Getting Reacquainted with Gnus

Getting Reacquainted with Gnus

[David Abrahams]

Hi,

After much futzing around with other approaches, I decided to surrender
to the inevitable truth that Gnus is the one true way (for me).  So I've
decided -- rather than building upon my already massive lack of
understanding of How It Really Works -- to approach Gnus very slowly, at
an oblique angle, with my old .gnus file handy in case The Beast turns
out to be in a bad mood and I need to konk it over the head in a hurry.

My first step was to go to http://gnus.org and look for documentation.
After poking around a while, I discovered that the latest docs there
were apparently posted sometime in 2003.  That reminded me of why I've
been wary of this project.

Then I tried to figure out which release of Gnus I should be using.  It
turned out that http://gnus.org/dist/ had a whole bunch of
cryptically-named gnus versions.  Ngnus and ognus sounded vaguely like
"No Gnus" and "Oort Gnus," names that I had heard often but never really
understood.  There was no indication of which package might be
appropriate for me.

I'm using a self-built snapshot of GNU Emacs that reports itself as
version

   23.0.60.2 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.9) of 2008-05-03 

The gnus that came with my emacs reports itself to be v5.13, so
eventually I tried looking in its `M-x info' and found section 10.2.1:

  ...
     On the 26th of October 2000, Oort Gnus was begun and was released as
  Gnus 5.10 on May 1st 2003 (24 releases).

     On the January 4th 2004, No Gnus was begun.

     If you happen upon a version of Gnus that has a prefixed name -
  "(ding) Gnus", "September Gnus", "Red Gnus", "Quassia Gnus",
  "Pterodactyl Gnus", "Oort Gnus", "No Gnus" - don't panic.  Don't let it
  know that you're frightened.  Back away.  Slowly.  Whatever you do,
  don't run.  Walk away, calmly, until you're out of its reach.  Find a
  proper released version of Gnus and snuggle up to that instead.

This is cute, but confusing.  And note, the latter paragraph doesn't
appear in the old 2003 docs on gnus.org.  Somehow I persevered, but it
wasn't until section 10.2.7 of the *info* that it began to become clear
what these versions meant.  I still don't know what version I should be
using.  I guess the only thing newer than 5.13 would be a development
snapshot?

My point in writing this post is that the environment for someone trying
to get started with the latest, best Gnus is not too friendly.  I would
like to see updated documentation available on gnus.org, and I'd
especially like to see clear guidance there about what to download when
acquiring gnus.  Even sinking the ognus and ngnus packages into a
subdirectory called "alpha" would be a big help.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com

Re: Getting Reacquainted with Gnus

[Andrew J Cosgriff]

David Abrahams wrote :

> After much futzing around with other approaches, I decided to surrender
> to the inevitable truth that Gnus is the one true way (for me).

Yes. I've been off in the wilderness ever since I got a Mac 5 years ago,
though I came to miss Emacs, and started to use Gnus again in the past
year, if only to look at gmane.*.

> My first step was to go to http://gnus.org and look for documentation.

Perhaps it's worth just having it point to
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs-en?CategoryGnus ? Though I notice
the first link to the tutorial there is broken, too (I don't suppose
anyone has a copy of it around for us put somewhere?)

[...]

> I'm using a self-built snapshot of GNU Emacs that reports itself as
> version
>
>    23.0.60.2 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.9) of 2008-05-03 

[...]

> I still don't know what version I should be using.  I guess the only
> thing newer than 5.13 would be a development snapshot?

Yes, though I believe Emacs CVS is synced up with Gnus CVS fairly(?)
regularly these days.

> My point in writing this post is that the environment for someone trying
> to get started with the latest, best Gnus is not too friendly.  I would
> like to see updated documentation available on gnus.org, and I'd
> especially like to see clear guidance there about what to download when
> acquiring gnus.  Even sinking the ognus and ngnus packages into a
> subdirectory called "alpha" would be a big help.

For the time being it seems like the latest, best Gnus is whatever your
Emacs ships with. If you want anything more recent, you're best pulling
it down via CVS, since actual development "releases" are pretty few and
far between these days, it seems.


I'm happy to try and hack up a bit of content for an updated (but very
basic) gnus.org website that merely answers a few key questions like

- what is it? why do i want to use it?
- how can i get:
 - the latest stable release
 - the bleeding edge development releases
- how do i get started?
- where can i find more information? (emacswiki, mailing list, etc.)

(and maybe something to generate both the latest stable manual and the
latest CVS development one into HTML)

...is anyone interested?


Cheers,
 Cos. (wondering exactly happened to that Gnus cap he had all those
 years ago...)
-- 
http://andrew.j.cosgriff.name/ | do not ingest

Re: Getting Reacquainted with Gnus

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:42:38 -0400 David Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> wrote: 

DA> My first step was to go to http://gnus.org and look for documentation.
DA> After poking around a while, I discovered that the latest docs there
DA> were apparently posted sometime in 2003.  That reminded me of why I've
DA> been wary of this project.

Who is in charge of that web site?  Looks like Lars from the front page.

I can help with deploying the docs (both the latest release and from CVS
nightly) if necessary.  I agree it's badly needed.

Ted

Re: Getting Reacquainted with Gnus

[Ian Swainson]

On Thursday 31 July 2008 at 05:06 PM, Andrew J Cosgriff <confusenet@polydistortion.net> wrote:
>
> ...is anyone interested?

I think its a great idea also, and would be pleased to help in any way I
can.

Cheers,
ian

-- 
Ian Swainson

fortune says:
Q:What do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back?
A:A stick.

Created using GNU/Linux | http://www.getgnulinux.org

Re: Getting Reacquainted with Gnus

[Miles Bader]

Andrew J Cosgriff <confusenet@polydistortion.net> writes:
>> I still don't know what version I should be using.  I guess the only
>> thing newer than 5.13 would be a development snapshot?
>
> Yes, though I believe Emacs CVS is synced up with Gnus CVS fairly(?)
> regularly these days.

Yes.  Currently "regularly" is about every 2-3 weeks.

> For the time being it seems like the latest, best Gnus is whatever your
> Emacs ships with.

That's pretty much true if you're using Emacs from the CVS trunk.

> If you want anything more recent, you're best pulling it down via CVS,
> since actual development "releases" are pretty few and far between
> these days, it seems.

More or less, though Gnus development releases might be useful for
people that don't want to run a CVS Emacs, but want a newer Gnus.

BTW, another point that might be worth mentioning is that the Gnus bug
reporting email addresses don't seem to reach anybody, or at least, the
only way I've found to get a response is to send to the development
mailing list.

-Miles

-- 
XML is like violence.  If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not
using enough of it.

Re: Getting Reacquainted with Gnus

[Adam Sjøgren]

On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:06:01 +0000 (UTC), Andrew wrote:

> If you want anything more recent, you're best pulling it down via CVS,
> since actual development "releases" are pretty few and far between
> these days, it seems.

Usually every May 1st. Give or take a little.

[... updating the website ...]

> - where can i find more information? (emacswiki, mailing list, etc.)

(Info... :-))


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "It is a sort of cheap and cheerful kind of                  Adam Sjøgren
  abstraction, but it works well in practise."           asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Getting Reacquainted with Gnus

[Andrew J Cosgriff]

ajc wrote :

> I'm happy to try and hack up a bit of content for an updated (but very
> basic) gnus.org website that merely answers a few key questions like
>
> - what is it? why do i want to use it?
> - how can i get:
>  - the latest stable release
>  - the bleeding edge development releases
> - how do i get started?
> - where can i find more information? (emacswiki, mailing list, etc.)

Ok, here goes. I've done some preliminary content
rearrangement/recreation work, which you can see a demo of at

http://polydistortion.net/gnus/

I'd love some help!

- What other content do we need?

- We should probably copy the old my.gnus tutorial and FAQ over from
  what's in the wayback archive, though they'd need to be updated
  somehow.

- If somebody remembers how CSS works these days, I'd love something
  useful on the style front - I think I replaced that part of my brain
  with wine, music and Cisco IOS in the last few years...


Cheers,
 Cos.
-- 
http://andrew.j.cosgriff.name/ | the blurred crusade