Stuff I stumbeled over while writing Gnus-FAQ

Stuff I stumbeled over while writing Gnus-FAQ

[Frank Schmitt]

Hello

I'm just in the process of writing a new Gnus-Faq (don't hold your
breath, I need some more days before I am ready for publishing a first
draft) and I stumbeled about some things, maybe somebody can help me
there:

Is the following sentence still valid?
-->--
   Gnus 5.8.x requires an emacs version that is greater
   than or equal to Emacs 20.x or XEmacs 20.x.
-->--

There's often the question "How to prevent Gnus from deleting the Mail
on the server it retrieves from my Pop3-server", there's no
functionality for this in any version of Gnus, so people have to use
either something like fetchmail, or the pop3.el from XEmacs mail-lib,
correct? And this pop3.el doesn't work with Gnu Emacs, correct too?

Do I remember correctly that there's no chance of specifying an other
browser than w3 for rendering html-mail in 5.8.8?

Is there any solution better than marking all messages and moving them
to the group they were already in before for the "Gnus' estimation of
total articles in Group is to high" problem?

If you want to tick a message you say !, wouldn't it be nice if C-u ! 
removed the tick mark?

I know that Oort has an variable which makes Gnus ask you for
confirmation when replying in a newsgroup. Is this in 5.8.8, too?

Is there anybody out there using aspell together with flyspell and
ispell.el? Where does configuration compared to ispell differ? Is it
enough to set ispell-program-name to aspell?

-- 
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Re: Stuff I stumbeled over while writing Gnus-FAQ

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> Is the following sentence still valid?
> -->--
>    Gnus 5.8.x requires an emacs version that is greater
>    than or equal to Emacs 20.x or XEmacs 20.x.
> -->--

Emacs 20.3 and XEmacs 20.1, I think.

> There's often the question "How to prevent Gnus from deleting the Mail
> on the server it retrieves from my Pop3-server", there's no
> functionality for this in any version of Gnus, so people have to use
> either something like fetchmail, or the pop3.el from XEmacs mail-lib,
> correct?

Yes.

> And this pop3.el doesn't work with Gnu Emacs, correct too?

Wasn't there some paperwork problems with that?  I forget...

> Do I remember correctly that there's no chance of specifying an other
> browser than w3 for rendering html-mail in 5.8.8?

I think so.  In Oort, there's `mm-text-html-renderer'.

> Is there any solution better than marking all messages and moving them
> to the group they were already in before for the "Gnus' estimation of
> total articles in Group is to high" problem?

Nope.

> If you want to tick a message you say !, wouldn't it be nice if C-u ! 
> removed the tick mark?

`C-u !' is the same as `4 !'.  That is, tick the next four messages.
(That's the normal Emacs numerical prefix rule.)

> I know that Oort has an variable which makes Gnus ask you for
> confirmation when replying in a newsgroup. Is this in 5.8.8, too?

I don't think so...

> Is there anybody out there using aspell together with flyspell and
> ispell.el? Where does configuration compared to ispell differ? Is it
> enough to set ispell-program-name to aspell?

Uhm...  Somebody else take this one.  :-)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Stuff I stumbeled over while writing Gnus-FAQ

[Henrik Enberg]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> If you want to tick a message you say !, wouldn't it be nice if C-u ! 
> removed the tick mark?

Doesn't `M-u' do that?

> I know that Oort has an variable which makes Gnus ask you for
> confirmation when replying in a newsgroup. Is this in 5.8.8, too?

Nope

> Is there anybody out there using aspell together with flyspell and
> ispell.el? Where does configuration compared to ispell differ? Is it
> enough to set ispell-program-name to aspell?

I've been using aspell for quite some time now with flyspell and
ispell.el, and it works just fine.  The only custmization I have is
(setq ispell-program-name "aspell") in  .emacs.el.

Re: Stuff I stumbeled over while writing Gnus-FAQ

[Hans de Graaff]

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On Tue, 31 Dec 2002, Frank Schmitt wrote:

> Is there anybody out there using aspell together with flyspell and
> ispell.el? Where does configuration compared to ispell differ? Is it
> enough to set ispell-program-name to aspell?

(setq-default ispell-program-name "aspell")

This is all I do, and flyspell works just fine with aspell.

Hans

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Re: Stuff I stumbeled over while writing Gnus-FAQ

[Frank Schmitt]

Hello

Thanks to you and the others. Let's do some more work then.

-- 
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Re: Stuff I stumbeled over while writing Gnus-FAQ

[Kai Großjohann]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> There's often the question "How to prevent Gnus from deleting the Mail
> on the server it retrieves from my Pop3-server", there's no
> functionality for this in any version of Gnus, so people have to use
> either something like fetchmail, or the pop3.el from XEmacs mail-lib,
> correct? And this pop3.el doesn't work with Gnu Emacs, correct too?

Actually, the XEmacs functionality comes from epop3mail.el by
Franklin Lee, and I think that works with Emacs, too.
-- 
Ambibibentists unite!

Re: Stuff I stumbeled over while writing Gnus-FAQ

[Simon Josefsson]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> There's often the question "How to prevent Gnus from deleting the Mail
> on the server it retrieves from my Pop3-server", there's no
> functionality for this in any version of Gnus, so people have to use
> either something like fetchmail, or the pop3.el from XEmacs mail-lib,
> correct? And this pop3.el doesn't work with Gnu Emacs, correct too?

There is epop3mail which is (I believe) a superset of the features
available in Emacs pop3.el, XEmacs pop3.el and Gnus pop3.el.  Maybe if
it is recommended, people will start to use it and the other
non-maintained (AFAIK) versions can be dropped or merged into one
package.  Assuming epop3mail is in a good legal shape, too.

Or they could use a IMAP mail-source with the :dontexpunge flag, if
the POP3-server talks IMAP too.

Re: Stuff I stumbeled over while writing Gnus-FAQ

[Frank Schmitt]

kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>
>> There's often the question "How to prevent Gnus from deleting the Mail
>> on the server it retrieves from my Pop3-server", there's no
>> functionality for this in any version of Gnus, so people have to use
>> either something like fetchmail, or the pop3.el from XEmacs mail-lib,
>> correct? And this pop3.el doesn't work with Gnu Emacs, correct too?
>
> Actually, the XEmacs functionality comes from epop3mail.el by
> Franklin Lee, and I think that works with Emacs, too.

I just did some research about epop3mail.el, but I couldn't really find
a homepage or something alike for this, neither could i get hold of
Franklin Lees email address.

Is there anybody out there who can help me out? Is epop3mail.el still
under active development? 

Is there any reason besides nobody did it yet, why Gnus' pop3.el can't
handle this stuff? Shouldn't it be quite trivial to do? 

You introduce a new keyword for mail-source pop leave-on-server-p which
is nil by default and when the mail shall stay on the server you set it
to t. If pop3.el fetches messages and leave-on-server-p is non-nil, it
retrieves first the uidls for all messages by sending the command 'uidl'
to the server, then it looks in pop3-retrieved-messages (explained later)
which message already have been retrieved, for all others it sends 'retr'
as usual to retrieve them, adds their uidls to
pop3-retrieved-messages and writes a line X-Gnus-Pop-infos:
name.of.server; theUIDL. Then we need a switch at the place where 'dele'
is send to the server which makes pop3.el send this command only if
leave-on-server is nil and finally when a Mail is deleted, we need to
delete it on the server, too.

This should work and allow a per server setting of leave-on-server
(epopmail.el doesn't do this) and for somebody who knows Lisp and the
Gnus sources it should be a triviality to do it.

-- 
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Re: Stuff I stumbeled over while writing Gnus-FAQ

[Simon Josefsson]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>
>> Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>>
>>> There's often the question "How to prevent Gnus from deleting the Mail
>>> on the server it retrieves from my Pop3-server", there's no
>>> functionality for this in any version of Gnus, so people have to use
>>> either something like fetchmail, or the pop3.el from XEmacs mail-lib,
>>> correct? And this pop3.el doesn't work with Gnu Emacs, correct too?
>>
>> Actually, the XEmacs functionality comes from epop3mail.el by
>> Franklin Lee, and I think that works with Emacs, too.
>
> I just did some research about epop3mail.el, but I couldn't really find
> a homepage or something alike for this, neither could i get hold of
> Franklin Lees email address.
>
> Is there anybody out there who can help me out? Is epop3mail.el still
> under active development?

The last release I have is 0.9.9.5 from 04/16/2000.  It says the
address is lee.franklin -a-t- worldnet.att.net.  The file is called
"ep3m-0995.zip".

> Is there any reason besides nobody did it yet, why Gnus' pop3.el can't
> handle this stuff? Shouldn't it be quite trivial to do? 
>
> You introduce a new keyword for mail-source pop leave-on-server-p which
> is nil by default and when the mail shall stay on the server you set it
> to t. If pop3.el fetches messages and leave-on-server-p is non-nil, it
> retrieves first the uidls for all messages by sending the command 'uidl'
> to the server, then it looks in pop3-retrieved-messages (explained later)
> which message already have been retrieved, for all others it sends 'retr'
> as usual to retrieve them, adds their uidls to
> pop3-retrieved-messages and writes a line X-Gnus-Pop-infos:
> name.of.server; theUIDL. Then we need a switch at the place where 'dele'
> is send to the server which makes pop3.el send this command only if
> leave-on-server is nil and finally when a Mail is deleted, we need to
> delete it on the server, too.
>
> This should work and allow a per server setting of leave-on-server
> (epopmail.el doesn't do this) and for somebody who knows Lisp and the
> Gnus sources it should be a triviality to do it.

Sounds like a good idea.  If you do the work, it would be nice if you
base it on something that can be included in Emacs so it benefits
everyone.