for rules valid in only one group or all.Score
      for rules valid in all groups. See the Gnus manual for the exact
      syntax, basically it's one big list whose elements are lists again.
      the first element of those lists is the header to score on, then
      one more list with what to match, which score to assign, when to
      expire the rule and how to do the matching. If you find me very
      interesting, you could e.g. add the following to your all.Score:

      (("references" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 500 nil s))
       ("message-id" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 999 nil s)))


      This would add 999 to the score of messages written by me and 500
      to the score of messages which are a (possibly indirect) answer to
      a message written by me. Of course nobody with a sane mind would do
      this :-)

      The third alternative is adaptive scoring. This means Gnus watches
      you and tries to find out what you find interesting and what
      annoying and sets up rules which reflect this. Adaptive scoring can
      be a huge help when reading high traffic groups. If you want to
      activate adaptive scoring say

      (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t)


      in ~/.gnus.

4.10. How can I disable threading in some (e.g. mail-) groups, or set
      other variables specific for some groups?

      While in group buffer move point over the group and hit G c, this
      opens a buffer where you can set options for the group. At the
      bottom of the buffer you'll find an item that allows you to set
      variables locally for the group. To disable threading enter
      gnus-show-threads as name of variable and nil as value. Hit button
      done at the top of the buffer when you're ready.

4.11. Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to those?

      Stop those "Can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes in Gnus
      Country :-). It's a three step process: First we make faces
      (specifications of how summary-line shall look like) for those
      postings, then we'll give them some special score and finally we'll
      tell Gnus to use the new faces. You can find detailed instructions
      on how to do it on my.gnus.org [http://my.gnus.org/Members/dzimmerm
      /HowTo%2C2002-07-25%2C1027619165012198456/view]

4.12. The number of total messages in a group which Gnus displays in
      group buffer is by far to high, especially in mail groups. Is this
      a bug?

      No, that's a matter of design of Gnus, fixing this would mean
      reimplementation of major parts of Gnus' back ends. Gnus thinks
      "highest-article-number - lowest-article-number =
      total-number-of-articles". This works OK for Usenet groups, but if
      you delete and move many messages in mail groups, this fails. To
      cure the symptom, enter the group via C-u RET (this makes Gnus get
      all messages), then hit M P b to mark all messages and then say B m
      name.of.group to move all messages to the group they have been in
      before, they get new message numbers in this process and the count
      is right again (until you delete and move your mail to other groups
      again).

4.13. I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how to
      change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?

      You can control the windows configuration by calling the function
      gnus-add-configuration. The syntax is a bit complicated but
      explained very well in the manual node "Window Layout". Some
      popular examples:

      Instead 25% summary 75% article buffer 35% summary and 65% article
      (the 1.0 for article means "take the remaining space"):

      (gnus-add-configuration '(article (vertical 1.0 (summary .35 point) (article 1.0))))


      A three pane layout, Group buffer on the left, summary buffer
      top-right, article buffer bottom-right:

      (gnus-add-configuration
       '(article
         (horizontal 1.0
                     (vertical 25
                               (group 1.0))
                     (vertical 1.0
                               (summary 0.25 point)
                               (article 1.0)))))
      (gnus-add-configuration
       '(summary
         (horizontal 1.0
                     (vertical 25
                               (group 1.0))
                     (vertical 1.0
                               (summary 1.0 point)))))


4.14. I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it?

      You've got to play around with the variable
      gnus-summary-line-format. It's value is a string of symbols which
      stand for things like author, date, subject etc. A list of the
      available specifiers can be found in the manual node "Summary
      Buffer Lines" and the often forgotten node "Formatting Variables"
      and it's sub-nodes. There you'll find useful things like
      positioning the cursor and tabulators which allow you a summary in
      table form, but sadly hard tabulators are broken in 5.8.8.

      Since 5.10.0, Gnus offers you some very nice new specifiers, e.g.
      %B which draws a thread-tree and %&user-date which gives you a date
      where the details are dependent of the articles age. Here's an
      example which uses both:

      (setq gnus-summary-line-format ":%U%R %B %s %-60=|%4L |%-20,20f |%&user-date; \n")


      resulting in:

      :O     Re: [Richard Stallman] rfc2047.el          |  13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:06
      :O     Re: Revival of the ding-patches list       |  13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:12
      :R  >  Re: Find correct list of articles for a gro|  25 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:16
      :O  \->  ...                                      |  21 |Kai Grossjohann      | 0:01
      :R  >  Re: Cry for help: deuglify.el - moving stuf|  28 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:34
      :O  \->  ...                                      | 115 |Raymond Scholz       | 1:24
      :O    \->  ...                                    |  19 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |15:33
      :O     Slow mailing list                          |  13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:49
      :O     Re: `@' mark not documented                |  13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:50
      :R  >  Re: Gnus still doesn't count messages prope|  23 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:57
      :O  \->  ...                                      |  18 |Kai Grossjohann      | 0:35
      :O    \->  ...                                    |  13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt | 0:56


4.15. How to split incoming mails in several groups?

      Gnus offers two possibilities for splitting mail, the easy
      nnmail-split-methods and the more powerful Fancy Mail Splitting.
      I'll only talk about the first one, refer to the manual, node
      "Fancy Mail Splitting" for the latter.

      The value of nnmail-split-methods is a list, each element is a list
      which stands for a splitting rule. Each rule has the form "group
      where matching articles should go to", "regular expression which
      has to be matched", the first rule which matches wins. The last
      rule must always be a general rule (regular expression .*) which
      denotes where articles should go which don't match any other rule.
      If the folder doesn't exist yet, it will be created as soon as an
      article lands there. By default the mail will be send to all groups
      whose rules match. If you don't want that (you probably don't
      want), say

      (setq nnmail-crosspost nil)


      in ~/.gnus.

      An example might be better than thousand words, so here's my
      nnmail-split-methods. Note that I send duplicates in a special
      group and that the default group is spam, since I filter all mails
      out which are from some list I'm subscribed to or which are
      addressed directly to me before. Those rules kill about 80% of the
      Spam which reaches me (Email addresses are changed to prevent
      spammers from using them):

      (setq nnmail-split-methods
        '(("duplicates" "^Gnus-Warning:.*duplicate")
          ("XEmacs-NT" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@xemacs.bla.*")
          ("Gnus-Tut" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@socha.bla.*")
          ("tcsh" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@mx.gw.bla.*")
          ("BAfH" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@.*uni-muenchen.bla.*")
          ("Hamster-src" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*hamster-sourcen@yahoogroups.\\(de\\|com\\).*")
          ("Tagesschau" "^From: tagesschau <localpart@www.tagesschau.bla>$")
          ("Replies" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@Frank-Schmitt.bla.*")
          ("EK" "^From:.*\\(localpart@privateprovider.bla\\|localpart@workplace.bla\\).*")
          ("Spam" "^Content-Type:.*\\(ks_c_5601-1987\\|EUC-KR\\|big5\\|iso-2022-jp\\).*")
          ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(This really work\\|XINGA\\|ADV:\\|XXX\\|adult\\|sex\\).*")
          ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(\=\?ks_c_5601-1987\?\\|\=\?euc-kr\?\\|\=\?big5\?\\).*")
          ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*BulkMailer.*\\|.*MIME::Lite.*\\|\\)")
          ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*CyberCreek Avalanche\\|.*http\:\/\/GetResponse\.com\\)")
          ("Spam" "^From:.*\\(verizon\.net\\|prontomail\.com\\|money\\|ConsumerDirect\\).*")
          ("Spam" "^Delivered-To: GMX delivery to spamtrap@gmx.bla$")
          ("Spam" "^Received: from link2buy.com")
          ("Spam" "^CC: .*azzrael@t-online.bla")
          ("Spam" "^X-Mailer-Version: 1.50 BETA")
          ("Uni" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@uni-koblenz.bla.*")
          ("Inbox" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*\\(my\ name\\|address@one.bla\\|adress@two.bla\\)")
          ("Spam" "")))


5. Composing messages

5.1.  What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and
      postings?

      To start composing a new mail hit m either in Group or Summary
      buffer, for a posting, it's either a in Group buffer and filling
      the Newsgroups header manually or a in the Summary buffer of the
      group where the posting shall be send to. Replying by mail is r if
      you don't want to cite the author, or import the cited text
      manually and R to cite the text of the original message. For a
      follow up to a newsgroup, it's f and F (analog to r and R.

      Enter new headers above the line saying "--text follows this
      line--", enter the text below the line. When ready hit C-c C-c, to
      send the message, if you want to finish it later hit C-c C-d to
      save it in the drafts group, where you can start editing it again
      by saying D e.

5.2.  How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?

      Say

      (add-hook 'message-mode-hook
            (lambda ()
                 (setq fill-column 72)
                 (turn-on-auto-fill)))


      in ~/.gnus. You can reformat a paragraph by hitting M-q (as usual)

5.3.  How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...?

      There are other ways, but you should use posting styles for this.
      (See below why). This example should make the syntax clear:

      (setq gnus-posting-styles
        '((".*"
           (name "Frank Schmitt")
           (address "me@there.bla")
           (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
           (signature-file "~/.signature")
           ("X-SampleHeader" "foobar")
           (eval (setq some-variable "Foo bar")))))


      The ".*" means that this settings are the default ones (see below),
      valid values for the first element of the following lists are
      signature, signature-file, organization, address, name or body. The
      attribute name can also be a string. In that case, this will be
      used as a header name, and the value will be inserted in the
      headers of the article; if the value is `nil', the header name will
      be removed. You can also say (eval (foo bar)), then the function
      foo will be evaluated with argument bar and the result will be
      thrown away.

5.4.  Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group
      I post too?

      That's the strength of posting styles. Before, we used ".*" to set
      the default for all groups. You can use a regexp like "^gmane" and
      the following settings are only applied to postings you send to the
      gmane hierarchy, use ".*binaries" instead and they will be applied
      to postings send to groups containing the string binaries in their
      name etc.

      You can instead of specifying a regexp specify a function which is
      evaluated, only if it returns true, the corresponding settings take
      effect. Two interesting candidates for this are message-news-p
      which returns t if the current Group is a newsgroup and the
      corresponding message-mail-p.

      Note that all forms that match are applied, that means in the
      example below, when I post to gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general,
      the settings under ".*" are applied and the settings under
      message-news-p and those under "^gmane" and those under "^gmane\
      \.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$". Because of this put
      general settings at the top and specific ones at the bottom.

      (setq gnus-posting-styles
        '((".*"  ;;default
           (name "Frank Schmitt")
           (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
           (signature-file "~/.signature")    )
          ((message-news-p)  ;;Usenet news?
           (address "mySpamTrap@Frank-Schmitt.bla")
           ("Reply-To" "hereRealRepliesOnlyPlease@Frank-Schmitt.bla")    )
          ((message-mail-p)  ;;mail?
           (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.bla")    )
          ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact
           (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.net")
           ("Reply-To" nil)    )
          ("^gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general$"
           (eval (setq mail-envelope-from "Azzrael@rz-online.de"))
           (address "Azzrael@rz-online.de")) ))


5.5.  Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking?

      You can use ispell.el to spell-check stuff in Emacs. So the first
      thing to do is to make sure that you've got either ispell [http://
      fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html] or aspell [http:
      //aspell.sourceforge.net/] installed and in your Path. Then you
      need ispell.el [http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html]
      and for on-the-fly spell-checking flyspell.el [http://
      www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/personnel/Manuel.Serrano/flyspell/
      flyspell.html]. Ispell.el is shipped with Gnus Emacs and available
      through the Emacs package system, flyspell.el is shipped with Emacs
      and part of XEmacs text-modes package which is available through
      the package system, so there should be no need to install them
      manually.

      Ispell.el assumes you use ispell, if you choose aspell say

      (setq ispell-program-name "aspell")

      in your Emacs configuration file.

      If you want your outgoing messages to be spell-checked, say

      (add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)

      In your ~/.gnus, if you prefer on-the-fly spell-checking say

      (add-hook 'message-mode-hook (lambda () (flyspell-mode 1)))

5.6.  Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to?

      Yes, say something like

      (add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook
                (lambda ()
                  (cond
                   ((string-match
                     "^de\\." (gnus-group-real-name gnus-newsgroup-name))
                    (ispell-change-dictionary "deutsch8"))
                   (t
                    (ispell-change-dictionary "english")))))


      in ~/.gnus. Change "^de\\." and "deutsch8" to something that suits
      your needs.

5.7.  Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember all those
      email addresses?

      There's an very basic solution for this, mail aliases. You can
      store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple alias
      syntax:

      alias al        "Al <al@english-heritage.bla>"


      Then typing your alias (followed by a space or punctuation
      character) on a To: or Cc: line in the message buffer will cause
      gnus to insert the full address for you. See the node "Mail
      Aliases" in Message (not Gnus) manual for details.

      However, what you really want is the Insidious Big Brother Database
      bbdb. Get it through the XEmacs package system or from bbdb's
      homepage [http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/]. Now place the following in
      ~/.gnus, to activate bbdb for Gnus:

      (require 'bbdb)
      (bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message)


      Now you probably want some general bbdb configuration, place them
      in ~/.emacs:

      (require 'bbdb)
      ;;If you don't live in Northern America, you should disable the
      ;;syntax check for telephone numbers by saying
      (setq bbdb-north-american-phone-numbers-p nil)
      ;;Tell bbdb about your email address:
      (setq bbdb-user-mail-names
            (regexp-opt '("Your.Email@here.bla"
                          "Your.other@mail.there.bla")))
      ;;cycling while completing email addresses
      (setq bbdb-complete-name-allow-cycling t)
      ;;No popup-buffers
      (setq bbdb-use-pop-up nil)


      Now you should be ready to go. Say M-x bbdb RET RET to open a bbdb
      buffer showing all entries. Say c to create a new entry, b to
      search your BBDB and C-o to add a new field to an entry. If you
      want to add a sender to the BBDB you can also just hit `:' on the
      posting in the summary buffer and you are done. When you now
      compose a new mail, hit TAB to cycle through know recipients.

5.8.  Sometimes I see little images at the top of article buffer. What's
      that and how can I send one with my postings, too?

      Those images are called X-Faces. They are 48*48 pixel b/w pictures,
      encoded in a header line. If you want to include one in your posts,
      you've got to convert some image to a X-Face. So fire up some image
      manipulation program (say Gimp), open the image you want to
      include, cut out the relevant part, reduce color depth to 1 bit,
      resize to 48*48 and save as bitmap. Now you should get the compface
      package from this site [ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/]. and
      create the actual X-face by saying

      cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon |compface > file.face
      cat ./file.face | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g' | sed 's/\"/\\\"/g' > ./file.face.quoted


      if you can't use compface, there's an online X-face converter at
      http://www.dairiki.org/xface/ [http://www.dairiki.org/xface/]. If
      you use MS Windows, you could also use the WinFace program from
      http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/ [http://www.xs4all.nl/
      ~walterln/winface/]. Now you only have to tell Gnus to include the
      X-face in your postings by saying

      (setq message-default-headers
              (with-temp-buffer
                (insert "X-Face: ")
                (insert-file-contents "~/.xemacs/xface")
                (buffer-string)))


      in ~/.gnus.

5.9.  Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in newsgroups. Can Gnus
      warn me, when I'm replying by mail in newsgroups?

      Put this in ~/.gnus:

      (setq gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news t)


      if you already use Gnus 5.10.0, if you still use 5.8.8 or 5.9 try
      this instead:

      (defadvice gnus-summary-reply (around reply-in-news activate)
             (interactive)
              (when (or (not (gnus-news-group-p gnus-newsgroup-name))
                        (y-or-n-p "Really reply? "))
               ad-do-it))


5.10. How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?

      Since 5.10.0 Gnus doesn't generate a sender header by default. For
      older Gnus' try this in ~/.gnus:

      (eval-after-load "message"
            '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))


5.11. I want gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and news, how
      to do it?

      You must set the variable gnus-message-archive-group to do this.
      You can set it to a string giving the name of the group where the
      copies shall go or like in the example below use a function which
      is evaluated and which returns the group to use.

      (setq gnus-message-archive-group
              '((if (message-news-p)
                    "nnml:Send-News"
                  "nnml:Send-Mail")))


5.12. People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why aren't they and
      how to fix it?

      The message-ID is an unique identifier for messages you send. To
      make it unique, Gnus need to know which machine name to put after
      the "@". If the name of the machine where Gnus is running isn't
      suitable (it probably isn't at most private machines) you can tell
      Gnus what to use by saying:

      (defun message-make-message-id()
         (concat "<"(message-unique-id)"@yourmachine.yourdomain.tld>"))


      in ~/.gnus. If you have no idea what to insert for
      "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld", you've got several choices. You can
      either ask your provider if he allows you to use something like
      yourUserName.userfqdn.provider.net, or you can use
      somethingUnique.yourdomain.tld if you own the domain
      yourdomain.tld, or you can register at a service which gives
      private users a FQDN for free, e.g. http://www.stura.tu-freiberg.de
      /~dlx/addfqdn.html [http://www.stura.tu-freiberg.de/~dlx/
      addfqdn.html]. (Sorry but this website is in German, if you know of
      an English one offering the same, drop me a note).

      Finally you can tell Gnus not to generate a Message-ID for News at
      all (and letting the server do the job) by saying

      (setq message-required-news-headers
        (remove' Message-ID message-required-news-headers))


      you can also tell Gnus not to generate Message-IDs for mail by
      saying

      (setq message-required-mail-headers
        (remove' Message-ID message-required-mail-headers))


      , however some mail servers don't generate proper Message-IDs, too,
      so test if your Mail Server behaves correctly by sending yourself a
      Mail and looking at the Message-ID.

6. Old messages

6.1.  How to import my old mail into Gnus?

      The easiest way is to tell your old mail program to export the
      messages in mbox format. Most Unix mailers are able to do this, if
      you come from the MS Windows world, you may find tools at http://
      mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/ [http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/].

      Now you've got to import this mbox file into Gnus. To do this,
      create a nndoc group based on the mbox file by saying G f /path/
      file.mbox RET in Group buffer. You now have read-only access to
      your mail. If you want to import the messages to your normal Gnus
      mail groups hierarchy, enter the nndoc group you've just created by
      saying C-u RET (thus making sure all messages are retrieved), mark
      all messages by saying M P b and either copy them to the desired
      group by saying B c name.of.group RET or send them through
      nnmail-split-methods (respool them) by saying B r.

6.2.  How to archive interesting messages?

      If you stumble across an interesting message, say in gnu.emacs.gnus
      and want to archive it there are several solutions. The first and
      easiest is to save it to a file by saying O f. However, wouldn't it
      be much more convenient to have more direct access to the archived
      message from Gnus? If you say yes, put this snippet by Frank Haun
      <pille3003@fhaun.de> in ~/.gnus:

      (defun my-archive-article (&optional n)
        "Copies one or more article(s) to a corresponding `nnml:' group, e.g.
      `gnus.ding' goes to `nnml:1.gnus.ding'. And `nnml:List-gnus.ding' goes
      to `nnml:1.List-gnus-ding'.

      Use process marks or mark a region in the summary buffer to archive
      more then one article."
        (interactive "P")
        (let ((archive-name
               (format
                "nnml:1.%s"
                (if (featurep 'xemacs)
                    (replace-in-string gnus-newsgroup-name "^.*:" "")
                  (replace-regexp-in-string "^.*:" "" gnus-newsgroup-name)))))
          (gnus-summary-copy-article n archive-name)))


      You can now say M-x my-archive-article in summary buffer to archive
      the article under the cursor in a nnml group. (Change nnml to your
      preferred back end)

      Of course you can also make sure the cache is enabled by saying

      (setq gnus-use-cache t)


      then you only have to set either the tick or the dormant mark for
      articles you want to keep, setting the read mark will remove them
      from cache.

6.3.  How to search for a specific message?

      There are several ways for this, too. For a posting from a Usenet
      group the easiest solution is probably to ask groups.google.com
      [http://groups.google.com], if you found the posting there, tell
      Google to display the raw message, look for the message-id, and say
      M-^ the@message.id RET in a summary buffer. Since Gnus 5.10.0
      there's also a Gnus interface for groups.google.com which you can
      call with G W) in group buffer.

      Another idea which works for both mail and news groups is to enter
      the group where the message you are searching is and use the
      standard Emacs search C-s, it's smart enough to look at articles in
      collapsed threads, too. If you want to search bodies, too try M-s
      instead. Further on there are the gnus-summary-limit-to-foo
      functions, which can help you, too.

      Of course you can also use grep to search through your local mail,
      but this is both slow for big archives and inconvenient since you
      are not displaying the found mail in Gnus. Here comes nnir into
      action. Nnir is a front end to search engines like swish-e or
      swish++ and others. You index your mail with one of those search
      engines and with the help of nnir you can search trough the indexed
      mail and generate a temporary group with all messages which met
      your search criteria. If this sound cool to you get nnir.el from
      ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/ [ftp://
      ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/] or ftp://
      ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/ [ftp://
      ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/]. Instructions on
      how to use it are at the top of the file.

6.4.  How to get rid of old unwanted mail?

      You can of course just mark the mail you don't need anymore by
      saying # with point over the mail and then say B DEL to get rid of
      them forever. You could also instead of actually deleting them,
      send them to a junk-group by saying B m nnml:trash-bin which you
      clear from time to time, but both are not the intended way in Gnus.

      In Gnus, we let mail expire like news expires on a news server.
      That means you tell Gnus the message is expirable (you tell Gnus "I
      don't need this mail anymore") by saying E with point over the mail
      in summary buffer. Now when you leave the group, Gnus looks at all
      messages which you marked as expirable before and if they are old
      enough (default is older than a week) they are deleted.

6.5.  I want that all read messages are expired (at least in some
      groups). How to do it?

      If you want all read messages to be expired (e.g. in mailing lists
      where there's an online archive), you've got two choices:
      auto-expire and total-expire. Auto-expire means, that every article
      which has no marks set and is selected for reading is marked as
      expirable, Gnus hits E for you every time you read a message.
      Total-expire follows a slightly different approach, here all
      article where the read mark is set are expirable.

      To activate auto-expire, include auto-expire in the Group
      parameters for the group. (Hit G c in summary buffer with point
      over the group to change group parameters). For total-expire add
      total-expire to the group-parameters.

      Which method you choose is merely a matter of taste: Auto-expire is
      faster, but it doesn't play together with Adaptive Scoring, so if
      you want to use this feature, you should use total-expire.

      If you want a message to be excluded from expiration in a group
      where total or auto expire is active, set either tick (hit u) or
      dormant mark (hit u), when you use auto-expire, you can also set
      the read mark (hit d).

6.6.  I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them to
      another group.

      Say something like this in ~/.gnus:

      (setq nnmail-expiry-target "nnml:expired")


      (If you want to change the value of nnmail-expiry-target on a per
      group basis see the question "How can I disable threading in some
      (e.g. mail-) groups, or set other variables specific for some
      groups?")

7. Gnus in a dial-up environment

7.1.  I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I minimize
      the time I've got to be connected?

      You've got basically two options: Either you use the Gnus Agent
      (see below) for this, or you can install programs which fetch your
      news and mail to your local disk and Gnus reads the stuff from your
      local machine.

      If you want to follow the second approach, you need a program which
      fetches news and offers them to Gnus, a program which does the same
      for mail and a program which receives the mail you write from Gnus
      and sends them when you're online.

      Let's talk about Unix systems first: For the news part, the easiest
      solution is a small nntp server like Leafnode [http://
      www.leafnode.org/] or sn [http://infa.abo.fi/~patrik/sn/], of
      course you can also install a full featured news server like inn
      [http://www.isc.org/products/INN/]. Then you want to fetch your
      Mail, popular choices are fetchmail [http://www.catb.org/~esr/
      fetchmail/] and getmail [http://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/software/
      getmail-3.0/]. You should tell those to write the mail to your disk
      and Gnus to read it from there. Last but not least the mail sending
      part: This can be done with every MTA like sendmail [http://
      www.sendmail.org/], postfix [http://www.qmail.org/], exim [http://
      www.exim.org/] or qmail [http://www.qmail.org/].

      On windows boxes I'd vote for Hamster [http://www.tglsoft.de/],
      it's a small freeware, open-source program which fetches your mail
      and news from remote servers and offers them to Gnus (or any other
      mail and/or news reader) via nntp respectively POP3 or IMAP. It
      also includes a smtp server for receiving mails from Gnus.

7.2.  So what was this thing about the Agent?

      The Gnus agent is part of Gnus, it allows you to fetch mail and
      news and store them on disk for reading them later when you're
      offline. It kind of mimics offline newsreaders like e.g. Forte
      Agent. If you want to use the Agent place the following in ~/.gnus
      if you are still using 5.8.8 or 5.9 (it's the default since
      5.10.0):

      (setq gnus-agent t)


      Now you've got to select the servers whose groups can be stored
      locally. To do this, open the server buffer (that is press ^ while
      in the group buffer). Now select a server by moving point to the
      line naming that server. Finally, agentize the server by typing J a
      . If you make a mistake, or change your mind, you can undo this
      action by typing J r. When you're done, type 'q' to return to the
      group buffer. Now the next time you enter a group on a agentized
      server, the headers will be stored on disk and read from there the
      next time you enter the group.

7.3.  I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it?

      You can tell the agent to automatically fetch the bodies of
      articles which fulfill certain predicates, this is done in a
      special buffer which can be reached by saying J c in group buffer.
      Please refer to the documentation for information which predicates
      are possible and how exactly to do it.

      Further on you can tell the agent manually which articles to store
      on disk. There are two ways to do this: Number one: In the summary
      buffer, process mark a set of articles that shall be stored in the
      agent by saying # with point over the article and then type J s.
      The other possibility is to set, again in the summary buffer,
      downloadable (%) marks for the articles you want by typing @ with
      point over the article and then typing J u. What's the difference?
      Well, process marks are erased as soon as you exit the summary
      buffer while downloadable marks are permanent. You can actually set
      downloadable marks in several groups then use fetch session ('J s'
      in the GROUP buffer) to fetch all of those articles. The only
      downside is that fetch session also fetches all of the headers for
      every selected group on an agentized server. Depending on the
      volume of headers, the initial fetch session could take hours.

7.4.  How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings while I'm
      offline?

      All you've got to do is to tell Gnus when you are online (plugged)
      and when you are offline (unplugged), the rest works automatically.
      You can toggle plugged/unplugged state by saying J j in group
      buffer. To start Gnus unplugged say M-x gnus-unplugged instead of
      M-x gnus. Note that for this to work, the agent must be active.

8. Getting help

8.1.  How to find information and help inside Emacs?

      The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say C-h i d m Gnus RET to
      start the Gnus manual, then walk through the menus or do a
      full-text search with s). Then there are the general Emacs help
      commands starting with C-h, type C-h ? ? to get a list of all
      available help commands and their meaning. Finally M-x
      apropos-command lets you search through all available functions and
      M-x apropos searches the bound variables.

8.2.  I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g. attachments,
      PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?

      There's not only the Gnus manual but also the manuals for message,
      emacs-mime, sieve and pgg. Those packages are distributed with Gnus
      and used by Gnus but aren't really part of core Gnus, so they are
      documented in different info files, you should have a look in those
      manuals, too.

8.3.  Which websites should I know?

      The two most important ones are the official Gnus website [http://
      www.gnus.org]. and it's sister site my.gnus.org (MGO) [http://
      my.gnus.org], hosting an archive of lisp snippets, howtos, a (not
      really finished) tutorial and this FAQ.

      Tell me about other sites which are interesting.

8.4.  Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?

      There's the newsgroup gnu.emacs.gnus (pull it from e.g.
      news.gnus.org) which deals with general questions and the ding
      mailing list (ding@gnus.org) dealing with development of Gnus. You
      can read the ding list via NNTP, too under the name gnus.ding from
      news.gnus.org.

      If you want to stay in the big8, news.software.newssreaders is also
      read by some Gnus users (but chances for qualified help are much
      better in the above groups) and if you speak German, there's
      de.comm.software.gnus.

8.5.  Where to report bugs?

      Say M-x gnus-bug, this will start a message to the gnus bug mailing
      list [mailto:bugs@gnus.org] including information about your
      environment which make it easier to help you.

8.6.  I need real-time help, where to find it?

      Point your IRC client to irc.my.gnus.org channel #mygnus. Don't be
      afraid if people there speak German, they are willing and capable
      of switching to English when people from outside Germany enter.

9. Tuning Gnus

9.1.  Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?

      The reason for this could be the way Gnus reads it's active file,
      see the node "The Active File" in the Gnus manual for things you
      might try to speed the process up. An other idea would be to byte
      compile your ~/.gnus (say M-x byte-compile-file RET ~/.gnus RET to
      do it). Finally, if you have require statements in your .gnus, you
      could replace them with eval-after-load, which loads the stuff not
      at startup time, but when it's needed. Say you've got this in your
      ~/.gnus:

      (require 'message)
      (add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled))


      then as soon as you start Gnus, message.el is loaded. If you
      replace it with

      (eval-after-load "message"
            '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))


      it's loaded when it's needed.

9.2.  How to speed up the process of entering a group?

      A speed killer is setting the variable gnus-fetch-old-headers to
      anything different from nil, so don't do this if speed is an issue.
      To speed up building of summary say

      (gnus-compile)


      at the bottom of your ~/.gnus, this will make gnus byte-compile
      things like gnus-summary-line-format. then you could increase the
      value of gc-cons-threshold by saying something like

      (setq gc-cons-threshold 3500000)


      in ~/.emacs. If you don't care about width of CJK characters or use
      Gnus 5.10.0 or younger together with a recent GNU Emacs, you should
      say

      (setq gnus-use-correct-string-widths nil)


      in ~/.gnus (thanks to Jesper harder for the last two suggestions).
      Finally if you are still using 5.8.8 or 5.9 and experience speed
      problems with summary buffer generation, you definitely should
      update to 5.10.0 since there quite some work on improving it has
      been done.

9.3.  Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?

      The reason could be that you told Gnus to archive the messages you
      wrote by setting gnus-message-archive-group. Try to use a nnml
      group instead of an archive group, this should bring you back to
      normal speed.

Glossary

~/.gnus

    When the term ~/.gnus is used it just means your Gnus
    configuration file. You might as well call it ~/.gnus.el or
    specify another name.

Back End

    In Gnus terminology a back end is a virtual server, a layer
    between core Gnus and the real NNTP-, POP3-, IMAP- or
    whatever-server which offers Gnus a standardized interface to
    functions like "get message", "get Headers" etc.

Emacs

    When the term Emacs is used in this FAQ, it means either GNU
    Emacs or XEmacs.

Message

    In this FAQ message means a either a mail or a posting to a
    Usenet Newsgroup or to some other fancy back end, no matter of
    which kind it is.

MUA

    MUA is an acronym for Mail User Agent, it's the program you use
    to read and write e-mails.

NUA

    NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you use
    to read and write Usenet news.