1 @c \input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*-
2 @c Uncomment 1st line before texing this file alone.
4 @c Copyright (C) 1995, 2001-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
6 @c @setfilename gnus-faq.info
7 @c @settitle Frequently Asked Questions
11 @node Frequently Asked Questions
12 @section Frequently Asked Questions
16 * FAQ - Introduction:: About Gnus and this FAQ.
17 * FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ:: Installation of Gnus.
18 * FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer:: Start up questions and the
19 first buffer Gnus shows you.
20 * FAQ 3 - Getting Messages:: Making Gnus read your mail
22 * FAQ 4 - Reading messages:: How to efficiently read
24 * FAQ 5 - Composing messages:: Composing mails or Usenet
26 * FAQ 6 - Old messages:: Importing, archiving,
27 searching and deleting messages.
28 * FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment:: Reading mail and news while
30 * FAQ 8 - Getting help:: When this FAQ isn't enough.
31 * FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus:: How to make Gnus faster.
32 * FAQ - Glossary:: Terms used in the FAQ
38 This is the new Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.
40 Please submit features and suggestions to the
41 @email{ding@@gnus.org, ding list}.
51 2008-06-15: Adjust for message-fill-column. Add x-face-file.
52 Clarify difference between ding and gnu.emacs.gnus. Remove
53 reference to discontinued service.
56 2006-04-15: Added tip on how to delete sent buffer on exit.
59 @node FAQ - Introduction
60 @subsection Introduction
62 This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.
64 Gnus is a Usenet Newsreader and Electronic Mail User Agent implemented
65 as a part of Emacs. It's been around in some form for almost a decade
66 now, and has been distributed as a standard part of Emacs for much of
67 that time. Gnus 5 is the latest (and greatest) incarnation. The
68 original version was called GNUS, and was written by Masanobu UMEDA@.
69 When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen grew bored and
70 decided to rewrite Gnus.
72 Its biggest strength is the fact that it is extremely
73 customizable. It is somewhat intimidating at first glance, but
74 most of the complexity can be ignored until you're ready to take
75 advantage of it. If you receive a reasonable volume of e-mail
76 (you're on various mailing lists), or you would like to read
77 high-volume mailing lists but cannot keep up with them, or read
78 high volume newsgroups or are just bored, then Gnus is what you
81 This FAQ was maintained by Justin Sheehy until March 2002. He
82 would like to thank Steve Baur and Per Abrahamsen for doing a wonderful
83 job with this FAQ before him. We would like to do the same: thanks,
86 This version is much nicer than the unofficial hypertext
87 versions that are archived at Utrecht, Oxford, Smart Pages, Ohio
88 State, and other FAQ archives. See the resources question below
89 if you want information on obtaining it in another format.
91 The information contained here was compiled with the assistance
92 of the Gnus development mailing list, and any errors or
93 misprints are the Gnus team's fault, sorry.
95 @node FAQ 1 - Installation FAQ
96 @subsection Installation FAQ
99 * FAQ 1-1:: What is the latest version of Gnus?
100 * FAQ 1-2:: What's new in 5.10?
101 * FAQ 1-3:: Where and how to get Gnus?
102 * FAQ 1-4:: What to do with the tarball now?
103 * FAQ 1-5:: I sometimes read references to No Gnus and Oort Gnus,
105 * FAQ 1-6:: Which version of Emacs do I need?
106 * FAQ 1-7:: How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
110 @subsubheading Question 1.1
112 What is the latest version of Gnus?
114 @subsubheading Answer
116 Jingle please: Gnus 5.10 is released, get it while it's
117 hot! As well as the step in version number is rather
118 small, Gnus 5.10 has tons of new features which you
119 shouldn't miss. The current release (5.13) should be at
120 least as stable as the latest release of the 5.8 series.
123 @subsubheading Question 1.2
127 @subsubheading Answer
129 First of all, you should have a look into the file
130 GNUS-NEWS in the toplevel directory of the Gnus tarball,
131 there the most important changes are listed. Here's a
132 short list of the changes I find especially
133 important/interesting:
138 Major rewrite of the Gnus agent, Gnus agent is now
142 Many new article washing functions for dealing with
143 ugly formatted articles.
149 Message-utils now included in Gnus.
152 New format specifiers for summary lines, e.g., %B for
153 a complex trn-style thread tree.
157 @subsubheading Question 1.3
159 Where and how to get Gnus?
161 @subsubheading Answer
163 Gnus is released independent from releases of Emacs and XEmacs.
164 Therefore, the version bundled with Emacs or the version in XEmacs's
165 package system might not be up to date (e.g., Gnus 5.9 bundled with Emacs
167 You can get the latest released version of Gnus from
168 @uref{http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz}
169 or via anonymous FTP from
170 @uref{ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz}.
173 @subsubheading Question 1.4
175 What to do with the tarball now?
177 @subsubheading Answer
179 Untar it via @samp{tar xvzf gnus.tar.gz} and do the common
180 @samp{./configure; make; make install} circle.
181 (under MS-Windows either get the Cygwin environment from
182 @uref{http://www.cygwin.com}
183 which allows you to do what's described above or unpack the
184 tarball with some packer (e.g., Winace from
185 @uref{http://www.winace.com})
186 and use the batch-file make.bat included in the tarball to install
187 Gnus.) If you don't want to (or aren't allowed to) install Gnus
188 system-wide, you can install it in your home directory and add the
189 following lines to your ~/.xemacs/init.el or ~/.emacs:
192 (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/gnus/lisp")
193 (if (featurep 'xemacs)
194 (add-to-list 'Info-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/")
195 (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "/path/to/gnus/texi/"))
199 Make sure that you don't have any Gnus related stuff
200 before this line, on MS Windows use something like
201 "C:/path/to/lisp" (yes, "/").
204 @subsubheading Question 1.5
206 I sometimes read references to No Gnus and Oort Gnus,
209 @subsubheading Answer
211 Oort Gnus was the name of the development version of
212 Gnus, which became Gnus 5.10 in autumn 2003. No Gnus is
213 the name of the current development version which will
214 once become Gnus 5.12 or Gnus 6. (If you're wondering why
215 not 5.11, the odd version numbers are normally used for
216 the Gnus versions bundled with Emacs)
219 @subsubheading Question 1.6
221 Which version of Emacs do I need?
223 @subsubheading Answer
225 Gnus 5.13 requires an Emacs version that is greater than or equal
226 to Emacs 23.1 or XEmacs 21.1, although there are some features that
227 only work on Emacs 24.
230 @subsubheading Question 1.7
232 How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
234 @subsubheading Answer
236 You can't use the same copy of Gnus in both as the Lisp
237 files are byte-compiled to a format which is different
238 depending on which Emacs did the compilation. Get one copy
239 of Gnus for Emacs and one for XEmacs.
241 @node FAQ 2 - Startup / Group buffer
242 @subsection Startup / Group buffer
245 * FAQ 2-1:: Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save
246 file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean and
248 * FAQ 2-2:: Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to,
250 * FAQ 2-3:: How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
251 * FAQ 2-4:: My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to
252 sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse through
254 * FAQ 2-5:: How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to
255 sort the groups in a topic?
259 @subsubheading Question 2.1
261 Every time I start Gnus I get a message "Gnus auto-save
262 file exists. Do you want to read it?", what does this mean
263 and how to prevent it?
265 @subsubheading Answer
267 This message means that the last time you used Gnus, it
268 wasn't properly exited and therefore couldn't write its
269 information to disk (e.g., which messages you read), you
270 are now asked if you want to restore that information
271 from the auto-save file.
273 To prevent this message make sure you exit Gnus
274 via @samp{q} in group buffer instead of
278 @subsubheading Question 2.2
280 Gnus doesn't remember which groups I'm subscribed to,
283 @subsubheading Answer
285 You get the message described in the q/a pair above while
286 starting Gnus, right? It's an other symptom for the same
287 problem, so read the answer above.
290 @subsubheading Question 2.3
292 How to change the format of the lines in Group buffer?
294 @subsubheading Answer
296 You've got to tweak the value of the variable
297 gnus-group-line-format. See the manual node "Group Line
298 Specification" for information on how to do this. An
299 example for this (guess from whose .gnus :-)):
302 (setq gnus-group-line-format "%P%M%S[%5t]%5y : %(%g%)\n")
307 @subsubheading Question 2.4
309 My group buffer becomes a bit crowded, is there a way to
310 sort my groups into categories so I can easier browse
313 @subsubheading Answer
315 Gnus offers the topic mode, it allows you to sort your
316 groups in, well, topics, e.g., all groups dealing with
317 Linux under the topic linux, all dealing with music under
318 the topic music and all dealing with scottish music under
319 the topic scottish which is a subtopic of music.
321 To enter topic mode, just hit t while in Group buffer. Now
322 you can use @samp{T n} to create a topic
323 at point and @samp{T m} to move a group to
324 a specific topic. For more commands see the manual or the
325 menu. You might want to include the %P specifier at the
326 beginning of your gnus-group-line-format variable to have
327 the groups nicely indented.
330 @subsubheading Question 2.5
332 How to manually sort the groups in Group buffer? How to
333 sort the groups in a topic?
335 @subsubheading Answer
337 Move point over the group you want to move and
338 hit @samp{C-k}, now move point to the
339 place where you want the group to be and
342 @node FAQ 3 - Getting Messages
343 @subsection Getting Messages
346 * FAQ 3-1:: I just installed Gnus, started it via @samp{M-x gnus}
347 but it only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
348 * FAQ 3-2:: I'm working under Windows and have no idea what
350 * FAQ 3-3:: My news server requires authentication, how to store
351 user name and password on disk?
352 * FAQ 3-4:: Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to
353 subscribe to a group.
354 * FAQ 3-5:: Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed
355 to post on this server as well as I am, what's that?
356 * FAQ 3-6:: I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this
358 * FAQ 3-7:: And how about local spool files?
359 * FAQ 3-8:: OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to
360 read my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it?
361 * FAQ 3-9:: And what about IMAP?
362 * FAQ 3-10:: At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers,
363 can I use Gnus to read my mail from it?
364 * FAQ 3-11:: Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it
369 @subsubheading Question 3.1
371 I just installed Gnus, started it via
373 but it only says "nntp (news) open error", what to do?
375 @subsubheading Answer
377 You've got to tell Gnus where to fetch the news from. Read
378 the documentation for information on how to do this. As a
379 first start, put those lines in ~/.gnus.el:
382 (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.yourprovider.net"))
383 (setq user-mail-address "you@@yourprovider.net")
384 (setq user-full-name "Your Name")
389 @subsubheading Question 3.2
391 I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus.el means.
393 @subsubheading Answer
395 The ~/ means the home directory where Gnus and Emacs look
396 for the configuration files. However, you don't really
397 need to know what this means, it suffices that Emacs knows
398 what it means :-) You can type
399 @samp{C-x C-f ~/.gnus.el RET }
400 (yes, with the forward slash, even on Windows), and
401 Emacs will open the right file for you. (It will most
402 likely be new, and thus empty.)
403 However, I'd discourage you from doing so, since the
404 directory Emacs chooses will most certainly not be what
405 you want, so let's do it the correct way.
406 The first thing you've got to do is to
407 create a suitable directory (no blanks in directory name
408 please), e.g., c:\myhome. Then you must set the environment
409 variable HOME to this directory. To do this under Windows 9x
410 or Me include the line
417 in your autoexec.bat and reboot. Under NT, 2000 and XP, hit
418 Winkey+Pause/Break to enter system options (if it doesn't work, go
419 to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced). There you'll find the
420 possibility to set environment variables. Create a new one with
421 name HOME and value C:\myhome. Rebooting is not necessary.
423 Now to create ~/.gnus.el, say
424 @samp{C-x C-f ~/.gnus.el RET C-x C-s}.
428 @subsubheading Question 3.3
430 My news server requires authentication, how to store
431 user name and password on disk?
433 @subsubheading Answer
435 Create a file ~/.authinfo which includes for each server a line like this
438 machine news.yourprovider.net login YourUserName password YourPassword
442 Make sure that the file isn't readable to others if you
443 work on a OS which is capable of doing so. (Under Unix
446 chmod 600 ~/.authinfo
453 @subsubheading Question 3.4
455 Gnus seems to start up OK, but I can't find out how to
456 subscribe to a group.
458 @subsubheading Answer
460 If you know the name of the group say @samp{U
461 name.of.group RET} in group buffer (use the
462 tab-completion Luke). Otherwise hit ^ in group buffer,
463 this brings you to the server buffer. Now place point (the
464 cursor) over the server which carries the group you want,
465 hit @samp{RET}, move point to the group
466 you want to subscribe to and say @samp{u}
470 @subsubheading Question 3.5
472 Gnus doesn't show all groups / Gnus says I'm not allowed to
473 post on this server as well as I am, what's that?
475 @subsubheading Answer
477 Some providers allow restricted anonymous access and full
478 access only after authorization. To make Gnus send authinfo
479 to those servers append
486 to the line for those servers in ~/.authinfo.
489 @subsubheading Question 3.6
491 I want Gnus to fetch news from several servers, is this possible?
493 @subsubheading Answer
495 Of course. You can specify more sources for articles in the
496 variable gnus-secondary-select-methods. Add something like
500 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
501 '(nntp "news.yourSecondProvider.net"))
502 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
503 '(nntp "news.yourThirdProvider.net"))
508 @subsubheading Question 3.7
510 And how about local spool files?
512 @subsubheading Answer
514 No problem, this is just one more select method called
515 nnspool, so you want this:
518 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnspool ""))
522 Or this if you don't want an NNTP Server as primary news source:
525 (setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
529 Gnus will look for the spool file in /usr/spool/news, if you
530 want something different, change the line above to something like this:
533 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
535 (nnspool-directory "/usr/local/myspoolddir")))
539 This sets the spool directory for this server only.
540 You might have to specify more stuff like the program used
541 to post articles, see the Gnus manual on how to do this.
544 @subsubheading Question 3.8
546 OK, reading news works now, but I want to be able to read my mail
547 with Gnus, too. How to do it?
549 @subsubheading Answer
551 That's a bit harder since there are many possible sources
552 for mail, many possible ways for storing mail and many
553 different ways for sending mail. The most common cases are
554 these: 1: You want to read your mail from a pop3 server and
555 send them directly to a SMTP Server 2: Some program like
556 fetchmail retrieves your mail and stores it on disk from
557 where Gnus shall read it. Outgoing mail is sent by
558 Sendmail, Postfix or some other MTA@. Sometimes, you even
559 need a combination of the above cases.
561 However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way
562 it should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which back end
563 to use. Gnus supports many different back ends, the most
564 commonly used one is nnml. It stores every mail in one file
565 and is therefore quite fast. However you might prefer a one
566 file per group approach if your file system has problems with
567 many small files, the nnfolder back end is then probably the
568 choice for you. To use nnml add the following to ~/.gnus.el:
571 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml ""))
575 As you might have guessed, if you want nnfolder, it's
578 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnfolder ""))
582 Now we need to tell Gnus, where to get its mail from. If
583 it's a POP3 server, then you need something like this:
586 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
587 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "pop.YourProvider.net"
589 :password "yourPassword")))
593 Make sure ~/.gnus.el isn't readable to others if you store
594 your password there. If you want to read your mail from a
595 traditional spool file on your local machine, it's
598 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
599 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(file :path "/path/to/spool/file"))
603 If it's a Maildir, with one file per message as used by
604 postfix, Qmail and (optionally) fetchmail it's
607 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
608 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(maildir :path "/path/to/Maildir/"
609 :subdirs ("cur" "new")))
613 And finally if you want to read your mail from several files
614 in one directory, for example because procmail already split your
618 (eval-after-load "mail-source"
619 '(add-to-list 'mail-sources
620 '(directory :path "/path/to/procmail-dir/"
625 Where :suffix ".prcml" tells Gnus only to use files with the
628 OK, now you only need to tell Gnus how to send mail. If you
629 want to send mail via sendmail (or whichever MTA is playing
630 the role of sendmail on your system), you don't need to do
631 anything. However, if you want to send your mail to an
632 SMTP Server you need the following in your ~/.gnus.el
635 (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
636 (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
637 (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.yourProvider.net")
642 @subsubheading Question 3.9
646 @subsubheading Answer
648 There are two ways of using IMAP with Gnus. The first one is
649 to use IMAP like POP3, that means Gnus fetches the mail from
650 the IMAP server and stores it on disk. If you want to do
651 this (you don't really want to do this) add the following to
655 (add-to-list 'mail-sources '(imap :server "mail.mycorp.com"
659 :authentication login
661 :fetchflag "\\Seen"))
665 You might have to tweak the values for stream and/or
666 authentication, see the Gnus manual node "Mail Source
667 Specifiers" for possible values.
669 If you want to use IMAP the way it's intended, you've got to
670 follow a different approach. You've got to add the nnimap
671 back end to your select method and give the information
672 about the server there.
675 (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
676 '(nnimap "Give the baby a name"
677 (nnimap-address "imap.yourProvider.net")
679 (nnimap-list-pattern "archive.*")))
683 Again, you might have to specify how to authenticate to the
684 server if Gnus can't guess the correct way, see the Manual
685 Node "IMAP" for detailed information.
688 @subsubheading Question 3.10
690 At the office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
691 Gnus to read my mail from it?
693 @subsubheading Answer
695 Offer your administrator a pair of new running shoes for
696 activating IMAP on the server and follow the instructions
700 @subsubheading Question 3.11
702 Can I tell Gnus not to delete the mails on the server it
705 @subsubheading Answer
707 Yes, if the POP3 server supports the UIDL control (maybe almost servers
708 do it nowadays). To do that, add a @code{:leave VALUE} pair to each
709 POP3 mail source. See @pxref{Mail Source Specifiers} for VALUE.
711 @node FAQ 4 - Reading messages
712 @subsection Reading messages
715 * FAQ 4-1:: When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to
717 * FAQ 4-2:: How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time
718 I enter a group, even when it's read?
719 * FAQ 4-3:: How to view the headers of a message?
720 * FAQ 4-4:: How to view the raw unformatted message?
721 * FAQ 4-5:: How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at
722 the top of the article buffer?
723 * FAQ 4-6:: I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the
724 text part if it's available. How to do it?
725 * FAQ 4-7:: Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my
727 * FAQ 4-8:: Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted
729 * FAQ 4-9:: Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific
730 authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I
731 highlight more interesting ones in some way?
732 * FAQ 4-10:: How can I disable threading in some (e.g., mail-) groups,
733 or set other variables specific for some groups?
734 * FAQ 4-11:: Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to
736 * FAQ 4-12:: The number of total messages in a group which Gnus
737 displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in mail
738 groups. Is this a bug?
739 * FAQ 4-13:: I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer,
740 how to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
741 * FAQ 4-14:: I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to
743 * FAQ 4-15:: How to split incoming mails in several groups?
747 @subsubheading Question 4.1
749 When I enter a group, all read messages are gone. How to view them again?
751 @subsubheading Answer
753 If you enter the group by saying
755 in group buffer with point over the group, only unread and ticked messages are loaded. Say
757 instead to load all available messages. If you want only the 300 newest say
760 Loading only unread messages can be annoying if you have threaded view enabled, say
763 (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 'some)
767 in ~/.gnus.el to load enough old articles to prevent teared threads, replace 'some with t to load
768 all articles (Warning: Both settings enlarge the amount of data which is
769 fetched when you enter a group and slow down the process of entering a group).
771 If you already use Gnus 5.10, you can say
773 In summary buffer to load the last N messages, this feature is not available in 5.8.8
775 If you don't want all old messages, but the parent of the message you're just reading,
776 you can say @samp{^}, if you want to retrieve the whole thread
777 the message you're just reading belongs to, @samp{A T} is your friend.
780 @subsubheading Question 4.2
782 How to tell Gnus to show an important message every time I
783 enter a group, even when it's read?
785 @subsubheading Answer
787 You can tick important messages. To do this hit
788 @samp{u} while point is in summary buffer
789 over the message. When you want to remove the mark, hit
790 either @samp{d} (this deletes the tick
791 mark and set's unread mark) or @samp{M c}
792 (which deletes all marks for the message).
795 @subsubheading Question 4.3
797 How to view the headers of a message?
799 @subsubheading Answer
802 to show all headers, one more
807 @subsubheading Question 4.4
809 How to view the raw unformatted message?
811 @subsubheading Answer
815 to show the raw message
817 returns to normal view.
820 @subsubheading Question 4.5
822 How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at
823 the top of the article buffer?
825 @subsubheading Answer
827 The variable gnus-visible-headers controls which headers
828 are shown, its value is a regular expression, header lines
829 which match it are shown. So if you want author, subject,
830 date, and if the header exists, Followup-To and MUA / NUA
831 say this in ~/.gnus.el:
834 (setq gnus-visible-headers
835 '("^From" "^Subject" "^Date" "^Newsgroups" "^Followup-To"
836 "^User-Agent" "^X-Newsreader" "^X-Mailer"))
841 @subsubheading Question 4.6
843 I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the
844 text part if it's available. How to do it?
846 @subsubheading Answer
851 (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
853 (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/html")
854 (add-to-list 'mm-discouraged-alternatives "text/richtext")))
858 in ~/.gnus.el. If you don't want HTML rendered, even if there's no text alternative add
861 (setq mm-automatic-display (remove "text/html" mm-automatic-display))
868 @subsubheading Question 4.7
870 Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails?
872 @subsubheading Answer
874 Only if you use Gnus 5.10 or younger. In this case you've got the
875 choice between w3, w3m, links, lynx and html2text, which
876 one is used can be specified in the variable
877 mm-text-html-renderer, so if you want links to render your
881 (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'links)
886 @subsubheading Question 4.8
888 Is there anything I can do to make poorly formatted mails
891 @subsubheading Answer
893 Gnus offers you several functions to "wash" incoming mail, you can
894 find them if you browse through the menu, item
895 Article->Washing. The most interesting ones are probably "Wrap
896 long lines" (@samp{W w}), "Decode ROT13"
897 (@samp{W r}) and "Outlook Deuglify" which repairs
898 the dumb quoting used by many users of Microsoft products
899 (@samp{W Y f} gives you full deuglify.
900 See @samp{W Y C-h} or have a look at the menus for
901 other deuglifications). Outlook deuglify is only available since
905 @subsubheading Question 4.9
907 Is there a way to automatically ignore posts by specific
908 authors or with specific words in the subject? And can I
909 highlight more interesting ones in some way?
911 @subsubheading Answer
913 You want Scoring. Scoring means, that you define rules
914 which assign each message an integer value. Depending on
915 the value the message is highlighted in summary buffer (if
916 it's high, say +2000) or automatically marked read (if the
917 value is low, say -800) or some other action happens.
919 There are basically three ways of setting up rules which assign
920 the scoring-value to messages. The first and easiest way is to set
921 up rules based on the article you are just reading. Say you're
922 reading a message by a guy who always writes nonsense and you want
923 to ignore his messages in the future. Hit
924 @samp{L}, to set up a rule which lowers the score.
925 Now Gnus asks you which the criteria for lowering the Score shall
926 be. Hit @samp{?} twice to see all possibilities,
927 we want @samp{a} which means the author (the from
928 header). Now Gnus wants to know which kind of matching we want.
929 Hit either @samp{e} for an exact match or
930 @samp{s} for substring-match and delete afterwards
931 everything but the name to score down all authors with the given
932 name no matter which email address is used. Now you need to tell
933 Gnus when to apply the rule and how long it should last, hit
934 @samp{p} to apply the rule now and let it last
935 forever. If you want to raise the score instead of lowering it say
936 @samp{I} instead of @samp{L}.
938 You can also set up rules by hand. To do this say @samp{V
939 f} in summary buffer. Then you are asked for the name
940 of the score file, it's name.of.group.SCORE for rules valid in
941 only one group or all.Score for rules valid in all groups. See the
942 Gnus manual for the exact syntax, basically it's one big list
943 whose elements are lists again. the first element of those lists
944 is the header to score on, then one more list with what to match,
945 which score to assign, when to expire the rule and how to do the
946 matching. If you find me very interesting, you could add the
947 following to your all.Score:
950 (("references" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 500 nil s))
951 ("message-id" ("hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de" 999 nil s)))
955 This would add 999 to the score of messages written by me
956 and 500 to the score of messages which are a (possibly
957 indirect) answer to a message written by me. Of course
958 nobody with a sane mind would do this :-)
960 The third alternative is adaptive scoring. This means Gnus
961 watches you and tries to find out what you find
962 interesting and what annoying and sets up rules
963 which reflect this. Adaptive scoring can be a huge help
964 when reading high traffic groups. If you want to activate
968 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t)
975 @subsubheading Question 4.10
977 How can I disable threading in some (e.g., mail-) groups, or
978 set other variables specific for some groups?
980 @subsubheading Answer
982 While in group buffer move point over the group and hit
983 @samp{G c}, this opens a buffer where you
984 can set options for the group. At the bottom of the buffer
985 you'll find an item that allows you to set variables
986 locally for the group. To disable threading enter
987 gnus-show-threads as name of variable and nil as
988 value. Hit button done at the top of the buffer when
992 @subsubheading Question 4.11
994 Can I highlight messages written by me and follow-ups to
997 @subsubheading Answer
999 Stop those "Can I ..." questions, the answer is always yes
1000 in Gnus Country :-). It's a three step process: First we
1001 make faces (specifications of how summary-line shall look
1002 like) for those postings, then we'll give them some
1003 special score and finally we'll tell Gnus to use the new
1007 @subsubheading Question 4.12
1009 The number of total messages in a group which Gnus
1010 displays in group buffer is by far to high, especially in
1011 mail groups. Is this a bug?
1013 @subsubheading Answer
1015 No, that's a matter of design of Gnus, fixing this would
1016 mean reimplementation of major parts of Gnus'
1017 back ends. Gnus thinks "highest-article-number @minus{}
1018 lowest-article-number = total-number-of-articles". This
1019 works OK for Usenet groups, but if you delete and move
1020 many messages in mail groups, this fails. To cure the
1021 symptom, enter the group via @samp{C-u RET}
1022 (this makes Gnus get all messages), then
1023 hit @samp{M P b} to mark all messages and
1024 then say @samp{B m name.of.group} to move
1025 all messages to the group they have been in before, they
1026 get new message numbers in this process and the count is
1027 right again (until you delete and move your mail to other
1031 @subsubheading Question 4.13
1033 I don't like the layout of summary and article buffer, how
1034 to change it? Perhaps even a three pane display?
1036 @subsubheading Answer
1038 You can control the windows configuration by calling the
1039 function gnus-add-configuration. The syntax is a bit
1040 complicated but explained very well in the manual node
1041 "Window Layout". Some popular examples:
1043 Instead 25% summary 75% article buffer 35% summary and 65%
1044 article (the 1.0 for article means "take the remaining
1048 (gnus-add-configuration
1049 '(article (vertical 1.0 (summary .35 point) (article 1.0))))
1053 A three pane layout, Group buffer on the left, summary
1054 buffer top-right, article buffer bottom-right:
1057 (gnus-add-configuration
1063 (summary 0.25 point)
1065 (gnus-add-configuration
1071 (summary 1.0 point)))))
1076 @subsubheading Question 4.14
1078 I don't like the way the Summary buffer looks, how to tweak it?
1080 @subsubheading Answer
1082 You've got to play around with the variable
1083 gnus-summary-line-format. Its value is a string of
1084 symbols which stand for things like author, date, subject
1085 etc. A list of the available specifiers can be found in the
1086 manual node "Summary Buffer Lines" and the often forgotten
1087 node "Formatting Variables" and its sub-nodes. There
1088 you'll find useful things like positioning the cursor and
1089 tabulators which allow you a summary in table form, but
1090 sadly hard tabulators are broken in 5.8.8.
1092 Since 5.10, Gnus offers you some very nice new specifiers,
1093 e.g., %B which draws a thread-tree and %&user-date which
1094 gives you a date where the details are dependent of the
1095 articles age. Here's an example which uses both:
1098 (setq gnus-summary-line-format ":%U%R %B %s %-60=|%4L |%-20,20f |%&user-date; \n")
1105 :O Re: [Richard Stallman] rfc2047.el | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:06
1106 :O Re: Revival of the ding-patches list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:12
1107 :R > Re: Find correct list of articles for a gro| 25 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:16
1108 :O \-> ... | 21 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:01
1109 :R > Re: Cry for help: deuglify.el - moving stuf| 28 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:34
1110 :O \-> ... | 115 |Raymond Scholz | 1:24
1111 :O \-> ... | 19 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |15:33
1112 :O Slow mailing list | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:49
1113 :O Re: `@@' mark not documented | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:50
1114 :R > Re: Gnus still doesn't count messages prope| 23 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt |Sat 23:57
1115 :O \-> ... | 18 |Kai Grossjohann | 0:35
1116 :O \-> ... | 13 |Lars Magne Ingebrigt | 0:56
1121 @subsubheading Question 4.15
1123 How to split incoming mails in several groups?
1125 @subsubheading Answer
1127 Gnus offers two possibilities for splitting mail, the easy
1128 nnmail-split-methods and the more powerful Fancy Mail
1129 Splitting. I'll only talk about the first one, refer to
1130 the manual, node "Fancy Mail Splitting" for the latter.
1132 The value of nnmail-split-methods is a list, each element
1133 is a list which stands for a splitting rule. Each rule has
1134 the form "group where matching articles should go to",
1135 "regular expression which has to be matched", the first
1136 rule which matches wins. The last rule must always be a
1137 general rule (regular expression .*) which denotes where
1138 articles should go which don't match any other rule. If
1139 the folder doesn't exist yet, it will be created as soon
1140 as an article lands there. By default the mail will be
1141 send to all groups whose rules match. If you
1142 don't want that (you probably don't want), say
1145 (setq nnmail-crosspost nil)
1151 An example might be better than thousand words, so here's
1152 my nnmail-split-methods. Note that I send duplicates in a
1153 special group and that the default group is spam, since I
1154 filter all mails out which are from some list I'm
1155 subscribed to or which are addressed directly to me
1156 before. Those rules kill about 80% of the Spam which
1157 reaches me (Email addresses are changed to prevent spammers
1161 (setq nnmail-split-methods
1162 '(("duplicates" "^Gnus-Warning:.*duplicate")
1163 ("XEmacs-NT" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@xemacs.invalid.*")
1164 ("Gnus-Tut" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@socha.invalid.*")
1165 ("tcsh" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@mx.gw.invalid.*")
1166 ("BAfH" "^\\(To:\\|CC:\\).*localpart@@.*uni-muenchen.invalid.*")
1167 ("Hamster-src" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*hamster-sourcen@@yahoogroups.\\(de\\|com\\).*")
1168 ("Tagesschau" "^From: tagesschau <localpart@@www.tagesschau.invalid>$")
1169 ("Replies" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@@Frank-Schmitt.invalid.*")
1170 ("EK" "^From:.*\\(localpart@@privateprovider.invalid\\|localpart@@workplace.invalid\\).*")
1171 ("Spam" "^Content-Type:.*\\(ks_c_5601-1987\\|EUC-KR\\|big5\\|iso-2022-jp\\).*")
1172 ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(This really work\\|XINGA\\|ADV:\\|XXX\\|adult\\|sex\\).*")
1173 ("Spam" "^Subject:.*\\(\=\?ks_c_5601-1987\?\\|\=\?euc-kr\?\\|\=\?big5\?\\).*")
1174 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*BulkMailer.*\\|.*MIME::Lite.*\\|\\)")
1175 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer:\\(.*CyberCreek Avalanche\\|.*http\:\/\/GetResponse\.com\\)")
1176 ("Spam" "^From:.*\\(verizon\.net\\|prontomail\.com\\|money\\|ConsumerDirect\\).*")
1177 ("Spam" "^Delivered-To: GMX delivery to spamtrap@@gmx.invalid$")
1178 ("Spam" "^Received: from link2buy.com")
1179 ("Spam" "^CC: .*azzrael@@t-online.invalid")
1180 ("Spam" "^X-Mailer-Version: 1.50 BETA")
1181 ("Uni" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*localpart@@uni-koblenz.invalid.*")
1182 ("Inbox" "^\\(CC:\\|To:\\).*\\(my\ name\\|address@@one.invalid\\|address@@two.invalid\\)")
1187 @node FAQ 5 - Composing messages
1188 @subsection Composing messages
1191 * FAQ 5-1:: What are the basic commands I need to know for sending
1193 * FAQ 5-2:: How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing
1195 * FAQ 5-3:: How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To,
1197 * FAQ 5-4:: Can I set things like From, Signature etc. group based on
1198 the group I post too?
1199 * FAQ 5-5:: Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly
1201 * FAQ 5-6:: Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting
1203 * FAQ 5-7:: Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't
1204 remember all those email addresses?
1205 * FAQ 5-8:: Sometimes I see little images at the top of article
1206 buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my postings,
1208 * FAQ 5-9:: Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in
1209 newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in
1211 * FAQ 5-10:: How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
1212 * FAQ 5-11:: I want Gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and
1214 * FAQ 5-12:: I want Gnus to kill the buffer after successful sending
1215 instead of keeping it alive as "Sent mail to...", how to do it?
1216 * FAQ 5-13:: People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why
1217 aren't they and how to fix it?
1221 @subsubheading Question 5.1
1223 What are the basic commands I need to know for sending mail and postings?
1225 @subsubheading Answer
1227 To start composing a new mail hit @samp{m}
1228 either in Group or Summary buffer, for a posting, it's
1229 either @samp{a} in Group buffer and
1230 filling the Newsgroups header manually
1231 or @samp{a} in the Summary buffer of the
1232 group where the posting shall be send to. Replying by mail
1234 @samp{r} if you don't want to cite the
1235 author, or import the cited text manually and
1236 @samp{R} to cite the text of the original
1237 message. For a follow up to a newsgroup, it's
1238 @samp{f} and @samp{F}
1239 (analogously to @samp{r} and
1242 Enter new headers above the line saying "--text follows
1243 this line--", enter the text below the line. When ready
1244 hit @samp{C-c C-c}, to send the message,
1245 if you want to finish it later hit @samp{C-c
1246 C-d} to save it in the drafts group, where you
1247 can start editing it again by saying @samp{D
1251 @subsubheading Question 5.2
1253 How to enable automatic word-wrap when composing messages?
1255 @subsubheading Answer
1257 Starting from No Gnus, automatic word-wrap is already enabled by
1258 default, see the variable message-fill-column.
1260 For other versions of Gnus, say
1263 (unless (boundp 'message-fill-column)
1264 (add-hook 'message-mode-hook
1266 (setq fill-column 72)
1267 (turn-on-auto-fill))))
1273 You can reformat a paragraph by hitting @samp{M-q}
1277 @subsubheading Question 5.3
1279 How to set stuff like From, Organization, Reply-To, signature...?
1281 @subsubheading Answer
1283 There are other ways, but you should use posting styles
1284 for this. (See below why).
1285 This example should make the syntax clear:
1288 (setq gnus-posting-styles
1290 (name "Frank Schmitt")
1291 (address "me@@there.invalid")
1292 (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
1293 (signature-file "~/.signature")
1294 ("X-SampleHeader" "foobar")
1295 (eval (setq some-variable "Foo bar")))))
1299 The ".*" means that this settings are the default ones
1300 (see below), valid values for the first element of the
1301 following lists are signature, signature-file,
1302 organization, address, name or body. The attribute name
1303 can also be a string. In that case, this will be used as
1304 a header name, and the value will be inserted in the
1305 headers of the article; if the value is `nil', the header
1306 name will be removed. You can also say (eval (foo bar)),
1307 then the function foo will be evaluated with argument bar
1308 and the result will be thrown away.
1311 @subsubheading Question 5.4
1313 Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group I post too?
1315 @subsubheading Answer
1317 That's the strength of posting styles. Before, we used ".*"
1318 to set the default for all groups. You can use a regexp
1319 like "^gmane" and the following settings are only applied
1320 to postings you send to the gmane hierarchy, use
1321 ".*binaries" instead and they will be applied to postings
1322 send to groups containing the string binaries in their
1325 You can instead of specifying a regexp specify a function
1326 which is evaluated, only if it returns true, the
1327 corresponding settings take effect. Two interesting
1328 candidates for this are message-news-p which returns t if
1329 the current Group is a newsgroup and the corresponding
1332 Note that all forms that match are applied, that means in
1333 the example below, when I post to
1334 gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general, the settings under
1335 ".*" are applied and the settings under message-news-p and
1336 those under "^gmane" and those under
1337 "^gmane\\.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$". Because
1338 of this put general settings at the top and specific ones
1342 (setq gnus-posting-styles
1344 (name "Frank Schmitt")
1345 (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")
1346 (signature-file "~/.signature"))
1347 ((message-news-p) ;;Usenet news?
1348 (address "mySpamTrap@@Frank-Schmitt.invalid")
1349 (reply-to "hereRealRepliesOnlyPlease@@Frank-Schmitt.invalid"))
1350 ((message-mail-p) ;;mail?
1351 (address "usedForMails@@Frank-Schmitt.invalid"))
1352 ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact
1353 (address "usedForMails@@Frank-Schmitt.invalid")
1355 ("^gmane\\.mail\\.spam\\.spamassassin\\.general$"
1356 (eval (set (make-local-variable 'message-sendmail-envelope-from)
1357 "Azzrael@@rz-online.de")))))
1362 @subsubheading Question 5.5
1364 Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spell-checking?
1366 @subsubheading Answer
1368 You can use ispell.el to spell-check stuff in Emacs. So the
1369 first thing to do is to make sure that you've got either
1370 @uref{http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html, ispell}
1371 or @uref{http://aspell.sourceforge.net/, aspell}
1372 installed and in your Path. Then you need
1373 @uref{http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html, ispell.el}
1374 and for on-the-fly spell-checking
1375 @uref{http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Manuel.Serrano/flyspell/flyspell.html, flyspell.el}.
1376 Ispell.el is shipped with Emacs and available through the XEmacs package system,
1377 flyspell.el is shipped with Emacs and part of XEmacs text-modes package which is
1378 available through the package system, so there should be no need to install them
1381 Ispell.el assumes you use ispell, if you choose aspell say
1384 (setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
1388 in your Emacs configuration file.
1390 If you want your outgoing messages to be spell-checked, say
1393 (add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)
1397 In your ~/.gnus.el, if you prefer on-the-fly spell-checking say
1400 (add-hook 'message-mode-hook (lambda () (flyspell-mode 1)))
1405 @subsubheading Question 5.6
1407 Can I set the dictionary based on the group I'm posting to?
1409 @subsubheading Answer
1411 Yes, say something like
1414 (add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook
1418 "^de\\." (gnus-group-real-name gnus-newsgroup-name))
1419 (ispell-change-dictionary "deutsch8"))
1421 (ispell-change-dictionary "english")))))
1425 in ~/.gnus.el. Change "^de\\." and "deutsch8" to something
1426 that suits your needs.
1429 @subsubheading Question 5.7
1431 Is there some kind of address-book, so I needn't remember
1432 all those email addresses?
1434 @subsubheading Answer
1436 There's an very basic solution for this, mail aliases.
1437 You can store your mail addresses in a ~/.mailrc file using a simple
1441 alias al "Al <al@@english-heritage.invalid>"
1445 Then typing your alias (followed by a space or punctuation
1446 character) on a To: or Cc: line in the message buffer will
1447 cause Gnus to insert the full address for you. See the
1448 node "Mail Aliases" in Message (not Gnus) manual for
1451 However, what you really want is the Insidious Big Brother
1452 Database bbdb. Get it through the XEmacs package system or from
1453 @uref{http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/, bbdb's homepage}.
1454 Now place the following in ~/.gnus.el, to activate bbdb for Gnus:
1458 (bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message)
1462 Now you probably want some general bbdb configuration,
1463 place them in ~/.emacs:
1467 ;;If you don't live in Northern America, you should disable the
1468 ;;syntax check for telephone numbers by saying
1469 (setq bbdb-north-american-phone-numbers-p nil)
1470 ;;Tell bbdb about your email address:
1471 (setq bbdb-user-mail-names
1472 (regexp-opt '("Your.Email@@here.invalid"
1473 "Your.other@@mail.there.invalid")))
1474 ;;cycling while completing email addresses
1475 (setq bbdb-complete-name-allow-cycling t)
1477 (setq bbdb-use-pop-up nil)
1481 Now you should be ready to go. Say @samp{M-x bbdb RET
1482 RET} to open a bbdb buffer showing all
1483 entries. Say @samp{c} to create a new
1484 entry, @samp{b} to search your BBDB and
1485 @samp{C-o} to add a new field to an
1486 entry. If you want to add a sender to the BBDB you can
1487 also just hit `:' on the posting in the summary buffer and
1488 you are done. When you now compose a new mail,
1489 hit @samp{TAB} to cycle through know
1493 @subsubheading Question 5.8
1495 Sometimes I see little images at the top of article
1496 buffer. What's that and how can I send one with my
1499 @subsubheading Answer
1501 Those images are called X-Faces. They are 48*48 pixel b/w
1502 pictures, encoded in a header line. If you want to include
1503 one in your posts, you've got to convert some image to a
1504 X-Face. So fire up some image manipulation program (say
1505 Gimp), open the image you want to include, cut out the
1506 relevant part, reduce color depth to 1 bit, resize to
1507 48*48 and save as bitmap. Now you should get the compface
1509 @uref{ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/, this site}.
1510 and create the actual X-face by saying
1513 cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon | compface > file.face
1514 cat file.face | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g;s/\"/\\\"/g;' > file.face.quoted
1518 If you can't use compface, there's an online X-face converter at
1519 @uref{http://www.dairiki.org/xface/}.
1520 If you use MS Windows, you could also use the WinFace program,
1521 which used to be available from
1522 @indicateurl{http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/}.
1523 Now you only have to tell Gnus to include the X-face in your postings by saying
1526 (setq message-default-headers
1529 (insert-file-contents "~/.xface")
1534 in ~/.gnus.el. If you use Gnus 5.10, you can simply add an entry
1537 (x-face-file "~/.xface")
1541 to gnus-posting-styles.
1544 @subsubheading Question 5.9
1546 Sometimes I accidentally hit r instead of f in
1547 newsgroups. Can Gnus warn me, when I'm replying by mail in
1550 @subsubheading Answer
1552 Put this in ~/.gnus.el:
1555 (setq gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news t)
1559 if you already use Gnus 5.10, if you still use 5.8.8 or
1560 5.9 try this instead:
1563 (eval-after-load "gnus-msg"
1564 '(unless (boundp 'gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news)
1565 (defadvice gnus-summary-reply (around reply-in-news activate)
1566 "Request confirmation when replying to news."
1568 (when (or (not (gnus-news-group-p gnus-newsgroup-name))
1569 (y-or-n-p "Really reply by mail to article author? "))
1575 @subsubheading Question 5.10
1577 How to tell Gnus not to generate a sender header?
1579 @subsubheading Answer
1581 Since 5.10 Gnus doesn't generate a sender header by
1582 default. For older Gnus' try this in ~/.gnus.el:
1585 (eval-after-load "message"
1586 '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
1591 @subsubheading Question 5.11
1593 I want Gnus to locally store copies of my send mail and
1596 @subsubheading Answer
1598 You must set the variable gnus-message-archive-group to do
1599 this. You can set it to a string giving the name of the
1600 group where the copies shall go or like in the example
1601 below use a function which is evaluated and which returns
1605 (setq gnus-message-archive-group
1606 '((if (message-news-p)
1613 @subsubheading Question 5.12
1615 I want Gnus to kill the buffer after successful sending instead of keeping
1616 it alive as "Sent mail to...", how to do it?
1618 @subsubheading Answer
1620 Add this to your ~/.gnus:
1623 (setq message-kill-buffer-on-exit t)
1628 @subsubheading Question 5.13
1630 People tell me my Message-IDs are not correct, why
1631 aren't they and how to fix it?
1633 @subsubheading Answer
1635 The message-ID is an unique identifier for messages you
1636 send. To make it unique, Gnus need to know which machine
1637 name to put after the "@@". If the name of the machine
1638 where Gnus is running isn't suitable (it probably isn't
1639 at most private machines) you can tell Gnus what to use
1643 (setq message-user-fqdn "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld")
1647 in ~/.gnus.el. If you use Gnus 5.9 or earlier, you can use this
1648 instead (works for newer versions as well):
1651 (eval-after-load "message"
1652 '(let ((fqdn "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld"));; <-- Edit this!
1653 (if (boundp 'message-user-fqdn)
1654 (setq message-user-fqdn fqdn)
1655 (gnus-message 1 "Redefining `message-make-fqdn'.")
1656 (defun message-make-fqdn ()
1657 "Return user's fully qualified domain name."
1662 If you have no idea what to insert for
1663 "yourmachine.yourdomain.tld", you've got several
1664 choices. You can either ask your provider if he allows
1665 you to use something like
1666 yourUserName.userfqdn.provider.net, or you can use
1667 somethingUnique.yourdomain.tld if you own the domain
1668 yourdomain.tld, or you can register at a service which
1669 gives private users a FQDN for free.
1671 Finally you can tell Gnus not to generate a Message-ID
1672 for News at all (and letting the server do the job) by saying
1675 (setq message-required-news-headers
1676 (remove' Message-ID message-required-news-headers))
1680 you can also tell Gnus not to generate Message-IDs for mail by saying
1683 (setq message-required-mail-headers
1684 (remove' Message-ID message-required-mail-headers))
1688 , however some mail servers don't generate proper
1689 Message-IDs, too, so test if your Mail Server behaves
1690 correctly by sending yourself a Mail and looking at the Message-ID.
1692 @node FAQ 6 - Old messages
1693 @subsection Old messages
1696 * FAQ 6-1:: How to import my old mail into Gnus?
1697 * FAQ 6-2:: How to archive interesting messages?
1698 * FAQ 6-3:: How to search for a specific message?
1699 * FAQ 6-4:: How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
1700 * FAQ 6-5:: I want that all read messages are expired (at least in
1701 some groups). How to do it?
1702 * FAQ 6-6:: I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move
1703 them to another group.
1707 @subsubheading Question 6.1
1709 How to import my old mail into Gnus?
1711 @subsubheading Answer
1713 The easiest way is to tell your old mail program to
1714 export the messages in mbox format. Most Unix mailers
1715 are able to do this, if you come from the MS Windows
1716 world, you may find tools at
1717 @uref{http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net/}.
1719 Now you've got to import this mbox file into Gnus. To do
1720 this, create a nndoc group based on the mbox file by
1721 saying @samp{G f /path/file.mbox RET} in
1722 Group buffer. You now have read-only access to your
1723 mail. If you want to import the messages to your normal
1724 Gnus mail groups hierarchy, enter the nndoc group you've
1725 just created by saying @samp{C-u RET}
1726 (thus making sure all messages are retrieved), mark all
1727 messages by saying @samp{M P b} and
1728 either copy them to the desired group by saying
1729 @samp{B c name.of.group RET} or send them
1730 through nnmail-split-methods (respool them) by saying
1734 @subsubheading Question 6.2
1736 How to archive interesting messages?
1738 @subsubheading Answer
1740 If you stumble across an interesting message, say in
1741 gnu.emacs.gnus and want to archive it there are several
1742 solutions. The first and easiest is to save it to a file
1743 by saying @samp{O f}. However, wouldn't
1744 it be much more convenient to have more direct access to
1745 the archived message from Gnus? If you say yes, put this
1746 snippet by Frank Haun <pille3003@@fhaun.de> in
1750 (defun my-archive-article (&optional n)
1751 "Copies one or more article(s) to a corresponding `nnml:' group, e.g.,
1752 `gnus.ding' goes to `nnml:1.gnus.ding'. And `nnml:List-gnus.ding' goes
1753 to `nnml:1.List-gnus-ding'.
1755 Use process marks or mark a region in the summary buffer to archive
1756 more then one article."
1761 (if (featurep 'xemacs)
1762 (replace-in-string gnus-newsgroup-name "^.*:" "")
1763 (replace-regexp-in-string "^.*:" "" gnus-newsgroup-name)))))
1764 (gnus-summary-copy-article n archive-name)))
1768 You can now say @samp{M-x
1769 my-archive-article} in summary buffer to
1770 archive the article under the cursor in a nnml
1771 group. (Change nnml to your preferred back end)
1773 Of course you can also make sure the cache is enabled by saying
1776 (setq gnus-use-cache t)
1780 then you only have to set either the tick or the dormant
1781 mark for articles you want to keep, setting the read
1782 mark will remove them from cache.
1785 @subsubheading Question 6.3
1787 How to search for a specific message?
1789 @subsubheading Answer
1791 There are several ways for this, too. For a posting from
1792 a Usenet group the easiest solution is probably to ask
1793 @uref{http://groups.google.com, groups.google.com},
1794 if you found the posting there, tell Google to display
1795 the raw message, look for the message-id, and say
1796 @samp{M-^ the@@message.id RET} in a
1798 Since Gnus 5.10 there's also a Gnus interface for
1799 groups.google.com which you can call with
1800 @samp{G W}) in group buffer.
1802 Another idea which works for both mail and news groups
1803 is to enter the group where the message you are
1804 searching is and use the standard Emacs search
1805 @samp{C-s}, it's smart enough to look at
1806 articles in collapsed threads, too. If you want to
1807 search bodies, too try @samp{M-s}
1808 instead. Further on there are the
1809 gnus-summary-limit-to-foo functions, which can help you,
1812 Of course you can also use grep to search through your
1813 local mail, but this is both slow for big archives and
1814 inconvenient since you are not displaying the found mail
1815 in Gnus. Here nnir comes into action. Nnir is a front end
1816 to search engines like swish-e or swish++ and
1817 others. You index your mail with one of those search
1818 engines and with the help of nnir you can search through
1819 the indexed mail and generate a temporary group with all
1820 messages which met your search criteria. If this sounds
1821 cool to you, get nnir.el from
1822 @c FIXME Isn't this file in Gnus?
1824 @c Dead link 2013/7.
1825 @uref{ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/}
1828 @uref{ftp://ftp.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/pub/src/emacs/}.
1829 Instructions on how to use it are at the top of the file.
1832 @subsubheading Question 6.4
1834 How to get rid of old unwanted mail?
1836 @subsubheading Answer
1838 You can of course just mark the mail you don't need
1839 anymore by saying @samp{#} with point
1840 over the mail and then say @samp{B DEL}
1841 to get rid of them forever. You could also instead of
1842 actually deleting them, send them to a junk-group by
1843 saying @samp{B m nnml:trash-bin} which
1844 you clear from time to time, but both are not the intended
1847 In Gnus, we let mail expire like news expires on a news
1848 server. That means you tell Gnus the message is
1849 expirable (you tell Gnus "I don't need this mail
1850 anymore") by saying @samp{E} with point
1851 over the mail in summary buffer. Now when you leave the
1852 group, Gnus looks at all messages which you marked as
1853 expirable before and if they are old enough (default is
1854 older than a week) they are deleted.
1857 @subsubheading Question 6.5
1859 I want that all read messages are expired (at least in
1860 some groups). How to do it?
1862 @subsubheading Answer
1864 If you want all read messages to be expired (e.g., in
1865 mailing lists where there's an online archive), you've
1866 got two choices: auto-expire and
1867 total-expire. Auto-expire means, that every article
1868 which has no marks set and is selected for reading is
1869 marked as expirable, Gnus hits @samp{E}
1870 for you every time you read a message. Total-expire
1871 follows a slightly different approach, here all article
1872 where the read mark is set are expirable.
1874 To activate auto-expire, include auto-expire in the
1875 Group parameters for the group. (Hit @samp{G
1876 c} in summary buffer with point over the
1877 group to change group parameters). For total-expire add
1878 total-expire to the group-parameters.
1880 Which method you choose is merely a matter of taste:
1881 Auto-expire is faster, but it doesn't play together with
1882 Adaptive Scoring, so if you want to use this feature,
1883 you should use total-expire.
1885 If you want a message to be excluded from expiration in
1886 a group where total or auto expire is active, set either
1887 tick (hit @samp{u}) or dormant mark (hit
1888 @samp{u}), when you use auto-expire, you
1889 can also set the read mark (hit
1893 @subsubheading Question 6.6
1895 I don't want expiration to delete my mails but to move them
1898 @subsubheading Answer
1900 Say something like this in ~/.gnus.el:
1903 (setq nnmail-expiry-target "nnml:expired")
1907 (If you want to change the value of nnmail-expiry-target
1908 on a per group basis see the question "How can I disable
1909 threading in some (e.g., mail-) groups, or set other
1910 variables specific for some groups?")
1912 @node FAQ 7 - Gnus in a dial-up environment
1913 @subsection Gnus in a dial-up environment
1916 * FAQ 7-1:: I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I
1917 minimize the time I've got to be connected?
1918 * FAQ 7-2:: So what was this thing about the Agent?
1919 * FAQ 7-3:: I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do
1921 * FAQ 7-4:: How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings
1926 @subsubheading Question 7.1
1928 I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can
1929 I minimize the time I've got to be connected?
1931 @subsubheading Answer
1933 You've got basically two options: Either you use the
1934 Gnus Agent (see below) for this, or you can install
1935 programs which fetch your news and mail to your local
1936 disk and Gnus reads the stuff from your local
1939 If you want to follow the second approach, you need a
1940 program which fetches news and offers them to Gnus, a
1941 program which does the same for mail and a program which
1942 receives the mail you write from Gnus and sends them
1945 Let's talk about Unix systems first: For the news part,
1946 the easiest solution is a small nntp server like
1947 @uref{http://www.leafnode.org/, Leafnode} or
1948 @uref{http://infa.abo.fi/~patrik/sn/, sn},
1949 of course you can also install a full featured news
1951 @uref{http://www.isc.org/software/inn/, inn}.
1952 Then you want to fetch your Mail, popular choices
1953 are @uref{http://www.catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/, fetchmail}
1954 and @uref{http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/, getmail}.
1955 You should tell those to write the mail to your disk and
1956 Gnus to read it from there. Last but not least the mail
1957 sending part: This can be done with every MTA like
1958 @uref{http://www.sendmail.org/, sendmail},
1959 @uref{http://www.qmail.org/, postfix},
1960 @uref{http://www.exim.org/, exim} or
1961 @uref{http://www.qmail.org/, qmail}.
1963 On windows boxes I'd vote for
1964 @uref{http://www.tglsoft.de/, Hamster},
1965 it's a small freeware, open-source program which fetches
1966 your mail and news from remote servers and offers them
1967 to Gnus (or any other mail and/or news reader) via nntp
1968 respectively POP3 or IMAP@. It also includes a smtp
1969 server for receiving mails from Gnus.
1972 @subsubheading Question 7.2
1974 So what was this thing about the Agent?
1976 @subsubheading Answer
1978 The Gnus agent is part of Gnus, it allows you to fetch
1979 mail and news and store them on disk for reading them
1980 later when you're offline. It kind of mimics offline
1981 newsreaders like Forte Agent. If you want to use
1982 the Agent place the following in ~/.gnus.el if you are
1983 still using 5.8.8 or 5.9 (it's the default since 5.10):
1990 Now you've got to select the servers whose groups can be
1991 stored locally. To do this, open the server buffer
1992 (that is press @samp{^} while in the
1993 group buffer). Now select a server by moving point to
1994 the line naming that server. Finally, agentize the
1995 server by typing @samp{J a}. If you
1996 make a mistake, or change your mind, you can undo this
1997 action by typing @samp{J r}. When
1998 you're done, type 'q' to return to the group buffer.
1999 Now the next time you enter a group on a agentized
2000 server, the headers will be stored on disk and read from
2001 there the next time you enter the group.
2004 @subsubheading Question 7.3
2006 I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it?
2008 @subsubheading Answer
2010 You can tell the agent to automatically fetch the bodies
2011 of articles which fulfill certain predicates, this is
2012 done in a special buffer which can be reached by
2013 saying @samp{J c} in group
2014 buffer. Please refer to the documentation for
2015 information which predicates are possible and how
2018 Further on you can tell the agent manually which
2019 articles to store on disk. There are two ways to do
2020 this: Number one: In the summary buffer, process mark a
2021 set of articles that shall be stored in the agent by
2022 saying @samp{#} with point over the
2023 article and then type @samp{J s}. The
2024 other possibility is to set, again in the summary
2025 buffer, downloadable (%) marks for the articles you
2026 want by typing @samp{@@} with point over
2027 the article and then typing @samp{J u}.
2028 What's the difference? Well, process marks are erased as
2029 soon as you exit the summary buffer while downloadable
2030 marks are permanent. You can actually set downloadable
2031 marks in several groups then use fetch session ('J s' in
2032 the GROUP buffer) to fetch all of those articles. The
2033 only downside is that fetch session also fetches all of
2034 the headers for every selected group on an agentized
2035 server. Depending on the volume of headers, the initial
2036 fetch session could take hours.
2039 @subsubheading Question 7.4
2041 How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings
2044 @subsubheading Answer
2046 All you've got to do is to tell Gnus when you are online
2047 (plugged) and when you are offline (unplugged), the rest
2048 works automatically. You can toggle plugged/unplugged
2049 state by saying @samp{J j} in group
2050 buffer. To start Gnus unplugged say @samp{M-x
2051 gnus-unplugged} instead of
2052 @samp{M-x gnus}. Note that for this to
2053 work, the agent must be active.
2055 @node FAQ 8 - Getting help
2056 @subsection Getting help
2059 * FAQ 8-1:: How to find information and help inside Emacs?
2060 * FAQ 8-2:: I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g.,
2061 attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
2062 * FAQ 8-3:: Which websites should I know?
2063 * FAQ 8-4:: Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
2064 * FAQ 8-5:: Where to report bugs?
2065 * FAQ 8-6:: I need real-time help, where to find it?
2069 @subsubheading Question 8.1
2071 How to find information and help inside Emacs?
2073 @subsubheading Answer
2075 The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say
2076 @samp{C-h i d m Gnus RET} to start the
2077 Gnus manual, then walk through the menus or do a
2078 full-text search with @samp{s}). Then
2079 there are the general Emacs help commands starting with
2080 C-h, type @samp{C-h ? ?} to get a list
2081 of all available help commands and their meaning. Finally
2082 @samp{M-x apropos-command} lets you
2083 search through all available functions and @samp{M-x
2084 apropos} searches the bound variables.
2087 @subsubheading Question 8.2
2089 I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X
2090 (e.g., attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?
2092 @subsubheading Answer
2094 There's not only the Gnus manual but also the manuals for message,
2095 emacs-mime, sieve, EasyPG Assistant, and pgg. Those packages are
2096 distributed with Gnus and used by Gnus but aren't really part of core
2097 Gnus, so they are documented in different info files, you should have
2098 a look in those manuals, too.
2101 @subsubheading Question 8.3
2103 Which websites should I know?
2105 @subsubheading Answer
2107 The most important one is the
2108 @uref{http://www.gnus.org, official Gnus website}.
2110 Tell me about other sites which are interesting.
2113 @subsubheading Question 8.4
2115 Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
2117 @subsubheading Answer
2119 There's the newsgroup gnu.emacs.gnus (also available as
2120 @uref{http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.user,
2121 gmane.emacs.gnus.user}) which deals with general Gnus
2122 questions. If you have questions about development versions of
2123 Gnus, you should better ask on the ding mailing list, see below.
2125 If you want to stay in the big8,
2126 news.software.readers is also read by some Gnus
2127 users (but chances for qualified help are much better in
2128 the above groups). If you speak German, there's
2129 de.comm.software.gnus.
2131 The ding mailing list (ding@@gnus.org) deals with development of
2132 Gnus. You can read the ding list via NNTP, too under the name
2133 @uref{http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general,
2134 gmane.emacs.gnus.general} from news.gmane.org.
2137 @subsubheading Question 8.5
2139 Where to report bugs?
2141 @subsubheading Answer
2143 Say @samp{M-x gnus-bug}, this will start
2145 @email{bugs@@gnus.org, gnus bug mailing list}
2146 including information about your environment which make
2147 it easier to help you.
2150 @subsubheading Question 8.6
2152 I need real-time help, where to find it?
2154 @subsubheading Answer
2156 Point your IRC client to irc.freenode.net, channel #gnus.
2158 @node FAQ 9 - Tuning Gnus
2159 @subsection Tuning Gnus
2162 * FAQ 9-1:: Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
2163 * FAQ 9-2:: How to speed up the process of entering a group?
2164 * FAQ 9-3:: Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
2168 @subsubheading Question 9.1
2170 Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?
2172 @subsubheading Answer
2174 The reason for this could be the way Gnus reads its
2175 active file, see the node "The Active File" in the Gnus
2176 manual for things you might try to speed the process up.
2177 An other idea would be to byte compile your ~/.gnus.el (say
2178 @samp{M-x byte-compile-file RET ~/.gnus.el
2179 RET} to do it). Finally, if you have require
2180 statements in your .gnus, you could replace them with
2181 eval-after-load, which loads the stuff not at startup
2182 time, but when it's needed. Say you've got this in your
2187 (add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled))
2191 then as soon as you start Gnus, message.el is loaded. If
2195 (eval-after-load "message"
2196 '(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))
2200 it's loaded when it's needed.
2203 @subsubheading Question 9.2
2205 How to speed up the process of entering a group?
2207 @subsubheading Answer
2209 A speed killer is setting the variable
2210 gnus-fetch-old-headers to anything different from nil,
2211 so don't do this if speed is an issue. To speed up
2212 building of summary say
2219 at the bottom of your ~/.gnus.el, this will make gnus
2220 byte-compile things like
2221 gnus-summary-line-format.
2222 then you could increase the value of gc-cons-threshold
2223 by saying something like
2226 (setq gc-cons-threshold 3500000)
2230 in ~/.emacs. If you don't care about width of CJK
2231 characters or use Gnus 5.10 or younger together with a
2232 recent GNU Emacs, you should say
2235 (setq gnus-use-correct-string-widths nil)
2239 in ~/.gnus.el (thanks to Jesper harder for the last
2240 two suggestions). Finally if you are still using 5.8.8
2241 or 5.9 and experience speed problems with summary
2242 buffer generation, you definitely should update to
2243 5.10 since there quite some work on improving it has
2247 @subsubheading Question 9.3
2249 Sending mail becomes slower and slower, what's up?
2251 @subsubheading Answer
2253 The reason could be that you told Gnus to archive the
2254 messages you wrote by setting
2255 gnus-message-archive-group. Try to use a nnml group
2256 instead of an archive group, this should bring you back
2259 @node FAQ - Glossary
2260 @subsection Glossary
2265 When the term ~/.gnus.el is used it just means your Gnus
2266 configuration file. You might as well call it ~/.gnus or
2267 specify another name.
2270 In Gnus terminology a back end is a virtual server, a layer
2271 between core Gnus and the real NNTP-, POP3-, IMAP- or
2272 whatever-server which offers Gnus a standardized interface
2273 to functions like "get message", "get Headers" etc.
2276 When the term Emacs is used in this FAQ, it means either GNU
2280 In this FAQ message means a either a mail or a posting to a
2281 Usenet Newsgroup or to some other fancy back end, no matter
2282 of which kind it is.
2285 MUA is an acronym for Mail User Agent, it's the program you
2286 use to read and write e-mails.
2289 NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you
2290 use to read and write Usenet news.