From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995From: larsi@ifi.uio.no (ding)Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995Subject: So you want to use the new GnusMessage-ID: <lars-doc1@eyesore.no>Actually, since you are reading this, chances are you are alreadyusing the new Gnus. Congratulations.This entire newsgroup you are reading is, in fact, no real newsgroupat 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 therest of the Emacs sources. You are using the "nndoc" backend foraccessing it. Scary, isn't it?This isn't the real documentation. `M-x info', `m gnus <RET>' to readthat. This "newsgroup" is intended as a kinder, gentler way of gettingpeople started.Gnus is a rewrite of GNUS 4.1, written by Masanobu Umeda. The rewritewas done by moi, yours truly, your humble servant, Lars MagneIngebrigtsen. If you have a WWW browser, you can investigate to yourheart's delight at <URL:http://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/larsi.html>.;; Copyright (C) 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,;; 2008, 2009, 2010 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 3 of the License, 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. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995From: larsi@ifi.uio.no (ding)Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995Subject: Starting upMessage-ID: <lars-doc2@eyesore.no>If you are having problems with Gnus not finding your server, you haveto 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, seethe "Foreign groups" article for that.From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995From: larsi@ifi.uio.no (ding)Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995Subject: 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 newsgroupson the server are "new", and kill them all.If you have a .newsrc file, the new groups will be processed with thefunction 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" - notquite dead, but not exactly alive, either.Jump back to the *Group* buffer, and type `A z' to list all the zombiegroups. Look though the list, and subscribe to the groups you want toread by pressing `u' on the one you think look interesting.If all the groups have been killed, type `A k' to list all the killedgroups. 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' tolist all the kill groups, and repeat. You can also type `U' and beprompted for groups to subscribe to.)From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995From: larsi@ifi.uio.no (ding)Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995Subject: 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 havennml, which is a one-file-one-mail backend, which is quite nice, butapt to make your systems administrator go crazy and come after youwith 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, butslower 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, soyou will probably find them among the zombie groups after you setthese variables and re-start Gnus.From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995From: larsi@ifi.uio.no (ding)Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995Subject: Foreign newsgroupsMessage-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". Youcan then either type `B news.funet.fi <RET>' to browse that server andsubscribe to that group, or you can type`G m alt.furniture.couches<RET>nntp<RET>news.funet.fi<RET>', if youlike to type a lot.If you want to read a directory as a newsgroup, you can create annndir 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 readthe info pages to find out more.From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995From: larsi@ifi.uio.no (ding)Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995Subject: Low level changes in GNUS, or, Wrong type argument: stringp, nilMessage-ID: <lars-doc6@eyesore.no>Gnus really isn't GNUS, even though it looks like it. If you scrapethe 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 formatshave all changed. If you have some code lying around that depend onthese, or change these, you'll have to re-write your code.Old hilit19 code does not work at all. In fact, you should probablyremove 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 firsttwo.) Gnus provides various integrated functions for highlighting,which are both faster and more accurated.There is absolutely no chance, whatsoever, of getting Gnus to workwith Emacs 18. It won't even work on Emacsen older than Emacs19.30/XEmacs 19.13. Upgrade your Emacs or die.From lars Thu Feb 23 23:20:38 1995From: larsi@ifi.uio.no (ding)Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995Subject: 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 1995From: larsi@ifi.uio.no (ding)Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995Subject: How do I set up virtual newsgroups?Message-ID: <lars-doc9@eyesore.no>Virtual newsgroups are collections of other newsgroups. Why peoplewant this is beyond me, but here goes:Create the group by saying`G m my.virtual.newsgroup<RET>nnvirtual<RET>^rec\.aquaria\.*<RET>'This will create the group "nnvirtual:my.virtual.newsgroup", whichwill 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 thegroup line.Note that all the groups that are part of the virtual group have to bealive. This means that the cannot, absolutely not, be zombie orkilled. They can be unsubscribed; that's no problem.You can combine groups from different servers in the same virtualnewsgroup, something that may actually be useful. Say you have thegroup "comp.headers" on the server "news.server.no" and the same groupon "news.server.edu". If people have posted articles with Distributionheaders that stop propagation of their articles, combining these twonewsgroups into one virtual newsgroup should give you a better view ofwhat's going on.One caveat, though: The virtual group article numbers from the firstsource group (group A) will always be lower than the article numbersfrom the second (group B). This means that Gnus will believe thatarticles from group A are older than articles from group B. Threadingwill lessen these problems, but it might be a good idea to sort thethreads over the date of the articles to get a correct feel for theflow 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 alongthe 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 1995From: larsi@ifi.uio.no (ding)Date: Fri Feb 24 13:40:45 1995Subject: Bugs & stuffMessage-ID: <lars-doc7@eyesore.no>If you want to report a bug, please type `M-x gnus-bug'. This willgive 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 nextversion. If the bug persists, please re-submit your bug report.When a bug occurs, I need a recipe for how to trigger the bug. Youhave 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 bugreport.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 mailme the patches, but one can't have everything.If you have any questions on usage, the "ding@ifi.uio.no" mailing listis where to post the questions.