(offtopic?) making gnus easier

(offtopic?) making gnus easier

[David Chmelik]

    It would be nice if gnus was "easy" as gui; it seems hard as old things
like tin, but I will not use gui except when writing more prose than than
code.  Is a lisp authors' book recommended, or is gnu doc enough?  Gnus
bewilders me (and non-coders in many more ways likely:)
many help sections, little toc description
many variables, little variable descriptiveness
    I am joking about this descriptiveness; it is overdone like xemacs (i
should try emacs "menus.")  Maybe it is easier for syadmins, or Sage helps
(no one near me does.) but from the pov. of a not total hard computer
scientist, even using gnus oneself is a problem (I relearned how to skip
gnus' "reading..," but 1/2 the time it usually will not unsubscribe: after
marking read & unsubscribing a couple times: it ignores you, or keeps
doing it like read-only grouplist:)
  gnus vs gnus-unplugged (rarely unplugs)
  gnus-activate-level (i did not check: unrelated to vga)
  gnus-agent (overkill for users; 'J' does nothing)
  gnus-cacheable-groups (this & next 2 in docs supposedly prevent loading)
  gnus-check-new-newsgroups
  gnus-read-active-file
  gnus-secondary-select-methods (someone on #gnus implied secondaries do not
immediately load.)
  gnus-use-cache (not near its' group list?)
    I take cs technical writing class next; this part is ignorant comments on
help; now skip if you want.  You have to know texinfo and emacs lisp.
like: "the summary 'buffer::'" "... posting ..."
"the article 'buffer'::" "... handling articles ..."
"composing messages::"  "... sending ..."
I use the buffer, but others will also not know the difference in chapter
descriptions: which go on like this for 50.  Undefined is ok in doshelp; not
texinfo.
    I offered to donate/pay for docs/help to solve this, but "make" also needs
free software docs comparing Bsd & gnu make.  I will not write much; as
without discussion i struggle into summer break to even use glibc & make;
unless i can help and someone else who prefers console & posix over 9 yr
thinks so.  But, i will ignore extra groups; gnus-mail will solve things if it
is nice.  I only studied lisp to write exercises, but may get the book.
sincerely, David Chmelik
(Darwin at the fsf)

Re: (offtopic?) making gnus easier

[Ted Zlatanov]

On 12 Feb 2006, dchmelik@nwinfo.net wrote:

> It would be nice if gnus was "easy" as gui

One area where I'd like to do some work is on creating and maintaining
Gnus configurations.  I started something with assistant.el, but never
had the time to work more on it.

I agree with your other points, but it's pretty unlikely all of Gnus
will be changed to accomodate new users who are probably better off
with Evolution or Thunderbird anyhow.  It doesn't seem like there's
interest among Gnus maintainers, that's all.

Ted