Features that make you love Gnus?

Features that make you love Gnus?

[Kyle Sexton]

I've got Gnus setup to handle my work email and it works well, but I
use it in the most basic way.  What cool features should I start
checking out that makes you love Gnus?

--
Kyle Sexton

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Oleksandr Gavenko]

On 2012-09-20, Kyle Sexton wrote:

> I've got Gnus setup to handle my work email and it works well, but I
> use it in the most basic way.  What cool features should I start
> checking out that makes you love Gnus?
>
I start using Emacs in 2007 then someone say that this is the best text
editor. Previously I use SciTE and I fail setup some lang syntax highlighting.
So I look for something...

I remember that I learn basic navigation and editing command for 2 week by
official refcard. I don't know English and have no Internet connection at that
time...

Next time I have same issue. I have a lot of trouble withs Thunderbird (it
corrupt internal store for RSS/Atom feed for which I subscribed, so does not
properly record what I read and what not and do this very often). Next I learn
about USENET from Wikipedia and try one. Next I discover that software
projects was managed and supported through mail lists. After that I trapped in
HighVolume traffic issue. And need new solution (good bye Thunderbird).

I hear that mutt and GNUS are the best (feature rich) mail clients.

I try read docs for both (also look to claws-mail as it have plugins for
"anything"), but don't be ready for such tools. As newbie I can't get directly
answer for such questions:

 * how to deal with high volume traffic
 * how especially be notified if someone replay to my message or below me in
   thread

I start using Gnus from end of 2011 and this is terrible experience. Ever for
today.

I delete Thunderbird, copy/paste config from emacswiki to start reading and
sending mails in Gnus and print Gnus refcard for key bindings...

Several times I integrate gnus configs from blog articles and emacswiki. For
example I was surprised by scoring system when look for kill-file feature...

Recently I decide to configure Gnus once and for all.

I read mostly whole Gnus manual, look for Gnus related articles at emacswiki,
perform search queries under Gmane web interface in related groups and perform
general search (I find useful mostly blogs and home page writing).

But I notice problems behind Gnus that have no solution known to me:

 * Blocking Emacs during Gnus loading. news.rsdn.ru server have special timing
   policy for access to their groups, so *Group* buffer can unfreeze after 30
   sec...

   Gnus Agent don't help with this issue I think...

   I look to INN and Leafnode solutions, but don't understand how Emacs will
   be send message back to NNTP...

 * Notification when someone replay to me or articles marked as ticked/dormant
   (!/?). I expect that Gnus periodically reloads all groups for which I
   subscribed (and posted to or have ticked/dormant articles) and scans for
   replays below my messages based on Message-Id.

   I miss this feature. The reason I switch to Gnus is expectation that Gnus
   provide this out of the box!!

   I ask question:

     Subject: Notifying me to read message from selected groups for new messages only if score greater then N.
     Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.user
     To: info-gnus-english@gnu.org
     Date: 2012-08-25 00:49:58+0300 Sat
     Archived-At: <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.user/15746>

  but nobody answer me...

  Tomorrow I will look to mutt for such feature...

-- 
Best regards!

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Mark Simpson]

Kyle Sexton <ks@mocker.org> writes:

> I've got Gnus setup to handle my work email and it works well, but I
> use it in the most basic way.  What cool features should I start
> checking out that makes you love Gnus?

I love Gnus because of Threading (it actually /does/ threading) and
Scoring.

Ciao
Mark

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Tassilo Horn]

Oleksandr Gavenko <gavenkoa@gmail.com> writes:

> But I notice problems behind Gnus that have no solution known to me:
>
>  * Blocking Emacs during Gnus loading. news.rsdn.ru server have
>    special timing policy for access to their groups, so *Group* buffer
>    can unfreeze after 30 sec...
>
>    Gnus Agent don't help with this issue I think...

Yes, right now Gnus blocks when getting new news/mail.  But some people
are experimenting with asynchronously performing such longrunning ops
(see async.el from John Wiegley), and there's Tom Tromey experimenting
with threads in emacs.  So the situation may become better in the middle
term.

>    I look to INN and Leafnode solutions, but don't understand how
>    Emacs will be send message back to NNTP...

It'll deliver the posting to your local leafnode, and that propagates it
back to your "real" news server.

>  * Notification when someone replay to me or articles marked as
>  ticked/dormant (!/?). I expect that Gnus periodically reloads all
>  groups for which I subscribed (and posted to or have ticked/dormant
>  articles) and scans for replays below my messages based on
>  Message-Id.

You could use gnus-notifications to get notifications on new news/mail.
And you could use scoring so that replies to your messages get a very
high score, and then sort according to score.

>    I ask question:
>
>      Subject: Notifying me to read message from selected groups for
>      new messages only if score greater then N.

Oh, sounds about what I've just suggested.  But I think
gnus-notifications currently notifies regardless of score or other
predicates.  Probably, this cannot be done easily, because I think
scores are computed not until you enter a summary buffer which it
doesn't do.  Julien will know the definitive answer.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Tassilo Horn]

Kyle Sexton <ks@mocker.org> writes:

> I've got Gnus setup to handle my work email and it works well, but I
> use it in the most basic way.  What cool features should I start
> checking out that makes you love Gnus?

Except for the cool features like scoring, threading, sane IMAP support,
good and fast searching with nnir, good integration with org-mode, two
rather simple things make me totally dependent on gnus:

1. gcc-self: I don't want to separate my mail in "received" and "sent".
   I want to see complete conversations!

   Frankly, yesterday at my father's computer I've seen that Firefox now
   has a "Keep replies in current folder" feature.  But of course it's
   not as flexible as gnus gcc-self.

2. I really, really hate receiving badly formatted mail.  Gnus washing
   commands help a bit sometimes, but more importantly, message-mode is
   just awesome for writing perfectly formatted plain-text mail.  If you
   write me some totally bogus, messed-up Outlook salad, you'll get a
   perfectly formatted reply where even your own text looks good (and of
   course the request to use some sane email program).

Ah, and not to forget, there are all those little niceties like
gravatars, notifications and google contacts integration that have
changed it from a bit baroque to well-integrated on the free desktop and
so Web 2.0-y.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Erik Colson]

. Posting styles - different from adress dependent on current mailbox
. Mailing lists support
. Adding attachments - Use arrows up/down to see history of files
. Topics view - Have multiple accounts and look as if they were one,
                mixing mailboxes as you want

probably lots more ;)

--
erik

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Julien Danjou]

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On Thu, Sep 20 2012, Kyle Sexton wrote:

> I've got Gnus setup to handle my work email and it works well, but I
> use it in the most basic way.  What cool features should I start
> checking out that makes you love Gnus?

I love to have font-lock (syntax highlighting) for almost anything
attached that Emacs understand. Being able to read mails with diff or C
code and see it in the same colors I have everyday to code is awesome.

-- 
Julien Danjou
;; Free Software hacker & freelance
;; http://julien.danjou.info

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Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Sivaram Neelakantan]

On Fri, Sep 21 2012,Tassilo Horn wrote:


[snipped 24 lines]

> Ah, and not to forget, there are all those little niceties like
> gravatars, notifications and google contacts integration that have
> changed it from a bit baroque to well-integrated on the free desktop and
> so Web 2.0-y.
>

Err..on the google contacts integration, could you tell us more?  How
it's done?


 sivaram
 -- 

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Tassilo Horn]

Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com> writes:

>> Ah, and not to forget, there are all those little niceties like
>> gravatars, notifications and google contacts integration that have
>> changed it from a bit baroque to well-integrated on the free desktop
>> and so Web 2.0-y.
>
> Err..on the google contacts integration, could you tell us more?  How
> it's done?

It's one of Juliens cool packages.  See

  http://julien.danjou.info/projects/emacs-packages#google-contacts

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Adam Sjøgren]

On Thu, 20 Sep 2012 08:48:13 -0500, Kyle wrote:

> I've got Gnus setup to handle my work email and it works well, but I
> use it in the most basic way.  What cool features should I start
> checking out that makes you love Gnus?

I like:

 * Topics (organising groups)

 * Scoring (I only use two levels: idiots articles that are
   automatically read, but still shown, morons articles that I never
   see)

 * Namazu (for searching emails)

 * Configurable display of headers

 * Preferring text over html in multipart emails

 * Use posting styles (for instance for using work email-address during
   work hours and private address outside, in select groups)

 * Splitting email out into groups in fancy ways (I forward emails that
   are not detected as spam, or from cron, to the email account my
   phone is connected to, so everything doesn't reach the phone)

 * Delayed sending of emails/articles (I've just started using this
   recently, and I'm (currently, anyway) hooked)

This based on a brief walk through of my configuration.

In general the greatest thing about Gnus I think is "malleability" - it
is usually possible to get Gnus to handle what ever weird corner case
you want something special for in just the way you want. Given enough
elisp-tutorial reading and experimentation :-)


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "Hur långt man än har kommit                                 Adam Sjøgren
  Är det alltid längre kvar"                             asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Oleksandr Gavenko]

On 2012-09-21, Tassilo Horn wrote:

> Oleksandr Gavenko <gavenkoa@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>    I look to INN and Leafnode solutions, but don't understand how
>>    Emacs will be send message back to NNTP...
>
> It'll deliver the posting to your local leafnode, and that propagates it
> back to your "real" news server.
>
So I must select group subscription from leafnode instead of in Emacs *server*
buffer...

>>  * Notification when someone replay to me or articles marked as
>>  ticked/dormant (!/?). I expect that Gnus periodically reloads all
>>  groups for which I subscribed (and posted to or have ticked/dormant
>>  articles) and scans for replays below my messages based on
>>  Message-Id.
>
> You could use gnus-notifications to get notifications on new news/mail.
> And you could use scoring so that replies to your messages get a very
> high score, and then sort according to score.
>
I currently use scoring (non-adaptive) with gnus-score-followup-thread in
message-sent-hook.

What is gnus-notifications? And where I can find it? I use Gnus v5.13 from
Emacs v23.4.1.

I would like to have capability to be notified if some one mail me to my IMAP
account or replay on my message in one of 70 groups from 5 NNTP server (Gmane,
Mozilla, Eternal September, rsdn.ru, sql.ru).

Note that I don't want to be notified if new message is not replay to me as I
read a lot groups!!

Does notifier pull new message with some periodicity (one time in a hour for
NNTP, and one time in 15 min for IMAP)?

>>    I ask question:
>>
>>      Subject: Notifying me to read message from selected groups for
>>      new messages only if score greater then N.
>
> Oh, sounds about what I've just suggested.  But I think
> gnus-notifications currently notifies regardless of score or other
> predicates.  Probably, this cannot be done easily, because I think
> scores are computed not until you enter a summary buffer which it
> doesn't do.  Julien will know the definitive answer.
>
If this done and that I wrote above Gnus become most powerful client in THE
world!!

I read docs for alpine and mutt, previously I use Thunderbird. They don't
allow such powerful scoring, grouping, highlighting, etc and tuning with
script (elisp in our case) language.

-- 
Best regards!

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Oleksandr Gavenko]

On 2012-09-21, Mark Simpson wrote:

> I love Gnus because of Threading (it actually /does/ threading) and
> Scoring.
>
That you mean when say "it actually /does/ threading"?

Thunderbird also make threading. And don't need such lines:

  (setq
   gnus-show-threads t
   gnus-thread-sort-functions '(gnus-thread-sort-by-date gnus-thread-sort-by-total-score)
   )

  (when window-system
    (setq
     gnus-sum-thread-tree-root "● "
     gnus-sum-thread-tree-false-root " ○ "   ;; XXX: this is bug. Why indent damaged by one space??
     gnus-sum-thread-tree-indent " "
     gnus-sum-thread-tree-single-indent "⚇ "
     gnus-sum-thread-tree-leaf-with-other "├► "
     gnus-sum-thread-tree-single-leaf "└► "
     gnus-sum-thread-tree-vertical "│"
     ))

mutt also allow scoring. My be it use not so powerful language with logical
operators and full elisp.


-- 
Best regards!

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Oleksandr Gavenko]

On 2012-09-21, Tassilo Horn wrote:

> 2. I really, really hate receiving badly formatted mail.  Gnus washing
>    commands help a bit sometimes, but more importantly, message-mode is
>    just awesome for writing perfectly formatted plain-text mail.  If you
>    write me some totally bogus, messed-up Outlook salad, you'll get a
>    perfectly formatted reply where even your own text looks good (and of
>    course the request to use some sane email program).
>
I usually use  "W Q" for message in HTML format (which come from NNTP gateway
for SQL.ru and RSDN.ru forums).

Can I set this option permanently for rsdn.* and sqlru.* groups?

-- 
Best regards!

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Mark Simpson]

Oleksandr Gavenko <gavenkoa@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2012-09-21, Mark Simpson wrote:
>
>> I love Gnus because of Threading (it actually /does/ threading) and
>> Scoring.
>>
> That you mean when say "it actually /does/ threading"?

In my experience mail clients sort by subject - that is not
/Threading/. But perhaps this has gotten better over the years. I have
never tried Thunderbird.

I just happened to notice that scoring was available in mutt when
someone pointed to mutt in a twitter entry last week. I'm glad to see
other mail/news readers picking up on this improvement upon kill files.

Ciao
Mark

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Tassilo Horn]

Oleksandr Gavenko <gavenkoa@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Oleksandr,

>>>    I look to INN and Leafnode solutions, but don't understand how
>>>    Emacs will be send message back to NNTP...
>>
>> It'll deliver the posting to your local leafnode, and that propagates
>> it back to your "real" news server.
>>
> So I must select group subscription from leafnode instead of in Emacs
> *server* buffer...

No, the *server* buffer will show an entry for your local leafnode.
From Gnus perspective, there's nothing different in using a local news
server from using the one of your ISP/university/whatever.  Something
like that:

  (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
               '(nntp "MyLocalLeafnode"
                      (nntp-address "localhost")))

Then you'll have a MyLocalLeafnode server in *server* where you can
subscribe to groupts.

> What is gnus-notifications? And where I can find it? I use Gnus v5.13
> from Emacs v23.4.1.

It's new in the git version of Gnus.

> I would like to have capability to be notified if some one mail me to
> my IMAP account or replay on my message in one of 70 groups from 5
> NNTP server (Gmane, Mozilla, Eternal September, rsdn.ru, sql.ru).
>
> Note that I don't want to be notified if new message is not replay to
> me as I read a lot groups!!

I think, that "only when someone replies to my mail" thingy isn't
possible right now.

> Does notifier pull new message with some periodicity (one time in a
> hour for NNTP, and one time in 15 min for IMAP)?

No.  But you can do this using gnus daemons. (info "(gnus)Daemons")

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Tassilo Horn]

Oleksandr Gavenko <gavenkoa@gmail.com> writes:

>> 2. I really, really hate receiving badly formatted mail.  Gnus washing
>>    commands help a bit sometimes, but more importantly, message-mode is
>>    just awesome for writing perfectly formatted plain-text mail.  If you
>>    write me some totally bogus, messed-up Outlook salad, you'll get a
>>    perfectly formatted reply where even your own text looks good (and of
>>    course the request to use some sane email program).
>
> I usually use "W Q" for message in HTML format (which come from NNTP
> gateway for SQL.ru and RSDN.ru forums).
>
> Can I set this option permanently for rsdn.* and sqlru.* groups?

Probably by adding some code into `gnus-article-mode' that checks if the
article is from one of these newsgroups and then does
(gnus-article-fill-long-lines).  But in my experience, these washing
commands make only sense on a message per message basis.  For example,
if the message contains some code snippet you never want to fill long
lines.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

On Thu, Sep 20 2012, Kyle Sexton wrote:

> I've got Gnus setup to handle my work email and it works well, but I
> use it in the most basic way.  What cool features should I start
> checking out that makes you love Gnus?

Since this is turning into a "what cool features do you wish Gnus had so
you could love it better" thread, I'd like a way to set up an arbitrary
handling mechanism for incoming mail. So I set some regexps on headers,
and incoming mail that matches gets fed to a function I wrote. Then I
can automatically make org captures out of incoming mail! With a running
computer and gnus agent, I can remotely wipe my hard drive simply by
emailing myself! And what young boy wouldn't like to be able to do that.

Now is when someone tells me that gnus has had this feature since 1997.

Ta,
E

-- 
GN Emacs 24.2.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.4.4)
 of 2012-09-16 on pellet
Ma Gnus v0.6

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Andreas Schwab]

Tassilo Horn <tsdh@gnu.org> writes:

> Oleksandr Gavenko <gavenkoa@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>> 2. I really, really hate receiving badly formatted mail.  Gnus washing
>>>    commands help a bit sometimes, but more importantly, message-mode is
>>>    just awesome for writing perfectly formatted plain-text mail.  If you
>>>    write me some totally bogus, messed-up Outlook salad, you'll get a
>>>    perfectly formatted reply where even your own text looks good (and of
>>>    course the request to use some sane email program).
>>
>> I usually use "W Q" for message in HTML format (which come from NNTP
>> gateway for SQL.ru and RSDN.ru forums).
>>
>> Can I set this option permanently for rsdn.* and sqlru.* groups?
>
> Probably by adding some code into `gnus-article-mode' that checks if the
> article is from one of these newsgroups and then does
> (gnus-article-fill-long-lines).

You can also set gnus-treat-fill-long-lines in the group parameters
(either individually for each group or via gnus-parameters).

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Adam Sjøgren]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:26:59 +0800, Eric wrote:

> I'd like a way to set up an arbitrary handling mechanism for incoming
> mail. So I set some regexps on headers, and incoming mail that matches
> gets fed to a function I wrote.

Can't you do that with fancy splitting? I'd think that is roughly what
happens when I have a split that is:
 
          ; Get rid of spam:
          (: spam-split)

or:

          (: (lambda ()
               (car (bbdb/gnus-split-method))))

or:

          ; Resend to mobile:
          ;   Must not match, otherwise the splitting ends here maybe it
          ;   would be nicer to (& (resend-to-mobile-split) (| (the rest))) ?
          (: resend-to-mobile-split "my-mobile@example.com")

> Now is when someone tells me that gnus has had this feature since 1997.

I'm not quite sure when fancy splitting was introduced.


  :-),

    Adam

-- 
 "Hur långt man än har kommit                                 Adam Sjøgren
  Är det alltid längre kvar"                             asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Malcolm Purvis]

>>>>> "Adam" == Adam Sjøgren <asjo@koldfront.dk> writes:

Adam> In general the greatest thing about Gnus I think is "malleability"

I've been using Gnus to read my email at both home and work for a decade
(and as a newsreader for much longer - Gack!) and agree with everything
on Adam's list.

The combination of adaptive scoring, total-expiry and programable expiry
rules makes it a great way to churn through mailing lists.

Programmable splitting are very powerful.  I've just started using
gnus-registry-split-fancy-with-parent to move email from work colleges
into the right project mailboxes and it's great.

Integration with org-mode and bbdb I also can't do without.

Malcolm

-- 
		     Malcolm Purvis <malcolmp@xemacs.org>

Re: Features that make you love Gnus?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

On Mon, Sep 24 2012, Adam Sjøgren wrote:

> On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:26:59 +0800, Eric wrote:
>
>> I'd like a way to set up an arbitrary handling mechanism for incoming
>> mail. So I set some regexps on headers, and incoming mail that matches
>> gets fed to a function I wrote.
>
> Can't you do that with fancy splitting? I'd think that is roughly what
> happens when I have a split that is:
>  
>           ; Get rid of spam:
>           (: spam-split)
>
> or:
>
>           (: (lambda ()
>                (car (bbdb/gnus-split-method))))
>
> or:
>
>           ; Resend to mobile:
>           ;   Must not match, otherwise the splitting ends here maybe it
>           ;   would be nicer to (& (resend-to-mobile-split) (| (the rest))) ?
>           (: resend-to-mobile-split "my-mobile@example.com")
>
>> Now is when someone tells me that gnus has had this feature since 1997.
>
> I'm not quite sure when fancy splitting was introduced.

No kidding, that does work. Thanks! It seemed odd at first, like a
misuse of splitting, but I guess you can see it as an extension of the
split…

Thanks again,
E

-- 
GNU Emacs 24.2.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.4.4)
 of 2012-09-16 on pellet
Ma Gnus v0.6