>>>>> Glenn Morris wrote:
> That's probably fine, if the message says something like:
> "You must run Gnus, or customize `gnus-dired-mail-mode', first"

> Or, how about something like changing the default value of
> gnus-dired-mail-mode to something like:

> (if (featurep 'gnus) 'gnus-user-agent
>   'mail-user-agent)

At last I discovered what causes the Gnus logo screen.  That is
the following snippet that has been put in gnus.el:

(eval-when (load)
  (let ((command (format "%s" this-command)))
    (when (string-match "gnus" command)
      (if (string-match "gnus-other-frame" command)
	  (gnus-get-buffer-create gnus-group-buffer)
	(gnus-splash)))))

It is evaluated when gnus.elc is being autoloaded.  Note that
what causes that autoloading then is `gnus-dired-attach', of
which the name matches "gnus".  So, how about faking the value
of `this-command'?  The patch is below.  Could you try it?

> emacs -Q
> C-x d
> M-x turn-on-gnus-dired-mode
> mark file
> C-c C-m C-a

This works well for me.  I don't know why I don't observe bug
1060, i.e. ``void-variable gnus-article-reply'', though.  Do you
still get that error?

In addition, `gnus-dired-attach' seems to have been written
before I improved Gnus' `compose-mail' handling.  Now it should
work with `gnus-user-agent' and the `gnus-setup-message' macro
is not necessary.

Regards,